Land Matters
In a preview of June’s Land Matters column, Landscape Architecture magazine editor Bill Thompson, FASLA, wonders if writing matters to landscape architects.

"Topography, plantings, and water are atavistic tools that call forth geologic, ecologic, social, and urban histories but reject the didactic framing of a consistent narrative."

What does this sentence, taken from a recent book about a prominent landscape architecture practice, mean? I confess its full meaning is hidden from me, reader, as it may be from you. But I do know one thing: It was written by a landscape architect, an academic at a midwestern university (read the review in our March issue to find out more).

Frederick Law Olmsted was a published writer long before he founded the profession of landscape architecture in North America, so I have to wonder what he’d say about the state of writing in the profession today. How would he view the sentence above—an example of the pompous “artspeak” that sometimes masquerades as intelligent discourse in writing about contemporary landscapes? And artspeak is just one symptom of a professional malaise. How did literacy in the profession go so awry that landscape architects think this and other forms of pretentious blather are legitimate ways of communicating?

Looked at another way, however, I should probably celebrate the fact that a landscape architect has written a book—any book—about contemporary designed landscapes. When I survey the cornucopia of landscape-related volumes rolling off the presses every year, I can’t help noticing that by far the majority are by architects or generic writers from other disciplines. Landscape architects write only a tiny percentage of them.

Does writing matter to landscape architects? If it does, why isn’t there more of it? I particularly note the near vacuum of critical or analytical commentary. Is the problem that landscape architects aren’t trained to think critically about built works? Or are landscape architects just timid about voicing critical opinions? One academic landscape architect I talked to frankly admitted that he didn’t want to weather the professional brickbats that might result from writing a “Critic at Large” piece for Landscape Architecture. But isn’t it a duty of academics to engage in informed critique?

The dearth of critical writing is just part of the problem. I have trouble overall recruiting competent writers from the profession to write on any topic for Landscape Architecture. When I became editor, I set as a goal that 75 percent of the magazine would be written by people with degrees in landscape architecture or some comparable background. I think in any given year we come close to meeting that goal, but it’s an uphill battle. How might we recruit potential authors from the profession who are passionate about writing about landscape issues and yet are humble enough to understand that writing well may involve a learning curve?

Landscape architects think of themselves as visual, not verbal, people, but if that’s an excuse for not working on their writing, I think it’s a cop-out. The question is, how can students and professionals develop the verbal side of their brains, and how can schools of landscape architecture and the profession at large encourage them to do so?

J. William “Bill” Thompson, FASLA
Editor / bthompson@asla.org