Land Matters

What Do Landscape Architects Read?

I sometimes have the sinking feeling that, for too many landscape architects, the answer is: “Little or nothing beyond what is absolutely necessary for the transaction of their daily business.” If true, that’s very bad news for me and the Landscape Architecture editorial staff, because we’ve dedicated the past several years to making this magazine worth reading again.

Some will answer that landscape architects look at lots of publications, particularly art and design magazines. Landscape architecture is, after all, a visual profession, and much can be learned from plans, drawings, and photos. So are designers really missing all that much if they don’t read?

They’ll definitely miss at least half of LAM. Those who just flip through the magazine could easily mistake its glorious photography as marketing for high-profile designs. “The Ecology of Privilege” (December 2006) is a perfect example. The photos unabashedly celebrate a spectacular home and award-winning landscape near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The text, however, tells a different story: one of how money and privilege are (with the help of landscape architects) turning the great vistas of the West into precincts for the rich and how land “trusts” are setting aside so-called public open space for the sole use of wealthy home buyers. Is reading about such landscape issues of professional value, or are landscape architects really better off just looking at pictures?

More broadly, does a professional aversion to reading (and its corollary, writing) have anything to do with the absence of a national, ongoing dialogue on significant landscape issues? Look at the most logical venue for such a dialogue: the LArch-L network. This valuable online forum should witness opinionated, in-depth dialogues on landscape issues every single day. Instead, a typical posting drily announces a faculty position opening or poses some technical question about software. I bet I’d find more passionate interchanges in an online forum devoted to poodle grooming.

And what of the university programs: Do they fire students with a zeal for reading, or do they perpetuate the notion that graphics are all that really matters? I do know some academic landscape architects who are passionate advocates of reading. One of them, Bruce Ferguson, FASLA, wrote in a recent e-mail that his knowledge of landscape architecture is reinforced by his continuing self-education. “I read gargantuan amounts of everything from history to geology to thermodynamics to economics and politics,” writes Ferguson. “I pursue complete breadth of understanding because of its necessity for my profession.” But how typical is Ferguson’s attitude among landscape academics? And of those who are avid readers, how successful are they at imparting the idea that reading makes a student a better landscape architect?
I suspect that the foregoing questions may seem a bit withering, so let me try to frame this more affirmatively. Since you have stuck with me this far, I assume that, if you are a landscape architect, you’re among those who do read. So tell me:

• What do you read relative to your practice and how does it help?
• What do you read from the larger world of books and periodicals, and how does that factor into your professional excellence?

The views expressed in this column belong to Bill Thompson, FASLA, editor of Landscape Architecture magazine, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of LAND Online or the American Society of Landscape Architects. Please direct all comments and responses to Thompson at bthompson@asla.org.