Week4
James Corner:
James Corner is a great landscape designer in my opinion, lots of his works are very fancy and sustainable which usually located in big coastal cities like New York, Seattle, and Miami and so on. His design projects are showing a special commitment to the design of a vibrant and dynamic public realm, informed by th interactive ecology between people and nature. Ultimate goal is to bring beauty, engagement, health and vitality to the different kinds of environments in which people live and interact. However, some of his projects are too “fancy” to practice, for example the one in China Dachong Village, the existing site is a relatively poor area, he purposed to add high level business after re-planning the site. I think that there is a less consideration of public engagement, he should think more about what the residents want there rather than his own ideal thoughts. All in all I appreciate most of his works because they did revival the original site and solve the environmental issue with the aesthetic method. His view points in declaration, he strengthen the specific aspect of landscape than other fields like engineer, landscape is a combination of beauty and desire and pleasure rather than only an object, which is more about quality than quantity. For landscape architects we should create the place that can accommodate everybody into, and people want to go there instead of they have to.
Charles Birnbaum:
Charles discussed about the role landscape architect play in the cultural value aspect and how to set up the duty and figure for the future in many other related fields like education and academic and so on. Landscape architecture should expand its “awareness” to the public realm. I agree with him that landscape do has cultural value and this part should be pay attention to. It is important to reserve our historical landscape and always “look back” to history. He listed a few details in the old version of declaration and books to advocate for the significance of past for future development. We can learn from the past and improve from the past so that to build a better nature that’s why we need to read past, and protect past. Especially in landscape design currently, people pay more attention to future than past, but properly “look back” can help us to make decision in what should do and what not.
Charles Waldheim:
In his declaration, he also suggested to reevaluated the definition of landscape architecture, it is not only about ecological and nature factors but more about combination of cultural, engineer and art and community. As landscape architects we need to make public realize our new role is to become more urbanism design and care about social issues. In the future, the issues for landscape architects may be more about how cultural and public engagement take big part of the design decision rather than gardening. Landscape architecture design is a way that solve social and cultural issue by the media of ecological elements and aesthetic thoughts. I am agree with him the thinking of how landscape architect to development , we should expand our”boundary” to solve problems into a deeper level to consider about the social economical factors.
