Landscape Architecture & Built Environment

Landscape Architecture & The Profession

• Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor public areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioral, or aesthetic outcomes.
• The built environment encompasses everything human-made, arranged, or maintained to meet human needs, wants, and values, mediating the overall environment and affecting the environmental context.

Landscape Architecture in the Built Environment

• The built environment includes different layers, from the earth and regions, then cities, landscapes, structures, interiors, to products.
• Various disciplines are involved, including earth scientists, global planners, regional planners, ecologists, urban designers, landscape architects, planners, architects, engineers, interior designers, graphic designers, and product/industrial designers.

Landscape

• A landscape is described based on its physiographic and environmental characteristics, including the features.
• A Landscape includes physical elements (e.g., landforms), living elements (e.g., flora and fauna), abstract elements (e.g., lighting, weather), and human elements (e.g., human activity, built environment).

Landscape Fabric

• Landscape fabric is an interconnected whole and integrated parts of a landscape at various scales, created through processes.
• This includes landscape processes, landscapes for people, regional landscapes, towns and cities, city districts, and urban green space and communication.
• The built environment profession aims for the sustainability of the landscape fabric, including protecting natural places, systems, and resources.
• Landscape processes include climate, hydrology, geology, geomorphology, soils, vegetation, air, fauna, and local ecosystems. The natural processes are essential to understanding how people influence and change landscapes, including agriculture, industry, and settlement.

Hydrological Cycle (Landscape Fabric)

• The hydrological cycle illustrates water storage, reservoirs, and moisture flow through the system.

Landscape for People

• Landscape design should consider human experience and integrate people's cultural, social, political, economic, and environmental needs.
• Understanding a community involves looking at the interacting populations of varying individuals in a common location (e.g., neighborhoods).

Regional Landscape

• Regional landscapes consider natural and semi-natural systems, agriculture, settlements, transport, climate, culture, and aim for sustainable regeneration of a region.

Cultural Landscape

• A landscape's characteristics differ based on historical influences, with some being vernacular landscapes shaped by human interaction.
• Cultural landscapes reflect dynamic, natural, and social systems. Examples are various cultural landscape types, such as vernacular landscapes, historic sites, ethnographic landscapes, and designed landscapes.

Towns & Cities

• Landscape design frequently occurs within cities, which are dynamic systems rather than fixed structures.
• Landscape design aims to create livable places.

City Districts

• City district landscape design is influenced by history, land use, communication, architecture, climate, topography, water, and vegetation.

Urban Greenspace & Communications

• Urban landscape design considers urban greenspace planning and transport networks.
• The design of various outdoor spaces like parks, gardens, squares, and streets offers diverse recreational, social, cultural, and environmental benefits to city dwellers.
• Examples include Kuala Lumpur open space and recreational planning.

Landscape Architecture Profession

• It's a profession focused on arranging natural scenery to produce aesthetic effects, considering land use.
• It involves the planning and design of land and water systems for societal purpose and enjoyment.
• It encompasses analysis, planning, design, management, and stewardship of both natural and built environments.
• Key figures in landscape architecture, particularly Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., are mentioned, highlighting the profession's development through his work and the establishment of a dedicated program at Harvard..

Development of Landscape Architecture in Malaysia

• Early Malay landscapes are marked by the integration of gardens into royal compounds and the practice of landscape design by commoners, including planting fruit trees and local herbs.
• Colonialism impacted Malaysian landscapes, particularly rural areas (e.g., Kelly's Castle), and the introduction of British garden concepts into urban spaces.
• Post-independence development saw the establishment of relevant Malaysian government bodies focused on landscape design and urban green spaces.