This short eBook began with an article for Landscape Architecture Magazine LAM. Bafflingly, it was rejected for being 'rather dated'. The editors obviously know more than we do about their readers' interests. So we regret the US landscape profession's lack of interest in design theory. Understood understood as 'a set of principles for undertaking a task', we believe that design theory lies, or should lie, at the heart of the landscape architecture profession. The Wikipedia article on post-Postmodernism (in 2015) notes that: In 1995, the landscape architect and urban planner Tom Turner issued a book-length call for a post-postmodern turn in urban planning. Turner criticizes the postmodern credo of “anything goes” and suggests that “the built environment professions are witnessing the gradual dawn of a post-Postmodernism that seeks to temper reason with faith.” The book was City as landscape and the design approach has developed since then and is now illustrated with examples from the authors of this eBook.
Tom Turner is a landscape architect based in London, UK. He founded the Gardenvisit.com website and is the author of print books on landscape architecture published by Routledge - on City as Landscape: a post-postmodern view of design and planning, Landscape planning and Environmental Impact Design.
Robert Holden is a British landscape architect born in Preston and educated at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Later a director of Brian Clouston and Partners, and director of the MA Landscape Architecture programme at the University of Greenwich. From 2004 he served as Secretary General of the European Foundation for Landscape Architecture. Robert Holden has been described as the leading European landscape architecture critic of his generation.