This article is the author’s commencement speech at 2022 Graduation Ceremony of the College of Architecture and Landscape, Peking University. Away from the cities, the author observed, experienced, and recorded the changes in vernacular landscapes: pesticide abuse and cutoff and channelized rivers have resulted in soil hardened, loaches, eels, frogs, and other creatures disappeared, and rivers and water sources seriously polluted; while demolishing the vernacular cultural heritage of the ancient town, the reconstructed one is built with a large number of ornamental, ancient-looking structures, and stereotyped symbols, mirroring the shallow understanding of aesthetic, historical, and cultural identities. Metaphorically, the author is so ashamed of these „articles written on the land” and encourages the graduates to revise them in the future with their knowledge of ecology and aesthetics.
Knowledge workers drive social and economic development in contemporary cities but often exhibit poor psychological and physical health because of sedentary work, long-term and intense mental labor, and high-level occupational competition. Thus, providing high-quality restorative green spaces in knowledge workers’ proximity to promote their health and well-being has become an important and pressing need. Although the multiple health benefits of proximity to green spaces have been highlighted, the existing planning and design practices are not well supported by scientific theories and evidence. This study interprets the health benefits of proximity to green spaces in work environments considering four theoretical mechanisms: stress reduction, attention restoration and landscape preference, physical activity promotion, and sensory enrichment through an integrative literature review. Next, the paper identifies the key environmental characteristics of green spaces that can enhance the health and well-being of knowledge workers. In addition, it develops a set of criteria for evaluating the restorative capacity of existing sites and a set of guidelines to design restorative nearby green spaces, and proposes a simple paradigm to connect interdisciplinary research and practice.
Green View Index (GVI) is a core indicator to measure urban quality. Identifying proper ranges of GVI has become a significant proposition in Landscape Architecture to design environments that can increase individuals’ pleasure level. However, quantitative research on the pleasure level impacted by varied GVIs is still inadequate. This research explores the changes of pleasure level through EEG data collection and questionnaire survey under panoramic scenarios with different panoramic GVIs, which can represent more environmental elements than two-dimensional images. By adding shrubs and trees gradually, this experiment precisely set five scenarios with the GVI changing from 0 to 30%, 60%, 90%, and 0. Research results show that 1) individuals’ pleasure level dropped to the lowest when they first enter the scenario with a panoramic GVI of 0, but when panoramic GVI increased from 0 to 30% and to 60%, the pleasure level increased and finally researched the highest; 2) in an environment with a panoramic GVI of 90%, individuals’ pleasure level significantly reduced, while some participants self-reported the sense of fear and oppression; and 3) when shifting panoramic GVI from 90% to 0, the bright and open space increased participants’ pleasure level. All these findings reveal that individuals’ pleasure level reached the highest under the scenario with 60% panoramic GVI; extremely high panoramic GVI may lead to negative emotions; and landscape with carefully designed panoramic GVIs can improve one’s pleasure level. Future research may probe into the relationship between GVI and individuals’ pleasure level from more perspectives to provide reference for the design, optimization, and evaluation of outdoor urban greening.
To understand the attention distribution and visual cognition in streets, this study conducted an experiment on Nanjing Road Pedestrian Mall (Street) using Head-mounted eye-trackers. Participants’ attention distribution were analyzed via Area Of Interest (AOI) during real-life walking scenarios, combining with several experiment tasks (i.e., destination selection, point-of-interest photography, and in-depth interviews), to capture participants’ naturalistic decision-making. The study combined automatic semantic segmentation with manual audit to code participants’ attention fixation duration and proportion by AOIs. A new indicator „information density,” which is the ratio of the attention percentage to the exposure percentage of a given environmental element, was introduced to describe the efficiency of environmental elements on attracting attentions. Findings revealed information density varies across environmental elements: higher information density was found in sign, building entrance, brand name, and poster; the lower was found in building, sky, and ground; while tree and person fell in between. Findings hence suggest environmental elements of higher information density (such as business signs) should be systematically designed to enhance desired experiences. Findings also indicated that personalized experiences are more likely to induce positive associations about environment which eventually lead to place attachment.
This article maps out landscape architects’ expertise in multidisciplinary, comprehensive climate adaptation discourse. Systemic frameworks and process-driven approaches in contemporary Landscape Architecture discipline can become a powerful tool for harnessing unprecedented solidarity for climate actions across fields. However, landscape expertise is still largely ignored or marginalized in real-life climate discourse dominated by policymakers, scientists, and engineers. This study addresses this gap in understanding landscape expertise through design research projects over the past two decades. The article theorizes a body of landscape architecture projects in the past two decades, and proposes three terms—spatialize, synthesize, and speculate—for describing the landscape expertise in multidisciplinary, comprehensive climate adaptation projects. „Spatialize” refers to landscape architects’ capacity to construct knowledge through strategically displaying „data” through critical cartography. „Synthesize” is the ability to envision multispecies entanglement by combining cultural, ecological, historical, biological, and political lenses through material practices. „Speculate” means to understand landscape design as a long-term practice with repeated operations, and, thus, to design is to deploy a speculative framework that generates knowledge through practice.
Switzerland’s alpine ecologies are uniquely affected by climate change. Many of the country’s plant species are migrating higher in altitude due to rising annual mean temperature with extensive habitat loss expected in as early as 2050. Given the compounded effects of the growing tourism economy and the expanding presence of aggressive pioneer plant species, regionally significant alpine meadows have been displaced before their sensitive and rare plant communities can adapt. This impending loss of biodiversity is quickly becoming a national ecological redoubt.
Situated at the crossroads of the Oberalp, the St. Gotthard, and the Furka passes, the town of Andermatt lies at the eastern end of the Urseren Valley, a floristically diverse region of Central Switzerland. Abandoned military bunkers and fortresses (Fort Stöckli and Artillery Works Gütsch) overlook Andermatt as relics of the Swiss National Redoubt defence plan.
This project investigates how specific military infrastructure integrated into the landscape can be repurposed into living archives for research, preservation, and propagation of alpine plant communities. Can this design strategy combining active and passive interventions mitigate anthropocentric pressures on these alpine ecologies while providing a new purpose to outmoded military infrastructure? Will a strategically managed ecological retreat preserve Swiss identity beyond the non-human?
After two years of sporadic lockdowns, northern Laos has fully reopened to travelers. However, communities have shown indifference to ecotourism recovery that provides ecological services; prioritized alternatives such as rubber concession are diminishing indigenous sociocultural values and turning ancestral soils into exploitative grounds in exchange for economic returns. Disappearance of historical traces may ultimately homogenize communities’ indigenous sociocultural significance. In light of such fragility, Development Detours offers an adaptive framework of landscape genealogies by using two tailored formulas externally and internally. The proposal constructs resilience by detouring development progression, interconnecting nodes of chronicle as a rework of presence. Two villages along the Nam Tha River, namely Sin Oudom and Khon Kham, were selected for their ongoing frictions. While formula one emphasizes „differences” between livelihoods by reconnecting nonlinear spatio-temporality into discursive viewpoints, formula two delineates „collectiveness” by acknowledging myths, traditions, and legacies of practices as a celebration of identities. By utilizing account as a forward-minded approach, history is adapted to the present.