In Groundwork, landscape architect Diana Balmori and architect Joel Sanders explore the territory between their fields, which is often painted—falsely, they write—as a dichotomy. “An integrated practice of landscape and architecture could have dramatic environmental consequences: the disciplines would cease to have separate agendas and would instead allow for buildings and landscapes to perform as linked interactive systems that heal the environment.” It is tantalizing, despite the hubris behind the idea that people or designers can “heal” nature. Ecologists and biologists maintain that the best way to heal an ecosystem is to connect it to more of itself. On the other hand, a major problem with the philosophical underpinnings of sustainable design may be our failure to understand humans as part of nature itself.
Balmori and Sanders seek “interface”— the possibility of unifying their design disciplines. “This awareness of the environment as a complex system puts architecture and landscape on equivalent terms and will encourage practitioners to create designs that approach the efficiency and performance standards of a living being,” they write. (Maybe a little beauty, too? We fickle organisms have shown a tendency to care for designs that we love.)
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