Sustaining beauty.
The performance of appearance
A manifesto in three parts
Elizabeth K. Meyer, University ofVirginia School of Archhitecture
Abstract
Sustainable landscape design is generally understood in relation to three
principles -ecological health, social justice and economic prosperity. Rarely
do aesthetics factor into sustainability discourse, except in negative asides
conflating the visible with the aesthetic and rendering both superfluous.
This article examines the role ofbeauty and aesthetics in a sustaina-
bility agenda. It argues that it will take more than ecologically regenera-
tive designs for culture to be sustainable, that what is needed are designed
landscapes that provoke those who experience them to become more aware
ofhow their actions affect the environment, and to care enough to make
changes. This involves considering the role of aesthetic environmental
experiences, such as beauty, in re-centering human consciousness from an
egocentric to a more bio-centric perspective. This argument in the form of
a manifesto is inspired by American landscape architects whose work is not
usually understood as contributing to sustainable design.
Aesthetics /Beauty /Ethics /Pe!formance I Sustainability
6 Journal of Landscape Architecture/ spring 2oo8
Part one: Introduction
Landscape design practitioners and theorists understandably focus on the
ecological aspects of sustainability; this seems reasonable given that the
site and medium of our work is landscape- the actual topography, soil,
water, plants, and space- and imperative given the growing consensus
about the impact ofhuman action on the global environment. Beauty is
rarely discussed in the discourse oflandscape design sustainability and, if
it is, dismissed as a superficial concern. What is the value of the visual and
formal when human, regional and global health are at stake? Doesn't the
discussion of the beautiful trivialize landscape architecture as ornamen-
tation, as the superficial practice of gardening?
I find American landscape architecture's limited discussion of sustain-
ability curious, especially given the profession's history. In the nineteenth
century one of its leading practitioners, Frederick Law Olmsted- a former
farmer, journalist, and director of the US Sanitary Commission during
our Civil War- came to make urban public parks and landscapes because
of their perceived agency as spaces of urban social and environmental re-
form. For Olmsted, parks performed in two ways: they were environmen-
tal cleaning machines, open spaces ofhealthy sunlight, well-drained soils,
and shady groves of trees reducing temperatures, absorbing carbon diox-
ide and releasing oxygen. Landscape architectural works such as urban
parks, promenades and boulevards, public gardens, parkways and sub-
urban residential enclaves were cultural products that responded to and
then altered the processes of modernization and urbanization.
In Olmsted's estimation this urban environmental function was
equaled, if not exceeded, by the function or in contemporary theoret-
ical terms, performance of the designed landscape's appearance. [1] He
cared about what those landscapes looked like as well as how they worked.
Based on his readings of psychologists, art critics, and philosophers, Olm-
sted believed that the experience of that appearance - the combination of
physical characteristics and sensory qualities- altered one's mental and
psychological state. In other words, a particular form of appearance, the
character known as beauty, performed. There are numerous examples of
his belief in the recuperative, transformative power of aesthetic experienc-
es in nature. Olmsted's theories on the psychological effects oflandscapes
were evident as early as the 185os, before he had started to design accord-
ing to the historian most closely associated with Olmsted's archives (Bev-
eridse 1995: 35). During his career as a landscape architect, these theories
 Figures 1-3 A hybrid program: wildlife habitat I marsh and human
habitat I promenade arc juxtaposed at Crissy Field park, San Francisco,
CA, USA (George Hargreaves Associates). The natural rhythms of wild-
life mating and nesting alter the sequences through the park; gates
to the bridge across the marsh are not always open, signaling periods
when human presence would be disruptive. Yet, the wildlife area con-
structed on the site of a former military base is not 'buffered' or re-
moved from the promenade experience. Its changing textures, colors,
and water levels are witnessed over time, through daily or weekly vis-
its to this neighborhood park. The dynamic cycles of human and non-
humanlife are intertwined, increasing one's aesthetic and environ-
mental appreciation of the marsh.

were embedded in the firm's annual or official reports for park boards or
clients of projects such as Prospect Park, Brooklyn (Beveridse 1997= 10), the
Parks and Parkways ofBoston (Sutton 1979: 244-245), and Mount Royal Park,
Montreal (Sutton 1979: 214-215). We find Olmsted's ideas most cpncisely
summarized when he was asked to lecture on parks, as in the conclusion
to his 1868 address to the Prospect Park Scientific Association: "A park is
a work of art, designed to produce certain effects upon the mind of men."
(Beverid.ge 1997= 147-157).
For nineteenth-century American landscape architects like Olmsted,
urban landscapes were experiences as well as environments, sustaining
civilization and culture as much as the bio-physical environment. And
yet, contemporary theory and practice of sustainable landscape design
have little regard for the performance of appearance, particularly beauty.
Instead, the literature describes and analyses eco-technologies for con-
structing rain gardens and green roofs or day-lighting streams accord-
ing to quantifiable ecological and hydrological processes. Sustainability
stands on three pillars, we are told: ecology, social equity and economy.
and the ecological operates in relationship to social justice and capitalist
profit, but not aesthetics.
Here, I will make a claim for reinserting the aesthetic into discussions
of sustainability. I will make a case for the appearance of the designed
landscape as more than a visual, stylistic or ornamental issue, as more
than a rear-garde interest in form. I will attempt to rescue the visual, by
connecting it to the body and poly-sensual experience. I will try to ex-
plain how immersive, aesthetic experience can lead to recognition, empa-
thy, love, respect and care for the environment.

Journal of Landscape Architecture j spring 2008 7

Sustaining Beauty. The performance of appearance Elizabeth K. Meyer

Figure 4 A new, hybrid language of description and aesthetic appre-

ciation is required to capture the strange, toxic beauty of rainbow-
colored water polluted by acidic mine drainage at a coal mine, the site
of AMD Park in Vintondale, FA, USA.

The discourse on aesthetics and beauty in landscape architecture precedes "The domain of aesthetics," wrote Howett, "must come to be seen as coex-
Olmsted's beliefs, of course, and continues to the present. An aesthetic ap- tensive with the ecosphere, rather than narrowed to its traditional appli-
preciation of the designed landscape emerged in the eighteenth centu- cations in art criticism, so that aesthetic values may no longer be isolated
ry with the explorations of somatic experiences moving through pictur- from ecological ones. Thus every work oflandscape architecture, what-
esque landscape gardens. Criticism of the landscape shifted from a focus ever its scale, ought first of all to be responsive to the whole range of in-
on the creator to the audience, from theories of construction to theories teractive systems- soils and geology, climate and hydrology, vegetation
of reception. This period heard considerable debates concerning the basis and wildlife, and the human community that will come into play on a
for aesthetic criticism, and whether beauty was intrinsic to a specific form, given site and will be affected by its design. In the measure that the forms
or associated with particular emotional responses. But intrinsic to many of the designed landscape artfully express and celebrate that responsive-
theories was the belief that the appreciation of beauty was not purely op- ness, their beauty will be discovered." (Howett 19877).
tical or visual. Rather, beauty was "that quality or combination of quali- Spirn adds, "This is an aesthetic that celebrates motion and change, that
ties which affords keen pleasure to the other senses (e.g. hearing) or which encompasses dynamic processes, rather than static objects, and that em-
charms the intellectual or moral bculties, through inherent grace, or fit- braces multiple, rather than singular, visions. This is not a timeless aesthet-
ness to a desired end." (Oxford En3lish Dictionmy, 2008). While some early- ic, but one that recognizes both the flow of passing time and the singularity
twenty-first century readers, this author included, might find accounts of the moment in time, that demands both continuity and revolution. This
of grace a bit odd, I do find the idea that the sensuous perception ofbeau- aesthetic engages all the senses, not just sight, but sound, smell, touch and
ty could charm, as in influence or persuade, one's intellectual and mor- taste, as well. This aesthetic includes both the making of things and places
al position intriguing. Can landscape appearance perform in this way? and the sensing, using, and contemplating of them." (Spirn 1988: 108).
Can landscape form and space indirectly, but more effectively, increase From the writings oflandscape architects such as Howett and Spirn
the sustainability of the bio-physical environment through the experi- that predate the United Nations' Brundtland Commission's populariza-
ences it affords? tion of the term sustainability, we can already see how crucial beauty and
Both Catherine Howett and Anne Whiston Spirn wrote of these is- aesthetics are to an ecological design agenda. They argue that the act of
sues twenty years ago in short essays that have the ring of a manifesto. I experiencing designed landscapes poly-sensually, over time, through and
have written elsewhere of the significance of these key articles for provid- with the body, is not simply an act of pleasure, but possibly, one of trans-
ing conceptual bridges between aesthetics and ecological design. (Meyer formation. Through their writings we can infer that new forms ofbeauty
2000:187-244). Two brief excerpts, one from each author, ground my un- will be discovered, as new techniques and approaches for reclaiming, re-
derstanding ofhow appearance differs from aesthetics, how performance making and reforming a site's natural processes are invented. These new
can include ecological function and emotional or ethical revelation, and types ofbeauty will be found through the experience, as well as the mak-
how a concern for beauty and aesthetics is necessary for sustainable de- ing, oflandscape. [2] They promise to expand the public's, and many de-
sign if it is to have a significant cultural impact. signers', conceptions of sustainability beyond the ecological health realm,
and into social practice and the cultural sphere.

8 Journal of landscape Architecture j spring 2008

 Figures 5-8 When walking in the University ofVirginia Dell, Char-
lottesville, VA, USA (Nelson Byrd Woltz; Biohabitats), one crosses a
small bridge where a stream flows into a stone rill. That moment is
accompanied by the sound of water falling fi:om the rill's scupper
into a pond with a clearly constructed geometry. That £<ll aerates and
cleans the stream water as it moves into a fore bay- a settling basin
-and then £<lls a second time through a weir into the pond which is
part of a larger campus storm water management system. There, the
stream's path moves out of sight, underground, for several city blocks.
While the waterway does not look natural, the hydrological process-
es of this disturbed urban stream are regenerated through human
agency- the design and construction of natural processes over tlatu-
ral forms.

This is not to say that my argument is a widely-held one. [3] Beauty is not Yet, I have come to believe that the experience of certain kinds of beauty
a word that was used in my design education, or at least not used in a pos- -granted new forms of strange beauty- is a necessary component of fos-
itive sense. This is not a discipline-specific problem; it extends to other tering a sustainable community, and that beauty is a key component in
visual arts as well. One has only to think of the response to art critic Dave developing an environmental ethic. This realization has evolved over the
Hickey's writings on beauty, or the fact that the Washington, D.C. Hirsh- past decade, partially in response to the limitations of mainstream sustain-
horn Museum's 1999 exhibition, Regarding Beauty, self-consciously re- ability discourse, partially through exposure to writings on beauty such
flected on this rarely discussed topic (Benezra 1999 ]. In fact, at a re~ent end- as Anita Berrizbeitia' s interpretation of Robert Burle Marx [Berrizbeitia
of-semester studio review at Harvard's Graduate School ofDesign, I felt zoos: 90-95], and partially through my knowledge of designed landscapes
compelled to correct a younger (and otherwise quite talented and artic- by companies as disparate as Julie Bargmann's DIRT Studio in the United
ulate J colleague's dismissive use of the terms beauty and aesthetics. Like States, Peter Latz and Partners in Germany, and Kongjian Yu' s Turenscape
many landscape architects, he equated beauty and aesthetics with the vis- in China. It has been extended and enriched by reading eco-critic Lawrence
ual and the formal, and in doing so rendered them inconsequential. His Buell, geographer Denis Cosgrove, philosopher Elaine Scarry, and sociolo-
fascination for the performative blinded him to the distinctions between gist Ulrich Beck. Buell's book Writin8for an Endan8ered World is instructive
beauty and beautification or ornamentation. He did not think that beau- in this regard. He suggests that American environmental policy is missing
ty mattered, or realize that appearance could perform. "a coherent vision of the common environmental good that is sufficiently

Journal of Landscape Architecture/ spring zoo8 9

Sustaining Beauty. The performance of appearance Elizabeth K. Meyer
Figures 9-14 Allegheny River Park, Pittsburgh, PA, USA by Michael
VanValkenburgh Associates and artists Ann Hamilton and Michael
Mercil is a dynamic, resilient landscape constructed to create !ubi-
tat for riparian plants and humans within a narrow, 10-15 meter wide
space between the river and city streets. The plant palette includes
species that are tolerant of floods and regenerate after disturbances.
These trees, grasses and vines are as enduring as the chain link fence
and cantilevered concrete walks; their beauty is perceived in relation
to their resilience, to their ability to regenerate.
compelling to generate sustained public support." Drawing on the writing
ofUlrich Beck, he argues that what is needed is not more policies or tech-
nologies, but more "attitudes, feelings, images, narratives." [5]
I believe that works oflandscape architecture are more than designed
ecosystems, more than strategies for open-ended processes. They are cul-
tural products with distinct forms and experiences that evoke attitudes
and feelings through space, sequence and form. Like literature and art,
images and narratives, landscape architecture can play a role in building
sustained public support for the environment. Geographer Denis Cos-
grove underscores this in his book, Socia! Formation and Symbolic Landscape,
when he argues that cultural products such as works oflandscape archi-
tecture can change human consciousness as well as modes of production
like the neo-liberal capitalism that characterizes late zoth- and early 21St-
century American society and that is so at odds with human, regional and
global health. So while I do not believe that design can change society, I
do believe it can alter an individual's consciousness and perhaps assist in
restructuring her priorities and values.
I could make this case in many forms, but have chosen to do so
through a personal and rhetorical form, a design manifesto. [6] I will in-
10 journal oflandscapc Architecture I spring 2oo8
traduce the manifesto with a brief account of the current state of think-
ing about and action on sustainability in the United States. The manifes-
to is a work in progress, delivered for the first time in London and Beijing
in 2007. [7] I have included a few illustrations to emphasize key points in
my manifesto, while realizing that it is impossible to capture aesthetic ex-
perience- versus the look or appearance of things in images. These se-
lections depict projects designed by colleagues who might not have used
the term 'sustainability' in a description of their work, but who do care
about conserving ecosystems, revealing site processes, regenerative eco-
logical systems, and remediating sites through design. [8] I could refer to
other projects designed by these landscape architects as well as by others,
so the projects illustrated here are intended to be suggestive of this mani-
festo's tenets rather than exclusive examples.
Part two
Context: sustainability in North American landscape architecture
What does sustainability mean within the American culture oflandscape
architecture? The United States government's resistance, if not outright
opposition, to environmental initiatives adopted by most of the devel-

oped world, and increasingly the developing world, over the past two
decades, demonstrates that sustainability is perceived to be outside the
mainstream and at odds with predominant American conceptions (nco-
liberal, free-market) of capitalism. It is not surprising that landscape ar-
chitects have not differed much from the population as a whole. Granted,
some understood sustainability as an extension and broadening ofian
McHarg's environmental agenda codified in his manifesto, Desi3n with
Nature. But others perceived it as a threat to their service-oriented practice
of doing whatever a developer wanted on a site, of deploying the McHar-
gian method as a tool for maximizing a site's capacity. Still other~ consid-
ered it as yet another attack on design "with a capital D." Given such am-
bivalence, it is not surprising that the first article about sustain;bility
in Landscape Architectllre, the United States' professional journal, was pub-
lished in 1994, eleven years after the United Nations' Brundtland Com-
mission convened.
So, we have to remind ourselves that sustainability's current mean-
ing and usage is relatively new, having evolved over two decades, often
in tandem with significant global convocations. [9] Many American land-
scape architects link the term sustainable development to the 1983 UN's
World Commission on Environment and Development chaired by Nor-
way's Prime Minister Gro Brundtland, and their 1987 report, published in
book form as Our Common Future. The Commission offered the definition
that continues to be the most frequently quoted and hotly debated: "Sus-
tainable development is development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs." [10]
But, like many Americans, landscape architects perceived sustainabil-
ity as entering popular usage, if not mainstream acceptance, when Vice-
President AI Gore attended the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and
Development, also known as the Earth Summit, in Rio de Janeiro. Its Dec-
laration on the Environment and Development contained 27 principles
intended to guide sustainable development. These are broad in scope, cov-
ering topics from the role of women and indigenous peoples to the nega-
tive impact of war on global sustainability. Several of the principles tie di-
rectly to the activities of a landscape architect.
"Principle 1: Human beings are at the center of concerns for sustaina-
ble development. They are entitled to healthy and productive life in har-
mony with nature."
"Principle 3: The right to development must be fulfilled so as to equi-
tably meet developmental and environmental needs of the present and
future generations."
"Principle 4: In order to achieve sustainable development, environmen-
tal protection shall constitute an integral part of the development process
and cannot be considered in isolation from it." (United Nations 1992).
The following year, the American Society ofLandscape Architects Board
ofTrustees adopted their own version of a 'Declaration on Environment
and Development'. It endures, deeply embedded in the ASLA website, and
consists of five objectives and five strategies, none of which addresses the
form or appearance of a designed landscape. Many focus on specific con-
struction technologies or lofty ethical values (ASLA 1993).
In their introduction to Landscape and SllStainabiliry, John Benson and
Maggie Roe speak of an odd silence in landscape architecture literature
since the ASLA Declaration on the Environment. They note that few books
about landscape architecture and sustainability were published in Eng-
lish between 1992-2000 that are not primarily technical manuals (Benson
and Rowe zooo: z). Two were published in 1994, on the heels of the Rio Sum-
mit: John Lyle's Re3enerative Desi311 and Sustainable Development, and Robert
Journal ofLmdscape Architecture f spring zoo8 11
Sustaining Beauty. The performance of appearance Elizabeth K. Meyer

Figures 15-18 Teardrop Park, Lower Manhattan, NYC, USA by Michael

VanValkenburgh Associates and artists Ann Hamilton and Michael
Mercil, a small neighborhood park and playground located inside a
city block, epitomizes the effectiveness of'hypernature', a distilled
and amplified sense of nature, in engaging one's body and emotions
in the construction of an aesthetic and environmental experience.
The sublime, uncanny mass of the more than eight meter high, fifty-
one meter long stone wall is a threshold between the lawn and a chil-
dren's playground. It is clearly out of place in terms of the city, but of
its place in terms of the region. Its particular yet unexpected beauty is
challenging andre-centering, momentarily shifting one's attentions
and affiliations towards the unseen, underground natural world.

Thayer's Green World Grey Heart. Technolo8.J1, Nawre and the Sustainable Land-
scape. They are key texts for landscape architects interested in ecological
design and sustainable development. Of the two, Thayer speaks most di-
rectly on the appearance of sustainable landscapes by calling for aesthetic
legibility through the direct revelation of ecological processes at work on
a site. (Thayer 1994: 313-317). Lyle's book introduces the concept 'regenera-
tive' into landscape design theory. [u] This shift in language is pivotal to
changing cultural conceptions ofbeauty, and I will return to it in the sec-
ond tenet of my manifesto.
Outside the scholarly literature, the evidence of interest is mixed:
what is one to make of finding 729,ooo Go ogle hits for 'landscape archi-
tecture' and 'sustainability' in the same month that Bill Thompson, edi-
tor of the professional journal, Landscape Architecture, wrote an editorial
entitled 'How Green is your magazine?' in which he asked "Is it time for a
green issue ofLandscape Architecture?" (Thompson zooT 11 ). Perhaps all I
can say is that sustainability is one of many concerns evident in contem-
porary practice, but not all members of the ASLA or landscape architecture
practitioners would say they are committed to increasing the knowledge
base for sustainable landscape design, or to creating new forms of sustain-
able landscapes. Based on my review of the literature and knowledge of
the field, and realizing the traps of characterizing a profession of unique
individuals, I would categorize current American attitudes towards sus-
tainability as follows:
1. Yawn: acknowledge+ continue on
Sustainable design is what we do, so what is the big deal?
Sustainability is considered as nothing new by many in the profession.
A concern for social and environmental urban reform practices was at the
basis oflandscape architecture emerging as a profession in rapidly urban-
izing nineteenth-century North America and Europe. This perspective sees
sustainability as a new name for an enduring set of values and practices.
While not antithetical to sustainability, they are suspicious of this term
being used as a form of green wash or opportunistic marketing on the part
of other design and planning professionals who just a decade or two ago
were dismissive oflandscape design and constructed nature as feminine,
informal, soft, unstructured, anti-progressive and nostalgic.

12 Journal of landscape Architecture/ spring 2008


The ASLA Declaration £1lls into this camp, as it states that the concepts be-
hind sustainability are not new to the profession, and that they "reflect
the fundamental and long-established values of the ASLA." They are right,
of course. These values are embedded in key texts and projects such as
Olmsted's Emerald Necklace in Boston, an 188os constructed urban wet-
land and park system. They can be found in 1950s-6os works and texts by
Larry Halprin, and by Ian McHarg, whose manifesto Desi&n with Nature
was seminal in enhancing the visibility and growth of the profession of
landscape architecture during the post-First Earth Day decade. Since that
time, the number of American graduate programs in landscape architec-
ture has increased fi:om around a half-dozen to over three dozen.
That mid-twentieth concern for environmental issues, evident in the
work of a design and a planner, was continued and synthesized through
research by two of McHarg's students. Michael Hough's City Form and
Nawral Process, and Anne Spirn' s Granite Garden, both published in 1984,
expanded environmentalism into the realm of urban landscape design
at the site scale. And while there were intense debates in our prqfession
about the relationship between environmentalism and design, these were
integrated by the late 198os and early 1990s through mediating th~ories
and/or practices of phenomenology and earth art, as documented in my
article, 'The Post Earth Day Conundrum'. I might note that these explo-
rations into the space between, and beyDnd, environmentalism and for-
malism in American landscape architecture occurred when most archi-
tects were entrenched in historicist postmodernism, arguing about what
type of historicist fas:ade to add to their highly unsustainable buildings.
In many ways, this group ofYawners has every right to do so.
2. Embrace: adapt+ proselytize
Sustainability eco-technologies
For this, the largest group oflandscape architects, sustainability is a tech-
nical challenge. How can ecological processes be constructed? What are
the best management practices for reducing rain water runoff, for increas-
ing rainwater percolation and filtration, for paving roads, for reducing
construction waste and so on? These are admirable practices, as they have
updated construction techniques for planting and earthwork, paving, and
material selection that often depleted natural resources and polluted off-
site ecosystems. I would place the invaluable applied research ofJames Ur-
ban or Meg Calkins published in Landscape Architecture, and the admirable
work of the Sustainable Sites Initiative in this category. And yet I would
argue that this type of work is not enough, especially if a designer's hand
is not legible, if our contributions are invisible infrastructure. We are dif-
ferent from restoration ecologists and civil engineers.
3. Dismiss: avoid+ denigrate
Sustainability =no design
Sustainability is so concerned with ecology, process and environment that
there is no room for design, form or expression. This group believes that
form and appearance are more important than ecological performance.
Landscape Architecture is an art. Twenty-five years ago, when American
Landscape Architecture had strong, opposing camps: the environmental-
ists those who admired Ian McHarg- and the artists- those who ad-
mired Dan Kiley and Peter Walker- this would have been a large group. As
I argued elsewhere, this has not been the case since the generation of de-
signers and educators that gained prominence in the 198os, such as Cath-
erine Howett, Michael Hough, Anne W. Spirn, Michael VanValkenburgh
and George Hargreaves have sought to bridge the divide between art and
science, aesthetics and environmentalism (Mryer 2ooo: 187-244). Today, the
fact that most students oflandscape architecture cannot imagine such
debates shows the extent of this cultural shift within the profession and
those attracted to study it.
Journal of Landscape Architecture/ spring 2008 13
 The performance of appearance Elizabeth K. Meyer
Figures 19-22 The particular beauty ofUrban Outfitters Corporate
Headquarters, Philadelphia, PA, USA by DIRT Studio and Meyer
Scherer Rockcasde, Architects, is found in the re-use of tons of
on-site demolition rubble for a new site materials palette Sustain-
ability started with integrating the waste that would conventionally
have been hauled out of the former US Navy shipyard and taken
to landfill.
Instead, the concrete pavement slabs were broken up and arranged
with crushed stone and trees to create a pervious field where ground
water could infiltrate and people could walk. Its beauty is particular
to the former site conditions and material resources found there, and
nor dependent on an a priori sense of form.
4. Distain: adopt in private+ distance in public
Sustainability is not to be spoken; it is a form of reductive ecological ftmc-
tionalism.
Many in this group are 'big name' designers who speak of performativity,
process, and the operations of ecology as a base for their work, or who refer
to process as a metaphor and analog. They might adopt and deploy ecolog-
ical processes in their work, but they distance themselves from sustaina-
ble task forces and advocates. There are many reasons for this, including
those mentioned already in the first group, the Yawners. But I suspect
there are two others: part of this group finds content and method in con-
temporary theories of ecology, in comparison with some advocates of sus-
tainable design who are tied to pre-198os conceptions of environmental
ethics and ecological theory (I will return to this later), and second, un-
like the Adapters+ Proselytizers, many in this group do not reduce sus-
tainability to technicalmetrics. American landscape architects such as
George Hargreaves, Julie Bargmann, and Michael VanValkenburgh, and
especially the self-identified landscape urbanists such as James Corner,
Charles Waldheim, and Chris Reed, would fall into this category.
The Distainers were well represented in the 2005 GroundswdL Construct-
in8 the Co11temporary Landscape exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art
(MOMA). This was a seminal event, the first collective exhibition on land-
scape architecture since MOMA opened over 75 years ago. The critical essay
written by Curator of Architecture and Design Peter Reed that accompa-
nied the exhibition was full of talk about ecology, process and temporality,
14 Journal ofLmdscape Architecture/ spring zooS
but the text does not mention sustainability. This is typical of the ambiv-
alence about the term within the elite of the profession, and within de-
sign criticism in America. Serious design, powerful form and sustainability
are seldom mentioned in the same breath. And there is definitely no place
in MOMA for the "fuzzy, 'milk-toast,' easy, comforting, and homogeneous
beauty of sustainable, nondescript landscapes." (Berrizbeitia 2005: 91).
Is there an alternative to these four sensibilities and practices? Yes, it
already exists, but it has not been described as such. Nevertheless, I have
experienced it in certain sensibilities and projects, like Hargreaves and
Associates' Crissy Field in San Francisco where a hybrid program of bird
habitat and human recreation results in the formal and functional juxta-
position of two landscape types, marsh habitat and recreation promenade.
This close juxtaposition ofhuman and wildlife program space without the
in-between buffering or visual separation that would be the norm offers
another approach. The city residents, like my brother and nephews, who
frequent the park on bicycles notice the extreme contrast between the ac-
cessible playfields of grass, and the sometimes inaccessible, constantly
changing tidal wetland marsh. Just as the habitat for park visitors features
sculptural landforms that channel prevailing winds away from picnic and
gathering areas, so the habitat for birds and other wetland species features
the seasonal closing of gates to the marsh during mating and breeding pe-
riods. Through this simple act ofjuxtaposition, and the combination of
adjacency without access, even children as young as my nephews figured
out that the park was not just for them, that it was designed for all forms

of wildlife, two- and four-legged, mammal, amphibian, and avian. They did
not need interpretive signs to tell them this. These lessons were revealed
through their experience of moving through the park and through the sea-
sons.
This fifth approach, Sustaining Beauty, exploits the aesthetic experi-
ence oflandscape as a tool in the sustainable design toolbox. Here, I refer
to more than pictorial landscapes and pleasant, idealized pastoral scenes.
Instead, I am recalling somatic, sensory experiences of places that lead to
new awareness of the rhythms and cycles necessary to sustain and regen-
erate life. These depend on the immediate apprehension of new, unexpect-
ed forms, spaces and sequences, and the simultaneous memory of former
experiences, and conceptions, oflandscape space and form. Between these
two ways of experiencing and processing, cognition occurs, and a new un-
derstanding and empathy towards species and niches around us may be
possible. Arthur Danto refers to this role for beauty when he wrote1 "Beau-
ty is at the intersection of sensuousness and truth." (Danto 1999: 195).
This approach already exists, but it has not been recognized for its po-
tential agency within the range of practices contributing to a sustainable
city. It is found in many projects and across regions. I believe that it has
currency and should be added to the many tactics used by those who care
about sustaining our cities, regions, and planet through landscape design.
And I hope it can be given credence by designers who are seeking sustain-
ability in metrics and criteria, as well as by social scientists and natural
scientists who discount the ethical agency of a designed landscape's aes-
thetics. [12]
Part Three: Manifesto
Sustaining beauty. The performance of appearance
l. Sustaining culture through landscapes
Sustainable landscape design is not the same as sustainable development
or ecological design or restoration ecology or conservation biology.
Sustainable development requires more than designed landscapes that
are created using sustainable technologies. Design is a cultural act, a prod-
uct of culture made with the materials of nature, and embedded within
and inflected by a particular social formation; it often employs princi-
ples of ecology, but it does more than that. It enables social routines and
spatial practices, from daily promenades to commuting to work. It trans-
lates cultural values into memorable landscape forms and spaces that of-
ten challenge, expand, and alter our conceptions ofbeauty.
2. Cultivating hybrids: language oflandscape
Conceptualizing sustainable landscapes requires new words as well as
new technologies, new languages as well as new technique.
Sustainable landscape design flourishes when fixed categories are trans-
gressed and their limits and overlaps explored. This is a £1miliar trope in
post-structuralist theory; it is a pragmatic imperative in landscape architec-
ture design. Our profession is still hampered by the limited language of for-
mal and informal, cultural and natural, man-made and natural. How does
such language allow us to capture the strange beauty and horror of a for-
est polluted by acidic drainage from coal mining that has been transformed
through bio-remediation into a park? Is that natural? Man-made? Its toxic
Journal oflandscapc Architecture/ spring 2008 15
Sustaining Beauty. The performance of appearance Elizabeth K. Meyer
stage reservoir 5:
reed bed system for stormwater treat-
ment built into wetland terraces above
pool > combination of horizontal +
vertical reed beds (substance flow
system) > effective for removal of
inorganics
stage reservoir 6:
sand filtration system installed in wall
between upper + lower basins >
water is aerated + filtered through
sand + stone > chlorine added as
necessary to maintain swimmable
water in lower basin
beauty, a phrase I borrow from Julie Bargmann ofDIRT Studio, is a hybrid.
Through hybridization, these and other paired terms have the potential
to open up new conceptual design approaches between and across the cat-
egories that restrict our thinking: social and ecological, urban and wild,
aesthetic and ethical, appearance and performance, beauty and distur-
bance, aesthetics and sustainability.
These conceptual and experiential hybrids can occur within designed
landscapes on disturbed sites across geographies - whether in the coal
fields ofPennsylvania in the eastern United States, in the vague terrain
of swooping highway interchanges in Barcelona, or among coal and steel
processing plants in the Rul1r Valley in Germany.
3. Beyond ecological performance
Sustainable landscape design must do more than function or perform ec-
ologically; it must perform socially and culturally.
Sustainable landscape design can reveal natural cycles such as seasonal
floods, and regenerate natural processes by cleaning and filtering rain-
water or replenishing soils through arrested erosion and deposition- and
do so while intersecting with social routines and spatial practices. This
intermingling of ecological and social temporal cycles -seasonal floods
and human activities such as holiday festivals or sports -links the activi-
ties of everyday life and the unique events of a particular city to the expe-
rience of the dynamic bio-physical aspects of the environment. Nature is
not out there but in here, interwoven in the human urban condition. Hy-
drology, ecology and human life are intertwined.
16 Journal of Landscape Architecture j spring 2008
Figures 23-26 Stoss Landscape Urbanism and Taylor & Burns Archi-
tects conceived of an abandoned system of nineteenth century drink-
ing water reservoirs on Mount Tabor, Portland, OR, as a new public
park. They outlined a framework for catalyzing new ecological and so-
cial occupations for the site through the re-use and regeneration of
existing infrastructure and woodlands. A particular, sustaining beau-
ty is imagined to evolve through the strategic insertions within the
waterworks that recharge ground water, create wildlife habitat, and
allow for recreational swimming.
4. Natural process over natural form
Ecological mimicry is a component of sustainable landscape design, but
the mimicry of natural processes is more important than the mimicry of
natural forms.
Natural-looking landscapes are not the only genre to perform ecolog-
ically. This is especially true in constructed urban conditions when there
are no longer spaces of the scale that might support a natural-looking land-
scape. In these extreme conditions- in narrow, remnant strips between
city streets and rivers, on compacted sites with no organic matter or top-
soil, along abandoned post-industrial infrastructure such as railroad track
beds and LKtory sites nature must be constructed in new ways, in differ-
ent configurations, deploying technological and ecological knowledge.
Where space and soil are limited, plants can be opportunistically in-
serted between and along the ramps flanked by chain link scrims and
cantilevered walks; hardy species can act as hosts and create habitat for
other species of plants and wildlife; spontaneous vegetation can be facil-
itated with soil trenches and mounds; wetland grasses can be planted in
floating planters instead of on terra firma. This is an example of what Joan
Nassauer has described as framing messy landscapes- another form ofhy-
brid- so that ecological design aesthetics can be recognized as art.
These types of projects- part technological construction, part ecologi-
cal process- won't be mistaken for natural landscapes. This may contrib-
ute to their longevity. Natural-looking landscapes may not be sustainable
in the long term, as they are often overlooked in metropolitan areas. They
are assumed to be found, wild conditions not needing care. Most con-
structed nature in the city, especially constructed wetland, needs care, cul-
tivation, and gardening. In my experience, natural-looking designed land-
scapes quickly become invisible landscapes and neglected landscapes.
5. Hypernature: the recognition of art
The recognition of art is fundamental to, and a precondition of, landscape
design.
This is not a new idea; nineteenth-century landscape design theorists
J.C. Loudon, A.J. Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted advocated as much
when making the case for the inclusion oflandscape design or landscape
architecture as one of the Fine Arts. More recently, Michael Van yalken-
burgh and his partners, Laura Solano and Matthew Urbanksi, expressed
their interest in exaggerated, concentrated hypernature- an exaggerat-
ed version of constructed nature. Creating hypernature was prompted by
pragmatic acknowledgements of the constrictions ofbuilding on tough
urban sites and the recognition that designed landscapes are usually expe-
rienced while distracted, in the course of everyday urban life. Attenuation
of forms, densification of elements, juxtaposition of materials, intention-
al discontinuities, formal incongruities tactics associated with montage
or collage- are deployed for several reasons: to make a courtyard, a park,
a campus more capable of appearing, ofbeing noticed, and of performing
more robustly, more resiliently. [13]
Sustainable landscape design should be form-full, evident and palpa-
ble, so that it draws the attention of an urban audience distracted by daily
concerns of work and family, or the over-stimulation of the digital world.
This requires a keen understanding of the medium oflandscape, and the
deployment of design tactics such as exaggeration, amplification, distilla-
tion, condensation, juxtaposition, or transposition/ displacement.
6. The performance of beauty
The experience ofhypernature-designed landscapes that reveal andre-
generate natural processes/ structures through the amplification and
exaggeration of experience, and that artistically exploit the medium of
nature- is restorative.
A beautiful landscape works on our psyche, affording the chance to
ponder on a world outside ourselves. Through this experience, we are de-
centered, restored, renewed and reconnected to the biophysical world. The
haptic, somatic experience ofbeauty can inculcate environmental values.
As Elaine Scarry wrote, "Beauty invites replication. [...] it is lifesaving.
Beauty quickens. It adrenalizes. It makes the heart beat faster. It makes
Journal of Landscape Architecture/ spring 2008 17
life more vivid, animated, living, worth living." Furthermore, Scarry sug-
gests that when we experience beauty, it changes our relationship to that
object or scene or person. She continues, "At the moment we see some-
thing beautiful, we undergo a radical decentering. Beauty, according to
Wei!, requires us 'to give up our imaginary position as the center[ ... ] A
transformation then takes place at the very roots of our sensibility, in our
immediate reception of sense impressions and psychological impressions.'
[... ] we find we are standing in a different relationship to the world than
we were the moment before. It is not that we cease to stand at the center
of the world, for we never stood there. It is that we cease to stand even at
the center of our own world. We willingly cede ground to the thing that
stands before us." (Scany 1999:3,24, 111-112).
Scarry's account of the experience ofbeauty resonates with that of art
critic and philosopher Arthur Danto. He argues that beauty is not found
or discovered, immediately, through the eye and in relationship to known
tropes. Rather, it is discovered through a process of mediation between the
mind and body, between seeing and touching/smelling/hearing, between
reason and the senses, between what is known through past experiences
and what is expected in the here and now. As Dan to, drawing on Hegel and
Hume, writes, "We arrive at the judgment ofbeauty only after critical anal-
ysis- which means that it is finally not subjective at all, since it depends
on the kind of reasoning in which criticism at its best consists [... ] Doubt-
less the critic should look. But seeing is inseparable from reasoning, andre-
sponse to a work of art is mediated by a discourse of reasons parallel entire-
ly to what takes place with moral questions." (Danto 1999: 192-193).
18 Journal of Landscape Architecture j spring zooS
The experience ofbeauty, a process between the senses and reason, an un-
folding of awareness, is restorative. By extension, the aesthetic experience
of constructed hyper-nature is transformative, not simply in the nine-
teenth-century terms or practices known to Olmsted. Rather, aesthetic
experience can result in the appreciation of new forms ofbeauty that are
discovered, in Howett's terms, because they reveal previously unrealized
relationships between human and non-human life processes.
7. Sustainable design= constructing experiences
Beautiful sustainable landscape design involves the design of experiences as
much as the design ofform and the design ofecosystems. These experiences
are vehicles for connecting with, and caring for, the world around us.
Through the experience of different types of beauty we come to no-
tice, to care, to deliberate about our place in the world. In the phenome-
nological thought of scholars such as Merleau-Ponty and Berleant, these
participatory environmental experiences not only break down the barri-
ers between subject and object; they change us and, at times, have theca-
pacity to challenge us, to provoke us to act. Many environmentalists cite
their early experiences in the wilderness or the countryside- some near-
by woodlot or creek where they learned to revel in the exuberance of suc-
cessional plant growth in unlikely places, the adaptive shelters of insects,
birds and animals- as the reason they became environmentalists.
Designed landscapes, too, can provide such experiences if they afford
experience of the wild, when the abundance, the excessiveness, and the
tenacious persistence of plants, wildlife, and water are uncovered in the
 silresim chemical corp.
ll!illt "II
tanner street corridor
most unexpected places: city drainage ways, urban plazas and gardens,
above and below elevated rail lines and highways. [14]
8. Sustainable beauty is particular, not generic.
There will be as many forms of sustainability as there are places/cities/
regwns.
These beauties will not emulate their physical context but act as a
magnifying glass, increasing our ability to see and appreciate the context.
Sustainable landscape beauty can find the particular in the productive
as well as the toxic, the transposed as well as the transgressive, the found
and the made, the regenerative as well as the resilient. Sustainable beau-
ty may be strange and surreal. It may be intimate and immense. It will be
of its place whether an abandoned brownfield site, an obsolete navy ship-
yard, or a lumbered forest. And yet it will not simulate its place. It will be
recognized as site-specific design, emerging out of its context but differ-
entiated from it.
9. Sustainable beauty is dynamic, not static.
The intrinsic beauty oflandscape resides in its change over time.
Landscape architecture's medium shares many characteristics with ar-
chitecture, dance and sculpture. Our medium is material and tactile; it is
spatial. But more than its related fields, the landscape medium is tempo-
ral. Not only do we move through landscape, the landscape moves, chang-
es, grows, declines. Beauty is ephemeral; it can be a fleeting event, cap-
tured once a year in the mix of a specific light angle, a particular slope of
Figure 27-33 The Silresim Chemical plant, Lowell, MA, USA, landscape
framework plan, by Stoss Landscape Urbanism, is a form of'perform-
ance practice' that envisions the remediation and re-use of a polluted
industrial site over time. The biophysical processes of ground water
remediation and soil plant regeneration occur in the public realm and
are £<cilitated or witnessed by the neighbors. These transitional land-
scapes afford spaces for the routines of everyday life, sustaining cul-
ture as well as ecology. Their beauty unfolds over time, reminding
neighbors that regeneration is slow, and uncertain. The representa-
tion of this dynamic is a key aspect in educating the public about the
temporal aspect of the process. This project goes beyond ecological
performance, also catalyzing social processes and new aesthetic expe-
nences.
the ground, and a short-lived drop of a carpet ofbrilliant yellow leaves. Or
it can be created by the long processes of stump and log decay, and of re-
generation, in a forest garden.
These changes are multiple and overlapping, operating at numer-
ous scales and tempos: the spontaneous, successional vegetation growth
on slag heaps, the tidal rhythms of water ebbing and flowing in a rocky
channel next to a smooth, constant, gently tilting lawn, or the seasonal
changes of temperature and plant growth. J.B. Jackson, the landscape his-
torian, wrote that the act of designing landscape is a process of manipu-
lating time 0ackson 1984:8). Since sustainable landscapes reveal, enable, re-
pair and regenerate ecological processes, they are temporal and dynamic.
Sustainable beauty arrests time, delays time, intensifies time; it opens up
daily experience to what Michael VanValkenburgh calls "psychological
intimate immensity," the wonder of urban social and natural ecologies
made palpable through the landscape medium [15].
10. Enduring beauty is resilient and regenerative.
Antiquated conceptions oflandscape beauty as generic, balanced, smooth,
bounded, charming, pleasing and harmonious persist and must be reex-
amined through the lens of new paradigms of ecology.
Projects that are dynamic rather than static can be designed for distur-
bance and resilience. Floods that are anticipated are not disasters but nat-
ural events, part of a regular disturbance regime. Plants that can sustain
extreme spring high water are planted. Knowing that ice flows damage
tree trunks, we specify species that regenerate with numerous new stems
Journal of Landscape Architecture j spring 2008 19
Sustaining Beauty. The performance of appearance Elizabeth K. Meyer
when damaged. The beauty of this type oflandscape lies in the knowledge
ofits tenacity, its toughness, its resilience.
This sense ofbeauty, not as a set, unchanging concept but one that
evolves over time in response to different needs or contexts, is accepted in
many fields outside landscape architecture. This changing conception of
beauty, based on the resilience of a designed landscape's materials and not
on an a priori set of forms or types, resonates with contemporary concerns
as well as the early theoretical foundations of our profession. In a post-
September 11th context where American urban space is subject to increas-
ing standardization and surveillance due to a culture of fear and security,
the adaptation and resilience of plants and paved surfaces to the distur-
bances of extreme weather, flooding, pollution, low light levels, evokes
hope and inspires alternative models for coping with the uncertain.
In one ofhis prescient articles that outlined many of the conundrums
to be faced by American landscape architecture as it emerged as a disci-
pline, Charles Eliot, Jr. established a position within the formal and infor-
mal debates of the 1890s by arguing that beauty was not intrinsic to either
formal type. "The hct may not be explicable, but it is one of the common-
places of science that the form which every vital product takes has been
shaped for it by natural selection through a million ages, with a view to
its use, advantage or convenience, and that beauty has resulted from that
evolution. [... ]Whoever, regardless of circumstances, insists upon any par-
ticular style or mode of arranging land and its accompanying landscape,
is most certainly a quack. He has overlooked the important basal fact that,
although beauty does not consist in fitness, nevertheless all that would
be fair must first be fit. True art is expressive before it is beautiful." (Eliot,
1896: 133). Eliot recognized that changes in need, in society, and in the sci-
ences, would alter cultural conceptions ofbeauty.
Closer to our times, paradigm shifts in the ecological sciences have
influenced cultural conceptions of what is fitting and beautiful in the
natural world. Since the publication ofian McHarg's Desi!]n with Nature
in 1969, scientific theories about ecosystem dynamics have changed con-
siderably [16]. Resilience, adaptation and disturbance have replaced stabil-
ity, harmony, equilibrium and balance as the operative words in ecosystem
studies. Conceptions ofstable, climax plant and animal communities have
given way to an understanding of disturbance regimes, emergent andre-
silient properties, and chaotic self-organizing systems. These theories have
enormous implications for landscape design, and yet twenty years after
their general adoption in the sciences, many landscape architects and their
clients operate on outdated, even romantic, conceptions of nature and its
beauty. Just how beautiful is a green residential lawn maintained by pesti-
cides and herbicides that are harmful to children, pets and songbirds?
Recent ASLA conference themes are a case in point. During the 2oo6
conference there was little talk ofbrownfield sites; instead, 'Green (not
brown and gray) solutions only for a Blue Planet'. This past year's theme
was 'Designing with Nature: The Art ofBalance'. That sounded like a ret-
20 Journal of Landscape Architecture/ spring 2008
rospective glance at landscape ecology and design from the 1950S-7os. As
a professional organization, the ASLA needs to be more cognizant of con-
temporary ecological theory, especially given the recent UN Intergovern-
mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report's find-
ings on global climate change and its implications for the future form
of cities and settlements. Our adaptive designs must be part of resilient,
adaptive, and regenerative urban form. [17]
Twenty-first-century associations of resilience are as much cultural as
ecological. Three American landscape architects, each committed to the
concepts if not the rhetoric of sustainability, have recognized the limita-
tions of the word 'sustainable', and the potential of conceiving landscape
architecture as regenerative and resilient: John Lyle, Julie Bargmann and
Randy Hester. [18] In Desi!Jnfor Ecolo!]ical Democracy, Hester's account of
the principles that support enduring settlements, underscores the impor-
tance of replacing stability or balance with resilience: "[ ... ] design of na-
ture or mimicry of nature that allows human habitation to maintain itself
efficiently and compatibly with its surrounding environment through of-
ten dramatic changes that threaten survival. Such design is the basis of
resilient form that is fundamental to sustainable urban ecology[ ... ]. This
ability to endure is based on, among other things, having an urban form
that continually provides what a community needs, even in times of tem-
porary crises. Resilient urbanity has the internal ability to persist- to re-
cover easily without significant loss from illness, misfortune, attack, nat-
ural or social disaster, or other dramatic disturbance. And it can readily
absorb change. A resilient city is able to retain the essence of its form even
after it has been deformed. In this way, resilience seems a better word
than sustainability for design goals for the city. Resilient form maintains
itself efficiently and seamlessly with both the landscape and the cultural
networks of which it is a part." (Hester zoo6: 138-139).
ll. Landscape agency: from experiences to sustainable praxis
The experience of designed landscape can be a spatial practice of noticing,
wandering and wondering in, and caring about the environment. The ex-
perience oflandscape can be a mode oflearning and inculcating values.
The final tenet of this manifesto underscores the multiple discours-
es and practices where sustainability resides. Sustainability is a position
within environmental ethics, as well as techniques or tactics ground-
ed in the natural sciences. Sustainability as an ethic is decidedly a mid-
dle-ground position between an egocentric and ecocentric world view. It
straddles the human and non-human, attempting a hybridity that see the
interconnections between and across a homocentric and biocentric world-
view [19]. I believe that the designed landscape can be built through var-
ious tactics, using sustainable ecotechnologies, but it can also be an aes-
thetic experience that changes people's environmental ethics. And from
my perspective the latter is the most important reason to care about sus-
tainable landscape design. The apprehension and experience ofbeauty, es-
j
pecially new, challenging forms ofbeauty, can lead to attentiveness, em-
pathy, love, respect, care, concern and action on the part of those who visit
and experience designed landscapes. It will take more than the estimated
15,000 registered landscape architects or 3o,ooo members of the American
Society of Landscape Architects to make the United States- the most en-
ergy consuming, waste producing, environmentally challenged developed
country in the world a sustainable culture. But multiply those num-
bers by the number of people who are our clients, who visit and frequent
the streets, public spaces, parks, gardens and communities we design, and
whose understanding of the connections between human consumption,
waste, and habits and eco-system health might be altered because of an
aesthetic experience they have. Not all change will, or has to be, based
on education, guilt, or a sense of sacrifice. Sometimes, in the best of situ-
ations, persuasion takes place unknowingly, gradually, but convincing-
ly, until the change is perceived to be internal and an act of personal will,
not collective guilt.
Sustaining beauty I sustaining culture
The mass media is saturated with images and discussions of sustainabili-
ty, green politics, and global climate change. During the past year around
the annual celebration ofEarth Day, a parka-wearing Leonardo DiCap-
rio shared the cover ofVanity Fair magazine with a small polar bear (May
2007), the Republican Governor of the State of California twirled a small
globe on his finger like it was a basketball on the cover ofNewsweek's
Leadership and the Environment issue (16 April2007), Time magazine
published a Special Double Issue entitled 'The Global Warming Survival
Guide: 51 Things you can do to make a difference' (9 April2oo7), and aNew
York 'Times Sunday Ma8azine cover adorned with an American flag made of
green flower blossoms, moss, seed heads and leaves examined 'The Green-
ing of Global Geopolitics' (15 April2oo7).
Design and shelter magazines run regular columns and issues on the
greening of the design fields. Even Dwell. At Home in the Modem World mag-
azine, dedicated to perpetuating modernist design, has run an article on
sustainability in every issue since 2000. In a recent issue, 'A New Shade of
Green. Sustainability is here to Stay', editor Sam Grawe captured the cul-
nue' s reaction to a year of green journalism in the wake of the unexpected
popularity of Al Gore's 2oo6 documentary film and book, An Inco.nvenient
'Truth, and his 2007 Nobel Peace Prize award (shared with the UN's Inter-
governmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, for its analysis ar{d syn-
thesis of global research findings). "I have to be honest with you. I am get-
ting tired of sustainability." (Grawe ZOOT 41).
Are these forums the only effective .ways to change values and prac-
tices? I think not. For as Grawe's editorial attests, media saturation can as
easily lead to cynicism as to environmentalism. Especially when it appears
that every product and industry is now eco-friendly or environmentally-
friendly, from oversized SUV automobiles and 'McMansion' houses to oil
companies; when the sustainability-obsessed become eco-bloggers moni-
toring their daily impact on the globe, and patrons of eco-chic night clubs
who party in a space made of recycled, renewable, sustainable, and safe
materials; and when the bio-physical world is depicted in ads for Home
Depot hardware store as if were a toy or pet to be befriended and hugged.
We need multiple forms and forums for caring and learning about the
impact of our actions on the planet: some visual, some textual, and some
experiential. As Lawrence Buell noted in Writin8Jor an Endan8ered World,
we need more than reports and data, we also need products of culture,
narratives, images, and places to move us to act.
In this regard, design matters and beauty matters. It moves something
in our psyche, as the experience of a winter snowfall on the imprinted
concrete waterfront promenade at Allegheny River Park, Pittsburgh, PA.,
demonstrates. In the absence of vegetation, in the linear marks left by im-
printing native grasses in the concrete, water settles and freezes, icy shad-
ows form, reminding us of what is absent. These ground marks intermin-
gle in mysterious ways with the motion of river water and the light from
nearby streetlights. Where is man and nature there? Formal and infor-
mal? Ecology and technology? Aesthetics and sustainability? All super-
seded by the fleeting, yet memorable, recognition of and experience of a
place known in, and over, time.
It is not enough to design landscapes that incorporate best manage-
ment practices, follow LEED (USGBc' s Leadership in Energy and Envi-
ronmental Design) criteria, and look as if they were not designed. It is
not enough to emulate the admirable design forms or practices of our
colleagues from afar. Designed landscapes need to be constructed hu-
man experiences as much as ecosystems. They need to move citizens to
action. The designed landscapes of the world take up a small amount of
the globe's surface. Yet they are visited and inhabited by people who have
a great impact on the environment in everything they do - where they
live and how they commute, what they consume, and whom they elect to
public office. The influence of designed landscapes might be much larg-
er than their immediate influence on a local ecosystem or watershed, as
worthwhile as designing a rain garden or a green roof that reduces storm
water runoff may be.
Many professions and disciplines will contribute to our understanding
of sustainability. Landscape architects who are designers do so by making
places that are constructed performing ecosystems and constructed aes-
thetic experiences. We are sustained by reducing, editing, doing less bad.
But we are also sustained, and regenerated, through abundance, wonder,
and beauty. The performance of a landscape's appearance, and the expe-
rience ofbeauty, should have as much currency in debates about what a
sustainable landscape might, and should, be as the performance of its eco-
logical systems. I think, I hope, that such a shift might be one of the tools
that jolts our clients and neighbors out of their complacency and inaction,
transforming them into a new generation of environmentalist-citizens.
Journal of Landscape Architecture j spring zooS 21
Sustaining Beauty. The performance of appearance Elizabeth K. Meyer
Notes
1 1 am consciously using the terms appearance and perform-
ance because of their currency in contemporary landscape de-
sign theory. Designed landscapes are considered from two
perspectives-how they look (appearance], and how they frmc-
tion ecologically (performance] (Czerniak zoo1]. What is miss-
ing from this critical position is how appearance performs or,
in other words, how the experience of a designed landscape's
forms and spaces work through our senses and alter our con-
sciousness. How does the look oflandscape alter us, work
through and on us? The link between appearance and per-
fonnance from this perspective is the field known as aesthet-
ics, the philosophy and science pertaining to sensuous percep-
tion and the criticism and appreciation of the beautiful (Oxford
En3lish Dictionary zooS].
2 Charles Eliot, Jr., one of Olmsted's partners, wrote of chang-
ing criteria and conceptions ofbeauty in the 1S9os. Written at
a time when functionalism was already challenging existing
norms ofbeauty, his arguments resonate with current debates
and deserve more attention. See Eliot (1S96].
3 See Berrizbcitia (20os] for mote on the agency ofbeauty and
her assessment that what we might understand as 1ny cat-
egory of'Adopt and Proselytize' sustainable landscapes. She
writes ofBurle Marx's Parque del Este, "This is not the distant,
background beauty of pictorial landscapes. This is demand-
ing beauty, beauty that requires the active engagement of the
eye with the mind, beauty rhat requires perceptual acuity. Nor
is this the fuzzy, 'milk-toast', easy, comforting, and homoge-
neous beauty of sustainable, nondescript landscapes." (Ber-
rizbeitia zoos: 91]. See Mozingo (1997] and Nassauer (199S] for
perspectives on the related topic of ecological design and aes-
thetics.
4 For more on the agency of forms ofbeauty, see Arthur Dan-
to's essay, (Beauty for Ashes' in Benezra 1999. Regarding Beau-
ty 1Sz-197; Jean-Francoise Lyotard. 1994 (English translation).
Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press; Jean-Francoise Lyotard. 19Sz. Presenting the
Unpresentable: the Sublime. Art Forum zo (April): 64-66; and
Jean-Francoise Lyotard 19S4- Sublime and the Avant-garde. Art
Forum 22: 36.
5 Here BuellzooJ: 1, is quoting Richard N. L. Andrews 1999.
Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves. A History
OfAmerican Environmental Policy. New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 370; and referring to Beck (199s).
6 I continue to believe in the operative efficacy of manifes-
tos, despite the despair and cynicism of recent writings such
as Hohmann and Langhorst's Apocalyptic Manifesto that was
distributed through the mail to many university departments
ofLandscapc Architecture in zoo4, and published in zoos. Oth-
er contemporary manifesto writers of note include Alan Berg-
er, Adriaan Geuze, Dieter Kienast, Winy Maas, Anne Whiston
Spirn, and the students who annually proclaim their positions
in manifestos they write in my Theories ofModern Landscape
Architecture course.
7 In August and September of 2007, the manifesto was deliv-
ered during a plenary lecture at the Royal Geographical Society
(RGS) annual meeting on Sustainability and the O!crality ofLife
in London, and at a conference at Peking University in Beijing.
22 Journal of Landscape Architecture j spring zooS
I am grateful to Angela Gurnell and Stephen Daniels of the 16 Sec Cook zooo, Merchant 2002 and Kingsland zoos.
RGS, as well as Kongjian Yu, his colleagues :wd students at Pe-
17 To be fair, when announcing the zooS annualASLA meeting
king University for the opportunity to deliver this manifesto
theme, Green Infrastructure: Linking Landscapes and Commu-
in the form of a heavily illustrated lecture at these events, and
nities, the ASLA noted that sustainability is the "highest rated
for the exchanges following the lectures that have contributed
topic by both annual meeting attendees and non-attendees for
to this article's development.
three years. See Land On-line 2007.
8 For instance, landscape designer julie Bargmann, whose
18 See Lyle 1994 and Thayer 1994. Bargmann teaches a required
DIRT Studio practice focuses on post-industrial, often toxic,
course in the University ofVirginia Landscape Architecture
sites, shudders when she hears the word 'sustainability'.
1
curriculum called Regenerative Technologies.
She prefers the term regenerativc'.
19 See Ian Thompson's chapter in Benson and Roe zooo for an
9 In fact, the authoritative dictionary of the English language,
insightful analysis of the ethics of various forms of sustain-
The unabridged Oxford En!Jlish Dictionmy, only recently ex-
ability.
panded the definition of' sustainable' to include recent envi-
ronmental connotations. Their 2001 draft addition reads,
11
0f, relating, or designating forms ofhuman economic acti-
vity that do not lead to environmental degradation, especially
avoiding long-term depletion of natural resources." References
10 See United Nations 1987, United Nations 2ooS, as well as American Society ofLandscape Architects (ASiA). 1993· Ameri-
Our Common Future 19S7. can Society ofLandscape Architects Declaration on Environment and
Development. http://host.asla.org/nonmembers(declarn-env-
11 "The term 'regenerative' describes the processes that re-
dev.html [accessed z6January zooS]
store, renew or revitalize their own sources of energy and tna-
terials, creating sustainable systems that integrate the needs Amidon, J. zoos. Hypernature. In Michael Van Valkenbw;gh Asso-
of society with the integrity of nature." From the John T. Lyle ciates. Allegheny Riverfront Park. N.Y: Princeton Architectur-
Center for Regenerative Studies, Pomona, CA. www.csupomo- al Press: s6-68
na.edu/-crs/ [accessed 27 January zooS]. A regenerative system
Beck, U. 199S· Ecolo!Jical Enli!Jhtenment. Essays on the Politics of the
/(provides for continuous replacetnent, through its own func-
Risk Society. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press
tional processes of the energy and materials used in its opera-
tions." Lyle, 10. Benezra, N. and Visa, 0. 1999. ReiJardiniJ Beauty. Washington,
D.C.: Hirshhorn Museum
12 In April2007, 'Resilience for Ecology and Urban Design',
the Institute for Ecosystem Studies' annual Cary Conference, Benson. J. and Roe, M. 2000. Landscape and Smtainability.
was convened by the renowned ecologist Steward Pickett. He London: Spon Press
gathered "leaders both in the science and the urban design
Berleant, A. 1991. Art and En3a3ement.
community to develop a shared framework" to discuss how
Philadelphia: Temple University
to direct and apply ecological knowledge towards the design
of sustainable cities. The largest divide during the three-day Berrizbeitia, A. zoos. Roberto Burle Marx in Caracas. Parque del
event was the reluctance, if not inability, ofbrilliant, con- Este 1956-61. Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press
cerned scientists to consider how the appearance oflandscape
Berrizbeitia, A. 2006. Replacing Process.
mattered.
In: julia Czerniak and George Hargreaves (ed.) Lm;ge Parks. New
13 Jane Amidon's (zoos) edited interviews with Van Valken- York: Princeton Architectural Press: 17s-19S
burgh and his partners make a persuasive argument for the
Beveridge, C. and Rocheleau, P. 1995. Frederick Larv Olmsted.
value ofhypernature versus simulated nature when designing
Desi3nin8 the American Landscape. N.Y.: Rizzoli
in an urban landscape. While VanValkenburgh has not dis-
cussed the application of this design tactic explicitly for the de- Beveridge, C. amd Hoffi11an, C. 1997. The Papers ofFrederick Larv
sign of sustainable landscapes, a recent interview captures the Olmsted. Supplementmy Series, volttme 1, WritiniJ on Public Spaces,
sense of temporary cognition, recognition and itnmersion that Parkways, and Park Systems. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
hypernature might engender in the quintessential sustainable
Buell, L. 2001. Writinilfor an Endan!Jmd World. Literature,
landscape, a green roof for the ASLA national headquarters in
Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond.
Washington, D.C. (Werthmann zooT 134).
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press
14 These insights were gleaned from several conversations
Calkins, M. 2002. Green Specs.
with Michael Van Valkcnburgh and Georgco Hargreaves
Landscape Architecture 92 (s): 40-4s, 96-97.
in the mid to late 19Sos, where they spoke of shifts in their
work from designingconstructing spaces and forms to Calkins, M. zooz. Green Specs II.
designingconstructing experiences. Landscape Architecture 9z (9]: 46-so, 103-109.
15 See Amidon zoos: 17 for VanValkenburgh's interpretation Calkins, M. 2006. Greening the Blacktop.
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The Poetics ofSpace.

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Biographical Notes
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 194S, zoo4 translation. The World of Elizabeth K. Meyer, FASLA, is an Associate Professor ofLand-
Perception. New York: Routledge scapc Architecture at the University ofVirginia School of
Architecture where she teaches design studios and theory
Meyer, E. 2000. The Post-Earth Day Conundrum. Translating
courses. She was Department Chair from 1993-199S and
Environmental Values into Landscape Design. In Michel Co-
2001-2002. Prior to 1993, Meyer was in private practice with
nan (ed.) Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture. Washington,
firms in Washington and Philadelphia, and taught at Cornell
DC: Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard Universiry:1S7-z44
and Harvard. She has published widely in journals and edited
Mozingo, L. 1997. The Aesthetics of Ecological Design: Seeing anthologies, most recently in Czerniak and Hargreaves' Large
Science as Culture. Landscape )oumal16 (1): 46-57. Parks (2007). Her current research explores the intersection of
emerging theories of science and aesthetics in modern land-
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scape architecture in the United States.
scapeJoumai14 (z): 161-qo.
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dictionary.oed.com/ cgi/entry/ 50z4 364S/ 50z4364Sse 1?single~1&
query-type~word&query1vord~sustaimbility&first~1&max­
Contact
to-show~1o&hilite~50Z4364Sse1 (accessed z6 January 2008)
Elizabeth K. Meyer, FASLA
Our Common Future. 1987. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Associate Professor
Reed, Peter. zoo5. Groundswell. ConstructinB the Comempormy University ofVirginia School ofArchitecture
Landscape. New York: The Museum ofModern Art Department ofArchitecture and Landscape Architecture
Scarry, E. 1999. On Beauty and BeinBJttst. Campbell Hall
Princeton: Princeton University Press Box400122
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4122
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USA
New York: Basic Books
Telephone: ti -434-924 6960
Spirn, A. 19SS. The Poetics of City and Nature: Towards a New
Aesthetic for Urban Design. Landscape )oumal7 (z) Fall: 108-126. Telefax: +1-434-982-2678
bmeyer@virginia.edu
Sustainable Sites Initiative. zooS. www.sustainablesites.org/
(accessed 29 January zooS)
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Frederick Law Olmsted's WritiniJS on City Landscape.
Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press
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the Sttstainable Landscape. New York: John Wiley
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Rowe. Landscape and Sustainability. London: Spon Press
Thompson, W. zoo7. How Green is your magazine?
Landscape Architecture (97 ): 11.
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Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development.
www.un.org/issues/m-susdev.html [accessed z6 January zooS]
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multilingual/Def.<ult.asp?DocumentiD~78&ArticlelD~1163
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ment. www.unngocsd.org/CSD-Definitions%zoSD.htm
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Landscape Architectttre 94 (3): 3S, 40, 4z, 44-45
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Valkenbur;gh Associates DesiBnfor the Headquarters of the Ameri-
can Society ofLandscape Architects. Princeton: Princeton Archi-
tectural Press
Journal of Landscape Architecture/ spring zooS 23
J
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sprins o8 of LANDSCAPE
ARCHITECTURE

Editorial Under the

4 Elizabeth K. Meyer Georges Farhat

Sustaining beauty. The urban as infrastructurallandscape
The performance of appearance Open space and infrastructure networks
A nunifesto in three parts in the Val de Bievre n1.etropolitan area
(Paris J
6
56

Diedrich Bruns, Nicole Haustein, Jorg Willeke

Landscape planning for
ECLAS Lecture 2007
flood risk management planning
with SEA Carl Steinitz

24 Landscape planning:
A brief history of influentual ideas

68
Sanda Lenzholzer
A city is not a building-
architectural concepts for
public square design in
dutch urban clinute contexts Book Reviews

44 Staging Change

Open Space: People Space

E40o- An Interpretive Atlas

Landscape t

Gregor Graf The Sun King Louis XIV

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