ARCHITECTURE CONTEXT

Architecture Context



Architecture Context

Introduction

The main purpose of writing this paper is to explain and link the architectural theories and principles with my learning and knowledge of architecture. The paper also describes what I am interested to learn. My basic interest in architectural field is in the landscape architecture. For me, it is enhancing the nature's beauty for the mankind. I have many inspirational designs in landscape architecture. In future, I aim to make and build some good landscape architectural designs. Landscape design and landscape architecture are in their basic forms a manifestation of humans' passionate care for nature. The two concepts are similar, with landscape design focusing more on the artistic merits of design. Landscape design has a significant role to play in the procurement of resources and materials and in the interaction with natural form and elements toward creating livable communities. It also offers solutions for global climate change and warming and peak oil (i.e., the maximum global output that occurred recently and the subsequent gradual decline) (Kornberger 2004, 1095).

Landscape architecture is an academic discipline and an area of professional practice that seemingly defies definition. Demarcating the field is a difficult endeavor since the breadth of the field is quite wide, dynamic, and far ranging. This piece focuses on landscape architecture in the United States and Canada (although landscape architecture is alive and well in the rest of the world). However, in the United States, the education of a landscape architect focuses primarily on North American and European studies. This persistence is unfortunate, as few students learn much more than a brief history of landscape architecture in a history survey course akin to the European Grand Tour of the 18th and 19th centuries (Treib 1993, 11).

Discussion

Throughout human history, landscape works such as the Greek and Roman gardens shared a commonality of an incessant love for greenery and plants. Other than these, the “elements” of nature (fire, water, air, and earth in the ancient Occident and metal, water, wood, fire, and earth in the ancient Orient) have influenced the design of ancient gardens.

One of the first and foremost contemporary comprehensive histories of landscape architecture was produced by Norman Newton in his book Design on the Land: The Development of Landscape Architecture, published in 1971. Newton clearly articulated the transformation of a profession from garden design, a largely private endeavor, to landscape architecture as a public service. Another classic book, by Geoffrey and Susan Jellicoe, The Landscape of Man: Shaping the Environment From Prehistory to the Present Day (published in 1975; third edition published in 1995), covers landscape to the early 1990s. These volumes offer an inclusive and legible history of the built environment and provide concise descriptions and abundant plans, illustrations, and photographs of gardens and built landscapes from early civilization to the evolution of the modern landscape (Kornberger 2004, 1095).

The landscape architectural designs that have inspired me the most are the works by Ron Herman. He has designed many large and great landscapes of ...