Landscape Architecture and the Pandemic
'We need to ensure that all communities have the same level of access to restorative outdoor spaces and we need to understand this as a matter of public health.'
Here we have a selection of articles that react to the global pandemic, and how landscape architects could respond for the future.
ESSENTIAL WORKERS: 4 Ways Landscape Architects can be the First Line of Defense for Preventing Future Pandemics
By Michael Grove for World Landscape Architect
In response to the pandemic, Grove highlights four areas in which landscape architects can have an active role. He discusses the connections between deforestation, melting glaciers and urban inequities with the spread of diseases; concluding with his hopes for the trajectory of the landscape architecture profession.
'These include 1) championing habitat conservation; 2) fighting climate change; 3) advocating for responsible urbanization and limiting sprawl; and 4) supporting advanced agriculture.'
After Extraordinary Conditions
By Sarah Cowles for Landscape Architecture Magazine
Sarah Cowles' wonderful article describes life in quarantine in Tbilisi, Georgia, she explores the city, along with the balances in relationships between different groups negotiating their way through the crisis. Cowles also discusses how the pandemic has affected her work as the director of Isthmus Group Georgia - a landscape architecture, planning, and research studio - with the stand-still of projects brought about by uncertainty.
'Is there a German word for the specific sadness felt by the gardener of a rented home?'
Effects of pandemic on the profession of Landscape Architecture
By Aayushi Sanghvi for Re-thinking The Future
In this article, Sanghvi reflects on the responsibilities of the landscape architect and how these tasks have been impacted by the limitations of movement, access to facilities, new methods of communication brought by lockdowns. This article looks at how the whole process of the project, the analysis, design and implementation has been affected, and in turn affected other factors, and that these things might take a while to recover.
'The knowledge gained for the effective setting of the site, understanding of the contours, water bodies, greenery and overall planning of open spaces; in such a manner that the closed spaces become more meaningful and the relation between open and closed, out and in, built and unbuilt, is enhanced requires the physical presence on the site'
Edible cities: Landscape architect Phoebe Lickwar on post-pandemic public spaces and urban agriculture
By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin for Sight Lines
Exploring the relationship between agriculture and landscape architecture, Phoebe Lickwar talks to Jeanne Claire about the layers of design that can have an impact on a wider community, not just the immediate surroundings. In particular, Lickwar had concerns over food and education vulnerabilities in the pandemic; the lack of accessibility to fresh foods when the supply chain was disrupted, and the damage to children's education when they were no longer able to be in schools, and the lack of outdoor educational spaces. Food and the landscape was something that she had already been researching through her own practice,
'What would our cities look like if agriculture was systematically integrated into the urban fabric?'
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