Beyond the romantic and naı¨ve: the search for a complex ecological aesthetic design language for landscape architecture in New Zealand

Abstract

Landscape design is an expression and repository of cultural values and beliefs, and in Aotearoa, New Zealand, the designed landscape faces particular challenges. Globalization is seen as a potential threat to landscape identity, which is even more significant for a country which has built its economy and self-image from its unique natural landscape. The potential for resistance is limited by the small size and youth of the profession of landscape architecture in New Zealand. While traditions of farming and gardening extend back to early European settlement in the mid nineteenth century, and beyond to indigenous Maori practices of land modification, professional landscape design is a relatively recent development (the first tertiary course in landscape architecture began at Lincoln College (now Lincoln University) in 1969). Landscape design in New Zealand draws its vocabulary from the power of the country's natural heritage landscapes, convinced that a naturalistic aesthetic exclusively represents environmental health. Some of the core values of New Zealand society are, however, overlooked by designers. The need to develop a critically informed design language which includes the farming landscape along with the natural one is argued. The invention of such a language, referred to as a complex ecological aesthetic, is seen as a potential source of design expression that is invigorated by the tension between mechanistic and natural landscape aesthetics. It therefore has the potential to promote environmental health, while being regionally grounded, and can help face the challenges that globilization poses to the landscape.