WORDS Diane Menzies
Adjunct Professor, Unitec, PHD Lincoln, MBA Canty, MBUS: Dispute Resolution Massey, DIP LA Lincoln, Dip Hort (Dist) Lincoln, Life member of NZILA
IMAGES Meg Back & Maria Ignatieva
Although landscapes have been planned and made for several thousands of years, only in the blink of an eye, in relative time, has landscape architecture been a profession. Following Frederick Law Olmsted’s adoption and promotion of the title over 100 years ago, landscape architecture has been taught in universities in Europe and the USA, and more recently in many countries of the world. When the principles of the profession were established in the USA and Europe by the then leaders, western culture and values were privileged. Researchers, writers and promoters of the profession were almost exclusively western and professional principles and practice became entangled in western values. This was not critical when those cultures were western. However, as practice expands in countries such as India, People’s Republic of China, and those countries where indigenous cultures have a very different concept of landscape, the western cultural values enmeshed in the profession put practice and culture in conflict.
The landscape architecture profession now needs to tease theory and practice from cultural values in order to recognize and enable non-western cultures to confidently express their values in landscape planning and design, so that their contemporary places resonate and connect to their cultures. This paper examines the issue of mono-cultural teaching and practice, the challenges (even oppression) perceived by those who seek recognition of diverse cultural values, and some possible ideas for change. This is a serious issue because if the profession fails to extend beyond tokenism by recognising other cultural values in practice, then those from non-western cultures are likely to turn their back on the profession. This is already occurring in New Zealand where some Māori perceive landscape architects as unresponsive and disinterested in Māori cultural values. An alternative scenario is the maintenance of the status quo, and the continued global proliferation of the same ‘High Streets,’ meaning the ubiquitous designs derived from the same design values, dominated by the one culture. Landscape diversity will instead become landscape poverty. Our profession will be responsible for such landscape degradation.
Landscape architecture is a trap. It lures the unsuspecting student into thinking that their learning is about professional theory and practice from around the globe, rather than primarily from the western sectors. It lures the English speaking practitioner into thinking that they have received the body of landscape architectural knowledge from the world’s practitioners and writers, when non-English writers from cultures as diverse as Persia and Japan have rich archives of writings on landscape planning and design, but which have not been translated. It lures those who are not from western cultures into thinking that their cultures cannot be part of landscape practice, because landscape architecture is about western values. This is a false and unfortunate misunderstanding. It is false because landscape is a cultural construct and although much teaching, writing and practice is currently set in a western cultural framework, there are other understandings which respond to different cultural frameworks. Western based landscape architecture theory, writing and practice omit a large proportion of the world’s cultures, yet seem to be promulgated as the only understanding of landscape architecture. There is other knowledge, developed over centuries in China, Japan and by other eastern cultures which interpret nature and landscape in different ways. There are indigenous cultures throughout the world who understand landscape and nature in very dissimilar ways from western culture. We landscape architects who work with and between other cultures therefore need to recognise this misunderstanding for what it is: western culture rather than universal landscape understanding, and take vigorous measures to understand, recognise, respect, and learn from as well as practise recognising and privileging non-western cultures in their appropriate place, so that the profession has a richer and much more diverse international practice. This is one means to achieve contemporary spaces that provide an authentic sense of place and home, and that reflect and connect to the people who live there. This paper sets out to examine the issue of mono-cultural practice, the examples of recent concerns expressed, and some moves to address the issue.
The Mono-Cultural Concerns
Chinese landscape architects and particularly more recent landscape architecture students1 have complained that contemporary teaching and practice in China does not reflect or respond to Chinese culture. That may be true because the profession now has as its contemporary base western-derived landscape understanding. In an interview of Chinese professors of landscape architecture reported in Landscape Architecture Magazine the following was noted:
Some of the people who lead China’s most influential programs studied in the United States, and some of the programs have strong connections with American academics. Tsinghua University’s landscape architecture program was established with the help of a team of American landscape architects led by Laurie Olin, FASLA, of the University of Pennsylvania.2
However, recent scholarly work on landscape architecture theory from China reflects the different values Chinese people hold. It places importance on, among other things, naming places, or landscape features, such as rocks. Chinese, in contrast to western culture, emphasize poetry, emotion and symbolism when considering landscape. Chinese culture shares the attention to the visual or aesthetic aspects of landscape with western cultures, in contrast to many indigenous cultures, where intangible aspects may be more important. Meng, in a philosophical address explored poetry and events which are associated with landscapes as a means of interpreting and recognizing landscape values. Such thinking responds to the centuries old traditional Chinese understandings of gardewn and nature.3 He and others have explained that it is not only feng shui that encapsulates Chinese cultural understandings of landscape. There are many different philosophical understandings which have been promulgated over the centuries.4 Feng sui is an eco-philosophy which is relatively well-known in the west and has been adopted for centuries in China, but even this philosophy’s greater currency does not imply that it is part of teaching or mainstream understanding of landscape architecture in other parts of the globe.
The more recent integration of Chinese culture into landscape architecture theory coincides with other activities such as the reprinting of an early Chinese writer on garden design5 and anniversary celebrations and activities to recognise the author and publication; and the recognition of landscape architecture practice as an ‘A’ grade profession by the Government. While describing this as a renaissance of Chinese culture as it applies to landscape architecture may be making too much of the steps towards privileging Chinese culture in Chinese design, there is certainly much more interest and confidence in maintaining cultural integrity. A review of an edition of Chinese Landscape Architecture, the main professional journal,6 demonstrates this growing interest and confidence. The publication includes The Predicament and Prospect of Research on Chinese Traditional Gardens,7 discussion on landscape architecture from a cultural geographic viewpoint, 8and an article on classical landscape architecture design courses in which there is a need to explore and enhance the meaning and quality of landscape and that in turn requires teaching reform.9
This cultural confidence was not always present in recent years. Although some Chinese landscape architects were selected by clients in China,10 western landscape consultants were frequently sought for landscape planning of prominent cities, and design of key city sites.11 In addition, landscape architecture had been removed from the university curriculum, and prior to its removal the focus had been on garden design as opposed to design of larger scale areas. Such larger sites in the public realm were instead planned and designed by Government. The client-led selection of western consultants may have been in part a symptom of the emerging elite city movement which seems to require that top cities have a sky tower (preferably the highest) and at least one exuberant Norman Porter building (as much as the lack of locally trained landscape architects).
The more difficult to address issue has been the teaching, and thence practice, of landscape architecture following western cultural constructs. This can be explained by the training of the new teachers in America (primarily) where cultural diversity has been less of an issue. However, as those teachers have gained skills and maturity, more and more examples are occurring of planning and designs which not only have a Chinese cultural base but are also a fusion of ecological planning and green infrastructure management. Such designs12 create landscapes which reflect and value local places, rather than the apparently western inspired impositions. As Professor Hu Jie explains in an interview13:
The first thing we face is our environmental problems, and right now, Beijing, and the whole of China, is in a period of fast development. As landscape architects who work on large scale development, our responsibility is to keep projects environmentally sound. It shows our respect for nature, and environmental quality.
Another important philosophy is to study traditional Chinese landscape and culture, and to design from our tradition and bring the tradition of old historical landscapes to today’s contemporary design. Even when we call a project a contemporary project, it has to have elements from Chinese culture. So, while we talk about projects, we always focus on two areas. One is to study local culture. Another is to bring in modern ecological research and technology.
The consideration of Chinese culture and the landscape architecture profession in China is an example of just one culture which has initially applied the western cultural approach of the profession but is now considering teaching and practice with respect to their own culture: researching and debating cultural aspects, and considering teaching reform, at least to address some issues. Japanese landscape architects have maintained cultural traditions in landscape architecture with less intrusion of western cultural values. However, a leading Japanese landscape architect,14 noted recently that the imposition of western culture and lack of recognition and privileging of local culture was a leading issue for many landscape architects in Asian countries.
Indigenous Culture
Western cultural dominance of the landscape architectural profession is a particular issue in Aotearoa-New Zealand where landscape architecture has been practiced as a primarily western cultural construct despite the requirements of the Treaty of Waitangi to observe principles such as fairness and reciprocity. Indigenous understandings of nature and landscape are largely overlooked. Māori ways of perceiving landscape may currently be referenced in the form of a few Māori words, or as Māori patterns: tokenism. This is not necessarily deliberate cultural imperialism (although this has also occurred in Aotearoa-New Zealand). It has come about because the profession has not recognized the dominance and role of western culture in professional teaching and practice.
Western thought and western culture is not landscape architecture. It is instead landscape architecture as taught by European and American practitioners, based on their cultural constructs. We now must develop ideas and approaches which recognize Māori ways of doing things, and not simply privilege the discipline’s origins. We must look to the intangible, the naming, the narratives and stories, the events and histories which are part of the cultural construct of landscape for Māori. And we must also do so in ways that recognize contemporary iwi Māori rather than attempting to mimic the traditional.
Interested and concerned practitioners have over the years contributed ideas on ways to address this issue, or have undertaken sensitive and sophisticated work for Māori clients which recognize the client’s values. 15Despite this work the profession has scarcely changed thinking and Māori values are largely unacknowledged, or treated as a design opportunity for a site rather than an underlying difference in culture and understanding of landscape. Practitioners have often taken the view that if not working for a Māori client, or there are no clear Māori cultural issues prevailing, then there is no need to think further about cultural issues, and no need to consider the different way that Māori understand landscape. This is a mistaken view as Māori as well as other cultures live in, use and appreciate all aspects of landscapes.
This theme is highlighted in a report of the Waitangi Tribunal into the claim known as Wai 262, concerning the place of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) in contemporary New Zealand practice. The report notes:
‘.. Māori remain sidelined from decisions about key aspects of their culture. Laws and policies give others control of taonga such as .... traditional knowledge, and places, and flora and fauna that are significant to iwi and hapū culture and identity. And there is little place in those laws and policies for core Māori cultural values such as whanaungatanga and kaitiakitanga.’16
The report puts forward a framework for recognition of Māori values and culture in conservation, heritage and resource management, among other aspects.17
Recognition of indigenous landscape values was recently supported by a resolution at the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) Congress in New Zealand in April 2013. The resolution stated:
We, the landscape architects of 41 nations of the world, commend the following resolutions to international, national, regional and local decision makers and assert that:
All landscapes of intertwined cultural, natural, urban and rural systems, including land and water, are important to people´s identity and quality of life and therefore must be respected.
We support the proposed UNESCO International Landscape Convention and urge all nations to engage with the process and support this inspirational convention, founded on local charter actions.
We recognize traditional and indigenous knowledge and wisdom held by people of the world, which contributes to understanding landscape and can guide decision making at this time and for our shared future,
We acknowledge that the profound connection between people and place roots culture to landscape and that our future requires our effective action and collaboration to sustain the wealth of the landscape world-wide.
With the obligations of the Treaty of Waitangi and the support of the Tāmaki Makaurau Declaration, as well as examples of how other cultures are now privileging non-western cultures in landscape architecture practice, the time is right and due (some would say overdue) for the profession in New Zealand to lead bold change in practice.
Ideas For Change
Māori landscape architects have been exploring ways that landscape, and the landscape architecture profession, might be re-conceived in terms of Māori culture. They have based interpretations on concepts such as mauri and wairua, as well as Māori religious beliefs and customs. They have found this a challenge as all who are undertaking this work received their initial professional teaching in terms of western cultural constructs. This group have also found their colleagues often slow to adopt the very different values and approaches with which they have been grappling. Such thinking and work undertaken by Te Tau-a-Nuku (Māori landscape architects and aligned professionals group) was explained by Damian Powley at the IFLA Congress in April.18 He spoke about fostering the development of kaupapa-Māori aspirations within landscape architecture. His presentation included a ‘Māori landscape response which relies on empirical - place bound observation.’ Powley emphasized the role of people as a means of engagement with place, and described a landscape assessment methodology which recognized Māori cultural understanding of landscape. This work and other presentations at the international conference were supported or lead by Māori landscape architect Phil Wihongi who is also working vigorously to change thinking and practice. However, as a reflection of the New Zealand profession’s current lack of commitment to Māori values and culture, Te Tau-a Nuku is affiliated to Ngā Aho, Māori designers association, rather than the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects.
On a more positive note, landscape architecture students have ventured into this contested construct, exploring ways to design that respect and recognize contemporary pressures on the urban landscape. Josephine Clarke presented a challenging paper derived from her final undergraduate study for the IFLA Congress proceedings,19 which sought to overcome the invisibility and lack of engagement with Māori in design by demystifying the engagement process, and provided some practical ideas for doing this. Her Māori clients had confirmed that her approach was extremely useful and empowering for them.
Another paper by Ben Mellor, based on his Victoria University of Wellington Master’s thesis, provides a stream day-lighting design which explores the various Māori states of water, and ways to represent and enhance an urban stream, without the need for interpretive signs or Māori patterns. Mellor challenges European tradition and culture through his proposed engagement with water, rather than, as he understands it, the western response to landscape intervention of standing and watching.20 While both students were tested in their work by the overarching western cultural bias of our discipline’s teaching, they none-the-less have taken steps where others too timid have yet to venture.
Indigenous Contribution
An interest in landscape architecture and cultural values and interpretation has been expressed by Māori leaders to encourage our profession. In the keynote presentation to the international participants at the Shared Wisdom conference, Dr. Malcolm Paterson, Ngāti Whātua’s resource manager, emphasized the link between Māori and the land and water through pepeha, or tribal acknowledgement, in which identity is derived from landscape features. He described pioneering land sculpture by an ancestor, Titahi on a massive scale, echoing the moko, and carving patterns on the land. He also spoke of resourcescape and namescape as important issues for Māori, as well as aspects of hospitality and guardianship of the land, but noted the disempowerment of Māori in resource management.
Ngāti Hine kaumātua Kevin Prime recently presented a comparison of the western landscape architecture approach and compared this with a Māori understanding of landscape features, aspects and whakapapa. His interpretation does not simply translate words into Māori but takes a Māori perspective as well. He urges landscape architects to recognize these different perspectives. At the same conference at which Prime presented his interpretation of Māori ways of understanding landscape,21 others gave accounts of their work on landscape aspects such as Takere Norton and Iain Gover of Ngāi Tahu, who have developed a database of Māori place names. The information is recorded on GIS maps which allow verification, accuracy and the inclusion of narratives to add to their tribal knowledge base. Ngā Whenua Rahui’s chair Sir Tumu Te Heuheu reminded the same conference that all the cultural mapping and recording of landscape history was about people. This of course returns the issue of landscape back to the construct. A cultural construct is about people and their culture. Landscape is not a commodity or an object. It is based on people’s understandings, beliefs, memories, values and perceptions.
The recognition of the links between people and landscape, the intangible aspects which contribute to a cultural landscape is a concept well accepted by UNESCO, and a category for inscription as a World Heritage Site. Aotearoa-New Zealand’s maunga Tongariro is inscribed as both a natural as well as a cultural landscape. Other sites in the world are being listed solely as cultural landscapes. Such landscapes are often maintained by belief systems and cultural knowledge helps to sustain those particularly special landscapes. This in turn recognizes the relationships people have with landscape and the intertwining of people and landscape.
Steps For Change
When contemplating a strategy for change that has been resisted for many years, strong leadership is needed together with an action plan which is monitored for progress and change. The issue, as in China, needs to be addressed in different ways. It firstly must be addressed in educational institutions so that the teachers understand that their western values are being privileged to the discomfort and disadvantage of Māori students. The small numbers of successful Māori students and Māori landscape architects is a symptom of the profession’s current myopia. This same pattern is repeated in other countries where western values are the basis for landscape architecture. There are very few Aboriginal landscape architects in Australia, few First Nations landscape architects in Canada and in South Africa, African landscape architects have yet to be trained to practice there.22 This situation may seem a puzzle because indigenous peoples’ cultural understanding of landscape is integral to their belief systems and an essential part of who they are. A key reason for this is that those students do not feel their values and ethnicity are accepted, and look elsewhere.
There are steps underway to bring about change. The Landscape Architecture Department at Unitec in Auckland has a Māori Advisory Committee led by a Māori lecturer and practitioner,23 and have appointed an educator to develop and implement a Māori strategy to achieve change. In Wellington, Victoria University School of Architecture has a Treaty Committee24 which has a strategy for bringing about change in staff values and knowledge which includes language training and surveys each year on the inclusion of Māori values in teaching and research. Lincoln University has also given attention to Māori language and student projects for iwi Māori. Despite this, change is frustratingly slow.
The profession itself, the New Zealand Institute of landscape Architects, could increase the emphasis and pace of this change in a number of ways which might include among other things:
Taking responsibility for bringing about change
A Māori landscape values document
Annual workshops with specific groups, such as Māori social scientists, on making change
Special advocacy and support for Māori practitioners
Inclusion of the Māori landscape group in their executive deliberations
Requiring registration for practitioners to demonstrate conversance with Māori cultural value
Requiring education providers to demonstrate steps to change through accreditation reviews
Dissemination of Māori place names for adoption by the profession
An annual survey of practitioners to monitor change
There are many other ways to bring about change that could be considered in the fields of research, teaching and learning, practice and communication. Most particularly though, commitment and action is needed rather than a lengthy and debilitating consultation exercise.
Conclusion
The landscape architecture profession in New Zealand has tended to resist change. It has not widely adopted an understanding of cultural landscape and tends to uncritically follow legal interpretations of landscape, which in turn confirm western culture. None of the current New Zealand profession’s information privileges Māori values. Teaching and research generally (but not exclusively) follows the western pattern. This is not unsurprising as most landscape architects in New Zealand have a western, largely European, cultural heritage. Some regard promotion of Māori ways of doing things as a professional aberration at best. Even planting native plants was deemed in Christchurch by some members of the public as an attack on local people’s English garden heritage. Our profession is not far from mainstream values, where arguments about landscape are perceived as attacking people’s heritage, or even an attack on nationalism. So fundamental is the New Zealand cultural link to a myth of forest and lush green scenery, to beaches, sunshine and surf that our landscape is perceived as an important part of our identity.
We landscape architects have been smug for too long about our professional principles and practice, and are losing our professional leadership to others, who will interpret landscape without reference to our profession. We need to set strategies in place to bring about fresh changes to our profession. I see this as needing rapid affirmative action: through Māori language, Māori sections of the profession, and different thinking. For too long we have overlooked our western professional mono-culture. We now must work feverishly to bring about cultural diversity and inclusiveness. This is our bi-cultural place so it is up to our landscape architecture profession, if we want a future, to take urgent action.
1Students at International IFLA student charrettes over a number of years, at IFLA Asia Pacific conferences such as in Japan in 2002, and at Shanghai Jiaotong University in April 2013, pers. comm.
2Jost, D. 2013 LAM February. www.landscapearchitecturemagazine.com/2013/02/08/the-great-exchange/ accessed 6 September 2013.
3Meng Zhaozhen, 2013. Keynote paper, Jinzhou conference, China, May 2013.
4Meng Zhaozhen, pers. comm., April 2013.
5The book Yuan Ye was written in 1642 by Ji Cheng.
6Chinese Landscape Architecture 2013, Vol 29, 212, 08
7Fu Fan ibid, page 54-69
8Yao Yi-feng, ibid, page 83-85
9Dai Qui-si, Wang Zhi-yang and Guo Xuan, ibid pages 114-119
10Example are Zhou Gansshi’s carefully crafted work for a condominium development in Suzhou and Sun Xiaoxiang’s extensive botanic garden design work
11One such example is the designs by Vincent Asselin of Canada in four key Shanghai parks.
12For instance Hu Jie, Professor, Tsinghua University and consultant for the Beijing Olympic Forest Park
13www.asla.org/contentdetail.aspx?id=20102/ accessed Sept 6, 2013.
14Hiko Mitani, winner of numerous local and international awards for landscape design of sites such as the Kyoto State Guest House and grounds, and Japanese delegate for the International Federation of Landscape Architects, pers. comm. 2013.
15These include Alan Titchener, Di Lucas, and Neil Challenger at Lincoln University.
16Waitangi Tribunal Ko Aotearoa Tēnei Factsheet 1 Key Themes, Waitangi Tribunal, retrieved from www.waitangitribunal.govt.nz, October 1, 2013.
17Thanks to Phil Wihongi for identifying this relevant information.
18Powley, D. 2013. Ki Te Whenua Tuturu: Towards the Maori Landscape; IFLA50 Shared Wisdom in an Age of Change, April, Auckland.
19Clarke, J. 2013. How Do We as Designers Design with Cultural Integrity? IFLA50 Shared Wisdom in an Age of Change, April, Auckland, pages 172-179.
20Mellor, B. 2013, Expressing the Unseen Representing Maori Heritage in Wellington, IFLA50 Shared Wisdom in an Age of Change, April, Auckland, pages 217-235.
21Maori GIS Association conference Place 2013, August 17 and 18, SkyCity, Auckland.
22At least up till 2012.
22At least up till 2012.
23Richard Mann is Chair.
