This spring, I had the privilege of serving as the outside voice on the jury for the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects? Awards. Coming from my training in architecture, it seemed an easy fit?but the distance between the two design professionals is in some ways both smaller and greater than I had anticipated.
The proposals we evaluated dealt equally in paving as in plants, in parking as in parks?the hard materials familiar to architects. The buzzword around the jury table was ?placemaking.? How well did a design reflect?and amplify?what was unique and important to a particular locale"
The Peace Garden at Nathan Phillips Square, by PLANT Architect (one of several firms with a foot in both professions), was admired for the way it carved out a place of sanctuary within the bustle of Toronto. A mix of native plants and a water feature were essential to this?but so was the broader planning process. This envisaged moving an ill-maintained garden from the middle of the plaza to its edge, creating space by mounding the new garden over a major exhaust vent for an underground parking garage. Noticeably absent from many of the entries were scale drawings. One of the organizers said to me, only half joking, that architects ask landscape architects for plans at two times: when a project goes out to tender, and when the architect wants to submit for an award. I felt nervous judging entries without the usual trinity of plans, sections and elevations to consider. But while arch...