Landscape architecture, a ‘composite’ discipline, invites cross-fertilizing spatial, scientific, cultural, historical and regulatory perspectives on society’s most pressing questions. It considers natural spatial conditions and nature processes on equal footing with man-made elements and human, and non-human practices. The Landscape architecture mindset assumes all these things do not exist in isolation, but as moving parts in a complex network of simultaneous, multidirectional exchanges.
As such, the field offers knowledge frameworks, research models, and design methods to address a mix of qualitative and quantitative matters. Internationally, Landscape research and education are increasingly recognized as vectors of an action-oriented scrutiny on crucial challenges, like sustainability, resource scarcity and climate change, impacting spatial and social environments at smaller and larger scales.
Today, globally, we live in an urbanizing world, and society everywhere faces serious environmental challenges. In this period of rapid change, the European Research Council has cited a need for transformative research modes that can generate a new way of seeing things, a methodological or instrumental advance. Landscape researchers today must strive to do more than prove theories true; they must aim to produce working knowledges that can be applied to wicked problems in an era of uncertainty.