Gives an overview of the practice of ecological design and planning for landscape architects. It explores the concepts and themes important to contemporary landscape architecture.

Basics Landscape Architecture 02: Ecological Design provides an overview of ecological design and planning for landscape architects. It explores the concepts and themes important to the contemporary practice of ecological design and planning in a highly accessible and richly illustrated format. Focusing primarily on urban environments, this book examines the relationships between ecological design theory and design methods. It describes and illustrates the basic structures and functions of natural and human systems through landscape ecology principles and the dynamics of landscape processes.

This groundbreaking work explains key ecological concepts and their application to the design and management of sustainable landscapes. It covers topics from biogeography and plant selection to global change. Beck draws on real world cases where professionals have put ecological principles to use in the built landscape.

Aimed at prospective and new students, this book gives a comprehensive introduction to the nature and practice of landscape architecture, the professional skills required and the latest developments. After discussing the history of the profession, the book explains the design process through principles such as hierarchy, human scale, unity, harmony, asymmetry, colour, form and texture. It looks at how design is represented through both drawing and modelling, and through digital techniques such as CAD and the use of GIS (Geographic Information Systems). This is followed by an examination of project management and landscape management techniques. Finally, the book explores educational and employment opportunities and the future of the profession in the context of climate change and sustainability. Illustrated with international examples of completed projects, Landscape Architecture provides an invaluable, one-stop resource for anyone considering studying or a career in this field.

Planning Sustainable Cities: An infrastructure-based approach provides an analytical framework for urban sustainability, focusing on the services and performance of infrastructure systems. The book approaches infrastructure as a series of systems that function in synergy and are directly linked with urban planning. This method streamlines and guides the planning process, while still highlighting detail, each infrastructure system is decoded in four "system levels". The levels organize the processes, highlight connections between entities and decode the high-level planning and decision making process affecting infrastructure. For each system level strategic objectives of planning are determined. The objectives correspond to the five focus areas of the Zofnass program: Quality of life, Natural World, Climate and Risk, Resource Allocation, Leadership. Developed through the Zofnass Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, this approach integrates the key infrastructure systems of Energy, Landscape, Transportation, Waste, Water, Information and Food and explores their synergies through land use planning, engineering, economics and policy. The size and complexity of infrastructure systems means that multiple stakeholders facing their own challenges and agendas are involved in planning; this book creates a common, collaborative platform between public authorities, planners, and engineers. It is an essential resource for those seeking Envision Sustainability Professionals accreditation.

After more than a century of heroic urban visions, urban dwellers today live in suburban subdivisions, gated communities, edge cities, apartment towers, and slums. The contemporary cities we know are more often the embodiment of unexpected outcomes and unintended consequences rather than visionary planning. As an alternative approach for rethinking and remaking today’s cities and regions, this book explores the intersections of critical inquiry and immediate, substantive actions. The contributions inside recognize the rich complexities of the present city not as barriers or obstacles but as grounds for uncovering opportunity and unleashing potential. Now Urbanism asserts that the future city is already here. It views city making as grounded in the imperfect, messy, yet rich reality of the existing city and the everyday purposeful agency of its dwellers. Through a framework of situating, grounding, performing, distributing, instigating, and enduring, these contributions written by a multidisciplinary group of practitioners and scholars illustrate specificity, context, agency, and networks of actors and actions in the re-making of the contemporary city.

Visual Communication for Landscape Architecture demonstrates not only how and where a range of visual communication skills are needed to inform a design process, but also why they are essential in order to make presentations both informative and memorable. It illustrates how representational techniques can be sensitively applied in different contexts appropriate to a diverse range of design challenges, and encourages experimentation with contemporary techniques, both 2D and 3D. Developing a professional but creative design portfolio is explored in relation to creating e-portfolios and websites. A total of 12 contemporary case studies enable readers to contextualize the methods and techniques explored in each chapter through exploring real-life examples of winning projects by successful landscape architecture practices, making this title an inspirational resource for both budding – and practising – landscape architects.