Defining a research question, describing why it needs to be answered and explaining how methods are selected and applied are challenging tasks for anyone embarking on academic research within the field of landscape architecture. Whether you are an early career researcher or a senior academic, it is essential to draw meaningful conclusions and robust answers to research questions. Research in Landscape Architecture provides guidance on the rationales needed for selecting methods and offers direction to help to frame and design academic research within the discipline. Over the last couple of decades the traditional orientation in landscape architecture as a field of professional practice has gradually been complemented by a growing focus on research. This book will help you to develop the connections between research, teaching and practice, to help you to build a common framework of theory and research methods. Bringing together contributions from landscape architects across the world, this book covers a broad range of research methodologies and examples to help you conduct research successfully. Also included is a study in which the editors discuss the most important priorities for the research within the discipline over the coming years. This book will provide a definitive path to developing research within landscape architecture.

A practical, single-source guide to successful strategies for landscape architecture research As the scope of landscape architecture expands to engage with other disciplines, and streams of information directing this field continue to grow and diversify, it becomes increasingly important for landscape architects to be able to implement a range of effective research strategies when seeking, creating, and validating knowledge. Landscape Architecture Research offers a framework for advancing better design thinking solutions by supplying readers with a system of inquiry tactics that open up a wider range of research possibilities. With a logical and innovative approach that favors legitimacy of knowledge based on collective, grounded practices, rather than strict adherence to protocols drawn only from scientific models, this comprehensive, illustrated guide produces a sound argument for establishing a new paradigm for legitimizing research quality. Landscape Architecture Research presents: Case studies that show how the range of presented research strategies have been successfully used in practice New perspective on the relationship between theory, research, practice, and critique, a relationship that is specific to landscape architecture Detailed coverage of the ways that new knowledge is produced through research activities and practical innovations in landscape architecture The first and only book on this topic of growing importance in landscape architecture, Landscape Architecture Research keeps professionals and students in step with the latest developments in landscape architecture, and delivers a dynamic and flexible game plan for verifying the integrity of their work.

The Routledge Research Companion to Landscape Architecture considers landscape architecture’s increasingly important cultural, aesthetic, and ecological role. The volume reflects topical concerns in theoretical, historical, philosophical, and practice-related research in landscape architecture – research that reflects our relationship with what has traditionally been called ‘nature’. It does so at a time when questions about the use of global resources and understanding the links between human and non-human worlds are more crucial than ever. The twenty-five chapters of this edited collection bring together significant positions in current landscape architecture research under five broad themes – History, Sites and Heritage, City and Nature, Ethics and Sustainability, Knowledge and Practice – supplemented with a discussion of landscape architecture education. Prominent as well as up-and-coming contributors from landscape architecture and adjacent fields including Tom Avermaete, Peter Carl, Gareth Doherty, Ottmar Ette, Matthew Gandy, Christophe Girot, Anne Whiston Spirn, Ian H. Thompson and Jane Wolff seek to widen, fuel, and frame critical discussion in this growing area. A significant contribution to landscape architecture research, this book will be beneficial not only to students and academics in landscape architecture, but also to scholars in related fields such as history, architecture, and social studies.

Being the first of its kind this book will help the readers especially students and writers to be able to write papers, theses, dissertations and journal articles in the field of landscape architecture. It explains in very simple terms the various steps and process of a research process. It covers from choosing a research topic, literature review, research methodology, data collection, data analysis, results and discussion, conclusions and recommendations. The readers will be able to grasp very easily the technique of doing research methodology. Beginning from the simple definitions to the final write up this book will guide the reader all the way towards completing the research process. Hundreds of lecturers and students have benefitted from this book and many have successfully written a well defined research papers in landscape architecture and terminal papers on other design based discipline. It has been lauded by university professors, students and paper writers as being timely and helpful in aiding them in writing research papers.

Landscape architecture and architecture are two fields that exist in close proximity to one another. Some have argued that the two are, in fact, one field. Others maintain that the disciplines are distinct. These designations are a subject of continual debate by theorists and practitioners alike. Here, David Leatherbarrow offers an entirely new way of thinking of architecture and landscape architecture. Moving beyond partisan arguments, he shows how the two disciplines rely upon one another to form a single framework of cultural meaning. Leatherbarrow redefines landscape architecture and architecture as topographical arts, the shared task of which is to accommodate and express the patterns of our lives. Topography, in his view, incorporates terrain, built and unbuilt, but also traces of practical affairs, by means of which culture preserves and renews its typical situations and institutions. This rigorous argument is supported by nearly 100 illustrations, as well as examples of topography from the sixteenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, through the heroic period of early modernism, to more recent offerings. A number of these studies revise existing accounts of decisive moments in the history of these disciplines, particularly the birth of the informal garden, the emergence of continuous space in the landscapes and architecture of the modern period, and the new significance of landform or earthwork in contemporary architecture. For readers not directly involved with either of these professions, this book shows how over the centuries our lives have been shaped and enriched by landscape and architecture. Topographical Stories provides a new paradigm for theorizing and practicing landscape and architecture.

In its history of over a hundred of years, landscape architecture has developed many ideas, concepts, methods, and models. In this issue, LA Frontiers focuses on prototype studies by examining those traceable and repeatable landscape theories, methodologies, and pedagogies, and introducing the knowledge from allied disciplines to inspire knowledge innovation, with a particular highlight on the prototypes adaptive to future uncertainties. It hopes to extend the disciplinary horizon and enrich the fruition of disciplinary growth, and to provide designers and scholars with prospective design thoughts and more resilient working methods. This issue explores the following aspects: First, prototyping process, or test planning process, which is characterized for the test-planning-design process and has been widely applied in the fields of computer sciences and industrial design but still being less explored in landscape architecture. This process emphasizes the multi-disciplinary collaboration and test procedure before design, which would improve the communication efficiency among professionals from different fields. Second, reflection and innovation on classic theories and models in landscape planning and design, such as Ian McHarg's Map Overlay and Carl Steinitz's Six Steps model. Third, research-based design, including design research or competitions with clear goals and boundary conditions which help designers comprehend the essence and implications of design and encourage disciplinary innovation. And fourth, inductive and empirical pedagogies to inspire forward-looking design ideas and working methods.