Must Landscapes Mean?: Approaches to Significance in Recent Landscape Architecture

Abstract A renewed concern for meaning in landscape architecture—and the ways by which meaning can be achieved—resurfaced during the early 1980s after an absence in professional publications of almost half a century. This essay examines the sources of significance in landscape design and the possibilities—and limits—of designing meaning into landscape architecture. Six approaches currently employed are discussed: the Neoarchaic, the Genius of the Place, the Zeitgeist, the Vernacular Landscape, the Didactic and the Theme Garden. Meaning, it is argued, results less from the effects of a particular design than from the collective associations accrued over time. Questioning the absence of a more active pursuit for personal pleasure in the landscape, the author suggests that pleasure could help link individual experience with a broader cultural grounding for creating significance.