Research in Landscape Architecture

Methods and Methodology

Adri van den Brink, Diedrich Bruns, Hilde Tobi, Simon Bell, Adri van den Brink, Diedrich Bruns, Hilde Tobi, Simon Bell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315396880
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

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.

PART I
RAISING AWARENESS

Chapter 1: Advancing landscape architecture research

Diedrich Bruns, Adri van den Brink, Hilde Tobi and Simon Bell

THE RELATED WORLDS OF RESEARCH AND DESIGN

In all design disciplines, research and design go hand in hand. They are two sides of the same coin. The founders of landscape architecture, icons such as André le Nôtre, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Frederick Law Olmsted, as well as their successors to the present day, took thorough note of the needs of the people who were going to use and enjoy the landscape to be created. In addition, they studied, at every design location, land use, elevation and drainage, slope and light, soil and vegetation, views, possible walking routes and so on. They systematically acquired site-specific knowledge on which to base firm proposals for landscape interventions. Through their work influential practitioners have inspired, and continue to inspire, generations of landscape architects. Two things are specific to a designer’s knowledge about a particular location and already emerged as those pioneers developed their practice. First, practitioner knowledge is defined as ’embodied’, that is it is the knowing of what to do under particular circumstances. Second, the knowledge is situational, that is it is difficult to transfer to other places and situations, and also time. It is not for nothing that ‘Capability’ Brown received his nickname: for seeing the capabilities in a specific piece of land which made a unique design possible while using a relatively restricted palette of materials.

However, it is also true that the early practitioners did not carry out any fundamental research nor make especially systematic observations about different phenomena as a result of their work which could have informed the development of their ideas and designs. They came from a different tradition in an era when science was in its infancy and scientists were amateur gentlemen who could afford to indulge their private interests. Early landscape architects were quick to spot the possibilities offered by the new technologies which emerged during the industrial revolution, such as steam engines, cast iron and glass as well as profiting from the plant collecting expeditions and botanical research which enriched the parks and gardens. Scientific breakthroughs in pest control, fertilisers and plant breeding impacted practice. Later, during the 20th century, social science theories and empirical research also came to be applied. Landscape architects have long since been the beneficiaries and recipients of the results of research carried out by other related disciplines.

Today, the relationship between research and design is becoming increasingly intense. As the remit of landscape architecture has expanded from the design of parks and gardens to much larger scales and with links to many more disciplines than architecture, horticulture, engineering and planning, the nature of design problems has become multi-faceted and more complex. The rather straightforward commissioner–designer or client–designer–contractor relationship common in the past has grown into complex societal tasks, combined with processes in which designers can play different roles at the same time. Ongoing technological development has opened a vast range of possibilities for design, representation and construction but has also meant that the range of knowledge needed to solve problems has become too great for any one person to be an expert in. These are some of the reasons why landscape architects are increasingly engaging in academic research. Landscape architects need much more than embodied and situational knowledge. The need for a wide variety of background research related to specific projects, sites or situations remains and is a necessary part of what a practicing landscape architect does in their day to day life. This, however, is not the same as academic research and should not be confused with it, even if the landscape concerned is broad in extent and rich in aspects which need to be explored before planning, design or management can begin.

There is an ongoing open debate in the design disciplines in general, and not only in landscape architecture, about what might be meant by ‘research’ (e.g. Davis 2008). In this chapter we aim to clearly define how we as editors of this book perceive research in landscape architecture from a mainly academic perspective (though set in the context of the wider activities often described as ‘research’, including those aspects alluded to above). In doing so we provide some classifications and definition of terms (which some readers may find inclusive or exclusive depending on their point of view). To start with, the relationship between research and design can be grouped according to three categories (Lenzholzer et al. – Chapter 4). The first category is research on design that includes studies about the products of design, in our case, for example, historic gardens, modernist new towns or baroque parks. The second category is research for design that covers all types of research supporting the design process and the coming into being of the design product. Examples here might include research from the natural or social sciences which informs and provides evidence supporting design decisions. The third category is research through designing that includes all research and studies that actively employ designing as a research method. This may be comparable to developing prototype solutions to particular problems which are tested against certain criteria and in which the active, reflective process of design plays a fundamental role.

A distinction is often made in science between fundamental or basic research and applied research. Fundamental research includes work which tries to understand the basic structure of the universe, for example, but for which the results have no specific and direct application to the solution of a problem, although the knowledge gained might lead to key technological breakthroughs later. In the context of landscape architecture the term ‘applied research’ may need clarification. Landscape architects strive to make an impact on society (including to make places more habitable, healthier or diverse), regardless of their role as researcher, teacher, professional designer or a combination of all three (which is widely accepted as a profound way of linking academia with innovative practice). Some may speak about ‘project-based research’ rather than ‘applied research’ and the term ‘project’ includes all real-world landscape design projects. However, this may mean that the research done for some projects only yields situational or embodied research results.

If we are trying (as we editors believe we are) to raise the game and to move forward in depth and quality of research we must try to make a clear distinction. Retaining the term ‘applied research’ is more valid as it reflects the fact that this is what we do. The difference is that, in aiming to carry out much more evidence-based design, the quality of the evidence and its applicability must transcend the specific site. While it may not be possible to generate generalisable results which can be applied absolutely universally (as do the laws of physics – except in the vicinity of black holes) the results should be generalisable within a broad but limited set of conditions and much more so than being applicable to a single situation. Thus, many of the results of research for landscape architecture are very widely applicable within, for example, similar cultural settings, similar climates or similar ecosystems. Many findings about, for example, how access to nature enables us to recover from stress, have been found to extend very broadly and with few limitations.

It is important not to confuse ‘project research’ with a ‘research project’, a term used to describe any sort of study including, for example, a discrete doctoral research project. Project research is research for a specific planning or design project and embodied or situational research. A research project starts with a problem which may or may not be associated with the physical landscape and if it is, may not be concerned with planning or designing that landscape but with understanding phenomena by using it (or more than one) as an exemplar or case study. This is not to say that the results may be less interesting or even valuable, it is just that they are different in kind and in purpose and this difference is crucial for anyone moving from practice into academia or for anyone commissioning research. Nor does it matter whether the research project is commissioned or non-commissioned. Non-commissioned research may be what an individual academic does as part of their daily academic life – pursuing an interesting and rewarding topic out of personal interest, or it may be what many PhD students do (as long as they can get a grant for it!). Much applied research is commissioned by national or international funding agencies where the problem is presented to the academic world who have to compete to win the funding. Doctoral and post-doctoral research can – and in many cases will – be conducted as part of or in the context of commissioned research.

We also think it might be helpful to distinguish between academic research on the one hand and non-academic research on the other in landscape architecture. This distinction refers to principles that academics must observe individually, amongst each other, and in their responsibility towards society, when engaging in research. Examples of such principles are scrupulousness, reliability, validity and impartiality. These principles can be read as general notions or norms of good academic practice, in other words: quality standards about what research should be and how it should be conducted in order to qualify as research that contributes to enhancing any disciplinary knowledge base, in this case that of landscape architecture (many countries and disciplines have a good research practice declaration with these norms). This is the kind of research this book is about. Such research is primarily conducted by academic, university-based researchers and sometimes by academic researchers employed by independent institutes. Examples are doctoral and post-doctoral studies or as senior researchers working on medium to large-scale commissioned projects (e.g. funded by the European Union (EU)), or else academics and professional landscape architects doing research as part of their job and publishing their work in peer-review journals or as high quality, refereed reports. Such research also complies with scholarly standards in terms of its relationship to the existing body of research in the specific field, its theoretical grounding and its methodological soundness.

Writing for popular and professional design journals and inquiries at the project level that inform designing can include some kind of research. Searching databases or literature for information and writing up some conclusions to inform policy is frequently referred to as research and companies may employ people to do this as ‘researchers’ but they are not the same as our use of the term in academia. Although such work can be very important and useful, it is not the kind of academic research this book addresses.

Table 1.1
Research proposal checklist

Questions

• What is the problem (we are generally doing applied research)? • Why is it important (we need funding or the problem should be worth researching)? • What do we already know about the problem (so we don’t repeat work or try to solve a problem already solved)? • What don’t we know (and therefore want to find out)? • How do we do it (what methods did we apply)? • What do we find (the results)? • What does it mean (to what extent did we solve the problem and how significant are the results we found)? • What do we contribute to building and debating the knowledge base?

The scholarly principles mentioned above are strongly related to the way research is conducted, including the methodology and methods applied. Valid and reliable knowledge, for example, is knowledge that is the outcome of methodologically sound research. The choice of research question, the research set-up, the choice of method and the references to sources used all need to be accurately documented in a form that allows for verification of each step taken in the research process. These are necessary conditions for research to consistently and reliably contribute to the body of knowledge in landscape architecture. However, research may also be about ‘seeing things’ that others don’t see, such as formulating challenging research questions that lead to new knowledge (which is, by the way, one of the hardest aspects of doing research), and about creatively exploring new paths to study these questions. This is where research methodology and research methods come in to play their vital role in enhancing the landscape architecture knowledge base.

In order to qualify as research in our terms, researchers might find it useful to test a proposal against a set of simple questions which are in effect the logic of academic research and which can be mirrored in the development of a research project from a practical standpoint (see Table 1.1).

TYPES OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE STUDIES

While making indispensable design contributions landscape architects must also continue broadening the role they are playing in society. They must contribute by generating new knowledge which can be applied more generally, although usually within some limits – it is difficult to expect that we can come up with universal laws! This may be, for example, knowledge about the materiality and concepts of landscapes, and about the processes that shape them. This may also be about the perception and experience of landscapes, about design methods and about the way in which knowledge from other disciplines may be combined with design knowledge. Confronting the grand challenges society is facing from a landscape architecture perspective will contribute our special approaches to tackling problems. We believe we have a lot to offer, by producing research and also by converting and melding scientific results into practical solutions. The latter can be a viewed as a kind of post-research activity (producing planning or design guidelines can be one such role). The challenges of climate change, energy transition, urbanisation, health, food security and others can successfully be addressed only if the driving processes and the spatial and human dimensions are considered together. Landscape architects provide and will continue to make important contributions while society is undergoing the necessary social and physical transformations of land, space and environment (ESF/COST 2010; van den Brink and Bruns 2014).

Landscape architecture research is designed to expand our knowledge related to the shaping of landscapes and to processes of landscape intervention at various scales. For the purpose of this book we define landscape by (a) the interaction of the human and non-human, and (b) the human perception of the resulting material phenomena, that is, features and processes (Roe 2013, p.401). A landscape is both about the ‘phenomenon itself and our perception of it’ (Wylie 2007, p.7). A particular area may be studied in purely physical terms, but, since each area also carries multiple meanings ‘that emanate from the values by which people define themselves’ (Greider and Garkovich...