Discussions around aesthetics have been given relatively little attention in landscape architecture discourse. Predominantly framed by the dominance of the visual, debates around aesthetics have often been limited to notions of the sublime, the beautiful and the picturesque – or, more recently and concerningly for landscape architecture – as the argument for addressing visual design problems such as the screening of infrastructure.1
Elizabeth Meyer has drawn our attention to the ecological performance of an understanding of aesthetics that is not pictorial, but immersive, poly-sensory, dynamic and temporal, both in the experience of creating landscapes and being in them. This experiential appreciation occurs in the body as well as the mind. As designers, the place and physical environment we work in, the people we collaborate with, the medium we use, the time we take, our past bodily experiences and knowledge and the Zeitgeist are all
