Aesthetic Intent in Landscape Architecture: The Particularity of Beauty, Meaning, and Experience

Abstract

Even though aesthetics has always played a central role in the definition of landscape architecture, the lack of clarity about what the term means has frequently resulted in aesthetic considerations being left out of design discourse. In the hope of reinvigorating aesthetic discussions within the field of landscape architecture, this paper reviews key texts on aesthetic theory from landscape architecture, philosophy, and art theory. It describes three different aesthetic intents found within landscape architecture discourse: (1) “Aesthetics as the beautiful” suggests that the aesthetic experience is about pleasure, particularly the pleasure that arises from viewing beautiful arrangements of form; (2) “Aesthetics as the meaningful” situates cultural meaning as the central aesthetic aim; and (3) “Aesthetics as experience” shifts the focus from the aesthetic object to the aesthetic experience—the interaction between a subject and their environment. Each of the three conceptions describes an aspect of landscape architecture - beautiful composition, cultural meaning, or personal experience—that cannot be reduced or generalized. This suggests that the concept of aesthetics in landscape architecture serves as a placeholder for the particular, immediate, entangled, and unpredictable ways one experiences landscapes. By observing and celebrating the uniqueness of a place, designs can better reflect the richness of materials, senses, and meanings that exist in the world around us.