Landscape architecture is resilient design: Enduring strategies and frameworks adapted from the Olmsted Office

Abstract

Abstract Prior to the conception of resilience as an ecological model and an ensuing priority design objective, the Office of Frederick Law Olmsted deployed comprehensive planning and design strategies that would be considered ‘resilient’ by most present-day standards. In this study, a selection of nineteenth- andearly twentieth-century projects were reviewed in tandem with over fifty contemporary flood resilience projects. This assessment led to the derivation of six overarching design frameworks and affiliated physical site strategies. A selection of Olmsted’s projects were then assessed for their embodiment of each of these frameworks and deployment of physical design strategies. Resilient design themes such as ‘systems thinking’, ‘safe to fail’, ‘redundancy’ and ‘accounting for indeterminacy’ were found to be consistently prevalent and central to the Olmsted Office. These findings emphasize embedded disciplinary knowledge in landscape architectural discourse, practice and tools that remain critical for cities’ resilience in the twenty-first century.