Future Directions in Landscape Architecture

This theme gives AJLA an opportunity to move beyond documenting landscape architecture projects and research and become a platform for questioning, challenging, and advancing the discipline’s intellectual and professional direction, with Africa contributing meaningfully to the global conversation. What does it mean to be a landscape architect in a world undergoing profound environmental, social, technological and cultural transformation? Three considerations at the centre of the issue:

First: A critical examination of the profession.

We need contributions that question the conventional boundaries of landscape architecture. Is the profession sufficiently influential in shaping development decisions? Should landscape architects become more actively involved in environmental policy, land governance, social advocacy and ecological economics?

Second: An African contribution to global thinking.

Africa should not simply be represented as a continent experiencing the consequences of global environmental and economic change. Its landscapes, cultural knowledge, informal systems of adaptation and alternative relationships with nature have much to contribute to international discourse.

Third: Moving from criticism towards possibility.

The issue should not become a catalogue of environmental problems. It should encourage innovative thinking, alternative methodologies, speculative propositions, built projects, research and critical reflection that demonstrate how the profession might respond differently.

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