Traces Of Ecologism In Western Modern Landscape Planning And Design

In order to clearly recognize the necessity and emergency of eco-design under the pressure of ecological crisis, the responsibility and obligation of landscape designers and the developing thread of ecologism, for forecasting the future direction of ecological design and obtaining the experience and enlightenment to instruct practices of eco-design, the origin, phylogeny, influence and future trends of ecologism in the field of western modern landscape architecture design were analyzed, and the theories, methods as well as practice cases of ecological modern design were reviewed and evaluated.Through researches on literatures, related theories and cases of eco-design were summarized domestically and internationally. By analogy analysis, the differences and internal contacts between disciplines, regions, designers, social background and ecological concepts were introduced, to absorb research results in other disciplines extensively and to demonstrate the theme of the dissertation from multiple perspectives. Based on that, the developing process of ecological ideology was divided into six stages, and for each period, the representative cases, ideas, theories and leading designers were analyzed thoroughly, to generalize the development framework and context of ecological ideology in western modern landscape planning and design. Meanwhile, kinds of domestic theories and practices of eco-design were surveyed in order to recognize the advantages and disadvantages in Chinese modern landscape design, and reveal the significance of ecologism on construction and development of civil sustainable landscape design.Three parts were mainly included in the article. At first, the concepts and research status, at home and abroad, of ecologism and modern landscape design were introduced, and the relationship between them was analyzed and reflected ethically. And then, the development process of ecologism in design area was explored, which contained six phrases:embryonic stage (approximately from16century to18century), the period of origination (approximately19century), the period of development (from the very beginning of20century to1980s), the period of prosperity (about1990s), mature stage (from the turn of the century up to now) and the post-mature period (future). Last but not the least, in each period, the social background, the influence from multi-disciplines, the representative designers, ideas, research theories, planning methods and practice cases were dissected, for the purpose of revealing the internal relationship between ecologism and landscape design and prospecting the future of modern landscape directed by ecological ideology. Finally, the influence of ecologism on western modern landscape architecture was summarized and generalized, as well as the diverse tendency, characters and principles in the practices of ecological design. The result of the research indicates that ecological ideology originated from jungle and bosco landscape in renaissance garden in16to17century, in the field of western landscape planning and design, and sprouted in natural gardens in18C, generated in modernism landscape in19C, and developed in1960s, because of interpenetration of relative disciplines, and improvement of analyzing techniques, which promoted the changes of ecological consciousness and planning methods. With the proposition of principles of eco-design, regenerative design and sustainable landscape, as well as innovation of ecological materials and technology, the ecologism moved towards prosperity in1990s, and became mature in the early21st Century, resulting from landscape urbanism and ecological urbanism. The emergence of ecologism once caused the dissociation within landscape architecture, but its development integrated the three characters, as ecology, aesthetics and sociology, and affected the natural view, value view, research category, design though, theoretical methods and practice technology in landscape architecture. Directed by ecologism, the western modern landscape design developed from single esthetic design to scientific planning. In the future, the ecological ethics and ethically aesthetics will be integrated into ecologism. Landscape has changed from design to science, but will grow from scientific to ethic reflection.Generally, up to now, about the researches in other related disciplines as landscape ecology, ecology and geography, the surveys as to ecologism have been presented as sectional and fragmentary situation, and not yet formed a complete and systematic cognition about origination, development traces, expression and practices of ecological ideology in landscape design. Therefore, to a certain extent, there are originality and innovation in the researches, results and conclusion of the article.Especially speaking, the originality and innovation in the dissertation mainly pays attention to the following five aspects:1) re-defined the ecological ideology in landscape architecture;2) explored the origination of ecologism in the field of western landscape planning and design; form the development framework of ecologism; and reveal the influence on modern landscape design from ecologism;3) analyzed the design thought, theories, methods and practices of pioneers, objectively and dialecticallly; reviewed the history of eco-design to reflect and recognize; and summarized the historic experience and exhortation, for the purpose of instructing the modern ecological design domestically;4) summarized the main characters and affecting factors of ecologism during the developing stages in western modern landscape design, as well as five styles of ecological design basing on the history of development, in order to clarify the practicing principles of ecological design;5) proposed the ecological concept that the ecological, artistic, scientific and social characters of landscape planning could be integrated together; and prospected the future tendency of landscape architecture which will be combined with ecological ethics and ethically aesthetics.