Neeco

“The build environment is the paradigm of structure, of rational order, of stable form; the grown environment is the paradigm of system, of the order of nature, of ever-changing matter. The built and the grown environments are complementary in that they are at once both interdependent and incomparable. (1)”
― B. Cannon Ivers, 250 Things a Landscape Architect Should Know

“For centuries philosophers and scientists have discussed this most pressing of questions: are humans part of nature - or are we above or beside (or indeed beneath) it? One of the most important things a landscape architect must know is that humans are not only part of nature - we are nature. This insight is at once the simplest and also the most startling and disturbing insight that Modernity can imagine. If humans are nature, that means we must completely reconfigure the way we think about our presence in the world. Gone are the days when humans could subjugate nature in our attempts to reshape the world in our own image. Instead we must realize that we are here on this planet on equal terms with trees, plants, animals, jellyfish and mountains - an ethical knowledge that we must treat everything on Earth (the whole system of which we are part) in a decent way. We must take this knowledge seriously and make landscapes, cities and societies such as we have never seen before. (4, Stig L. Andersson)”
― B. Cannon Ivers, 250 Things a Landscape Architect Should Know

“The world is moving into a phase when landscape design may well be recognized as the most comprehensive of the arts. The reasons for this are threefold: (a) the existing delicately balanced order of nature within the biosphere, or protective envelope of the planet, is being disturbed by the activities of man, and it seems that only his own exertions can restore a balance and ensure survival; (b) these exertions call first for ecosystems that are no more than a return to an efficient animal state of sustained existence; and (c) man's destiny being to rise above the animal state, he creates around him an environment that is a projection into nature of his abstract ideas.”
― Geoffrey Jellicoe, The Landscape of Man: Shaping the Enviroment From Prehistory to the Present Day

“Certain forms of knowledge and control require a narrowing of vision. The great advantage of such tunnel vision is that it brings into sharp focus certain limited aspects of an otherwise far more complex and unwieldy reality. This very simplification, in turn, makes the phenomenon at the center of the field of vision more legible and hence more susceptible to careful measurement and calculation. Combined with similar observations, an overall, aggregate, synoptic view of a selective reality is achieved, making possible a high degree of schematic knowledge, control, and manipulation. (11)”
― James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed