Martha Schwartz (Landscape Architect)
Introduction
Landscape architecture or landscaping is the art of projecting, planning, designing, managing, conserving and rehabilitating open spaces, public space and land. The scope of the profession includes architectural drawing, environmental restoration, site or regional planning, town planning, urban design, residential development, park and recreational space planning, and historic preservation.
An expert in landscape architecture or landscaping is called a landscape architect or simply a landscape architect, depending on the country.
History
The history of landscape architecture is linked to that of gardening, but without being confused with it. The two disciplines deal with the composition of plantings and outdoor adaptations, but:
The Romans planned landscaping on a large scale. Vitruvius wrote on various topics, such as city planning, that still interest landscape architects today. As with other arts, it was with the arrival of the Renaissance that garden design was revived with exceptional achievements, such as the former Paseo del Prado in Madrid transformed during the renovation to become the Salón del Prado, which was built during the reign of Charles III, or the still preserved Alameda de Hércules in Seville, built in 1574, the oldest public garden in Europe that has survived to this day.[1] Over the centuries XIV, Of those models of private villas, an extraordinary example stands out, which is Villa de Este, in Tivoli. The garden continued to develop throughout the Renaissance until the 20th century and, already in the 19th century, during the Baroque, it reached its peak with the work of André Le Nôtre in the palaces of Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles.[2].
Century England became the home of a new style of landscape design. Specialists such as William Kent, Humphry Repton and above all Capability Brown reorganized the great spheres of the English bourgeoisie, giving them the appearance of an idealized version of nature. Many of these parks still exist today. The Scotsman Gilbert Laing Meason used the term “landscape architecture” for the first time in 1828 in his work The Landscape Architecture of the Great Painters of Italy, it was then that this name was coined and it regained importance in the urban planning of the century. The combination of modern planning and the tradition of landscape gardening gave landscape architecture its particular orientation. In the second half of the century, Frederick Law Olmsted created a series of parks that continue to have a profound influence on the current practice of landscape architecture. These include Central Park in New York, Prospect Park "Prospect Park (Brooklyn)") in Brooklyn, Parc du Mont-Royal in Montreal and the Emerald Necklace park network in Boston.