Abstract

In his seminal essay “Towards a Critical Regionalism,” the architectural historian Kenneth Frampton argued that the ontological condition of architecture is found in the poetic expression of a structure’s constructional logic. This stance presupposes a certain structural stasis, one which resists or responds to the dynamic conditions within which all built structures ultimately stand. But what if no such stasis can be found? Landscape architecture, more than any other environmental design disciplines, finds itself facing this dilemma. Its primary media—water, plants, soil—behave in complex and relatively indeterminate ways. Indeed, it may well be that the ontological condition of landscape architecture is change itself, or, to paraphrase Frampton, how its “constructional logic” expresses a landscape’s transformation over space and time. This article will explore this ontological dilemma through the lens of itineration, a term used by anthropologist Tim Ingold, to describe the emergence of form as a continuous interplay between the flows of consciousness and materials.