Talking about landscape spaces. Towards a spatial-visual landscape design vocabulary

Abstract

Spatial-visual landscape design vocabulary is important for landscape architects to understand, design, and communicate about landscape spaces. Despite the importance, there is no comprehensive overview available. This article aims to fill this gap by reviewing and categorising the spatial-visual design vocabulary for the field of landscape architecture and to provide a systematic framework for understanding landscape spaces inter-subjectively. Based on the analysis of the vocabulary used in the extensive body of literature available in landscape architecture and related disciplines, four dominant categories are selected in describing spatial and visual organisation. The categories identified and discussed are sequence, orientation, continuity, and complexity. In addition, a landscape design syntax is developed to understand and to describe the visual manifestation of landscape spaces, how space is organised, and what ordering principles play a role from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives.