Chairing the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Prof. Niall G. Kirkwood, also the Program Director, is among the most eminent of landscape architects today. His award-winning development projects include Wexner Center for Visual Arts, Columbus, Ohio; Canary Wharf, London Docklands; Kings Cross, London; Bishopsgate, City of London and Vila Olimpica, Barcelona Waterfront. Merging sheer ideation and analysis with creativity, he is the founder and Director of the Centre for Environment and Technology, (CTE) - a research, advisory and executive education initiative at Harvard Design School, currently focusing on site reclamation and remediation issues in North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. His personal initiatives currently include research into the reuse of former industrial urban land. Published books include 'The Art of Landscape Detail: Fundamentals, Practices and Case Studies' published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 'Motor City Landscape: The Detroit Riverfront' published by HDS Press, 2000,  'Manufactured Sites: Rethinking the Post-Industrial Landscape’ published by E&FN Spon, 2001, and 'Weathering and Durability in Landscape Architecture'. Here in exclusive conversation with Sarita Vijayan, Editorial & Brand Director AecworldXP, he sheds light on the ideas and agendas that drive the landscape architect today.

 AEC: What in your opinion is the very purpose of landscape design? What then is the role of the landscape architect in the present context?

NGK: The planning and design of the built environment encompasses natural and cultural systems. This moves from the scale of the region or territory to the individual garden. While much of traditional landscape practice is about the development and/or conservation of the physical and visual aspects of the landscape, there is more at stake than aesthetics in our need to understand and be concerned with the present and future health of built environments. There is a need to understand first the natural world and how development utilises natural processes and second, how our particular culture has evolved to produce the habits, knowledge and places we hold dear.

AEC: And where does landscape design stand today? We stand at the dawn of a new millennium. What in your opinion are the concerns we must address?

NGK: Landscape architecture and the accompanying fields of design related to the landscape and human settlement are building in this new century with a renewed urgency and an underlying sense of both- the historical roots of the discipline and the need for true innovation and creativity in addressing a number of contemporary landscape planning and design concerns. Among these concerns are the increased need and desire for new urban landscapes of quality, meaning and durability in the context of large scale expansion of urban areas, the desire to find ways to confront past legacies of industrial actions on the land and to direct current and future industrial activities, that are still vital for economic and national growth and finally, to confront the urgent global pressure on natural resources and ecological sustainability through climatic, social/cultural and environmental change.

I believe that the first half of the twenty first century will be one of the most challenging and demanding periods due to outside pressures on and from the global environment as well as the changing priorities of landscape designers themselves - priorities concerned with new methods of practice, the evolving role of interdisciplinary work and the changing nature of projects and commissions.

AEC: With a shift in opinion and attitude, the boundaries between the built environment and its surround are gradually diffusing. Buildings that melt into its surround, elements that extend from the surrounding into the defined space, often merge the indoors and the outdoors into a singular experience. How exclusive then is landscape design as a field of exploration?

NGK: If you consider that architecture, infrastructure and transportation systems are part of the larger landscape environment, then the flows between different scales of built work is not only desirable but the only method of development in a sustainable manner. Landscape design is then an inclusive means to achieve integrated, rich and robust built work.

AEC: Famous landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx once quoted- " A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant - rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance  but it is also a colour, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself." How organic however is landscape design really today?

NGK: Landscape design today (globally) addresses issues of sustainable communities, water supply and quality, vegetation diversity and regeneration, human settlement and urbanisation, soil preservation and construction, coastal protection and tsunami redevelopment. In all of these design proposals, natural and man-made landscape elements are at the forefront. Today (as opposed to Marx's period) there is less preoccupation with formal issues of design style or manifestation of the modern movement. Rather issues of the health of the land, its people and communities are predominant and in addressing people and other living organisms they are by definition - organic. The opposite of organic is dead.

AEC: With sculpture and graphic compositions often guiding landscape design and material explorations redefining the textures, the very experience of the landscape; is landscape design in your opinion not art itself?

NGK: I do not agree that sculpture and graphic compositions guide landscape design. I also believe however, that landscape design is an art form of the highest order - as it has been since the mid-nineteenth century.

AEC: Architectural design has transcended from pure aesthetics to root itself in varied contexts- social, cultural and political to name a few. Do you feel landscape design responds to these contexts as well?  

NGK: Today's landscape design challenges are formidable- severe levels of large-scale natural disturbance are to be found world-wide, population centers in industrialised and developing countries continue to expand, new sources of energy, water and minerals will be sought opening up remote, large and fragile land areas, and war, population displacement, pollution, disease and the ongoing destruction of sensitive ecological areas will increasingly influence the nature of large-scale landscape enterprises as well as more localised patterns of infill development. But lest we all forget, landscape architecture has risen to this challenge before- and with great effectiveness, functionality and artfulness! The second half of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century can boast a similar litany of woes but landscape architects with breadth of vision and striking creativity addressed them and in doing so laid the foundations and structure of the national landscape of the United States and other countries. This was carried out through the National Parks, Highways and Transportation systems, the landscapes of power and energy and the framework of cities and towns. Indeed I believe landscape architecture cannot and should not operate in a vacuum, separated from the issues of the time.

AEC: From concrete trees to interactive lighting, what impact has urbanisation, rather the 'city' as an entity made on the perception of the surround, landscape and its design?

NGK: I do not know about concrete trees and interactive lighting which seem intellectually shallow but urbanisation or landscape and urbanism are currently one of the central topics of research and teaching at Harvard. A great amount of effort is now placed on the inter-relationship of landscape which only increases in the urban form, resources and population.

AEC: From bold expression to an eye for detail, how do your ideas and opinions manifest themselves into the physical landscape?

NGK: My research, publishing and teaching over the last ten years have focused on the role of innovation in technology and its relationship to Landscape Design. There has been a renewed interest by landscape architects and planners in working on devastated and polluted landscapes in order to return them to productive use by communities, governments and individuals.