Ian McHarg

Ian McHarg (1920–2001) was a Scottish landscape architect, planner, and educator, best known for his landmark book Design With Nature (1969). He founded the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and popularized ecological planning as a method integrating natural systems into design. McHarg’s method prefigured GIS, mapping soil, hydrology, and vegetation to guide planning decisions. He was a charismatic teacher and public intellectual, linking environmentalism with design during the rise of the ecological movement. McHarg remains one of the most influential figures in modern landscape architecture and ecological planning.

“Excerpts from a project on Trees and Beasts” Denise Hoffman Brandt© Denise Hoffman What do we actually mean when we talk about nature? As a professor in a discipline that since the early 1970s has, mostly, claimed to practice “design with nature”—referencing Ian McHarg’s book (1969) of that title—that’s a question I have often asked. […]

In the conversation with the landscape architecture professor, artist and writer Denise Hoffman Brandt, we speak about the morality issues attached to “doing good” while debunking Ian McHarg’s problematic position in Design with Nature. In the conversation, Brandt points out how our assumptions about nature shape our actions, why stewardship is problematic and what landscape […]

Günther Vogt probably needs no introduction in our profession; he has been an important practitioner for a couple of decades now, appreciated globally for his rich, non-linear and adventurous design approach. Initially, his education was more in the direction of botany. He later shifted to landscape architecture by studying in Rapperswil, Switzerland. After his study […]

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