Imaginaries in Landscape Architecture

In everyday English the word ‘imaginary’ is an adjective meaning unreal or made-up, but in academic circles it is often used as a noun, referring to systems of shared social meanings. Cultural producers, including writers, artists and designers, both respond to these imaginaries and contribute to their creation and elaboration.

This lecture considers some of the imaginaries that have been in play in the history of designed landscapes, including the Pastoral and the Picturesque and more recent examples such as the Edgeland and the Green Utopia. It argues that imaginaries are both necessary and unavoidable, but that they can also be deceptive. We need to become critics of our own imaginaries.

IAN THOMPSON is Reader in Landscape Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University, England, where he has taught for 28 years. His PhD research into value systems in landscape architecture practice became the book Ecology, Community and Delight (1999) which won a Landscape Institute award. He has written a number of other books, both academic and popular, including The Sun King’s Garden (Bloomsbury 2006), The English Lakes. A History (Bloomsbury 2010) and Landscape Architecture. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2014). For several years he was the Managing Editor of the journal Landscape Research and he was also one of the editors of The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies (both the original edition of 2013 and the updated edition of 2019). He completed an MA in Photography (with Distinction) from the University of Sunderland in 2014.