Exploring Landscape, Garden, and Colonial Legacy

Don’t miss this inspiring talk where Jala Makhzoumi delves into the intersection of landscape, gardens, and colonial history. A leading voice in landscape architecture, Makhzoumi’s work bridges ecological design, cultural heritage, and contemporary challenges.
 
Watch the recording here.

Summary

The search for a grounded language on landscape architecture relies in great part on the search for Arabic terms that capture the complexity of the layered English meaning of “landscape.” Until then, we must contend with inadequate translations—and sometimes transliterations—that reduce “landscape” to scenery and narrow the professional scope of the landscape architect to urban beautification. Moving away from the “borrowed” landscapes in cities, we encounter “rooted” conceptions in rural cultures. These ideas have endured over time and are in tune with the regional ecology and cultural values. Here, we find many iterations of “landscape,” even if they can’t be captured in a single word. For example, the traditional house garden typology, the hakura, which originated in the eastern Mediterranean, combines production and pleasure and is grounded in a love of nature and caring for the land. Can these examples inform and inspire a contextualized landscape architecture in the Middle East and beyond?