Throughout the past 10 years of publishing World Landscape and WLA Magazine there has been numerous times when I have been requested to change a credit or add a credit for an architect or a consultant on a project. Sometimes this is due to the landscape firm forgetting to add them during the process but other times it is the architect or other consultants have contacted me directly requesting and sometimes becoming very demanding that they be added to the credits. I understand that it is frustrating as the designer that they haven’t been credited and I will forward the request to the landscape firm or designer who submitted the project requesting clarification and approval and often this results in a scurry of emails between the firms and myself with the result often that the architect or consultant being added to the credits.
Each time after these series of events, I often think about landscape architects and the little or lack of credit they we receive on architecture and other projects whether private or public space. It has improved over the last fiver years but landscape architects still only receive a fraction of the recognition we deserve as a profession.
Reading through design or architecture websites, magazines and blogs it often surprises me that projects with a large landscape component do not list or credit the landscape architect. We regularly see the architecture media reporting the title or credits that the architect is credited first or only credited on a project even though the design is mostly landscape architecture or urban design.
As landscape architects we need to fight and push for recognition and credit whenever possible. We should receive the recognition as we play a role in nearly all built environment projects, other consultants receive credit although most of their work is often invisible to the naked eye.
How as landscape architects can we gain more recognition? There are various approaches to obtaining credit either reactive or proactive.
Read the full article in the latest edition of WLA Magazine.
Op-ed by Damian Holmes
Founder and Editor of World Landscape Architecture.
Registered Landscape Architect (AILA)