Landscape as Protagonist: Rachel Elliot-Jones with Steph Donse, Dan Pearson and Thomas Doxiadis

Nature is vital to our very being. And yet, our current system continues to neglect it. And we continue to discount it in our conception of cities and the buildings that make up our cities. Nature is out there. We are over here. We are disconnected. Landscape as Protagonist presents findings, essays and interviews that imagine landscape as the place to begin a built project, not a way to finish it. The book’s content is informed by a diverse group of people including landscape architects, architects, gardeners, Indigenous knowledge-holders, horticulturalists, property developers, writers, researchers and artists; addressing the problematic realities of trying to deliver meaningful landscapes in an urban setting. In a discussion with two of the contributors to the publication, landscape designer, gardener and journalist, Dan Pearson, and Thomas Doxiadis of architect and landscape architecture studio, doxiadis+, we will begin to uncover some of the reasons why plants and landscapes are seemingly undervalued in the development paradigm.