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Brian Davis

ABSTRACT John Dewey’s instrumental theory of knowl-edge offers a starting point for the exploration of new territory in landscape architecture, specifically the gap between intention and reality. This space is always at issue in landscape architectural practice and yet remains largely untouched by contemporary theoretical and tech-nical projects. In recent years the discipline has become concerned and engaged with design issues caused by the unintended consequences of our society’s industrial leg-acy and rapidly changing ecological and economic reali-ties through the conceptualization of landscapes that can perform multiple functions through time. This paper pre-sents the results of ongoing research that grapples with the gap between intention and reality and suggests that this approach to landscape architecture is an appropri-ate and promising disciplinary response to extreme and changing conditions. It does so first through a critique of current theories and then proposes new conceptual and technical tools for analysis and representation through a speculative project for an industrial shipping canal land-scape on the edge of the Rio de la Plata Estuary in the heart of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

KEYWORDS Landscape instrumentalism, technique, representation, John Dewey, ends and means, theory

It still remains true that the troubles which men undergo are the forces that lead them to project pictures of a better state of things. But the picture of the better is shaped so that it may become an instrumentality of action . . . (Dewey 1920, 118).

INTRODUCTIONRecent decades have seen an expansion of the role of

the landscape architecture discipline and a renewed

importance placed on understanding and engaging

with ecological and material realities. Theoretical

and technical projects have developed to both guide

and respond to these new dimensions and demands

in landscape architecture.1 After nearly a half- century

of sublimation into planning and architecture, the

fi eld has reasserted itself through alliances with newly

hybridized disciplines including landscape ecology

and landscape urbanism. However, the above quote by

John Dewey points to one important aspect that has

remained largely lacking in the prominent theoretical

projects of this time, and the key to this aspect lies in

the idea of instrumentality.

While exciting tools are being developed that

model aspects of ecological performance and social

scientists work to design methods for engaging the

human communities that are part of any landscape

(Hayden 1997), the discipline of landscape architec-

ture has not yet developed a theoretical- technical

project that examines the fundamental gap between

design intent and the reality of the material, political,

and economic situations with which the discipline is

inherently engaged. A renewed focus on instrumen-

tality off ers a theoretical and technical framework

to develop the conceptual tools needed to integrate

and synthesize techniques for modeling, computa-

tion, analysis, and construction of multi- functional

landscapes (Weller 2006, 73). This may off er a way to

294 Landscape Journal 32:2

overcome the false schism between ends and means

and contend with the liminal space between intent and

reality (Eldridge 1998, 104).

Reconsidering InstrumentalityThe term instrumentality and related words such as

instrumentalize carry a negative connotation, meaning

to execute the intentions of some entity. This defi ni-

tion implies that any instrument can only fulfi ll these

intentions—it never falls short or overshoots, but only

executes precisely what was intended. Therefore, to

instrumentalize something, whether a person, a theory,

or an oscillating spindle sander, is to reduce it to the

manifestation of some intent without remainder. This

idealist interpretation is not, however, the only way to

use the word.

Theodoro Adorno showed that “objects do not

go into their concepts without leaving a remainder,”

and because of this fact, reality will always in some

way exceed our knowledge and control (Bennett 2010,

14). Jane Bennett speaks “of healthy and enabling

instrumentalizations, rather than of treating people as

ends- in- themselves” in an eff ort to construct a more

nuanced and inclusive account of complex societies

and events (2010, 12). In this paper I use the term

instrument (and its derivatives) to mean something

much closer to Dewey’s preferred defi nition: not a

means to reach certain “desired results,” but a proposi-

tion to attain a grounded belief (J Dewey 2008, 175).

In this defi nition, ends and means exist along a con-

tinuum and are historical. Ends, goals, or ideals do not

arise out of nothing, but are developed through action

as a method for dealing with a real situation. And

these ideas, what Dewey would call “ends- in- view,”

are also means or instruments by which to achieve

eventual real ends (Eldridge 1998, 25 and 104).

The question of ends and means is one that has

been the subject of much discussion in the last 20 years

within landscape architecture. In his infl uential essay

“Terra Fluxus,” James Corner spells out his version of

landscape urbanism’s theoretical objectives, stating

that it is “strategic, emphasizing means over ends and

operational logic over compositional design” (Cor-

ner 2006, 31). This theoretical project has created a

productive discussion that seeks to invert what Corner

saw as the then- dominant approach of landscape and

urban design. Landscape Instrumentalism, however,

does not seek an inversion, but rather aims to follow

Dewey and ally ends and means along a continuum of

thoughtful action in a historical reality.

Instrumentalism does not imply that specula-

tions, fi ctions, and critique have no place, but rather

that a spectator position which assumes a world can

be observed through the senses and then conceptual-

ized and rationalized while emphasizing the synop-

tic view is not valid.2 John Dewey was interested in

undoing the spectator theory of knowledge (Moore

1961, 193). He vociferously argued for grappling with

situations as a full participant and for engaging the

medium at hand through experimentation. For Dewey,

ideas were instruments used by people to guide them

in reorganizing their environment and initiating new

lines of action, and all experience was experimental,

as no reality ever lined up perfectly with the imag-

ined or ideal (Eldridge 1998, 103). It follows then that

the object of knowledge is the future—consequences

and possibilities—rather than rationalizing the

observed past with a general or unifying theory.

By drawing from Dewey, instrumentality might be

resuscitated. Dewey’s project sought to “make intel-

ligible connections present in experience” (Eldridge

1998, 4). In its most basic form, his instrumentalism is a

unity of theory and practice (Moore 1961), an approach

that seems particularly apt for landscape architecture

as a discipline. In this way, landscape instrumental-

ism does not seek to reduce everything to a mere tool

that does only what something else intends. Rather,

it hypothesizes that a landscape is made of instru-

ments whose actions never align perfectly with a user’s

intention but are always doing more and less, creating

a liminal space between intent and reality (Figure 1).

This robust concept of instrumentality promises a way

to bridge some gaps between conceptual and technical

developments in landscape practice and research.

OBJECT- ORIENTED LANDSCAPESLandscape instrumentalism is interested in the agency

of things;3 some of those things include humans

and their collectives, their interpretations and ideas,

and their histories. But other things must also be

grappled with. The decisions and desires of migra-

tory warblers and Swainson’s thrushes also construct

the landscape, as does the movement of a toxic plume

of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons through glacial

clasts on the shores of Lake Michigan. The idea of

an object- oriented landscape, wherein everything in

Davis 295

the landscape is an object, does not reduce humans

to “slabs of inert matter” awaiting commands (Har-

man 2011, 251) but rather elevates all objects to a plane

of autonomous existence capable of changing things,

producing eff ects, and having other roles “besides that

of carriers of necessity, or ‘plastic’ vehicles for ‘human

ingenuity,’ or ‘a simple white screen to support the

diff erentiation of society’” (Bennett 2010, 31).

This gap that is created between the design intent

and reality is always at issue in landscape architecture.4

Unanticipated erosion across a newly graded slope,

volunteer species in a densely planted garden, fi ssures

of decomposition in expensive slate pavers, or patterns

of use in an urban plaza always contain some measure

of novelty and surprise. This fact becomes even more

pronounced at extremely large scales, where coastal

subsidence, extreme weather events, or geo- political

decisions can radically alter a landscape in unforeseen

ways. Lefebvre observed this when he wrote, “even

technocratic planners and programmers cannot pro-

duce a space with a perfectly clear understanding of

cause and eff ect, motive and implication” (1991, 37).

The space between intent and reality is one of

the great, unexplored regions of our discipline, and

holds much promise for considering the types and

scales of landscape that have become central in recent

decades. Until now, this space has been treated as a

remainder, something to be made up for with change

orders or some fuzzily determined and standardized

maintenance operation, but it calls for a bolder

response. We might create concepts and techniques to

contend with this territory in an expansive way, just

as the concepts of interchangeable parts and project

specifi cations were developed 200 years ago in an

attempt to minimize it.5 This frontier beckons land-

scape designers to chart and mold its topography, and

to make the conceptual leap down from the spectator’s

tower and into the dirt.

Setting the TableThis project requires tools, both conceptual and techni-

cal, that can contend with this liminal space. How can

a designer begin to grapple with this gap? History sug-

gests that it is unlikely that simply trying to eradicate

it will prove helpful, despite recent advances in fabri-

cation technologies and systems thinking. However,

the current push toward multi- functional landscapes

is illuminating. The idea conjures forth the need for

specifi city: which functions should be aligned and why,

and ultimately how will these functions fi t with other

functions? This call echoes Richard Weller’s assertion

that “critical pragmatism empowers and liberates land-

scape architecture . . . through an acute sense of site

specifi city, a sense that the site itself is the regulatory

idea of the project” (Weller 2008, 254). We must pursue

specifi city and pragmatism by constructing methods to

examine landscapes for their functions and eff ects, how

they relate in space, time, and materials.

Figure 1“The Drive in Central Park, New York, September 1860” by Winslow Homer, from Harper’s Weekly, September 15, 1860. This image showing Central Park in process—simultaneously under construction and in use—suggests that it is not the formal aesthetic moves that make the landscape Central Park, but rather the array of instruments at work (carriage drives, horses, top hats, may poles, topographic slopes) that constantly make and remake the landscape (courtesy the Smithsonian American Art Museum).


My research into these questions has led me to

test ideas and methods through a speculative proposal

for a real site—the Riachuelo Canal in Buenos Aires,

Argentina, one of the most polluted rivers in the world

(Blacksmith Institute 2007) and the site of a massive

new cleanup eff ort headed by a water basin author-

ity.6 The working hypothesis is that the environmental

remediation operations mandated by the 2008 Men-

doza7 decision of the Argentina federal court (Sola

2008) can generate the conditions for recreation and

industry. The confl icts and possibilities inherent in

such programmatic juxtapositions are a worthy sub-

ject, deserving of their own study examining diff er-

ences in program intent and actual use through time.

Here, however, I will use the project as a method for

exploring conceptual and technical boundaries with

regard to representation in the design process.

This landscape was chosen because it is an

extreme example of a common condition. As a com-

mercial maritime landscape with a toxic industrial

legacy in a densely inhabited low- lying area of a major

metropolis, the Riachuelo binds hydrological, eco-

logical, and socio- economic dynamics together in

one place. For the project there is a particular focus

on processes of environmental remediation in the

industrial waterway—a process that unite a range of

material operations and site histories, and is occurring

across a broad spectrum of temporal and spatial scales

through simultaneously competing and complimentary

top- down and bottom- up initiatives (Figure 2).

THE WHYProposing a public space project that aims to pair

industrial scale environmental remediation opera-

tions and all its noise, requisite expertise, and heavy

machinery with recreational programming that is

typically more open and pleasant demands an hon-

est reckoning with the question, “Why?” Why try to

mesh picnicking with dredging? Why not just keep

things separate? In addition to the problem of percep-

tion, there are very real issues of safety and liability. A

general contractor or municipal agency does not want

a happy couple blithely wandering into the operating

radius of an articulated excavator or a group of school

kids traipsing through a puddle of coal tar residue.

I propose that an instrumental approach can con-

tend with these issues within a tripartite framework:

economics, aesthetics, and politics. From an economic

perspective this instrumental approach allows forms

of occupation during construction and maintenance

operations, thereby reclaiming lost use value. In the

aesthetic realm it harnesses the aff ective potential of

the technological sublime, or at least aspects of it, and

engages their historical importance in the American

psyche. Politically, it extends agency in the public realm

to actors typically limited to acts of consumption. In

this way the project of landscape instrumentalism

Figure 2This “Operations Map” is used to systematically analyze the spatial and temporal implication of material operations of remediation on the Riachuelo Canal (in black), specifically sediment dredging and hyacinth composting. The diagrammatic lines superimposed on the map are scaled to indicate the quantities of materials being handled. The sediment is envisioned as forming the substrate for an expansion of the port facility, whereas the hyacinth compost is distributed throughout the green spaces of the basin.

Davis 297

attempts to extend and expand current norms within

the discipline of landscape architecture.

Economics: Use ValueEconomic value is the result of two main factors—

use value and exchange value (Marx 1915, 125–131).

Following Marx, a commodity is something that is

defi ned by its exchange value—the abstract correlation

of the object to monetary value—whereas use value is

determined by an object’s utility. A person purchases

a shovel because it has use value as an instrument for

digging, not because it can be easily exchanged for

another unrelated object.

Landscape projects have a life cycle. Typically a

public landscape is only public after construction or

maintenance operations are completed. Future users

are kept at bay until a “substantial stage of comple-

tion” is reached, or until the mowing is fi nished. For

large projects, this can mean that signifi cant portions

are not usable for months, years, or in the case of

Orange County Great Park, decades. This is occasion-

ally mitigated through phasing the implementation

of a project, or by instigating intermediate and provi-

sional programs. In the case of smaller projects such

as a playground or neighborhood plaza, the landscape

is often closed for a season as new play equipment or

plantings are installed, grading and drainage pipes are

reconstructed, or fencing is replaced.8

The recovery of this use value could have signifi -

cant economic impact. The exchange value of land-

scapes, specifi cally the infl uence of well- maintained

parkland on local real estate values, has been thor-

oughly studied and is a fundamental theme in land-

scape architectural practice dating back to Olmsted.9

The evidence regarding use value is sparser. However,

a recent study in 2009 by the Trust for Public Land

examined this aspect of a city park system. This study

considered only “direct use value,” which excludes use

value lacking a commercial corollary. By this measure

the Boston city park system was examined and found

to have provided over $354 million in direct use value

in 2006 alone (Harnik and Welle 2009, 5–7). If land-

scape designers can develop and propose methods for

capturing the use value of these public spaces lost dur-

ing construction and maintenance, even at some addi-

tional initial expense, the result would be a net gain.

This might provide an impetus for municipalities to

fi nd a way to recapture more of that value, especially

for landscapes such as infrastructural projects or

large- scale remediation eff orts, where the construction

is likely to take years.

Aesthetics: The technological sublimeAt its most basic, the sublime can be understood as an

experience of astonishment, meaning “that state of the

soul in which all its motions are suspended, with some

degree of horror,” (Burke 1997, 230). In The American

Technological Sublime, David Nye asserts the his-

torical importance of the sublime aesthetic in the

American landscape, noting that “ever since the early

national period the sublime has served as an element of

social cohesion, an element that was already quite evi-

dent when the fi rst canals were dug and steam engines

were fi rst harnessed to trains,” (1996, XIV).

Nye’s breakthrough was to recognize that within

the North American psyche, the sublime experience

was not limited to geologic objects such as mountains

and gorges, but could be an “amalgamation of natural,

technological, classical, and religious elements into

a single aesthetic,” (Nye 1996, 23). Importantly, he

makes the connection that the technological sublime

is concerned with a politics of perception. The public’s

experience of technologies in operation can create spe-

cifi c, attractive eff ects; a landscape of the technologi-

cal sublime can off er aesthetic experience that does

not only privilege the beautiful or the picturesque

(Meyer 1994) but rather off ers bystanders and users

an overwhelming and captivating moment. Dewey’s

understanding of a public not as a pre- existing

monolithic block, but as a community that forms in

response to a particular stimulus or problem is help-

ful here. Landscape instrumentalism draws from the

insight that a public “consists of all those who are

aff ected by the indirect consequences of [events] to

such an extent that it is deemed necessary to have

those consequences systematically cared for” (Dewey

1927, 16). Relative to landscape practices, designers

might build on the fact that the political eff ects of the

technological sublime can off er a very real and power-

ful mechanism to bind communities together and add

value to public landscapes. By devising methods that

bring people into proximity with landscapes in pro-

cess, we can design landscapes that off er an expanded

range of aesthetic experience.10


Politics: The Right to the CityThe right to the city is understood here as the right of

urban inhabitants to engage with all of the decisions

and actions that produce urban space (Harvey 2008).

This includes the right of participation, as well as the

more radical right of appropriation (Purcell 2002). In

the fi rst case, inhabitants’ desires and ideas are fi ltered

through institutions of the state in traditional ways.

The second right is a bit more complicated.

There are very good reasons that the right to

appropriation is not legitimized to the same degree as

the right to participation. Take an extreme example;

a Philadelphia in which anyone who wants could go

around blasting holes in the sidewalk, ripping up sec-

tions of street, or planting new trees in the middle of

Independence Mall would be problematic, if exciting.

And so the default seems to be to almost totally deny

this impulse,11 despite the violently negative ramifi ca-

tions it infl icts on our democracies and urban spaces

elucidated so well by Henri Lefebvre. With a focus

on specifi city and instrumental eff ects, landscape

Figure 3Plan, overall perspective, and detail perspective of fluid dynamics analysis of the Riachuelo. This 3- D computational fluid dynamics model uses Integrated Environmental Systems—Virtual Environment (IES- VE) to test the effects of design elements on the hydrodynamics of the canal. Multiple scenarios and configurations were first tested in a 2D cfd model using TAS Ambiens, which is much faster but only considers two dimensions. Here you can see certain pinch points, where the water is moving faster (white zones), and where water is moving much slower (black zones), likely causing suspended sediment to drop out.

Davis 299

architects might devise ways that enable landscapes to

be appropriated by citizens.

METHODS AND TECHNIQUESThe methods presented and discussed here are opera-

tive lines of action meant to grapple with the gap

between intent and reality (R. Dewey 1977). Far

from simply trying to eliminate this gap, a landscape

instrumentalist methodology might at times seek to

minimize it and at other times to exploit or use it as a

point of leverage. In Dewey’s instrumentalism methods

were of utmost importance as “the value of any cogni-

tive conclusion depends upon the method by which it

is reached” (J. Dewey 1929, 200).

In landscape instrumentalism, methods are instru-

ments used as a guide in an attempt to initiate new

lines of action. This approach diff ers from others in

that the designer is an active participant in the crea-

tion of knowledge, but only one among many, albeit

with a specifi c role. That is, the designer is neither the

passive, disinterested recorder, nor the all- powerful

maker of worlds, capable of construing and construct-

ing entire new realities though the power of the map.

Rather, the designer is actively engaged with a host of

other objects in the activities knowing and acting in a

specifi c situation.

The importance of technique in this undertak-

ing cannot be overstated. In 2006, James Corner

emphasized that “the techniques to address the sheer

scope of issues here are desperately lacking—and this

area alone, it would seem to me, is deserving of our

utmost attention and research” (2006, 32). For a long

time, conceptualization has reigned from a privileged

position over execution, ideas over technique. This is

a tendency that Corner has noted: “while there has

been no shortage of new ideas and theories in design

and planning, there has been little advancement and

invention of those specifi c tools and techniques that

are so crucial for the eff ective construal and construc-

tion of new worlds,” (1999, 217). And the dichotomy

that elevates ideas above execution shares symptoms of

the modern binary thinking in landscape theory that

Elizabeth Meyer identifi es as “incapable of describing

and identifying that which [is] unique to the modern

built landscape” (1994, 19).

In recent years great strides have been made in the

development and application of new tools of represen-

tation and computation.12 The potential to relate them

to specifi c concepts and practical applications through

the development of a theoretical- technical project

holds much promise and suggests that perhaps we are

now coming to a time when technique is being prop-

erly valued again.13

ModelingMuch of the modeling done by landscape architects

has historically been tectonic in nature. Drawn from

architecture, tectonic modeling methods are use-

ful for studying and communicating the way things

fi t together and the resulting formal aesthetic eff ects.

They are, however, extremely limited with respect to

how things might perform and change over time. For

this project, I used three modeling modes—analog

models, computational fl uid dynamic models, and

a sediment calculator. Each of these has particular

strengths, built- in assumptions, and limitations. The

goal was to develop a design process and workfl ow

that moved between the various modeling environ-

ments to develop a more instrumental landscape design

process that explored and expanded the limits of each

mode of working and thinking.

Computational Fluid Dynamics. Computational fl uid

dynamics is an area of investigation in the fi eld of fl uid

mechanics. Industry uses for this type of software

typically concentrate on the movement of air through

buildings or around objects, such as a plane fuselage in

a wind tunnel. However, landscape architecture might

begin to adapt these methods to study the eff ects of

design elements on the movement of water in a chan-

nel or along a surface. For this project, I used TAS

Ambiens (TAS) and Integrated Environmental Systems

Virtual Environment (IES- VE). TAS allows for rapid

two- dimensional prototyping and IES- VE enables a

more complex three- dimensional analysis.

In this project, I used the software to test and

develop strategies for the size and distribution of

elements such as wing dams, dredge pits, and pole

fi elds to aff ect water fl ow in the channel (Figure 3).

This enabled approximations of the specifi c eff ects of

design interventions on the fl ow rates and direction of

water currents—where are eddies created, where are

zones of fast water, and what is the diff erence in speed

between the two? What spatial distribution of wing

dams will provide an optimal fl ow rate? Probing for

these answers allowed informed speculation about real


future eff ects. Limitations of this modeling method are

that these programs do not consider sediment at all—

the fl uid is imagined as a clean material, much closer to

air than a river.

Analog Model. An analog model is a representation

that is easier to analyze than the original object. In

landscape architecture this often refers to a physical

model that simply tests how things go together and

appear as a composition. For this project, I built a

watertight model of a section of the Riachuelo with

an exaggerated vertical scale, fi tted it with a small

fountain pump, and fi lled the channel with water

and a measured amount of fi ne- grained sand. This

modeling technique allowed me to study patterns

of sediment deposition and water fl ow as they were

infl uenced by shape changes to the analog model

(Figure 4). The model does away with any numerical

specifi city because of the exaggerated vertical scale

and the fact that sediment does not scale, but allows

for the study of sedimentation and water currents

together in terms of pattern and proportion. The

model can be run for hours, and the changes and shift

in patterns of fl ow and deposition in response to new

sizes and spatial distribution of diff erent instruments

can be monitored and recorded.14

Matlab® Scripting. Matlab® is a powerful comput-

ing environment that allows for data visualization and

analysis. I worked with Dr. Julie Rosati of the United

States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to apply an

Euler method sedimentation calculator the USACE

developed for estimating deposition and shoaling in

shipping channels. The implication of these calcula-

tions allowed me to approximate a dredge period: given

user- defi ned inputs of sediment and water fl ow, as well

as dimensions for the sectional depth and width for a

given length of the water channel, the calculator could

approximate how long it would take before sediment

fi lls the channel past a specifi ed limit. This calculator

is a tool that uses an algorithm to calculate deposition

and shoaling while diff erentiating between bed- load

and suspended sediments and accounting for the eff ects

of prior deposition. However, it is unable to account

Figure 4The analog shape channel model was developed to allow me to study how various configurations and scales of particular design elements affected the pattern and shape of deposition of sediment. The horizontal scale was 1" = 100' and the vertical scale was exaggerated by a factor of 10x to make it possible to keep water in the channel. The model was painted black and a small fountain pump was used to pull water from the end of the model and recycle it to the top, simulating water flow through the model. I used fine- grained white decorative sand (to get the smallest grain size possible) and then painted the model black to make the patterns of deposition visible.

Davis 301

for shape changes in the water channel as it assumes a

single cross- section extruded along a given distance.

When I paired this use of Matlab® with the

other forms of modeling it was possible to localize the

inquiry. I could focus the sedimentation calculations

on specifi c stretches of the canal that exhibited the

same pattern of deposition over time (Figure 5). This

means that the dredging operation could be situated in

diff erent stretches of the canal, a result that has radical

implications for the design. This off ered a method for

working between models and the ability establish a

periodicity and sediment volume for the dredge cycle

in specifi c places along the Riachuelo.15

Orthographic ProjectionPlan. Adapting and synthesizing existing drawing

conventions has a long tradition in landscape practice.

Drawing on topology (as opposed to Euclidean geom-

etry), plans are rethought as a series of “charts,” and

specifi city rather than synthesis is prioritized. The

landscape and its objects are understood to be too

complex to represent in a single map—conceptual

fl attening still occurs but is no longer a foundational

construct. This move, modeled after nautical charts

and landscape construction documentation practices,

de- emphasizes the synoptic view and re- structures

narrative (Figure 6). While this might seem to be

simply a failure of nerve with regard to current interest

in mappings, it can also be seen as alternative direction.

By undoing the emphasis on fl attened synthesis, greater

attention can be paid to the specifi c movements of the

host of objects that make up the landscape.

Section. My proposed variation for the section adapts

the popular technique of stacking; rather than look-

ing at a series of strategic locations at one generalized

moment, I look at one important location over a series

of specifi c moments. This simple move visualizes

ephemeral spatial qualities, but also allows for some

measure of quantitative analysis and comparison over

time. Rather than relying solely on intuition to perceive

interesting spatial moments, the important moments

Figure 5This graph approximates the proposed 18- month dredging regime for the Riachuelo, developed by testing the analog shape channel model and the Matlab sedimentation calculator against one another. This resulted in adaptations to the diagram of the Operations Map. The crosshair symbols and vertical notations indicate a dredging operation. Three different scales of operation, each with its own instruments, zones of operation, schedule, and effects on other landscape processes are visualized.

Figure 6Chart 3 combines techniques from nautical and topological charts with architectural plans, with an emphasis on specificity in the landscape, including, mechanical actions, zones of operation, amplitude and intensity of processes, and aesthetic effects. The black is the Riachuelo, the thick white central line is the dredged channel, the grey is the surface kept free of water hyacinth with a tensile mesh system. Trees stretch back into adjacent neighborhoods along streets and wing dams protrude into the canal as focal points, landing areas for small boats, termini for local streets, and they help the water to scour an open channel for navigation.


to study in section are chosen with the assistance of a

new device—the correlation wheel—introduced below.

Quantitative analysis is enabled with a new notational

system—the instrument table, also introduced below.

This type of section is useful for understanding and

speculating on landscape change through time—

novelty, emergence, phasing, and other forms. This

could supplement and compliment existing techniques

and tools such as simulation and diagramming.

Notational SystemsInstrument Table. The instrument table is a two- axis

chart that becomes a notational system when used in

conjunction with plans or sections. Based on the idea

that an instrument can be understood through the con-

ceptual triad, explained below, the two axes are used

to identify the eff ect of the particular object as well as

the larger assemblage or activity in which it is embed-

ded (Figure 7). A more specifi c understanding of the

function of that particular instrument is achieved by

plotting these two aspects of an object and tying them

directly to its spatial form, and then drawing them in

relation to other instruments of the landscape.

Correlation Wheel. The correlation wheel is used to

link activities occurring at a specifi c time according

to the relative intensity of those activities. This tech-

nique draws from British nurse Florence Nightingale’s

“Diagram of the causes of mortality of the armies in the

East” (1858) and emphasizes cyclical relationships. In

this project I set the period for the wheel to one year.

Scales of intensity are established for each activity mov-

ing out from the center to the periphery, and months are

arrayed on the diagram in a radial pattern (Figure 8).

This technique allows the designer to be specifi c

about the chosen activities which are imagined to be

occurring in a given place during a specifi c period

(year, month, day, decade). It has serious limitations;

for instance, many of these activities operate on diff er-

ent temporal scales (a soccer game is played at a spe-

cifi c time, for instance, not all day and night usually,

whereas a river is always fl owing). This level of detail

Figure 7The instrument table allows the designer to be specific about the triad that defines an instrument—its form, its effect, and its assemblage or activity in which it takes part. When multiple tables are grouped together to catalogue and study different landscape instruments, the designer can begin to choreograph interactions and patterns on a formal level and also in terms of effects and activities. These work with a range of conventional representations including plan and section.

Figure 8The correlation wheel allows the designer to correlate cyclical processes through time. Each activity is indexed in the key and then played out through a year within a specific, bounded space that the diagram is tied to (indicated by a section or plan). For instance, the specific dredging operations occurring at the mouth of the river have a different schedule of operation and therefore potential effect on pedestrians and planting techniques, which this wheel allows the designer to approximate and study. This technique could be adapted to any single temporal scale.

Davis 303

is not approached, a shortcoming that is addressed

somewhat by an accompanying “time stamp.” By mak-

ing possible an immediate understanding of the types

of activities occurring in a given landscape at a specifi c

time during the year, the correlation wheel is a simple

and powerful tool that helps the designer understand

and engage in the temporal nature of spatial relations.

THEORETICAL CONCLUSIONSThe Conceptual TriadA working theory of landscape instrumentalism

calls for techniques that allow us to grapple with

the autonomy, potency, and the generative capacity

of landscapes themselves; not just human users or

spectator- designers. To achieve this, it is important to

understand the instrument as consisting of a concep-

tual triad: form, eff ect, and the assemblage in which

it takes part. The form of an instrument pertains to

its shape; its eff ect can be understood as its relation to

other objects. The fi nal leg of the stool is the assem-

blage in which something takes part, referring to the

larger activity or set of actions. For instance, there

may be a boating dock and many paddleboats at a

recreational lake, along with the water in the lake and

human users. All of these instruments are part of the

same assemblage—recreational boating on the lake—

though they may all take on wildly diff erent forms and

produce diff erent eff ects. These instruments might all

be part of other assemblages simultaneously or at dif-

ferent times, and these relationships are all “traceable

connections” (Latour 2005, 196). If we can develop

the necessary techniques to pursue them, some might

be leveraged as moments of opportunity for design

intervention, ecological catalysis, or meaningful social

interaction (Figure 9).

Radical DifferenceThere is another important concept that underlies the

theory of landscape instrumentalism: radical diff er-

ence. Landscape instrumentalism theorizes every

object in the landscape as an instrument—people, rats,

tennis shoes, silt fences, rivers, plane trees, and build-

ing facades. The theory must be further elaborated

in the future; right now it brings up more questions

than it answers. But if for a moment it can be accepted,

then the work of the designer is left to two areas: one,

determining which instruments are actionable, acces-

sible, or otherwise important to model, trace, map, and

develop possibilities with; and two, understanding at

which point changes in the assembly and operation of

instruments introduces a radical change and funda-

mentally alters the landscape itself—radical diff erence.

To understand this, it is useful to take the example that

is the object of this study—the Riachuelo.

The Riachuelo was originally a sinuous sediment-

laden river remade as an ad- hoc industrial thru- way,

later fashioned into a full- fl edged industrial shipping

canal and port facility, then taking the form of a sani-

tation canal, and fi nally becoming a remediation site

that might generate new port economies and recreation

ecologies throughout the river basin while causing po-

litical fl are ups and demanding economic investment.

Figure 9These sections bring together several instrumental techniques; the instrument tables, a correlation wheel specific to this place and time, and stacking sections. The simple table, when applied across several instruments and aligned along one edge allows certain patterns to emerge. All of these techniques together begin to enable a designer to be highly specific about space, illustrating difference when conceived as an instrumental landscape.


At what point does it stop becoming the Riachuelo

landscape? When did it become the Riachuelo land-

scape? One could argue that it always persists—the

Riachuelo is the Riachuelo landscape, at least since

humans entered the scene. But what if the watercourse

is diverted? What if the low part of the city fl oods? Or

the river dries up completely?

Ultimately, this is a topological question, con-

cerned with the ability of a landscape to maintain

a certain characteristic integrity while undergoing

processes of continual change over time. It calls for a

reckoning with the fact that all of the various original

design ideas might be functionally identical, or rela-

tively irrelevant, but simple changes in maintenance

practices, municipal funding, or erosion control

regimes can summon an entirely new landscape.

SPECULATIVE PROPOSITIONSThere are three implications that a landscape instru-

mentalist approach points to that might become

objects of future research and practice. Two of these

have close, existing corollaries in current architec-

tural practice, while the third seems to be a possibility

unique to landscape architecture.

Landscape Information ModelingIn 2011, Travis Flohr provided a review of Build-

ing Information Modeling technology (BIM) in this

journal (2011). He noted that BIM integrates “building

geometry, spatial relationships, geographic informa-

tion, material properties, and quantities of all building

components” (2011, 69) in a single computer modeling

environment, and that this working method held great

promise for landscape projects in terms of effi ciency in

project delivery. He also noted that these technologies

currently lack landscape components and make work-

fl ow between software platforms diffi cult, and ended

with a call for professional organizations to lobby to be

included in the future development of BIM software.

It is a compelling argument but ignores a set of

important issues related to landscape practice that

spring from the realization that architecture and

landscape are diff erent mediums. While sharing many

concepts, materials, working methodologies, and his-

tories, there is no reason to suggest that our represen-

tational, investigative, and project delivery tools should

be the same, or should have more in common than do

landscape architecture and forestry, or sedimentary

geology. In fact, I believe my work provides evidence

to the contrary. Initial results thus far point away from

trying to fi nd a single computational environment for

landscape representation, especially one built on the

conceit of abstract, limitless space. Instead, it is the

process of working between modes—comparing

them, interrogating the assumptions and limitations

of each—that has been most useful and revelatory in

my work. This suggests that in addition to lobbying for

the inclusion of landscape as a subset in the develop-

ment of BIM technology, we should be learning from,

appropriating, and synthesizing the representational

models of ecologists, civil engineers, and sedimentary

geologists to construct methods of landscape informa-

tion modeling.

Post Occupancy Evaluation The United States General Services Administration

(GSA) uses post- occupancy evaluations to “take a close

look at end- user satisfaction, sustainability, opera-

tional eff ectiveness, and compliance with GSA’s design

standards” (General Services Administration 2013).

While construction administration and punch lists

are well- established methods for evaluating structural

soundness and formal quality, and contractor guaran-

tees commonly ensure the establishment of plantings

for a predetermined time, the opportunity for evaluat-

ing the performance of a landscape project has only

recently been taken up through the Landscape Per-

formance Series (LPS) of the Landscape Architecture

Foundation, and the Sustainable Sites Initiative.

Built on the Mark Francis report from 1999 and

drawing from a rich history of precedent study within

the discipline, the LPS employs a case study method-

ology as a resource and tool infl uencing current and

future landscape practices and projects, albeit with a

focus on capital projects. These case studies attempt

to remedy the lack of systematic analysis while provid-

ing object lessons for theoretical development, practi-

cal application, and teaching (Francis 1999, 10). This

method collects facts (for example, permeable area of

the site was increased from 38 percent to 81 percent

through the use of concrete pavers) and conveys them

in narrative form, with as- built photos and plans serv-

ing as visual aids. In its current form the results seem

text- heavy, and that text reads as a sort of checklist

of factoids and truisms that narrate before/after sce-

narios, and ignores the gap between intent and reality.

Davis 305

Nonetheless, it provides a valuable and robust platform

that beckons further refi nement and exploration.

Some of the tools of landscape instrumentalism

suggest that notational systems might be developed

and representational methods employed to enable the

sort of performance analysis that could illuminate

future design decisions and maintenance practices.

Moreover, these tools might be equally eff ective during

both the design process and a post- occupancy evalua-

tion, as they exhibit the instrumental characteristic of

an ends- means continuum. The array of speculative

instrument tables produced during design could be

quickly and easily charted and compared to a new set

created at the specifi ed post- occupancy date; the specu-

lative correlation wheel that anticipates future popula-

tions and programmatic intensities might be compared

to an actual set of wheels created post- occupancy. Case

studies could become not only generalized analytical

tools, but would allow a landscape to be compared to

itself. These tools would enable an analysis of the real

landscape alongside the intended project, and would

do so in a way that better integrates facts with visual

aids. Moreover, their simplicity suggests that a host

of related and refi ned tools might be developed for

landscape types that focus on issues such as pollutant

migration or bio- diversity.

Maintenance as Design Practice By taking seriously Dewey’s proposition to under-

stand ends and means along a continuum, landscape

instrumentalism points towards a new paradigm of

landscape maintenance and management. Landscape

maintenance includes everything from trimming

hedges with a pair of shears to 800 pound chainsaws

swinging 11 rotary blades from a helicopter with a 90-

foot boom line while trimming powerline easements.

These operations range in scale from the individual to

the regulatory apparatus of public bureaucracy, and

attempt to constantly recreate the landscape as a medi-

ated equilibrium. By foregrounding instruments in all

of their forms and scales, an instrumentalist approach

makes clear that maintenance practices have far more

agency than is typically acknowledged.

Current landscape architectural practice hews

closely to the architectural model that prioritizes capital

projects. In the future, landscape architecture might re-

embrace maintenance to exploit the gap between intent

and reality through a more place- based practice. It is

yet another form our discipline might take as we climb

down from the spectator’s tower and get in to the dirt.

CONCLUSIONIn recent decades, the fi eld of landscape architecture

has been the site of many promising developments and

productive discussions that point toward the develop-

ment of multi- functional landscape practices at pre-

cisely the moment when our society faces major issues

such as climate change. The specifi city required by

these realizations is attempted in this initial landscape

instrumentalism project through the multi- modal mod-

eling method, the instrument table and the correlation

wheel, and the conceptual tools of the triad and radical

diff erence. In the future, I imagine many more and bet-

ter techniques might be developed.

An instrumental theory of landscape suggests that

if a space is a landscape, and not some other type of

space, then all of its objects and their dynamic rela-

tions are instruments, but not dumb drills, retaining

walls, and land use policies. Rather, they are dynamic

objects in relation to one another within a bounded ter-

ritory containing some measure of human intent. John

Dewey’s instrumental theory of knowledge off ers a the-

oretical and technical framework to develop the tools

needed to integrate and synthesize new techniques for

modeling, computation, analysis and construction of

multi- functional landscapes, and to chart a way for-

ward into the frontier between intent and reality.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a large debt of gratitude to my thesis adviser Elizabeth Meyer, whose intellectual generosity was a guiding light in carrying out much of this research at the University of Virginia. I would also like to thank Dr. Julie Rosati of the US Army Corps of Engineers as well as Andrés Carsen of ACUMAR and Silvia Rafaelli of Argentina Capacity Network to help for their help gath-ering information and applying techniques discussed in this work. Lastly, ongoing conversations with landscape designers Michael Geffel (University of Virginia) and Julian Raxworthy (RMIT, Melbourne) have been a tre-mendous help in developing this work.


NOTES1. See “Performance practices” by Chris Reed (2005) for a

compelling account of the possibilities inherent in this approach, written at a time when Landscape Urbanism was gaining a great deal of traction in popular discourse and achieving a certain hegemony in academic pedagogy and research.

2. The synoptic view so heavily emphasized in the mapping projects of the last generation is the clearest manifestation of assuming this spectator position, as shown by Peter Con-nelly (2004) in his essay “Embracing openness.”

3. In this way it breaks away from, or at least seeks to radicalize the tradition fully developed in the late 20th century in works such as The Language of Landscape by Ann Spirn (1998) and

“The hermeneutic landscape” by James Corner (2002).

4. As acknowledged by Peruvian landscape theorist Wiley Ludena Urquiza as well as J.B. Jackson, the necessity of some human presence or intent is fundamental to a landscape. An assortment of rocks and materials gath-ered together in a place that has never seen or even been perceived by a human is not a landscape, but rather some other type of space entirely.

5. Technological historians such as Thomas P. Hughes and Merritt Roe Smith have explored this particular (human) gap in agency and intentionality in material practices, and the effort to minimize it through standardization, in fasci-nating detail. Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology by Merritt Roe Smith (1980) details the story of the United States Armory at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia prior to the Civil War and the struggle to force the workers to manufac-ture weapons as a series of interchangeable parts and not artisanal pieces.

6. La Autoridad de Cuenca Matanza Riachuelo (ACUMAR) shares a lineage with the Tennessee Valley Authority as one of the few water basin authorities to have capital funds and so the ability to control and direct their own infrastruc-tural projects.

7. Mendoza Beatriz Silva et al vs. State of Argentina et al on damages (damages resulting from environmental pollution of Matanza/Riachuelo river). File M. 1569.

8. Taking the middle ground as a representative example, a neighborhood park might be closed for a year while undergoing reconstruction that costs $2 million. In New York City, these places are typically reconstructed once a generation due to economic and social cycles (baseball becomes less popular, the equipment is worn out, and the city parks department benefits from a financially support-ive administration, for instance). Additionally, closures for seasonal maintenance such as reseeding, tree pruning, or the regrading of the infield adds up to another year of clo-sure over a generation, and cost an additional $20,000 per year. This means that roughly 10 percent of the use value of the park (2 years in 20) is lost; in our case that translates to $400,000 out of the total cost of $2.4 million (capital

cost of $2 million plus $400,000 in maintenance and operations) that is lost to closures and reconstruction. In more extreme cases where major urban infrastructures are adjacent, above, or below the site these periods are often more unpredictable and protracted. If a sewer main is being reconstructed, a road enlarged, or an exit ramp realigned, the loss of use value can be 20 to 40 percent.

9. In his 1893 report on building the Columbian Exposition, Frederick Law Olmsted noted “it is a common thing with town governments, when they find bodies of land which . . . are not favorable to the ends of dealers in building- lots, to regard them as natural reservations for pleasure- grounds . . .” (Olmsted 1893, 152). He later noted that this was not an ideal practice for the creation of the landscape itself, hinting at the fact that it was in part driven by real estate concerns. In recent decades this relationship has been proven in a more explicit and quantitative way (Brill and Di Palermo 2002; Crompton 2005).

10. This includes not only the vast machines operating in contemporary landscapes, but also the technological- historical demons of our industrial and environmental legacy such as the contamination plumes, garbage collec-tions, and other residues.

11. The Citizen Pruners program in New York City is an inter-esting exception. Volunteers are required to undergo basic safety and horticultural training and are then given the right to prune the trees and other vegetation on any public lands in the city. The requirement of training seems to keep away most who would abuse this ability.

12. The work of Anuradha Mathur and Bradley Cantrell are two different and influential strains within this recent rediscovery.

13. David Fletcher claims this in the foreword of Modeling the Environment by Cantrell and Yates (2012).

14. Perhaps the most ambitious example of this type of model-ing is the US Army Corps of Engineer’s water basin model of the Mississippi River outside of Clinton, Mississippi. For an examination of the impact of this model on landscape architecture see Krystie Dykema Cheramie’s article “The scale of nature: Modeling the Mississippi River” (2011).

15. While undertaking this research I had the good fortune to hear Bradley Cantrell speak at the University of Virginia in March 2012 about his work with representation, computa-tional modeling, physical models, and potential for working between modalities.

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AUTHOR Brian Davis is a visiting instructor in the Cornell University Landscape Architecture Department. He has lived and worked as a practicing landscape designer and writer in Buenos Aires and New York City. His current research considers the relationship between instruments and landscapes. He also studies historical and contemporary landscapes in Latin America.

Landscapes and Instruments

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