ABSTRACT
Conceptual thinking about landscape design has always borrowed from a range of disciplines – geography, psychology, natural sciences – to name a few. Three types of theories – Explanatory, Normative and Resistance – characterise this borrowing and its integration with design. Typological classifications are explanatory theory that facilitates the design process by defining a set number of variables to design with. Primarily borrowed from the identification and assessment of characteristics in landscape planning, landscape typologies help classify landscapes that share common traits. Returning to the eighteenth century, in England landscapes were part of the philosophical discourse concerning aesthetic appreciation. The evaluation of landscape design has also been influenced by the social sciences and natural science sciences. During the 1980s designed landscapes received an unprecedented level of critique from cultural geographers and other academics in the humanities. This was significant as they brought methods such as Karl Marx's historical materialism and Sigmund Freud's notion of sublimation into their interpretations of landscapes.
