ABSTRACT
In the field of physical design, disciplines evolve. As ideas change about what design entails, the relationships between design disciplines transform as well. Ever since the early Renaissance moment marking the birth of modern abstraction, when Leon Battista Alberti codified disegno as a formal operation, architecture and landscape architecture have been defined in formal terms, distinguished from each other based on their associated scales, and materials, of operation. Today, however, we look at design differently, calling such distinctions into question. We comprehend design as operating at many scales simultaneously, and understand design materials in terms of performance rather than appearance. A common concern for ecology has altered design thinking, binding disciplines together in significant new ways. The boundaries formerly dividing areas of design concern become places of fertile cross-disciplinary invention.
