ABSTRACT
Context is a crucial question in landscape architecture criticism. More than any other design profession, landscape architecture must negotiate context in almost any design. From the perspective of critique, however, it can be asked whether a designed landscape should respond to the characteristics of its context. This chapter explores a range of theories relating to context, including critical regionalism, and James Corner’s theory of species, hybrids, and clones. A range of examples is introduced to demonstrate aspects of contextual criticism, including a focus on golf courses as a landscape type which grapples with issues of the global and the local. The concept of “sliders” is proposed as a simple critical tool in plotting relative responsiveness to place.
