With nature in mind: ‘Green metaphors' as an approach to reflect environmental concerns and awareness in landscape design

Abstract

The human-environment relationship forms the philosophical foundation of landscape architecture. To move beyond the common dualistic humanenvironment thinking in environmental design education, exploring and highlighting new ideas is important and necessary. A caring sensitivity and a change in awareness of our responsibilities are preconditions to creating these new ideas that will result in deeply responsive environmental designs. Here, responsibility includes ecological awareness and understanding interconnectedness. 'Green metaphors' are results of such an awareness and understanding. Green metaphors in environmental design are accepted as an approach for reflecting environmental concern. This study aims to understand how green metaphors are being used by landscape architecture students in design studio. One hundred and three poster presentations of senior students that explain the metaphorical thinking behind their design concept for a residential landscape design were analyzed in order to determine the frequency of green metaphors. Twenty-seven projects with green metaphors were analyzed in depth to understand the most emphasized issues in their approaches to the human-environment relationship.