Contemporary Landscape Performance Methods and Techniques

Book excerpt: This book defines, illustrates, applies, and explores current and future tools and methods for measuring landscape performance using the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center (HANC) as a case site, providing the most extensive, comprehensive description and application of existing landscape performance tools in the current literature to date. Landscape performance is a measure of the effectiveness with which landscape solutions fulfill their intended purpose and contribute to sustainability. The design of the HANC is a prime case for measuring landscape performance as the site has undergone a pervasive transformation of its 65-acre core as an initial phase of improvements. The massive six-year effort has reconfigured arrival, circulation, and parking, developed new educational facilities, constructed a network of walks and trails, and established sustainable ecologies of prairie, savannah, riparian woods, and upland woods across the northern half of its property. This book uses landscape performance as an integral method of not only blending science into the design process but using scientific outputs as the rationale for design-decision-making. Through this, the book showcases a multitude of proven quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods which can be applied to other designs and plans, calculating their specific impacts on the HANC, and guiding readers through how to use each tool through an applied process. This book provides a comprehensive set of tools and approaches to measuring landscape performance that could be used as a guide for other projects to replicate or expand upon. The book helps move the design professions beyond simple stereotypes of simple beauty of form, showcasing and describing how the design professions (primarily landscape architecture) are an extremely scientific and evidence-based industry.