Critical History, Theory, and Practice

fountain and orchard

The critical history, theory, and practice cluster focuses on humanist, design, and art-based approaches to landscape architecture. As a uniquely dynamic form of cultural expression, landscape architecture is best appreciated amidst multiple temporal, cultural, and spatial contexts that inform theory and practice. History, theory, and practice are conceptualized as mutually reinforcing research realms that clarify prior traditions and inform future visions of landscape architecture. As such, our research and teaching are both reflective and projective, analytical and synthetic, situated and propositional. The department’s strength in this cluster is represented in the research and professional practices of faculty whose work spans North American, South American, Asian, and European contexts from the 18th century to the present. The group’s research practices overlap with like-minded faculty members in the Historic Preservation Program and the Departments of Architecture, Art, and the History of Art and Architecture, as well as faculty members throughout the University of Oregon.

The Fuller Center for Productive Landscapes focuses on understanding the role landscape plays in sustaining culture—both literally, through agriculture, and more broadly, through inspiring the arts and grounding cultural identities.


Related Faculty

Jacques Abelman
Liska Chan
Mark R. Eischeid


Selected Faculty Publications

Parham, S. and Abelman, J. (2018). Food and Urban Design. In Zeunert, J. & Waterman, T. (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Food and Landscape. Abingdon: Routledge.

Abelman, J. (2016). Cultivating the City: Design Research for Productive Infrastructures in the Global South. In Wiskerke, H. (Ed.), Amsterdam Academy of Architecture: Research-Reflections-Projects. Amsterdam: Architectura & Natura Publishers.

Abelman, J. (2015). Cultivating the City: Infrastructures of Abundance in Urban Brazil. Urban Agriculture Magazine (RUAF), 29: 62–65.

Oles, T., Abelman, J. and Timmermans, M. (2014). Go with Me: 50 Steps to Landscape Thinking. Amsterdam Academy of Architecture.

Chan, L. (2016). Chinatown Invisible: Tracing Obscured Landscapes. A visual exploration of the intertwined environmental and social histories of one of America’s oldest urban districts [Display]. Exhibited at the Chinatown Soup, 16B Orchard St., Manhattan, November 15–29.

Eischeid, M.R. (2018). Color = Place + Time (reproduction of artwork, plus interpretive text). LA+, vol.8 ("Time"). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 

Lima, M. F. and Eischeid, M.R. (2017). Shrinking Cities: Rethinking Landscapes in the Context of Depopulating Urban Landscapes (introductory editorial). In special issue of Landscape Research on Shrinking Cities, Lima, M. Francisca, and Eischeid, Mark R. (eds.), 42(7): 691–698.

Eischeid, M.R. (2016). 'Exploding to the Infinite': Dan Kiley's North Christian Church. Bridging the Gap: Proceedings of the ECLAS Conference; Paul Bauer, Maria Collender, Michael Jakob, Lea Ketterer Bonnelame, Peter Petschek, Dominik Siegrist, and Christian Tschumi, eds. Rapperswil, Switzerland: HSR Hochschule für Technik, 85–87.

Eischeid, M.R. (2014). The Grid and the Non-Hierarchical Field: Peter Walker and Minimalist Landscape Architecture", in Specifics: Discussing Landscape Architecture; Christiane Sörensen and Karoline Liedtke, eds. Berlin: Jovis, 268–270.

Eischeid, M.R. (2012). The Sublime in Modernist Landscape Architecture: Dan Kiley and the Artificial Infinite. 2012 ECLAS Conference Proceedings; Izabela Dymitryszyn, Małgorzata Kaczyńska, and Gabriela Maksymiuk, eds. Warsaw: Warsaw University of Life Sciences, 33–36.