The LI are looking for creative proposals that visualise the impact of climate change for the next edition of the Landscape journal
The Landscape Institute recently declared a climate emergency and the autumn edition of the Landscape journal will be devoted to this topic.
The focus will be on the practical and technical steps that landscape practitioners can take to influence their clients, built environment professionals, partners and policy makers.
One of the biggest challenges in tackling climate change has been getting the public to take the issue seriously. Blue Planet, the film by David Attenborough, had a huge impact because it was able to show exactly what plastic in the Ocean looks like.
Landscape architect Stephen Sheppard proposes a new way of seeing communities: ‘through a perceptual climate change lens which can reveal what climate change looks like in everyday landscapes and help develop the public’s literacy…’ [Stephen R.J. Sheppard (2015). Making climate change visible: a critical role for landscape professionals Landscape and Urban Planning Science Direct – Elsevier].
We will be exploring aspects of Shepperd’s approach in this special edition of Landscape. His work offers a challenge for the profession. Landscape architects regularly visualise the landscape, often focusing on the design qualities of a scheme or the healing impact of proposals but the skills that go into visualising a great design could equally be used as a way of issuing a warning of the consequences of inaction.
Shepperd quotes a colleague who says: ‘it is hard to picture climate change, because carbon dioxide is invisible – if it were brown, we would have stopped producing it long ago.’
In preparation for this edition of the journal, we are calling for visualisations of climate change.
- What does climate change look like?
- How will it affect the town, the city and the rural landscape?
- How has it already changed a particular location?
We are seeking images that tell a story as graphically as those used in Blue Planet, visualisations that will work in print as well as online and images which show change in the landscape over a period of time.
At this stage, please send initial proposals to the journal’s Commissioning Editor, Paul Lincoln, via paul.lincoln@landscapeinstitute.org by 28 August 2019.
