Den eviga debatten? : om naturalism eller formalism som förhållningssätt inom svensk landskapsarkitektur

Abstract: In this essay, I explore the history of the ideas that have shaped the profession of landscape architecture, in a Swedish context. To this purpose, I have sampled the professional debate on landscape architecture at four points in time. These are the years around 1890, 1930, 1970 and 2010. Drawing on G N Brandt (1920), I make the distinction between two arguably crucial approaches, i . e., naturalism and formalism. By identifying these perspectives, and by dividing the arguments of each time period according to this classification, I am able to compare the course of the debate over time. I take on the task through hermeneutics. The material is the debate as articulated in a variety of text-based mediums. The conceptual division of naturalism contra formalism is to be understood as a tool for analysis. The division also necessitates a discussion on the link between man and nature, a relationship that I argue to lie deep in the discourse of landscape architecture. Furthermore, I explore a selection of influential methods, theories and ideals - those specific to landscape architectural discourse, and those coming from a more general, public debate. This leg of the essay serve to contextualise and examine the contemporary conditions for the profession. I argue that the use of the dialectical method is helpful in order to extrapolate an interdisciplinary debate that has been essential for the development of landscape architecture.