Landscape identity

Through the study of Aubrey Davis Park, I have a deeper understanding for a landscape’s identity.

In my opinion, the identity of a landscape is not innate, instead, it is given and defined by human’s emotions and feelings. For example, in a same location, Park A has 2000 trees while Park B has 10000 trees and they have same area. Although they are different with each other physically, but it’s hard to identify the two parks in landscape architecture discipline.

However, when people are visiting these two parks, they could have distinct feelings. For example, they might feel comfortable and warm to walk through Park A, and they’d like to spend time there with families, while cold and silent in Park B and would like to stay there alone when feeling upset. Only in this case can people actually identify the two, and make the parks unique. Therefore, the landscape identity is the thing that makes a place different with others and couldn’t be replaced.

So the history and culture of a place can also be parts for it’s identity, after all, history and culture is essentially people’s memories. For example, the name of Aubrey Davis Park comes from the former Mercer Island mayor Aubrey Davis, who lobbied for the park’s creation in the 1970s. After his death in 2013, the park was renamed after him. That’s to say, the name of this park actually loaded local people’s respect and thankfulness to Aubrey Davis, which couldn’t be replaced by any other parks all around the world, so the origin of its name is an essential part of Aubrey Davis Park’s identity.

Photo of an interpretive sign honoring Aubrey Davis in the park

Another important identity for this park is the towering ventilation shafts standing in the highest area of the park. They witnessed the history of Aubrey Davis Park — it is built on the top of a highway. Also, they created unique memories for visitors.

Therefore, if we want to design unique landscape, what we need to do is to dig out the history and culture that can’t be replicated and re-render them in our design and create unique feelings and emotions for visitors.