~ Section 7 – From Mid-Century Modernism to Ecological Thinking ~
Styles & Epochs of Art ~ A Landscape Architecture Journey
“When Design Woke Up to the Planet.”
Between the 1950s and the end of the 20th century, landscape architecture underwent one of the greatest intellectual shifts in its history.
What began as the optimism of Mid-Century Modern living — patios, pools, geometry, and clean lines — evolved into something deeper, more urgent, and profoundly more human.
This era marks the moment when design stopped being only about style, and began to grapple with ecology, systems, and the fragile reality of our planet.
© This article references LASD Studio | Yura Lotonenko research on ecological design, systems thinking, and earth-scale landscape philosophy (2017–2025).
Video Episode of Section 7 — From Mid-Century Modernism to Ecological Thinking
In this episode of Styles & Epochs of Art that Influenced Landscape Architecture and Garden Design, we follow the transformation of design from modern comfort to ecological consciousness.
Palm Springs patios give way to planetary systems.
Vernadsky’s biosphere meets Lovelock’s Gaia.
Hiroshima and Chernobyl show how a single site can affect the entire Earth.
And designers begin to see landscape not as decoration, but as living infrastructure — a system that must protect, restore, and sustain life.
The Epoch Overview
Historical & Cultural Context
After WWII, Modernism splintered into new voices.
The clarity of Bauhaus ideals met the realities of a growing, polluted, industrialized world.
Mid-Century landscapes promised a new lifestyle — outdoor rooms, pools, shade structures, open patios — echoing freedom and optimism in places like Palm Springs.
But by the late 1960s, environmental signs became impossible to ignore.
Cities drowned in smog.
Rivers burned.
Forests died back from pollution.
The world realized that beauty and comfort could not protect us from ecological collapse.
A new question emerged:
What if landscapes must serve nature as much as people?
Fine Art, Philosophy & the Rise of Ecological Thought
Vladimir Vernadsky — The Biosphere & Noosphere
In 1926, Ukrainian geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky introduced a revolutionary idea:
Life is a geologic force.
The Earth is wrapped in a “biosphere” — a living, dynamic membrane shaped by organisms, water, atmosphere, and stone.
Later he imagined the noosphere — the sphere of human thought interacting with Earth systems.
Vernadsky gave landscape architecture its future vocabulary:
interdependence, metabolism, planetary scale.
Lovelock & Margulis — The Gaia Hypothesis
Half a century later, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis expanded this thinking.
Gaia was not mythology —
it was Earth as a self-regulating organism.
Temperature, oxygen, oceans, soil — everything connected in a feedback loop that maintains life.
Landscape architecture could no longer be about form.
It had to become about function in the planetary sense.
Shock Events that Changed Design Forever
The ecological philosophy became real through global crisis.
Hiroshima & Nagasaki (1945)
Cities erased in seconds.
A sudden awareness that humanity could destroy itself — and the planet — with a single act.
Chernobyl (1986)
One explosion, invisible radiation drifting through Europe in days:
France, Sweden, the UK — all recorded the same signature.
It was the first time the world truly saw ecological interconnection.
A single site could disturb the balance of the whole Earth.
Landscape architecture changed after Chernobyl.
It could no longer be local decoration.
It had to respond to global systems, risk, resilience, and the fragility of life.
Ecology in Action — Landmark Projects (1970–2000)
Across continents, new ecological landscapes emerged — not as gardens, but as living systems:
The Woodlands, Texas — WRT / Ian McHarg
A pioneering community planned using ecological overlays — soils, hydrology, habitat.
Emscher Landschaftspark / Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, Germany — Latz + Partner
Industrial ruins transformed into ecological and cultural parks.
Parco Nord Milano, Italy
Rubble fields reborn as forests and meadows.
Hammarby Sjöstad, Stockholm
A district functioning like an ecosystem — water, energy, waste connected in loops.
Parc de la Deûle, Lille Métropole
Agriculture, industry, wetlands united into green infrastructure.
Crissy Field, San Francisco
Airstrips replaced by tidal marsh.
West Philadelphia Landscape Project — Anne Whiston Spirn
Ecology and environmental justice intertwined.
Barcelona ’92 Coastline
Industrial port → civic beaches + hidden stormwater systems.
Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, Singapore
A biodiverse sanctuary beside a global city.
Sydney Olympic Parklands, Australia
Toxic lands remediated into living habitat networks.
Orange County NCCP, California (Policy Milestone)
37,000+ acres of protected habitat — one of the largest ecological planning frameworks in the U.S.
These projects reflected a new truth:
Landscape is not a stage — it is living infrastructure.
Main Landscape Architectural Themes of the Epoch
Design Principles
From “space as sculpture” → to “landscape as system.”
Ecological overlays (soil, slope, water) shape form.
Landscapes become tools for resilience: floods, pollution, habitat.
Materiality & Plant Palette
Low-water planting
Native ecosystems
Successional landscapes
Reclaimed industrial materials
Wetland plants for purification
Trees as microclimate generators
Evolutionary Interpretation
For LASD Studio, this era marks the beginning of Earth-system design — the moment landscape architecture began to think like ecology.
This forms the foundation for our own methodology of Evolutionary Intelligent Systems, where landscapes behave as adaptive, learning organisms over time.
LASD Studio Interpretation & Works
Designing Landscapes as Evolving Intelligent Systems
At LASD Studio, we honor this epoch not by copying its forms, but by advancing its philosophy.
We design landscapes as alive dynamic systems — where ecological feedback, microclimate evolution, and biodiversity shape long-term behavior.
Geometry becomes framework; ecology becomes intelligence.
Every project is an exploration of how landscapes can learn, adapt, and evolve —
not only to serve human life,
but to sustain the living planet we depend on.