1 DECOLONISING LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE & THE WORK OF SALIMA NAJI Vincent Lulzac, 20 December 2020 Introduction This paper is the result of a long and difficult but enriching thinking process. It started a year ago, after deciding to write about “race and landscape architecture”. I wanted to investigate the politics of exclusion in the design field and find ways to design meaningful spaces that would speak to and do good for everyone. I quickly got lost in writings on inclusivity and exclusivity in design, but I couldn’t really get a grip on it. Something wasn’t feeling right and I needed to think more fundamentally about the profession and practice. There is a gap between the practice of our predecessors that we are being taught, and the type of projects that we will be working on in the future, considering the social and environmental crisis we are facing. This change will be long and not without difficulties, but there is a lot to explore. 2020 has been shaken by the raising awareness on institutional racism, decoloniality, and decolonisation. It is important to say that these questions were present and discussed way before 2020, but in the last year we have experienced a snowball effect that has made us question many established ideas. It has made us more aware of the worldwide wound created by colonial history and brought to light all its consequences that still impact our lives today. I would argue that landscape architecture has a close bond with coloniality and modernity and I will argue that our role is not only to create sustainable and inclusive designs , but also to re-think the way humans engage with nature. I believe that we should communicate and enter into dialogue with the non-human by decolonising landscape architecture. But what does it mean to decolonise landscape architecture in practice? By sharing my discoveries and personal experiences I will try to show how landscape architecture is fundamentally rooted in coloniality. In order to do so, Part I will look at the essence of landscape architecture, what does it mean from a decolonial point of view? How has modernity created a separation between human and nature? Part II will introduce the work of an architect, Salima Naji, based in Morocco. Exploring how her work, in the context of a sub-Saharan oasis, is a good example of what it means to develop a decolonial approach to architecture and landscape architecture. Part II will summarise some key ideas and discuss how these discoveries might influence the work of landscape architects in the future.
Part I - Decolonising landscape architecture - what and why? Today the practice of landscape architecture is complex, with many layers. There is a quote that says: “If everything exists within landscape, then landscape architects must learn to design everything” (anon). This work involves many different disciplines: architecture, geography, sociology, ecology, agronomy, botanics, civil and structural engineering, horticulture, industrial design, art and more. But landscape architecture has a history which is important to understand because it will help us to explain why we need to decolonise landscape architecture.