Problematizing AI Omnipresence in Landscape Architecture

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the role of AI in landscape architecture, proposing five archetypes to understand diverse perspectives and encouraging nuanced engagement to foster innovative practices in the digital economy.

Contribution

It introduces a framework of five archetypes for thinking about AI in landscape architecture, emphasizing relational and flexible perspectives beyond simple acceleration narratives.

Findings

Five archetypes model diverse AI perspectives in landscape architecture

Causal loop diagram illustrates interactions among archetypes

Nuanced AI engagement can enable new practice modes

Abstract

This position paper argues for, and offers, a critical lens through which to examine the current AI frenzy in the landscape architecture profession. In it, the authors propose five archetypes or mental modes that landscape architects might inhabit when thinking about AI. Rather than limiting judgments of AI use to a single axis of acceleration, these archetypes and corresponding narratives exist along a relational spectrum and are permeable, allowing LAs to take on and switch between them according to context. We model these relationships between the archetypes and their contributions to AI advancement using a causal loop diagram (CLD), and with those interactions argue that more nuanced ways of approaching AI might also open new modes of practice in the new digital economy.