Landscape architecture on the 100th anniversary of unam The challenge of designing the mexican landscape By Amaya Larrucea

Abstract

This article presents a series of thoughts on the theoretical framework of landscape architecture, on the occasion of the 25^th anniversary of the incorporation of such curriculum into the programs of study offered by the unam. This text explains why Landscape Architecture, in view of the severe ecological and environmental crisis that we are currently facing, shall refrain from solving limited and very specific problems, and seek to be at the battlefront to fight the deterioration of nature, creating landscapes where human activities may be fulfilled in harmony with nature and not damaging it or considering it only as a useful thing. In order to achieve such goals, this article introduces the notion of “ambit”, meaning the combination of an action and its direction in consonance with the natural context. The purpose of this article is to present such problem through two approaches: first, a brief review of how in our country, throughout history, landscape was deemed as wealth and used as such, through the analytical mechanisms of natural science; and second, authors who went beyond the aforementioned unilateral point of view and introduced landscape as an aesthetic value linked to human life. It also enlists the names of all persons who, directly or indirectly, drafted the corresponding curriculum for the unam, pioneers in trying to make humankind coexist in harmony with nature.