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Lynda H. Schneekloth is professor in the School of Architecture and Planning.
You are a landscape architect. Can you explain what that is and what prompted you to go into the field?
Landscape architecture is a "placemaking" profession that sits between architecture and planning. People in landscape architecture design and build places and spaces that range from a back yard to urban parks to greenways and bike paths to regional watershed plans. One might say that landscape architecture addresses the interface between people, built form and natural processes. Like architecture, it is a licensed profession because it is concerned with the life, health and safety of people. I came to study landscape architecture indirectly. My undergraduate degree is in English from the University of Wisconsin. So what did I do when I graduated? I taught nursery school. I learned many things from those 3- and 4-year-olds, but one of the most striking insights was about the relationships between people and places. It turned out that the richer, more complex and varied the environment I provided the children each day, the more contented, playful and engaged they were. I discovered there was a profession—landscape architecture—that actually designed play spaces for children. I enrolled in the graduate landscape architecture program at Wisconsin with a minor in child development. As I studied landscape architecture, I discovered how many opportunities one had to make places for people that also addressed the needs of other living things. Let me talk a little about the relationship of children and play space since that was a critical topic. I was engaged in a research project that explored how young children used space under different circumstances. We manipulated the environment that the children confronted each day along two variables: whether the play equipment was scattered or connected, and whether it was fixed or had "loose parts." What we found was the children organized their play behavior first around objects—they did not play in "open space." It showed that one of the key ideas about providing space for kids—having big undefined lawns—was not what they preferred. And perhaps most importantly, these young children exhibited the most complex and developmentally advanced physical and social behaviors when they were in complex, connected play environments that had parts they could manipulate to enhance and transform their play spaces. Until my discovery about children's use of space, I had very little knowledge about landscape architecture. Most people don't know much about the field. I can't tell you how often people say to me when they hear I am a landscape architect, "What kind of tree should I plant in my yard?" Yes, I do know a lot about trees, but landscape architecture is not the same as landscape gardening. On the other hand, we're often asked to "shrub it up" by architects and engineers, especially if they have designed and built an ungraceful building. We can do that as well, but it's not our favorite task. We are the people of the "in-between"—whether that is the in-between of buildings or the in-between of people, place and nature.
What is the connection between architecture and environmental issues?
Architecture is an environmental issue in that environment means "that which surrounds." We live in a world surrounded by things—buildings, roads, computers and storm sewers. All of these sit within a larger environment of climate, water regimes, waste cycles, wind and energy. Sometimes we are tempted to think of architecture as an object—as something that sits on the landscape. And it does. But that is not its purpose, nor its intervention on the earth. Architecture is like a second set of clothes that we inhabit, in which we move, and that mediates the outside and the inside. So in a sense, there is no thinking of architecture and building outside of the environment because it is the environment. But I think you are asking something different—about the relationship between architecture and environmentalism or ecology. It is said that buildings/architecture use between 40 percent and 60 percent of all energy in the United States; most of the rest is used in transportation. We know today that energy as we've come to understand it through the technologies of fossil fuels is fraught with difficulties. Digging up the ancient flowers that have been transformed into hydrocarbons and burning them has generated climate instability that we only are beginning to understand. Buildings are one of the main actors in this drama, and one that we as professionals and as citizens are going to have to address. The move toward "green architecture" to include the use of solar energy is a giant step forward if we can incorporate this kind of sustainable thinking into new building stock.
How are the Buffalo-Niagara region and the UB campuses examples of the challenges that exist when trying to incorporate conservation into urban or suburban planning and design?
Buffalo Niagara is a very special part of the earth. We sit on the Niagara River, which connects two of the Great Lakes, the largest fresh-water system in the world. And yet we have despoiled our place and left a legacy of contamination in the earth, water, wildlife and ourselves. So the first challenge is that people need to learn to take care of their waste and not leave it for others to take care of. Another challenge is sprawl. A shrinking population continues to build out further into the landscape, leaving the center—our cities and first-ring suburbs—empty. This kind of settlement requires people to use cars—creators of greenhouse gases—to meet their most basic needs. The North Campus was a part of this sprawl and requires cars for its existence. This is a serious challenge, with more than 15,000 cars entering and leaving the campus every day. But the university is full of bright people who care about the earth. We should be able to figure out how to resolve the car dependency by providing alternative connections to and from campus and by urbanizing the campus.
You wrote a book with Bob Shibley called "Placemaking: The Art and Practice of Building Communities." Can you explain what is meant by placemaking and how it relates to our region and the UB campuses?
Placemaking is the way in which people transform the space in which they live into places that are meaningful and loved. It is something that all people do every day, whether it is by tending the garden, shoveling the snow, painting the house, making a community garden, building cities or planning regions. But it is the special responsibility of professionals such as architects, landscape architects and planners who have the privilege of placemaking every day. But somehow it seems that many have lost the understanding of how to make places. Perhaps it is because we spend too much time in virtual worlds or too much time indoors. We seem to have forgotten the joys of making places, particularly as a community effort. The making of a collective campus life is a powerful experience for those students and faculty who engage in it; the making of a city, a neighborhood or a street not only makes our places, but forges relationships and resolves conflicts that make us understand our interdependencies. Making places transforms the physical world into beloved places, and it makes communities of people who come to share that world.
You head up a local group called the Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper, formerly known as the Friends of the Buffalo River. What is this group and why is it important to you?
The Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper is concerned with the preservation and restoration of the natural and cultural heritage of the region. It has worked to provide access to the water and ensure that our rivers and lakes are clean and not polluted. Over the years we have done planning, design, negotiations, pollution abatement, tours, educational programs, habitat restoration and more. This work is important to me personally and professionally because it combines my professional expertise with my desire to make and remake the world. I am blessed to have such good work to do, and such dedicated and creative people to work with.