Landscape design: signposts to a postmodern future?

The authors of Landscape Design: An International Survey, a wide-ranging review of contemporary practice, are forced to conclude that they can find little solid evidence of substantial design theory underlying the schemes selected. This paper asks whether this is so, and uses insights provided by Lodewijk Baljon's technique of comparative design analysis (developed in his study of the entries for the Pare de la Villette competition) to examine the state of contemporary landscape architecture as it approaches the millenium.