Constructedness: A Keyword in James Corner’s Theoretical Discourses About Landscape Architecture

The Landscape Imagination is a collection of essays written from 1990 to 2010 by James Corner, a contemporary landscape architect. The extensive knowledge of humanities and social sciences makes the works somewhat obscure to landscape architecture professionals, thus entailing an entry point to comprehend it. The word “constructedness” is adopted to penetrate into the interpretation of this collection and also Corner’s theoretical discourses. Based on the basic understanding of this keyword and its knowledge genealogy, this research explains Corner’s reflection on and reconstruction of the following four significant landscape architecture issues: “theory”, “drawing”, “ecology” and “urbanism”. These reflection and reconstruction on the one hand present the tension relationship between the humanist position of Corner and the positivist position criticized by him, and on the other hand, shows Corner’s inconsistency in urbanism issues. The research attempts to promote the discipline of landscape architecture in China in deepening the discussion on the relationship between design methods and knowledge composition.