Abstract:

In the profession of Landscape Architecture, practitioners typically inventory proposed sites (i.e. commercial developments, public parks, and residential landscapes) to assess a site’s context, views, climate, habitat, and other variables before undertaking a design. While these variables aid the practitioner in making informed design decisions, this inventory process is primarily geared, collected, and applied toward daytime conditions. However, sustainability of a site doesn’t terminate at sundown. In the slumber of a diurnal humanity, a site lives on as myriad nocturnal systems awaken under the cover of darkness. With this sentiment, our research asserted that a project site is a 24-hour organism whose daytime and nighttime systems are symbiotically intertwined, and are thus, equally important in achieving sustainable sites. Through the examination of seminal academic works and the combing of inventory-based texts, we found a gap in knowledge concerning nocturnal site conditions. In the texts, nocturnal topics like nighttime lighting were given modest textual coverage while other topics like ecology, astronomy, and sensory experience were covered frugally if at all. Via the survey of landscape practitioners, we found this academic gap transferred onward into the workforce with many respondents indicating limited academic training in nocturnal inventory, and subsequently, limited collection of nocturnal inventory in professional practice. Furthermore, our survey results indicate that practitioners favor aesthetics over other design considerations, thus, hinting that practitioners may, in part, sacrifice panoramic day-night sustainability for daytime aesthetics. We also found an incongruence between practitioners’ supposed high ecological consideration in their designs and their admitted low consideration for animal welfare in their lighting choices. This is crucial as light pollution in the night sky hinders the nocturnal navigation of select animal species. Additionally, when comparing practitioners’ diurnal and nocturnal site considerations, we found a significantly lower nocturnal consideration for plant materials, construction materials, and pollinators – all of which play a part in site sustainability. By establishing curricula at the university-level with better heed to these nocturnal considerations, landscape programs will shepherd more universal practitioners, and will thus, foster more sustainable sites in the future.

Keywords:

Night, nocturnal, ecology, landscape architecture, inventory and analysis.