Much of today’s contemporary public realm is competent — but much of it is forgettable. These plain spaces recede into the background of attention and become part of the automatism of moving through or passing by. Increasingly, ecological and technical performance functions as a professional alibi: landscapes become difficult to criticise because they perform well technically, even when their spatial qualities remain weak.

Across cities, we see landscapes that perform efficiently: they drain, cool, count biodiversity units, and meet accessibility codes. They satisfy planning frameworks and sustainability metrics. They are technically sound — and yet many feel flat: too correct, too safe, interchangeable, and emotionally thin. The problem is not ecological thinking. It is what happens when landscape is reduced to measurable performance alone.

Gardens by the Bay, Singapore, Photo by Darren Soh

Concepts that were genuinely radical a few decades ago — ecological thinking, blue-green infrastructure, nature-based solutions — are now so widely adopted that they risk becoming professional wallpaper: rhetorically ambitious, yet spatially timid. The language remains progressive, but the ground plane often feels cautious.

When Rem Koolhaas described “Junkspace” back in 2001, he lamented environments shaped by accumulation, efficiency and market logic — spaces optimised for throughput rather than meaning. If architecture has its Junkspace, landscape may now be developing its own equivalent — what we might call junkscapes: spaces optimised for compliance and circulation rather than memory.

Rainforest Wild Asia, Singapore

Part of the problem lies in the systems we operate within. Procurement models reward predictability. Value engineering trims spatial ambition before it is fully formed. Maintenance regimes discourage complexity. Biodiversity scores, urban greening factors and performance targets — important tools as they are — can become ends in themselves. When success is defined numerically, design energy flows toward compliance.

It is uncomfortable to acknowledge, but ecological legitimacy can soften scrutiny of spatial quality. A scheme that performs well on paper is harder to question, even if it lacks atmosphere.

There is also a cultural expectation at play. Many clients and approving authorities still equate “modern” landscape with clean, minimal, restrained aesthetics. Repeated without care, restraint becomes sterility. It produces public spaces people move through efficiently, but rarely remember.

Superbloom at The Tower of London

Many landscapes are described as innovative simply because they implement rain gardens, biodiverse planting palettes or green infrastructure systems. Yet these strategies are now standard elements of contemporary practice. Their presence alone no longer constitutes innovation. When applied without spatial ambition, they risk becoming technical features inserted into otherwise conventional layouts.

This is not a call to abandon ecological performance. The problem emerges when technological frameworks replace spatial ambition rather than supporting it.

Buona Vista Community Node, Singapore

Biophilic design promised to reconnect spatial experience with living systems. At its best, it produces layered canopies, acoustic richness, microclimates and seasonal change. At its weakest, it becomes surface greenery applied to conventional layouts. The difference is not the quantity of planting, but the spatial intention behind it.

As landscape architects, if we wish to retain and build our cultural relevance, we must be willing to defend this more forcefully. We cannot rely solely on metrics to legitimise our work. Nor can we allow ecological language to substitute for spatial ambition.

Appleby Blue Almshouse, UK

Landscapes should not only be responsible. They should also compel attention — inviting people to slow down, to notice, to feel grounded in place. In a world that feels increasingly uncertain and fragmented, that invitation matters.

When landscape architecture legitimises itself primarily through technical metrics, those metrics risk functioning as a technological alibi — protecting technically correct but spatially timid landscapes from critique. The discipline must ensure that technological performance supports spatial ambition rather than replacing it.