On visibility, value, and why nature still struggles to shape the architecture conversation

As a communications director in the architecture business, one of my regular tasks is to closely follow the architecture media. Luckily, it’s not a chore: I generally like the writing. I like how more and more websites and magazines are striving to move beyond simple project descriptions and insist on giving space for opinions, critiques, and interviews about the challenges facing our profession. This very website is a prime example.

But lately, I have begun to read architecture media with a quiet frustration. And – increasingly – a vocal concern. Simply put, nature, landscape architecture, and urban design remain vastly underrepresented in architecture media. This omission is not malicious, but it is persistent — and it matters.

It happens in many ways. Let’s take a very popular global architecture media platform as the case in point: A quick run-through of its latest 100 articles revealed that only four had anything to do with urban design or public realm. Of the 50 interviews the platform published last year, none featured a landscape architect.

This suggests that the issue is not only about what gets built and photographed, but also about what gets thought, discussed, and considered worth asking questions about. We are not only missing from the architectural images. We are missing from the architectural conversation. We simply do not get the invitation.

I understand that most architecture media see themselves as being, by definition, about “architecture”. Not “nature,” “landscape”, or “public realm”. Their gaze is naturally directed toward buildings – toward the built, the vertical, the structural. Towards form, not matter; towards the built, not the grown. Within image-led media formats, towards iconic representations rather than ecological systems.

And here is where my doubt begins. Is landscape architecture inherently incompatible with an architectural media culture that often operates through singular objects, striking images, and quick visual consumption? Can landscape be represented on these platforms without being flattened into an icon? Without trying, rather desperately, to ‘out-icon’ the icons of building architecture – a competition landscape is unlikely to win on those terms?

I once had a prominent editor explain to me, after we were left out of an article about a major London masterplan we had co-authored, that their readers were “real architects” and therefore not interested in landscape contributions. I remember thinking: if that is true, then the problem is far bigger than visibility. Then it is about what we consider architecture to be in the first place. Because in 2026, this distinction between architecture and landscape architecture, between building and nature, between plot and city feels increasingly outdated.

Why? Because the problems we face – as designers, as cities, as societies – no longer respect these distinctions. Climate change, biodiversity loss, urban flooding, heat islands, mental health, social fragmentation: these are not problems building architecture can solve on its own – if at all. These problems are environmental, cultural, social, and ecological in nature. And they require modes of design that can operate across environmental, social, and cultural registers at once, rather than approaches confined to buildings as isolated objects.

To design cities that are climatically resilient, socially inclusive, and biologically diverse, we must understand nature, landscape, and our public realm as integral parts of architecture – not as decorative afterthoughts or as supporting cast to our buildings – but as one integrated system.

And yes, we desperately need our architecture media to reflect this. But we might also need to ask an uncomfortable question: what kind of visibility are we actually asking for?

Perhaps the challenge is not only that landscape architecture is missing from architecture media, but that architecture media, as it currently functions, may struggle to host what landscape architecture truly is. Our discipline does not lend itself easily to instant consumption. It resists being reduced to a single image. It unfolds over time. It is seasonal, messy, layered, and slow. It relies on narratives, processes, and ecological understanding. And on a full aesthetic register that exceeds visual appearance, involving embodied experience, temporal unfolding, judgement, interpretation, and the political and cultural conditions that shape how landscapes are perceived.

In an age of doomscrolling, shrinking attention spans, and image-driven feeds, complex spatial stories are at a disadvantage. The attention economy favours objects over systems, form over process, speed over patience. In that sense, the difficulty of presenting landscape architecture online is part of a much wider cultural shift in how design is received, understood, and valued.

So perhaps the real question is not only “why are we not visible?” but also “what would meaningful visibility look like?”What new formats could allow landscape projects to be represented without being simplified into green icons? What kinds of storytelling could slow the scroll and make room for complexity, uncertainty, and time? And is all visibility necessarily good, if it comes at the cost of depth?

In SLA, we try to answer these questions in a number of ways: We use films, before-and-after images, data, philosophy, op-eds, testimonials, natural capital, essays, and even poetry. This works well on our own website and social media channels. But they are hard to translate into the conventions and convictions of mainstream architecture media.

Again, a quick fun fact: when we first wanted to publish our recent Grønningen-Bispeparken project, no architecture media wanted to touch it. It was only after we could show how well it was received on landscape platforms (such as Landezine) and it began winning international awards that the architecture media took notice.

Again, I don’t believe there is a conscious decision among architecture media to not cover landscape architecture. It’s more a case that it is embedded in the mainstream architectural culture that we understand (and maybe therefore value?) a house more easily than a landscape, a park, or a public realm. Case in point: in the newly revealed shortlist for the Mies van der Rohe Prize, only 4 of 40 projects has anything to do with landscape or the public realm. Apparently, the ground beneath our feet remains less interesting than what stands on top of it.

I realise I am preaching to the choir here on Landezine. As landscape architects, we are used to working in the background. Our projects take time. They develop slowly, often through processes that resist immediate legibility. They are frequently messy and may appear, at first glance, as insufficiently resolved or even “un-designed”. But this does not make them secondary. On the contrary, landscape interventions often carry long-term consequences for how cities function, adapt, and are inhabited—particularly in relation to water, climate, and everyday spatial use. Trees will outlive towers. Soil will remain after concrete cracks.

Going forward, I hope we will remain confident in this. And that we as a profession will be much more visible and vocal when we are overlooked, forgotten, or politely erased. There is more at stake than mere visibility. This is about whether our cities are shaped by short-lived images or by long-term responsibility toward life, climate, and future generations.