334 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Cooperation 

 in City 

 Planning 



Organization 

 and Equip- 

 ment of a 

 Landscape 

 Architects 

 Office 



Clerical 

 Force 



each designer shall be informed, at least in a general way, as to what 

 the other is doing and means to do, and that each shall consult the 

 other sufficiently in advance of the construction of any work so that 

 the ideas of both shall be made as far as possible effective. Such collab- 

 oration requires tact, sympathetic insight, and mutual respect in the 

 collaborators, and some men otherwise good designers are unfortu- 

 nately incapable of serving a client in this way. 



These two methods of cooperation among designers are much the 

 most likely to prove successful. Of course there can be effective co- 

 operation among the various assistants in a landscape architect's office, 

 and some of the larger offices of architects, engineers, and landscape 

 architects have assistants trained in these three fields. If the respon- 

 sible designer is himself capable of appreciating and handling the work 

 in its entirety, this is an excellent system of cooperation. If he is not, 

 he is little better than a quack and an exploiter of other men's ability. 



The broadest field of professional activity in which the landscape 

 architect finds himself most frequently in cooperation with practi- 

 tioners from other professions is the field of city planning, where the 

 landscape architect works in collaboration with engineer, architect, 

 sociologist, economist, or lawyer. Here the delimitation of field can- 

 not be territorial, but must be according to the subjects in which the 

 various collaborators are severally skilled. It is therefore doubly im- 

 portant that each collaborator should appreciate the point of view of 

 the others, and that all should have at least a sound fundamental con- 

 ception of the subject of city planning as a whole. 



There are some landscape architects, especially among the younger 

 men, as there are architects and engineers, who, so to speak, are their 

 own office force ; and indeed a great deal of good work is done by the 

 man with a small practice who keeps all its details in his own mind ; 

 but for any considerable amount of professional work it is necessary 

 that the landscape architect should have assistants, and that they 

 should be good both in their own field and as parts of the office machine. 



Assistance may so frequently be found for the clerical work of an 

 office at so low a price that a business would be small indeed which 

 could not afford some assistance of this kind. This work is however 

 extremely important to the efficiency of the whole organization. A 



