Designing Aotearoa New Zealand with nature: landscape regeneration of Western Waiheke Island

Abstract

Design with Nature had a global impact on late twentieth-century landscape architectural practice. This paper looks at both the direct influence of the text and how McHarg’s ideas were developed on Waiheke Island New Zealand. The project that we will examine is the Western Waiheke Entrance Landscape (Western Landscape), a 430-ha (1065 ac.) landscape project that is now 30 years old. The project was designed by a New Zealand landscape architect/planner, Dennis Scott [DJScott Associates Ltd (DJSA)] and has been widely deemed as a well-rounded ecological, social and economic success winning the NZILA enduring landscape award in 2017 (NZILA in Showcase: enduring category winner: Waiheke Western Entrance Headland Landscape, D J Scott Associates. https://nzila.co.nz/showcase/waiheke-island-western-entrance-headland-landscape, 2017). The DJSA design methodology combines integrated catchment management and a wide range of human activity into an ecologically regenerated landscape. We argue that this approach is a conscious, yet indigenous, development of Ian McHarg’s theory and methodology as expounded in the seminal book Design with Nature. These ideas and the consequences for the transformation of an important landscape point to new directions for socio-ecological practice.

Appendices

Appendix A: Maori glossary

Iwi	A Maori community or people
Kaumatua	A Maori elder
Mana Whenua	The indigenous people (Māori) who have historic and territorial rights over the land
Pa	A fortified settlement
Urupa	Cemetery

Appendix B: Dennis Scott professional biosketch

Dennis Scott began his education in science, landscape architecture and planning at Lincoln University, Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1970. Like many students at the time Scott avidly read McHarg’s (1969) publication Design with Nature. Scott began the development of an Integrated Catchment Management (ICM) method for his dissertation. This was a development of McHarg’s mapping methods towards practical outcomes and land-use management schemes. The catchment management theory was complementary to suitability mapping because it shared universal and multi-scale applicability.

Scott carried a McHargian ethos with him from university to the implementation of these ideas with the Ministry of Works and Development (MWD). The MWD planned, implemented and operated large-scale infrastructure projects like dams, roads and power stations as well as community housing projects and large-scale revegetation schemes. Scott began work with soil and plant scientists at MWD who were producing tracing-paper overlays, the forerunners to Geographic Information Systems. This helped Scott to refine the ICM method.

Scott worked at MWD throughout the 1970s and 1980s, analysing, mapping and planning for predominantly rural landscape interventions and developments. In the early 1980s, MDW research into benefits of native and indigenous plants in the regeneration process emerged and influenced the development of Scott’s method.

Scott’s in-depth understanding of the merits of suitability mapping, and how the information might be utilised and funnelled into policy, planning and design, was fundamental for the comprehensive re-imagining of Waiheke island, its functionality, character and future.