Performance Evaluation: Identifying Barriers and Enablers for Landscape Architecture Practice

Abstract

Performance evaluation is crucial for environmental design and sustainable development, especially so for architecture and landscape architecture. However, such performance evaluations remain rare in practice. It is argued that the concerns over potential negative evaluations and a lack of funding are the two main barriers preventing the undertaking of performance evaluations. This research investigated how these two barriers were overcome in practice by studying 41 evaluation cases in the New Zealand landscape architecture field, as well as several international and architectural case studies for comparison. A range of enablers for performance evaluation practices were identified by this research, including funding sources and models that were not documented by existing literature, as well as two strategies for handling the risks of negative evaluation. All of the identified enablers share the same underlying logic—the benefits and costs of an evaluation should be well-regulated by certain mechanisms to keep the benefits of an evaluation greater than, or at least balanced with, the costs, for all the parties involved in the evaluation.

Landscape Architecture Professional Knowledge Abstraction: Accessing, Applying and Disseminating

“…As this study is primarily concerned with the level of knowledge abstraction in practice, landscape architecture practitioners are the best sources of information. Therefore, members of the American Society of Landscape Architecture (ASLA), the largest professional association for landscape architecture in North America (15,155 members), were chosen for this study [38]. In order to keep the survey more manageable, this study only randomly sampled a small portion, about 5%, of the selected population, who were all full and honorary members with valid email addresses listed in the ASLA online member directory.…”

Exploring the Terminology, Definitions, and Forms of Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) in Landscape Architecture

“…This type of evaluation is always carried out after the built work has been occupied or been in service to allow the users to fully experience the design and for potential problems to become apparent [3]. As argued by numerous scholars and practitioners [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15], evaluating the actual performance of implemented designs is considered highly important for the healthy growth of the environmental design discipline and to help the relevant professions to better understand how their design solutions work in reality and, therefore, contribute to a better-performing built environment. There is a considerable number of studies published around POE since the late 1960s.…”

How Is “Success” Defined and Evaluated in Landscape Architecture—A Collective Case Study of Landscape Architecture Performance Evaluation Approaches in New Zealand

“…The LAF study analysed the methodology documents of the 148 CSI cases and developed a guidebook, in which a wide range of performance indicators and evaluation methods were documented to help future evaluators plan and conduct their evaluations. The CSI initiative is the most influential research programme in the field of landscape performance evaluation and was a representative example of one of the two most viable evaluation mechanisms identified by Chen et al [30].…”

“…As reported by Chen, Bowring, and Davis [30], apart from the evaluation cases that were undertaken under the CSI's benefits-oriented evaluation mechanism, there are also a wide range of cases that were evaluated under a different mechanism, adopting a financially and institutionally independent approach. However, there is no similar study mapping the methodological terrain of the cases conducted beyond the CSI mechanism.…”

“…Therefore, it would also be useful to carry out a study similar to the "terrain mapping" study commissioned by the LAF but investigate a larger variety of evaluation cases. Based on a previous study undertaken by Chen, Bowring, and Davis [30], which analysed the funding sources and evaluator types of a representative set of New Zealand evaluation cases, this research further investigated the same set of cases to examine how "success" is defined and evaluated in practice.…”