At Levi’s Plaza in San Francisco, I was interested in the planted spaces, but I was equally interested in the parts that were not green.

I liked the large weeping willow and the flowering trees. I also paid attention to the stone, water, paving, and places to sit. The site brought together a planted park and a more formally arranged, paved plaza.

I did not understand one as the landscape and the other as something outside it.

Both shaped the place I was experiencing.

That is an important distinction for me. When I think about landscape architecture, I am not thinking only about the areas where plants grow. I am thinking about how the outdoor environment is given form, how it supports life, and what kind of place it creates.

The Ground Is Not a Background

It is easy to think of a landscape as something surrounding a building.

I am more interested in what happens when that outdoor space becomes a starting point.

A courtyard can give several buildings a shared center. A public route can determine how different parts of a site connect. A change in ground level can make room for a quieter space beside a busy one.

These decisions concern the arrangement of the place, not only its appearance.

This is what I mean when I think of landscape as a spatial framework. It establishes where things can happen and how those places relate to one another.

Planting is part of that work. So are the landform, paths, paved spaces, and places where people gather.

The public realm is not made only of its green areas. The ground where people meet, cross paths, or spend part of their day deserves just as much consideration.

What a Green Area Does Not Tell Me

When I look at a plan, the amount of open space is useful information. But it does not tell me enough on its own.

The same area could be distributed as narrow planting strips around buildings or brought together as a shared garden. Both might look green on a drawing. They would offer very different possibilities.

I am not suggesting that every planted area needs to become a place for people to enter. Some spaces should protect vegetation, provide separation, or support other forms of life.

What matters is understanding their purpose.

My work in Abu Dhabi now includes urban design and master planning. At that scale, I want landscape to be part of the discussion about how a place is organized, rather than only how the remaining areas will be treated.

The position and shape of an outdoor space can limit what we are able to ask of it later.

That is why I want to ask what the landscape should do while there is still room for the answer to influence the plan.

Nature Is Doing More Than Looking Green

Saying that landscape is more than green space does not make plants less important to me.

I value a tree for its form, its character, and the way it changes. It does not need to perform several measurable functions before it deserves attention.

But designing with living things also means considering the conditions that allow them to live.

I need to think about the soil beneath the surface, the water available, and whether the planting suits the place where it is expected to grow.

A planted depression, for example, can be designed to collect runoff from nearby paving and allow it to filter through soil. What appears to be a small garden can also be part of how the site manages rain.

Appropriate planting and habitat design can also support insects, birds, and other wildlife. The landscape is not working only for the people who visit it.

For me, this adds depth to the idea of beauty.

I want to appreciate what I see while also understanding what sustains it. A green appearance alone cannot tell me whether those relationships have been considered.

Landscape Can Give a Place Its Identity

My interest in museums and campuses has made me attentive to how much of their character can come from the outdoor setting.

I do not always experience the building as the main event and the landscape as its accompaniment.

I may come to know a campus through its garden before I ever enter one of its buildings. The outdoor space can become the part through which I understand the larger place.

At Levi’s Plaza, the planted park and paved plaza offered different ways of occupying the campus. The landscape helped turn the space around offices into somewhere people could spend time, with public engagement part of the design’s intention.

This interests me more than whether the landscape makes the buildings look better.

It can give the larger place a role in public life.

Someone who has no reason to enter the offices can still have a relationship with the place through its outdoor spaces.

That is one way I understand landscape contributing to identity: not simply through a recognizable image, but through the kind of relationship a place offers.

Making Room for Life

In my thesis, I described outdoor space as an environment for many aspects of life. I wanted it to bring people closer to nature and give them opportunities to meet, enjoy themselves, and take part in cultural life.

That remains a more useful starting point for me than deciding how green a project should look.

A landscape might need open ground for a gathering, a planted area that should remain undisturbed, or a route that makes the rest of the site accessible. These are different needs, and each deserves space and consideration.

I do not expect every landscape to do everything.

I do want its role to be understood before it is reduced to a surface treatment.

The plants, water, ground, and constructed elements are not there simply to complete the view. They help establish the conditions in which people and nature can occupy the place.

This is why I see landscape architecture as more than the addition of green space.

It is part of deciding what kind of place we are making, and what we are making room for.