Gareth Doherty is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Director of the Master in Landscape Architecture Program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Doherty explores and unravels narratives and practices of landscape architecture that have not yet been formally documented. This work is essential to establish the precedents required to diversify the design disciplines and expand upon the limited and limiting traditional design canons. Doherty works in Islamic and, for comparative purposes, postcolonial societies, valuing the everyday and the experiential aspects of landscapes, be they professionally designed or not. Through a grounded research method Doherty calls “landscape fieldwork,” he employs human and environmental audiences as essential components of design and research in complex landscapes.
Doherty bases his work on two questions. First, how can landscape architecture theory, education, and practice benefit from working with societies with no formal landscape architecture discipline? Second, how does comparing landscapes of diverse societies better inform landscape architects’ sensitivity to the values that shape others’ attitudes towards the landscapes they dwell in and make? Doherty addresses these questions through research on designed landscapes across the postcolonial and Islamic worlds, primarily in the Arabian Peninsula, West Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.
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