, just intellectual
games. Others might remind us that landscape architecture is primarily a craft profession,
an artisanal practice requiring multiple skills and talents. Such people may tell us of the
lifetime commitment necessary to learn and master such skills, in which case theory
would just get in the way. This may be true. in much of contemporary discourse, there is
considerably divergent rhetoric having very little to do with a profession that is primarily
a skill-oriented endeavor, striving toward a greater artfulness and grace in its attendant skills.
However, there is a distinction between craft and motivation, between the skill of making and the purpose that motivates the skill. Craft may often win professional competitions.
lt can be repeated and, to a degree, taught. lts skills can be deployed without any reference
to feelings, history, or ideas. Motivation, however, necessitates the definition of a particular stance toward life——some idea of a culture’s relationship toward the world and existential
problems. It employs the feeling found in cultural memory and personal experience to general meaning, wonder, and expression. Motivation engenders a heightened sense of purpose. At its greatest, it is an epiphany, a revelation, a new way of seeing the world. Motivation
establishes a vital alertness, a sensitive curiosity, and an insatiable sense of marvel. A built
landscape may well survive blemishes of craft, but will very rarely survive a creative stillbirth.
This relation between craft and motivation, the how and the why, is the forgotten rule
of theory Originally, art and architecture were understood as a unity between techne and