I was not the first to pose this question; it was first asked in print by Garrett Eckbo, one of the most important landscape architects in America in the twentieth century. One could equally reverse the question and ask: ‘Is architecture landscape?’. In either formulation the question is about the relationship between two arts that are normally understood as separate professions these days. In fact, Eckbo was not the first to puzzle over this issue, even if his exact formulation had no antecedents. The question had already been posed in the nineteenth century, when landscape architecture emerged as a distinct discipline. The early theorists of the field, Humphry Repton and John Claudius Loudon in England, Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy in France, and Andrew Jackson Downing in the USA, all wondered about the relationships between these two practices – if indeed they were two. The professional accrediting and licensing bodies that were formed subsequently tried to settle the matter and institutionalise the distinction. But the question may be older, for it is possible to say that the distinction between these disciplines, at least the suggestion of fundamental differences, was debated even earlier in the eighteenth century. The cases I have in mind include the Abbé Laugier and William Chambers; the first compared the routes through a forest to the streets of a town, while the second used landscape aesthetics to evaluate the merits of a building's facade. Despite this tradition and indeed maybe because of it, the questions these theorists asked have not disappeared in our time.

During 2008–10, I was the Artist in Residence of the Leverhulme Trust, at the National Oceanography Centre, (NOCS), Southampton, working with sonar geophysicist Dr Tim Le Bas, exploring methods of seabed mapping and undersea survey. During this period I documented aspects of oceanographic study, learnt processes used by my scientific colleagues, conducted performative interventions and made works in direct response to the context of NOCS. The work produced was shown at an exhibition at University of Wales Institute, Cardiff in 2009 and will be developed into a larger exhibition at the John Hansard Gallery, Southampton in 2012. This article constitutes both a re-presentation of my primary research and a reflection on the methods I adopted to address the issues raised by my inquiries. Works produced are both referred to directly and represented via supplementary documentation.

The Japanese dry garden apart, water has been an essential ingredient in all garden-making. From its sources in agricultural and other modes of food production, water has been used to irrigate and maintain a host of necessary functions, some of which, like the water wheel in Mediterranean cultures [1], have been (and still are) crucial elements of agricultural cultivation.

But the other crucial feature of water, unless it is manipulated in some way by human agency, is its capacity to seek the path of least resistance. It may wear away rocks and soils, but essentially it seeks to find the easier and least resistant path through the local elements. The manipulation of water, then, in designed landscapes is a cultural mode of soliciting from water its best features, drawing out its performative aspects. But the features deemed ‘best’ are the result of a whole range of objectives that transcend physical properties to communicate and exploit specific and very local cultural capabilities.

John Evelyn (1620–1706) is a prominent character in the historiography of seventeenth-century science. His friendships with Robert Boyle, Christopher Wren and Sir Thomas Browne, to name a few, ensure this, as does the huge volume of relevant archival material that he left behind. He was not particularly accomplished as a scientist, or natural philosopher to use the contemporary term, but he did engage earnestly with the project of establishing new experimentalist directions for the investigation of nature, both in the Royal Society after its establishment in the early 1660s, and in other milieux in the lead up to that event. As a figure in garden historiography, Evelyn is equally important. He was not a professional gardener, but a gentleman educated for public office. However, until the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, the year he turned forty, he was excluded from public service because of his political allegiances – he was a Royalist. The 1650s were for Evelyn a decade of retirement, and from this time come both the gardens at Wotton – the topic of this paper – and his own famous garden at Sayes Court in Deptford, established in 1653. It was also the time when he composed much of the material on gardening and other virtuoso topics that he published both during that decade and subsequently.

Recent scholarly work has shifted our attention to the ways in which gardens negotiated the particularities of their ecological situation. New studies look at the archaeology of gardens, a fundamentally architectural shift which excavates issues of resource use. Materially specific research which sets gardens back into their hydraulic and topographic context has illuminated new dimensions of their inventive praxis. Many gardens turn out, in fact, to have been very carefully constructed in relation to a sensitive reading of local hydrological conditions. What is more, the facts of these sources seem also to be integrally enmeshed with their spatial and poetic aspects, providing salutary examples as our attention returns to what we are now calling sustainability.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the discovery of Pompeii attracted European aristocrats to include the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Southern Italy) on their Grand Tour itinerary. Similarly, Sybaris, an ancient Greek colonial polis also directed aristocratic attention to the region. French painter and engraver Jean-Claude Richard de Saint-Non and his entourage of architects most famously documented the ruinous Sybaris and exported its imagery back to France. In parallel with these developments, interest in recreating sybaritic images within luxurious Picturesque gardens arose. Drawing upon a pair of garden case studies, Monsieur de Monville's Broken Column House (1780–81) at Désert de Retz, Chambourcy, and Queen Marie-Antoinette's hameau (1783) within the Petit Trianon Gardens at Versailles, this paper examines the sybaritic images, their influences and the ethical values of the creators of these gardens. Monville and Marie-Antoinette were, for instance, charged of excess. This paper is concerned with the way in which these sybaritic places were configured and how they encapsulated a mythic Sybaris, and argues that the charges of excess levelled against their creators partly stemmed from the unusual and sybaritic effects to be found at their private entertainment gardens.

A significant development in urban history was the emergence of the Garden City movement at the end of the nineteenth century, inspired by the writings and actions of Ebenezer Howard. The movement would generate a broad range of urban typologies and various visionary models of the city during the twentieth century. The Garden City was a direct response to what were perceived to be the evils of large industrial cities and attempted to reunite country and town, particularly through the residential garden and the act of gardening. Using Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's assemblage theory I examine gardens and gardening, and the agencies inherent to these. By evoking the early history of the first Garden City at Letchworth, we can ask what role can gardens and gardeners play in addressing contemporary urban issues? [1].

What is a ‘Smartcity’? [1] The Smartcity differentiates itself from the ‘Eco-city’ by embracing new paradigms of programme, form and sociological interaction. It is neither a fixed place nor a singular approach but rather a manifesto for the production of a space relevant for the twenty-first century.

The Smartcity is not a creation from a blank slate, but an evolution of long-standing sustainable principles that intertwine with contemporary desires for a healthier physical, mental and social existence in an increasingly alienating world. It aims to preserve and enhance natural and cultural resources, expand the range of eco-transportation, employment and housing choice, and values long-term regional sustainability over short-term focus. The currency of an ‘eco-’ prefix has become devalued through overuse and abuse, and ‘sustainability’ is a blanket expression – clearly, some aspects of our lifestyle are worth sustaining and others are not. Deciding and acting on which category they fall into, however, is not as straightforward as it appears. Conservation of energy and the environment are key priorities, but so too is the conservation of heritage, tradition and human interaction. Each generation is the proprietor of its own values, and the current zeitgeist has reacted against the mass-produced and anodyne, whether in the guise of housing, jobs and clothing or fruit and vegetables. Without ignoring technological advances, the Smartcity embraces leanness and the low-tech by adopting an operating system that filters out excess and reboots our social space. Smartcity living does not ask for ‘more’ but determines how to use less in the creation of a healthier mental and physical existence [2].

For architects, intellectual property (IP) law is vital. Without it plans, building designs and models would have no value as others could copy them without payment. But what are an architect's rights and how are those rights retained in order to avoid commercial exploitation?

The legislation for this area of law comes from the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA), the Registered Designs Act 1949, the Trade Marks Act 1994 and the Patents Act 1977. IP itself is divided into those rights that are registrable at the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and those that are not. Rights that must be registered before the work is protected include trademarks, patents and registered designs; IP rights that cannot be registered include copyright and unregistered design rights.