Tim Waterman

Landscape Studies, Food Studies, Utopian Studies

About me

Photo by Nikos Tsogkas, in Bloomsbury, 2022

I live in London and I am Professor of Landscape Theory at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. I am Chair of the Landscape Research Group (LRG), a Non Executive Director at the arts organisation Furtherfield, and an advisor to the Centre for Landscape Democracy of the Landscape and Spatial Planning Institute at NMBU in Norway. I am also a former Vice President of the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS). I may be found, from time to time, in the pages of Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM), The Architects’ Journal, and Garden Design Journal, among others. My most recent book, published by Routledge in 2022, is a collection of my essays and journalism, The Landscape of Utopia: Writings on Everyday Life, Taste, Democracy, and Design. I am the author of Fundamentals of Landscape Architecture, which is now in its second edition from Bloomsbury and, with Ed Wall, Basics Landscape Architecture: Urban Design. These have been translated into eight languages. I have published three edited collections for Routledge: Landscape Citizenships, co-edited with Jane Wolff and Ed Wall (2021), Landscape and Agency: Critical Essays, with Ed Wall (2017) and the Routledge Handbook of Landscape and Food with Josh Zeunert (2018).

My research addresses imaginaries: moral, political, ecological, radical, and utopian. This forms the basis for explorations of power and democracy and their shaping of public space and public life; taste, manners, belief and ritual; and foodways in community and civic life and landscape.

I am a former restaurateur (The Vox Coffeehouse in Moscow, Idaho) and classical and rock musician (Nirvana opened for my band in their early years) and because of that background I aim for a future that is both a little bit tasty and a little bit rock and roll. Our cities, countryside, suburbs, and wilderness need great landscape thinking to accomplish this. I can still often be found on a stage with a microphone, but nowadays I’m talking instead of singing.

Follow me on Twitter @tim_waterman or on Mastodon @timwaterman@mas.to

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