The complex story of modern landscape architecture remains to be written, as does its precise definition. Thinking a Modern Landscape Architecture, West and East, written by one of the field's most prolific and insightful authors, provides a rare cross-cultural study that examines the written and design contributions made by two of the movement's most influential early protagonists: Christopher Tunnard (1910-1979) in England--and later the United States, and Sutemi Horiguchi (1896-1984) in Japan. Tunnard's pioneering manifesto, Gardens in the Modern Landscape, first published in 1938, laid out the thinking and provided the direction for a landscape architecture engaged more strongly with contemporary life, adopting ideas from modern art as well as the historical gardens of Japan. Rather than a book, it was the architect Horiguchi's 1934 essay "The Garden of Autumn Grasses" that initiated a new direction for garden making in Japan, with a considered and artful use of seasonal plants and a stronger connection to the modern architecture it accompanied. Unlike Tunnard, who sought inspiration and sources in contemporary art, Horiguchi looked to the eighteen-century Rimpa School of painting for insights into the composition of the new garden by carefully placing individual plants against a simple background. Although the two theorists-practitioners never met, Tunnard's interest in Japan, and use of Horiguchi's work as illustrations, links them in a shared quest for a landscape architecture appropriate to their times and respective countries. Lavishly illustrated with 150 historical and contemporary photos and drawings, Thinking a Modern Landscape Architecture, West and East: Christopher Tunnard and Sutemi Horiguchi offers the first compressive study into their thinking, landscape designs, and consequent influence on landscape architecture in the years that followed.

On the heels of our groundbreaking books in landscape architecture, James Corner's Recovering Landscape and Charles Waldheim's Landscape Urbanism Reader, comes another essential reader, . Examining our shifting perceptions of nature and place in the context of environmental challenges and how these affect urbanism and architecture, the seventeen essayists in argue for an all-encompassing view of landscape that integrates the scientific, intellectual, aesthetic, and mythic into a new multidisciplinary understanding of the contemporary landscape. A must-read for anyone concerned about the changing nature of our landscape in a time of climate crisis.

For almost thirty years Claude Cormier et Associés has designed landscapes daring in scope while earnest in execution, courting controversy while inviting public accord. Produced under the leadership of Claude Cormier, the range of these projects has spanned the creation of parks and squares, the renovation of historical landscapes, and the conversion of industrial sites. While always serious in the address of function, their designs often display a touch of humor in both method and form--in all, these are works marked by "serious fun." It is a practice unique in Canada, arguably in the world. That people use, and may even love, these urban landscapes testifies to the pleasure afforded by their designs and the humanistic dimensions of the practice. This, the first book exclusively dedicated to the landscapes of Claude Cormier and his team, provides a broad overview of their ideas and methods with insightful discussions of selected projects and the thinking behind them.

The Shape of the Land: Topography & Landscape Architecture--the first book to center on this subject--presents the contributions of thirteen well-known practitioners and academics who discuss the forms and ramifications of reconfiguring terrain. The essays range in content from pre-industrial precedents in the work of Humphry Repton to new digital topographic modeling systems without the use of contour lines, the treatment of waste products to the land art of the American Southwest. Practicing landscape architects focusing on the modeling of topography in the works considering both utility and aesthetics. In all, the book reviews the history, reasons, and results of at least three centuries of topographic interventions, while suggesting pathways into the future--as new technology and new necessities increase the functional demands placed upon landscape architects, while at the same time potentially offering new forms of artistic expression.

Dies ist ein umfassendes Lehrbuch und Nachschlagewerk zur Geschichte der Landschaftsarchitektur in Europa, Amerika und Asien, und zwar von ihren Ursprüngen bis hin zur Gegenwart. Diese 2. Auflage bietet mehr als nur einen aktualisierten Überblick: Sie behandelt ausführlich kulturelle, soziale, politische, technologische und philosophische Aspekte, die die Geschichte des Landschaftsbaus beeinflussen und untersucht darüber hinaus die Auswirkungen menschlicher Aktivitäten auf die Umwelt. Am Ende jedes Kapitels gibt es eine Zusammenfassung und Literaturhinweise. Neu hinzugekommen sind spezielle Kapitel zum asiatischen Landschaftsbau, zur modernen Planung und zu Pflanzmethoden. Eine idealer Einführungstext für Studenten der Landschaftsarchitektur und verwandter Disziplinen und unentbehrliches Nachschlagewerk für Experten. (y12/98)

Planting design is, rather obviously, a complex topic, spanning as it does art, science, social need, and morality--especially during these days of increasing planetary environmental threat. Although certainly not denying the importance of scientifically appropriate practices, the symposium "The Aesthetics of [Contemporary] Planting Design" addressed planting design today, proposing a renewed concern for the cultural and aesthetic aspects of the landscapes that result. This book, which has been developed from the original presentations at the symposium, presents the thoughts of a select international group of landscape architects and historians who discuss the subject of planting design through the lens of their own work as well as the work of others, both contemporary and historical. They suggest that, as in real estate, the most important factor in selecting plants is "location, location, location." Certainly the Californian situation is far more forgiving than the aridity and other restrictive environmental conditions endemic to the Sonoran desert, or the frost and short growing seasons of Nordic lands that direct Scandinavian landscape architects to rely on native birches, pines, rowan, and moss. Most of us would agree that there are plants sensible for each climatic zone. Addressing environmental conditions is but the first step in the equation, however. There are also the issues of combination and composition.

Twenty-two essays that provide a forum for assessing the tenets, accomplishments and limits of modernism in landscape architecture and for formulating ideas about possible directions for the future of the discipline These twenty-two essays provide a rich forum for assessing the tenets, accomplishments, and limits of modernism in landscape architecture and for formulating ideas about possible directions for the future of the discipline. During the 1930s Garrett Eckbo, Dan Kiley, and JamesRose began to integrate modernist architectural ideas into their work and to design a landscape more in accord with the life and sensibilities of their time. Together with Thomas Church, whose gardens provided the setting for California living, they laid the foundations for a modern American landscape design. This first critical assessment of modem landscape architecture brings together seminal articles from the 1930s and 1940s by Eckbo, Kiley, Rose, Fletcher Steele, and Christopher Tunnard, and includes contributions by contemporary writers and designers such as Peirce Lewis, Catherine Howett, John Dixon Hunt, Peter Walker, and Martha Schwartz who examine the historical and cultural framework within which modern landscape designers have worked. There are also essays by Lance Neckar, Reuben Rainey, Gregg Bleam, Michael Laurie, and Marc Treib that discuss the designs and legacy of the Americans Tunnard, Eckbo, Church, Kiley, and Robert Irwin. Dorothée Imbert takes up Pierre-Emile Legrain and French modernist gardens of the 1920s, and Thorbjörn Andersson reviews experiments with stylized naturalism developed by Erik Glemme and others in the Stockholm park system.