Ian Mcharg And The Search For Ideal Order

Ian McHarg and the Search for Ideal Order looks at the well-known and studied landscape architect, Ian McHarg, in a new light. The author explores McHarg’s formative years, and investigates how his ideas developed in both their complexity and scale. As a precursor to McHarg’s approach in his influential book Design with Nature, this book offers new interpretations into his search for environmental order and outlines how his struggle to understand humanity’s relationship to the environment in an era of rapid social and technological change reflects an ongoing challenge that landscape design has yet to fully resolve. This book will be of great interest to academics and researchers in landscape architectural history.

This volume provides an in-depth historical overview of graphic and visual communication styles, techniques, and outputs from key landscape architects over the past century. Representing Landscapes: One Hundred Years of Visual Communication offers a detailed account of how past and present landscape architects and practitioners have harnessed the power of visualization to frame and situate their designs within the larger cultural, social, ecological, and political milieux. The fifth book in the Representing Landscapes series, the presentations contained within each of the 25 chapters of this work are not merely drawings and illustrations but are rather graphic touchstones whose past and current influence shapes how landscape architects think and operate within the profession. This collected volume of essays gathers notable landscape historians, scholars, and designers to offer their insights on how the landscape has been presented and charts the development and use of new technologies and contemporary theory to reveal the conceptual power of the living medium of the larger landscape. Richly detailed with over 220 colour and black and white illustrations from some of the discipline’s best-known landscape architects and designers, this work is a ‘must-have’ for those studying contemporary landscape design or those fascinated by the profession’s history.

A.D. Gordon was one of the most interesting and original Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. Quest for Life presents Gordon’s philosophy, which was developed in Hebrew at the beginning of the twentieth century, to the English reading public. It discusses the role played by the early Land of Israel pioneering labor community in the development of his thought, and offers a new understanding of its major themes, including: the relation of humanity to nature, human freedom, ethnicity, religion, and ethics. In addition, the book discusses the repercussions of Gordon’s thought with respect to contemporary civilization while suggesting its implicit ‘quest for life’ as the basis for a re-evaluation of such topics as the meaning of human life, Jewish peoplehood and the idea of a Jewish homeland.

Waste and Urban Regeneration examines the Nanjido region of Seoul and its transformation from Nanjido Landfill to the World Cup Park, and its relation to the urban ecology within the context of the city’s urban development during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The study analyses the urban ecological meanings of the site’s two distinct forms by consolidating them with the Lefebvrian urban theory and relational ecological theories. This book looks at environmental transformations and their link to South Korea’s political and economic changes; how Seoul City controlled waste populations, the borderline characterisations of the inhabited landfill and its community, the regeneration of the landfill into the post-landfill park and site-specific artworks which explored the conflict between the invisible presence of the landfill’s garbage and its history. As one of the first accounts of a landfill and landfill-turned-park of South Korea, this study is a must-read for academics and researchers interested in waste management, ecology, landscape theory and history.

Drawing from the unique context and climate of the Himalaya, this book highlights several innovative design interventions, shaped by a myriad of social, cultural, environmental, and political factors that have been employed in villages to combat climate change. Climate-Adaptive Design in High Mountain Villages focuses on Ladakh, an outpost on the front lines of climate change, and the region’s creative responses to the pressing issues of food security, water management, energy efficiency, design aid, and material resources in the Anthropocene. These strategies – from artificial glaciers to tree armor – showcase the breadth of creative solutions already underway. In doing so, the research addresses the broader concept of climate-adaptive design and how it informs the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning. An ideal read for academics, researchers, and students in these fields, this book presents a focused investigation into climate-adaptive strategies that could provide transferable solutions for the rest of the world.

This book examines three landmark utopian visions central to 20th century landscape architectural, planning, and architectural theory. The period between the 1890s and the 1940s was a fertile time for utopian thinking. Significant geographic shifts of large populations; radically altered relations between capital and labor; rapid technological developments; large investments in transportation and energy infrastructure; and repetitive economic disruptions motivated many individuals to wholly reimagine society – including the connections between social relations and the built environment. Landscape and Utopia examines the role of landscapes in the political imaginations of the Garden City, the Radiant City, and Broadacre City. Each project uses landscapes to propose a reconstruction of the relationships between land, labor, and capital but - while the projects are well-known – the role played by landscapes has been largely left unexamined. Similarly, the radical anti-capitalism that underpinned each project has similarly been, for the most part, left out of contemporary discussions. This book sets these projects within a historical and philosophical context and opens a discussion on the role of landscapes in society today. This book will be a must-read for instructors, students, and researchers of the history and theory of landscape architecture, planning, and architecture as well as utopian studies, cultural and social history, and environmental theory.

Alvar Aalto and The Art of Landscape captures the essence of the Finnish architect’s landscape concept, emphasising culture and tradition, which characterised his approach to and understanding of architecture as part of the wider environment. From the forests of his youth to sights from his travels, Alvar Aalto (1898–1976) was influenced by outdoor landscapes. Throughout his career, he felt the need to shape the terrain and this became a signature of his architecture. Divided into five chapters, this book traces Aalto’s relationship with landscape, starting with an analysis of his definitions and descriptions of landscape language, which ranged from natural references and biological terms, to synonyms and comparisons. It includes beautifully illustrated case study projects from the 1950s and 1960s, discussing Aalto’s transformation of different landscapes through topography, terracing and tiers, ruins and natural elements, horizon outlines, landmarks, and the repetition of form. Featuring archival sketches, garden drawings, and plans, the book also contains Aalto’s text ‘Architecture in the Landscape of Central Finland’ from 1925 in the appendix. This book provides fascinating, untold insights into Aalto’s relationship with landscape and how this developed during his lifetime, for scholars, researchers, and students interested in architecture and landscape history, landscape art, and cultural studies.

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