On the Nature of Things : Contemporary American Landscape Architecture

Landscape architecture is a unique discipline where art, nature and the city converge and enter into an exciting dialogue. In the USA, the country of vast open plains and spacious towns, the great tradition of life in confrontation with nature plays an equally important role in landscape architecture as the acute problems of the built environment or social problems within the community. Design methods and practise in landscape architecture form the focus of this book, complemented by an analysis of the theoretical aspects of the subject. Perceptive portraits of 13 offices span the whole breadth of landscape design, from the post-ecological utopia of Michael Sorkin (New York/Vienna) to the urban pragmatism of the Roma Design group (San Francisco), from the ecological approach of the Philadelphia group Andropogon, also active in Japan, to the minimalist landscape art of Kathryn Gustafson (Seattle/London/Paris). The author is a freelance landscape architect in New York. His detailed knowledge of the contempo