[slightly updated reprint]
Q. I have some extra time this
summer/semester/winter and would like to read an extra book or two. Can
you suggest anything good?
A. It depends on your interest.
a) An easy avenue to consider as a start would be to get some
recent issues of Landscape Architecture Magazine which is published by
the American Society of Landscape Architecture and is meant as their
semi-official portrayal of the state of the profession.
b)
For environmental planning students I frequently recommend the
following (although some are recommended as examples of trends that I
may or may not fully endorse):
Ian McHarg's Design With Nature and A Quest for Life.
Anything written by
Wendell Berry. My favorite was
Home Economics, but that was a while ago.
Duany, Plater-Zyberk, and Speck's Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream.
James Howard Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape.
c)
For those who are trying to move up from entry level students to
serious students of landscape architecture, here is an edited version of the list
Dr. Shearer prepared for some our past design students:
There
are several books by John R. Stilgoe that are well worth reading. He is
an historian, not a designer, and holds a joint appointment between the
Department of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of
Design and the Visual & Environmental Studies Department of the
Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Also
worth mentioning, he writes a bi-monthly column in the Sunday Boston
Globe--South Shore Edition. You can find these by searching his name on
Google News.
John Stilgoe, Common Landscapes of North America.
His first major work, this book examines how North America has been
intentionally shaped from the colonial era through the early nineteenth
century by non-designers. Topics include measures taken by
government--such as the Ordering of Towns which was penned before the
Puritans stepped off the Arabella, the Spanish Law of the
Indies, and the Jefferson-era Northwest Ordinance; by farmers--how
northerners made fences to keep things in vs. how southerners made
fences to keep things out and why barns are red; and by what might be
considered visionary industrialists--such as the people who funded the
Pennsylvania Turnpike and the Erie Canal. As one might expect, this book
is chock full of historical facts, but its real strength is that
demonstrates how "traditional" practices for shaping the landscape are
not conventions to be followed uncritically. Instead, they are based on a
complex combination of ideals and practicalities. At a minimum, this
book would complement your landscape history class in that it describes
the "non-art" shaping of the environment. But separate from that
potential, I think this book would be of interest to everyone,
regardless of whether you are in the landscape architecture, landscape
industry, or environmental planning & management programs.
John Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic.
Relatively short and very approachable, this book was written for a
broad audience and intended to get everyone to go outside, look around,
and think about the implications of what they see. For example, how does
the US Post Office organize space and how, in turn, do we--in
part--live by that organization?
John Stilgoe, Landscape and Images.
This book is a compilation of some of JRS' articles and essays. Topics
include the role of photography in shaping our understanding of the
landscape (for better and worse), the specter of hobgoblins in suburbia,
and bikinis. This book came out last year through the University of
Virginia Press and I do not know if it is available as a paperback yet.
Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory.
Schama is another historian, but unlike Stilgoe does not focus on the
environment. (For example, a previous book was on Dutch painting and he
has recently been compiling a multivolume history of the Britain.) As a
result of his range, he is not as insightful on particular points about
landscape change, but his breadth makes connections that a more
specialized mind might miss. Some of the places described in Landscape and Memory
will be familiar to you from your landscape history class; others--like
Mount Rushmore--you will know from elsewhere. What I think is useful
about this book is its organization: Rather than go through a discussion
of these sites by time or by location, it is arranged in three parts by
material: wood, water, and rock. This perspective can help you re-think
not only what you learned in your history class, but how you might
apply design themes based on materials in studio.
William Cronan, Natures Metropolis.
If you are looking for patterns in this list, Cronan is also an
historian. If he has a fault, it would be that he occasionally
sentimentalizes some activities associated with shaping the environment.
That particular problem is not so evident in this history of Chicago in
which he describes how the idea (the promise?) of "progress," natural
resources, and technology combined to create a new kind of urban
condition. I recommend this book not because I think everyone should
know about America's second city, but because it lays out, in clear
language, how possibilities can be combined to create something bigger
than most people can imagine. Whether or not such things should
be built is another question, but it is happening at a rapid clip in
China as you read. Admittedly, this book will be of more obvious
interest to those in the environmental planning & management
program, but it could help everyone think about the built environment.
J. Nicholas Entrikin, The Betweenness of Place: Towards a Geography of Modernity.
This book is not an easy read: most graduate students need to keep a
very good dictionary at hand, and you will want to (or need to) pause
and think about what is expressed after each and every page. In essence,
Entrikin tries to synthesize two opposing ways we understand the
creation of regions. On the one side, there is the German "science of
space" view which holds that law-like forces of change operate
universally over time. On the other side is the French, "description of
place" view which holds that regions emerge from entirely idiosyncratic
opportunities and decisions. If you can get through it, it will help you
to understand arguments of geographic limitation-determinism.
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space. If you pick up Kevin Lynch and Gary Hack's Site Planning, you will be able to start applying what you read very quickly; It's just that kind of book. The Poetics of Space
is the opposite in term of easy application, but it is arguably as
important. You do not "use" this book. Instead, you live with it, and as
you do it infuses your own ideas and makes them richer. Most of the
points are made in terms of architecture—and indeed, this book is read
by just about every architect at some point in his or her education—but
do not let that get in the way of you reading it. (Stilgoe thought it
important enough that he wrote an introduction to one of the more recent
editions.)
Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension.
Hall is an anthropologist who writes on a variety of issues that
frequently go unnoticed in daily life because they are so ingrained in a
culture. In this book he examines what might be considered the dynamics
of personal space and indirectly, what designers might do to influence
how social places are designed.
Niall Kirkwood, The Art of Landscape Detail and Weathering and Durability in Landscape Architecture.
Kirkwood now deals with bioremediation and other technologies for brown
field sites, but his first book and follow-up were careful studies of
construction details. On the surface, they are about what combinations
of material and forms work, what do not work, and why. However, their
underlying premise is that for site scale design to be successful, the
ideas of the larger scheme should be expressed in the thoughtful
execution of the smallest elements. Admittedly, most books on building
details are hopelessly dull and this text might suffer a certain lack of
glamour. But if you want to further explore how a curb or a flight of
steps might matter and, moreover, how thinking about these things might
contribute to a richer design process, then these books are worth a
look. Also of note, when I last looked, they were quite expensive.
James Corner [Editor], Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture.
Corner was the Chair of the Landscape Architecture Department at the
University of Pennsylvania. Some of the essays in this collection are
difficult to read, but if you are interested in wrestling with big
ideas, it is a good place to start.
Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film.
Another disclaimer: I was GB's teaching fellow for several years. There
is "smart," there is "really smart," and there is "scary smart"—so
smart that you are glad the person uses their mind for good and not to
rule the planet for their own enrichment. Giuliana Bruno is scary smart.
This book is about the relationship between seeing and traveling, about
the "motion" in emotion. That topic alone makes it engaging, but what I
think is even more important about this book is the way it brings
together different arts.
Malcolm McCullough, Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand.
During pin-ups and reviews we have talked about how the making of
drawings and models is a matter of craft—of knowing about the qualities
of materials and how they can be shaped for a certain effect. Very soon
you will be making representations with a computer in addition to with a
lead holder and chipboard and you might be wondering, is there such a
thing as "digital craft"? After all, most AutoCad plots look as if they
could have been made by anyone any time. McCullough, who was trained as
an architect and urban planner, thinks that digital craft does exist,
even if the ideas of craft are not discussed or taught in a computer
lab. This book places digital media within a larger context of visual
arts. It will not teach you how to make the most of the Photoshop magic
wand tool, but it will introduce you to a way of thinking about your
efforts with keyboard and mouse that will lead to better works.
Douglas Cooper, Drawings and Perceiving: Life Drawings for Students of Architecture and Design. Cooper teaches at Carnegie Mellon and this book might be considered a translation or adaptation of the well known The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicholaides for designers. The instructions and exercises are quite good.
Robert W. Gill, Basic Rendering.
This book is all about black and white rendering. Its strength is its
discussion of how light behaves on the objects around us. It will help
you to become a master of stippling.
