Are gardens anything more than collections of plants? Spaces for leisure activities? Extensions that protect the private house from the public road? Art objects appreciated by a relatively small group of connoisseurs? To consider such questions this guidebook invites readers on a tour of ten beautiful gardens as depicted in thousands and thousands of pages of fiction written by the most skillful of novelists over a period of almost a millennium.
From Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji and the evermysterious Hypnerotomachia Poliphili to such Chinese masterpieces as the Chin P'ing Mei and Cao Xuequin's Story of the Stone and on through the works of famous English, European, Australian, and American writers, these novels compound gardens as they exist within the culture of the times with the specific needs of fiction, tackling everything from planting plans to the activities that take place within the garden confines. When novelists write the garden it is revealed, again and again, as the site of peccadilloes that define the state of being human, and while these written gardens may not be places we would ever wish to visit, should they actually exist, a consideration of their role in defining humanity provides yet another way to experience and appreciate any real gardens we happen to encounter.
This is a collection of 22 garden and landscape projects from "Fine Gardening" magazine. Projects include how to: add a fence; build a garden wall, from dry stone to rammed earth; create a garden oasis; and make housing for garden plants. Home gardeners, horticulturists and landscapers give first-hand accounts of common projects readers can build for their own landscapes. Also, practical, in-depth descriptions, together with full colour photographs and step-by-step illustrations, give clear directions on what needs to be done and how to go about doing it.
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First and foremost, this is a book about New Zealand landscape architecture and urban design, viewed through the lens of Isthmus, an award-winning design studio that for more than twenty-five years has been shaping and reshaping the way we experience our land and cityscapes. It is also a story about New Zealand, about changing perspectives and attitudes to the use of land and water, the way we organise our cities, the way we play, live, and work, and the lessons from the past that can influence the way we build new communities. Coast. Country. Neighbourhood. City. presents twenty-five projects, from small playscapes that put children back at the heart of the city right through to large infrastructural works, such as the New Plymouth Coastal Walkway, that have transformed cities by turning them around to face the water. These works are set against a background of contemporary debates about making the new New Zealand, housing and population intensification, urbanisation, and landscape protection. It is hoped that this book will bring these integrated works of landscape, urban design, and architecture to a wider audience. This is a generous, well-crafted, and beautifully photographed book that also explains the process of design through drawing. The twenty-five projects illustrate design ideas, the stories behind them, and the impact that these project have had on their communities. Importantly, Coast. Country. Neighbourhood. City. is the first published compilation of works detailing the output of one New Zealand design studio with a strong record of innovative landscape architecture practice.
This title features courtyard gardens and terraces designed to become part of the interior spaces of the homes they adjoin. Providing an attractive solution for time-poor owners, these low-maintenance gardens function as outdoor rooms and become extensions of everyday living spaces.
A renowned American landscape architect whose New York City based studio is responsible for some of the most notable and awarded spaces internationally and throughout the United States. Thomas Balsley: Uncommon Ground is a collection of selected projects that display the sweeping range of his work over the past twenty-five years.
Public and private parks, plazas, campuses, and waterfronts attest to the extraordinary level of design excellence that has defined his international reputation and that of his studio, Thomas Balsley Associates. Working within the margins of the city grids on scraps of land and post-industrial waterfronts, his unique fusion of nature, culture, and process have produced vibrant public spaces, urban miracles both large and small, provocative and sublime, and have established him as a leader and champion of the sustainable and livable urban environment. Balsley Park on Manhattan's 57th Street has been named in his honor, a testament to his substantial work in metropolises around the world. Along with popular and cultural acclaim, Balsley has also recently been selected to become the thirteenth recipient of the coveted ASLA Design Medal, in recognition of exceptional design work at a sustained and professional level.
SMART Landscape is a significant contribution to the conversation on sustainable landscape design, providing energy efficient models and water saving landscape ideas. There are many factors that would help realize energy efficient landscapes, including (but not limited to) the use of energy saving lamps, such as LED; the integration and adoption of renewable energy, including solar-powered and wind-powered landscape lighting; energy-efficient landscape design, particularly through the correct placement and selection of shade trees, and the creation of wind breaks. This book shows techniques for creating landscapes that also save water, for example by choosing correct planting materials; reducing stormwater run-off through the use of bio-swales, rain gardens and green roofs and walls; reducing water usage in landscapes through best-practice water-wise garden techniques, including irrigation using gray water. Permeable paving materials can also help to reduce stormwater runoff and allow rainwater to infiltrate into the ground and replenish groundwater rather than run into surface water systems.
Laurie Olin's interest in public outdoor seating in parks and civic spaces revolves around two poles: the first is a concern for aspects of the ordinary in our settings and actions, the apparatus and effects of the quotidian in our individual lives and experience; the other is the utility of public seating in the conduct and potential of our role as citizens and the establishment of place and community. A not inconsiderable aspect of both is the engendering of pleasure. In a democracy we are expected to fulfill two potentials - those of private citizen and contributing member of a community. When sitting on a bench or chair in a park or plaza we inevitably participate in the life of a particular space, city, and society while simultaneously pursuing our own life with its demands and aspirations. Chairs and benches in their many varieties and situations are the setting (pun intended) for profoundly simple, albeit important, and largely unnoticed aspects of our lives.
Humans are gregarious and habitually love to be together, often sitting about for hours at a time. Commonly this is for dining, whether singly or in groups, large or small. We sit in public places, in private ones, indoors and out, often doing nothing except watching the world. Over the course of centuries many devices have been developed for such purposes. Not a comprehensive history or survey, this is an appreciation derived from frequent, often iterative personal observation and constant professional engagement with the topic of seating, sometimes in gardens, but more particularly in public and civic environments. The book consists of a series of essays that begin with the author's personal discovery of public seating. An 'ah hah' moment as a young architect visiting Paris and his early experience as a designer is followed by a brief history of the evolution of public space and seating in the West. This is followed by an account of some of his experiments as a landscape architect, and the theory, craft, and role of seating in a number of prominent civic places his firm and others have designed in the past four decades. Along the way there are reflections on the author's interest in chairs, seating, public space, and aspects of the profession of landscape architecture. Accompanying the essays there are sketches, and watercolors made by Olin over time while travelling or working that weren't originally intended as book illustrations. Some are quick, hasty notes of something observed; others are more careful studies with, on occasion, measurements. Some were made leisurely while enjoying a felicitous moment or place, while others record the author puzzling through a particular design problem. Each in some way exemplifies aspects of the essays helping to articulate or sharpen the author's insights and point of view - those of a designer, not a historian or critic. They offer an alternative presentation of the topics raised, and a dialogue between writing and image - whether one of contrast, or at times, contrast.
- Great range of both riverfront and coastal promenade designs, spanning across the globe, each showcasing a unique way of resolving challenges with site adjustment, environmental factors, sustainability, and highlighting ways to improve or create better public access for a more culturally rich social cohesion between the infrastructure, community and the environment.- Many of the projects are focused on improving pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly zones within the waterfront designs.- Book features full-color photography throughout, with detailed diagrams and illustrations, key guidelines and informative text panels.Waterfronts, the unique places where land and water meet, are a finite resource, embodying the special history and character of each city. The last decades have witnessed profound changes along abandoned or underused waterfronts, bringing in new pedestrian areas, new business opportunities, and new vitality. This trend is accelerating in cities around the globe.Waterfront Promenade Design seeks to answer to the question of how we can go about rejuvenating waterfronts by promoting good landscape planning and design. In total, 34 great waterfront design practices were selected from all over the world, each with their own unique way of solving the problems posed by their allocated sites, social conditions, and public policies. All resulted in more vibrant, accessible, resilient, and culturally rich public spaces, attuned to these needs.In order to strengthen the waterfront's coherence and connection, this book pays special attention to the design of traversable space along waterfronts, ensuring that promenades are maintained as pedestrian and cyclists-friendly zones. Based on in-depth analysis, this book provides useful design and planning approaches for professionals, decision-makers, and scholars.
With neither the guile nor the hubris to do something as ingenious as it sounds, the city of Los Angeles is attempting to redeem a desert lake without refilling it. Part environmental history, landscape atlas, and speculative design research, The Spoils of Dust examines the unlikely reinvention of Owens Lake by the city that dried it.Once the third-largest lake in California and among the world’s greatest sources of dust, for decades the dried Owens Lake was merely a footnote to the most notorious water grab in modern history. Now, the desert lake has been reassembled—not refilled—to redeem its lost value without returning Los Angeles’s main water supply. In The Spoils of Dust this “bargain” redemption and its conjuring of a beguiling “lakelike” landscape is the backdrop for investigating contemporary relationships between landscape architecture, engineering, and perception. Assembled atop a barren waste, the Promethean lake reveals the frameworks we use to reinvent nature in the Anthropocene. Whether by technical dust “drawing” or casual roadside views, the new water-wise lake is an awkward and fascinating monument to the prismatic ways we know and value landscapes today. Unexpectedly, this has made its imaginative design the linchpin for critical water resource decisions, thrusting landscape architecture into a consequential position. The book concludes with a landscape atlas and robotic interface for a playful and integrated approach to landscape infrastructure design.
Landscape Tunings maintains that landscape is more than ecology and technical performance; it is also an environment of paramount importance to one's dispositions and wellbeing--an emotional space of social relevance, tuned with and for its communities. In this book, OFICINAA examines the design potentials of the Danube River as a civic anchor, a bioclimatic medium, and a space for collective imagination in the city of Ingolstadt, Germany.
Landscape Tunings: An Urban Park at the Danube explores the city's littoral landscapes with video-essays, drawings, walks, public installations, and exhibitions--each spotlighting the sensate-space where the city meets the Danube's edge. It then showcases the bottom-up and tactical design approaches of the Stadt Park Donau - Donau-Loop project, which aims to foster the spatial embodiment with the riverine environments facing the present challenges of the anthropogenic era. With contributions by G nther Vogt, Andres Lepik, and Simone Schimpf, Landscape Tunings projects the role of littoral landscapes as a medium for the collective wellbeing of the city. Flowing through ten countries, the Danube is one of the most international rivers in the world. Regardless of its scale, economic output, and ecological relevance, the Danube's landscapes act as cornerstones for civic interaction while "touching" numerous urban fabrics. Initiated in 2013, the Stadt Park Donau - Donau-Loop project in Ingolstadt derives from a three-year design study in collaboration with the various communities in the city. Rather than totalizing, and related to the key German concept of "Stimmung" (tuning of space), the design interventions are spatial tunings to foster community access, wonder and delight. These interventions intensify the particularities of the river landscapes with its distinct environments, and leverage the potentials of the riverbanks as a "thick" space in the pressing commitments to social wellbeing. The Stadt Park Donau - Donau-Loop project was exhibited at the Museum of Concrete Art and Design in Ingolstadt. The exhibition shared the multiple scopes and scales of the design, inviting the public to envision the Danube's inherent beauty as a spatial component in the urban fabric of one the fastest growing cities in Germany.
