Product Description

People have shaped the landscape around them since prehistoric times, creating places as diverse in form and meaning as Stonehenge, the Forbidden City of Beijing, Versailles, and New York's Central Park. Overflowing with hundreds of plans, drawings, and photographs, many created specially for this book, this engrossing volume spans the history of landscape design and reveals a great deal about the development of societies, and how cities, parks, and gardens embody cultural values.

Examining famous and lesser-known sites, some now vanished, this comprehensive survey leads the reader from ancient Egyptian royal cemeteries to the magnificent gardens of Renaissance and Baroque Europe, and from great 18th-century English estates and American public gardens to the earthworks and other landscape projects of today.

A feast for the historian, landscape designer, and gardener alike, this new book has no equal.
630 illustrations, 430 in full color, 544 pages, 85/8 x 111/2"

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61505 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 544 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, former administrator of New York City's Central Park (The Forests and Wetlands of New York City), begins Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History with stone circles and ziggurats, and traces design's evolution through to today's suburbs and theme parks. An encyclopedic account of man-made landscapes around the world illustrated with a stunning 633 photos and drawings, more than half in color, the book reveals a 1720 English turf ampitheater, the "Tea, Moss and Stones" (as one chapter is titled) of Japanese gardens, the grand genius of Versailles designer Andr‚ Le N“tre, as well as today's "Earthworks, Golf Courses, Philosophical Models, and Poetic Metaphors." It's an accessible and elegant respite.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Perhaps best known as the founding director of New York's Central Park Conservancy, which oversaw and funded the park's revitalization, Rogers (The Forests and Wetlands of New York City) here presents a comprehensive survey of landscape design. Viewing her subject as the art that modifies and shapes nature, she explores the cultural values that shape, or are embodied in, cities, parks, and gardens. Embracing all cultures and ranging from prehistoric times to the present, this book covers the broadest range of subjects implied by the title, including city planning, landscape architecture, conservation, earthworks, and other uses of land in contemporary art. While this history is international in scope, it does narrow its primary focus to the United States when it reaches the late 20th century. The photographs and especially the plans are excellent and numerous. Single pages or double-page spreads devoted to specific topics add an encyclopedic element while allowing Rogers to provide even more information, illustrations, and plans without interrupting the flow of her very readable text. Accessible to lay readers but of interest to scholars, this book could serve as the text for a comprehensive course on the history of landscape design. Highly recommended. Daniel Starr, Metropolitan Museum of Art Lib., New York

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
This sumptuously illustrated book expands the definition of landscaping from the usual suspects—Versailles, Tivoli, and Central Park—to include, on the one hand, Stonehenge and the Pyramids and, on the other, Disneyland. The result is a comprehensive history of human interaction with the land. Barlow Rogers, a landscape planner, considers that the main shift has been from a sacral idea of place to a conception of "value-neutral" space governed by mathematical principles of perspective. So, while ancient sites reflected pagan cosmologies and animistic beliefs, in Renaissance landscapes the experience of the individual viewer became central. When Petrarch, a keen gardener, explained why he had tried to climb Mont Ventoux, his words were quintessentially those of a Renaissance man: "My only motive was to see what so great an elevation had to offer."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

With intelligent text and breathtaking photographs
With 630 illustrations, many created just for this book (430 of which are in full color), Elizabeth Barlow Rogers' Landscape Design: A Cultural And Architectural History offers dazzling, panoramic beauty to complement its extensive commentary on landscapes throughout history, ranging from Stonehenge and the Forbidden City of Beijing to Versailles and New York's Central Park. This comprehensive survey, with its intelligent text and breathtaking photographs, is highly recommended to anyone interested in the history of landscaping since the dawn of humanity.

Landscape Design: A Cultural And Architectural History
From Nineveh to a mobile home in Pecos, NM, Rogers casts a wide net, exploring the evolution of formal landscaping in parallel to humansÕ urge to put their mark on the earth. A scholar, who administered New YorkÕs Central Park for two decades, she provides a compelling account of the cultural roots that underly the plantings, explaining the ideas inherent in unfamiliar and classic gardens. Every page contains sharp insightsÑfor example, her suggestion that the broken column that the Baron de Monville built as his house at the Desert de Retz outside Paris in the 1780s portended the revolution that would sweep away the civilization he cherished. The abundance of plans and illustrations do ample justice to the text. (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.)

A note about the photos
Very well researched history of landscape design. However, I wouldn't go so far as to describe the photographs as 'breathtaking' as does another reviewer. There are many of them, all interesting, but almost all (apart from a brief intro sequence) only quarter or eighth page size. As a result, there is no image as impressive as the front cover. This is my only quibble, and the reason for 4 not 5 stars: why have a book so big and then not make full use of its size to present such a visually-based subject?