Invisible Gardens - The Search for Modernism in the American Landscape

by Peter Walker and Melanie Simo

• ISBN13: 9780262731164
• ISBN10: 0262731169
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-08-01
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

Invisible Gardens is a composite history of the individuals and firms that defined the field of landscape architecture in America from 1925 to 1975, a period that spawned a significant body of work combining social ideas of enduring value with landscapes and gardens that forged a modern aesthetic. The major protagonists include Thomas Church, Roberto Burle Marx, Isamu Noguchi, Luis Barragan, Daniel Urban Kiley, Stanley White, Hideo Sasaki, Ian McHarg, Lawrence Halprin, and Garrett Eckbo. They were the pioneers of a new profession in America, the first to offer alternatives to the historic landscape and the park tradition, as well as to the suburban sprawl and other unplanned developments of twentieth-century cities and institutions. The work is described against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the Second World War, the postwar recovery, American corporate expansion, and the environmental revolution. The authors look at unbuilt schemes as well as actual gardens, ranging from tiny backyards and play spaces to urban plazas and corporate villas. Some of the projects discussed already occupy a canonical position in modern landscape architecture; others deserve a similar place but are less well known. The result is a record of landscape architecture's cultural contribution - as distinctly different in history, intent, and procedure from its sister fields of architecture and planning - during the years when it was acquiring professional status and struggling to define a modernist aesthetic out of the startling changes in postwar America.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Legacy of Landscape Architecture: Art or Social Service?	p. 2
The Garden as Social Vision	p. 30
The Garden as Art	p. 56
The Modern Transformation of Thomas Church	p. 92
Beyond the American (or California) Dream	p. 116
From Backyard to Center City	p. 144
The Lone Classicist	p. 170
The Modernization of the Schools	p. 198
The Corporate Office, a New Organism for Practice: First Wave	p. 224
The Environment: Science Overshadows Art	p. 258
The Corporate Office, Second Wave	p. 284
Epilogue	p. 312
Notes	p. 320
Further Reading	p. 342
Illustration Credits	p. 346
Index	p. 352
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.