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Language of Landscape
This eloquent and powerful book combines poetry and pragmatism to teach the language of landscape. Anne Whiston Spirn, author of the award-winning The Granite Urban Nature and Human Design , argues that the language of landscape exists with its own syntax, grammar, and metaphors, and that we imperil ourselves by failing to learn to read and speak this language. To understand the meanings of landscape, our habitat, is to see the world differently and to enable ourselves to avoid profound aesthetic and environmental mistakes.
Offering examples that range across thousands of years and five continents, Spirn examines urban, rural, and natural landscapes. She discusses the thought of renowned landscape authors―Thomas Jefferson, Frank Lloyd Wright, Frederick Law Olmsted, Lawrence Halprin―and of less well known pioneers, including Australian architect Glenn Murcutt and Danish landscape artist C. Th. Sørensen. She discusses instances of great landscape designers using landscape fluently, masterfully, and sometimes cynically. And, in a probing analysis of the many meanings of landscape, Spirn shows how one person’s ideal landscape may be another’s nightmare, how Utopian landscapes can be dark. There is danger when we lose the connection between a place and our understanding of it, Spirn warns, and she calls for change in the way we shape our environment, based on the notions of nature as a set of ideas and landscape as the expression of action and ideas in place.
Offering examples that range across thousands of years and five continents, Spirn examines urban, rural, and natural landscapes. She discusses the thought of renowned landscape authors―Thomas Jefferson, Frank Lloyd Wright, Frederick Law Olmsted, Lawrence Halprin―and of less well known pioneers, including Australian architect Glenn Murcutt and Danish landscape artist C. Th. Sørensen. She discusses instances of great landscape designers using landscape fluently, masterfully, and sometimes cynically. And, in a probing analysis of the many meanings of landscape, Spirn shows how one person’s ideal landscape may be another’s nightmare, how Utopian landscapes can be dark. There is danger when we lose the connection between a place and our understanding of it, Spirn warns, and she calls for change in the way we shape our environment, based on the notions of nature as a set of ideas and landscape as the expression of action and ideas in place.
320 pages, Paperback
First published December 11, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 22, 2019
Leitura fundamental pra quem lida com paisagismo. Fica bastante confuso em alguns momentos, especialmente porque faz referência a muitos lugares diferentes, mas tem questões muito importantes.
March 27, 2020
A good a b c of the landscape concepts and experiences written by Anne after the Granite Garden
December 17, 2007
Spirn offers mind-opening perspectives on the relationships between people and our environments. The universal landscape elements and contexts she describes can be understood by a novice, and I suspect her ideas could apply to any art form, not just landscape. Spirn explains the context of her thoughts within the history of landscape architecture and urban planning. Her language is sometimes dense and her sentences and paragraphs sometimes unstructured, but this vagueness increases the reader's ability to interact with her text and ultimately shows Spirn's openness to others' interpretations.
March 3, 2016
This is a unique book that is richly descriptive of landscape. In many ways, it is the best I have read for actually bringing a comprehensible vision of the layers of landscape to the fore. Unfortunately, the beauty of this book is masked somewhat by a stilted effort to categorize landscape elements into a literal, rather than metaphorical, definition of language. Also, the text wanders a bit and often lacks clear focus. Despite this, Spirn’s insight permeates her descriptions, and for those who are not put off by the package, it is a brilliant book well worth reading.
November 7, 2007
Anne Spirn is an amazingly cool landscape architect who really takes time to read landscapes and to discover the best fate for a space that is currently not working the way it should. She's been working on the West Phialdelphia Landscape Project for almost 20 years. Anybody interested in social and environmental change should read this.
March 25, 2007
An important book, if not necessarily a wholly engrossing one... the hippie-dippy tone gets repetetive and I wish the writing were less consistently vague.
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January 17, 2008Recommended reading on theory from the Landscape Information Hub UK
July 29, 2011
This book, along with Francaviglia, helped solidify my belief that we shortchange landscape in the nature vs nurture debate for both individuals and cultures.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
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