The Shape of the Land: Topography & Landscape Architecture

(Hardback)

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The Shape of the Land: Topography & Landscape Architecturethe first book to center on this subjectpresents the contributions of thirteen well-known practitioners and academics who discuss the forms and ramifications of reconfiguring terrain.

The essays range in content from pre-industrial precedents in the work of Humphry Repton to new digital topographic modeling systems without the use of contour lines, the treatment of waste products to the land art of the American Southwest. Practicing landscape architects focusing on the modeling of topography in the works considering both utility and aesthetics. In all, the book reviews the history, reasons, and results of at least three centuries of topographic interventions, while suggesting pathways into the futureas new technology and new necessities increase the functional demands placed upon landscape architects, while at the same time potentially offering new forms of artistic expression.

Reviews

"The essays in The Shape of the Land: Topography & Landscape Architecture originated in a symposium held at the University of California, Berkeley, on the very cusp of the pandemic. Paired with it predecessor publication, The Aesthetics of Contemporary Planting Design, it gathers current research in land formation." --Landscape Architecture Magazine

Author Bio

Marc Treib, Professor of Architecture Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, is a historian and critic of landscape and architecture who has published widely on modern and historical subjects in the United States, Japan, and Scandinavia. Books published by ORO Editions include Landscapes of Modern Architecture; Austere Gardens; The Landscapes of Georges Descombes: Doing Almost Nothing; and Thinking a Modern Landscape Architecture, West and East, and more recently The Aesthetics of Contemporary Planting Design and Serious Fun: The Landscapes of Claude Cormier.

Other contributors: Stephen Daniels, Georges Descombes, Adriaan Geuze, Jennifer Guthrie,Kathleen John-Alder, Ana Kuan, Karl Kullmann, Jos Miguel Lameiras, David Meyer, Elissa Rosenberg, Bas Smets and Laura Solano.