Between Landscape Architecture and Land Art [Hardcover]

Udo Weilacher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1996 | ISBN-10: 3764353163 | ISBN-13: 978-3764353162 | Edition: 1

Contemporary landscape architecture is progressing towards an appropiate and independent language of its own. Drawing on the potentials of art and architecture, the ever changing relationship between man and nature is given new expression. Ecological concerns and aesthetic aspirations interact in a fruitful dialogue. Particularly Land Art and related art movements become sources of inspiration and innovation. The ground-breakting works of the landscape artists and architects presented in this book reveal the diverse current trends in international landscape design. "This book offers many stimuli to design. Its contents are not just for landscape architects," wrote The architects' journal. With chapters on Dani Karavan, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Bernard Lassus, Peter Latz, Dieter Kienast, Herman Prigann, Peter Walker, Adriaan Geuze and others.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you're looking for a how-to on installing a Japanese rock garden or 10 simple steps for recreating the gardens of Versailles in your own backyard, Between Landscape Architecture and Land Art is probably not for you. But if you're interested in the work of some of the world's most renowned and inventive "land artists"--professionals who create art for, and out of, public and private exteriors--you'll be delighted with this collection of essays on and interviews with 11 landscape artists and architects.

Their work, which forcefully subverts the line between what we think of as conventional landscape design and outdoor installation art, is abundantly represented here in sketches and photographs. Most, unfortunately, are in black and white, though there are some fine color spreads that suggest how vibrantly jarring some of these works must be when beheld against their natural canvases of sun, earth, sky, and water.

Among the artists whose projects are featured are Hannsjörg Voth, whose massive installations in the middle of the desert (or, more spectacularly, aboard huge barges set afloat on the rivers of Europe) include the dazzling Himmelstreppe (Sky Stairway), a towering, seemingly archaic, deep-red clay, pyramidal wedge erected in the Moroccan desert between 1980 and 1987; Dani Karavan, whose three-kilometer Axe Majeur in the Paris suburb of Cergy-Pontoise has been under construction since 1980 and comprises 12 stations along its axis--each marked by bold, simple structures like a vast expanse of white steps leading to a park anchored by a geometric grouping of colossal, white columns; and Martha Schwartz, whose 1979 Bagel Garden--in which the artist transformed the small front garden of her Boston terrace house into a very witty (and handsome) installation featuring eight dozen evenly spaced, weatherproof bagels--"met with outrage on the part of other members of the profession and sparked off a controversial public debate." (Or so author Weilacher informs us with his characteristic, and charming, sense of melodrama.)

Others whose work and insights are included here include Ian Hamilton Finlay, Bernard Lassus, Peter Latz, Dieter Kienast, Sven-Ingvar Andersson, Herman Prigann, Hans Dieter Schall, and Adriaan Geuze. (If the names suggest the majority of land-art types hail from Europe, that seems to be the case; the government actually pays for this kind of outsize civic-minded creativity over there, you know.)

The book concludes with an overview essay, followed by a long and excellent review of the work of Isamu Noguchi, who pioneered this sort of thing. Again, Weilacher's ambitious and occasionally hypersemiotic tome is no professional field guide, but it is packed with elegant, eye-popping, and boldly irreverent work that should fill both the professional or amateur landscape designer's head with all sorts of new ways of thinking about outdoor space. --Timothy Murphy

Review

This book offers many stimuli to design. Its contents are not just for landscape architects. -- Architects journal

We must be grateful to Udo Weilacher for revealing the exciting range and scope of these artists' visions of landscape architecture.' --Land Forum --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 247 pages
• Publisher: Birkhäuser Basel; 1 edition (April 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3764353163
• ISBN-13: 978-3764353162
• Product Dimensions: 12.1 x 9.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #393,357 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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