Customer Reviews

Design on the Land: The Development of Landscape Architecture (Belknap Press)

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Unfortunately, gentle reader, you're likely to have this book assigned to you as part of your landscape architecture curriculum. If you're not in this situation, run from this book. First, the book was published in 1971, with no noticible updates in the past 33 years. Second, despite the relative modernity of the book, the author seems unaware of any advances in the social sciences and liberal arts after the Hoover administration. Thirdly the book rambles--no incision, no succinct observations, no underlying theme. Fourthly, Newton loads the book with indefensible positions. Fifthly, author weaves a cursory and grossly simplified (reduced) version of world history into an analysis of gardens and town plans. The result is horrid. Here is an example:

From the chapter on Medieval gardens--"It is almost as though man's eyes were not yet wholly open to the wonders of the natural world, for he was too buy contemplating his soul and its tortuous future. Daylight was too bright to bear; these were truly the Dark Ages, and openness to worldly experience would have to wait."

These types of generalizations, which don't stand up to even a cursory understanding of the gardens of the Middle Ages (herbalists, medicinal gardens, plurality of plant species growing in cloisters, flora in illuminated manuscripts, etc), that pepper the book.

This doesn't even begin to address the the ubiquitous invocations of "Mankind."

No university worth its salt can put this in front of a student in good conscience.

This is THE textbook for the history of landscape architecture. From early city planning in the cradle of civilization to recreating nature in the design work of our contemporaries, this book provides a chronology of land designs and theories, and outlines the formalizing of our profession by the father of landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmstead. This book provides a framework for more intense study of both landscapes and the design theories associated with them, including the layout of ancient cities to New York's Central Park. This is one of those textbooks worth keeping well after graduation!

Unfortunately this purportedly comprehensive survey of landscape architecture fails to include even one woman in the entire history of the profession. It's as though the female gender never existed! It is inexcusable that this book is still in current use as a university text.