The Language of Landscape [Hardcover]

Professor Anne Whiston Spirn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 11, 1998

This book combines poetry and pragmatism to teach the language of landscape. Anne Whiston Spirn argues that the language of landscape exists with its own 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 environmental and aesthetic 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, Frederick Law Olmsted, Frank Lloyd Wright, Lawrence Halprin - and of less well known pioneers, including the Australian architect Glenn Murcutt and the Danish landscape architect C.Th. Sorensen.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"The language of landscape," writes ecologist Anne Whiston Spirn, "is our native language." She elaborates: humans lived in natural landscapes well before they knew how to build houses; knew how to read the movements of clouds and birds well before they developed grammars and symbols. Anyone with a keen sensibility can recover that language, she suggests: "A person literate in landscape sees significance where an illiterate person notes nothing. Past and future fires, floods, landslides, welcome or warning are visible to those who can read them in tree and slope, boundary and gate." Spirn goes on to discuss human interactions with the landscape, taking as cases in point such matters as the dolmens of prehistoric Europe, environmentally friendly houses in Denmark and Australia, fountains in Paris, and tree-lined city streets in Philadelphia. Along the way she cites scholars, architects, and artists, learning lessons in how to read place and built form from the likes of Christopher Alexander, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Rachel Carson. She closes with an appeal to landscape architects, builders, and designers to study the natural details of place more closely before they set about changing it: "In landscapes ... the key is to establish a framework that provides overall structure--a structure not arbitrary but congruent with the deep context of a place, to define a vocabulary of forms that expresses the natural and cultural processes of the place." --Gregory McNamee

Review

"Landscape speaks to us. But how? Anne Spirn's superb and unique achievement is to spell out the 'how' so that we can better understand landscape's variant dialects its distinctive personalities and respond intelligently, with appropriate emotion." Yi-Fu Tuan, emeritus professor of geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison "Anne Whiston Spirn brings to her reading of landscapes the eye of an artist, the mind of a scholar, and the pen of a gifted writer. There are a few books that have the power to change the way one sees the world. This is one of them." William Cronon, author of Changes in the Land "Spirn has thought deeply about landscape and human responses to it. Her new book...offers a myriad of stimulating impressions and suggestions and pursues a wide array of intellectual issues...All will appreciate Spirn's sensitive eye and her vivid descriptions." Choice --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 334 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First edition. edition (December 11, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300077459
• ISBN-13: 978-0300077452
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,053,561 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Frustrating... but, August 19, 2003

By 

Matthew O. Nugent "chaglang" (Somerville, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Language of Landscape (Paperback)

Anne Whiston Spirn has a lot of truly important and enlightening things to say in "The Language of Landscape". Unfortunately, she makes the reader slog through an indulgent and contrived writing style in order to understand her. At the end of the chapter, "Language of Landscape", she explained how a person fluent in its elements could "read" a landscape, and how this is crucial to understanding the world. Yet she never fully articulates this in the following chapter, "Elements of Landscape and Language", with anything more than impressionistic vignettes of places she has visited. It was not at all what I was expecting, and left me frustrated and wondering what point she was trying (and failing) to make.

I soldiered on, and found that there are flashes of clarity, specifically when writing about specific case studies and experiences with students. In these passages, the writing is more direct and very readable. The second half of the book was excellent, especially the study of landscape and memory in Berlin. These passages are what "saved" the book for me, kept me reading, and finally earned it 3 stars.

For contrast, I think that JB Jackson does a better job of weaving his theory with his stories and experiences. Beginners to landscape studies may find him more accessable. Spirn's points are there for those who want to dig for them, but sometimes it's unclear if it's worth it.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Nowadays City Health in Urban Processes., April 10, 2000

By 

Patricia Bertacchini (Săo Paulo, Brazil) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Language of Landscape (Hardcover)

The Language of Landscape regads to a very important subject - the new values that has composed the urban drawing - which has contributed a lot for the enviromental health of the nowadays cities. Finding new ways to focus on the physic enviroment of the urban areas, Spirn offers a philosophic and conceptual base for the Urban Drawing, while illustrates, with real examples, the practical application of the theory. It is a good masterpiece, reflecting the result of years of experience in treating the lack of attention with the enviroment nowadays, the lack of comprehension of the natural processes - which has contributed to the physical shapes of the cities, and has invaded virgin areas, as forests, making this areas sterile - the recuperation of landscapes, according to the natural regeneration, and also themes reflecting directly the urban processes, like water, energy, nutritive resources - which are subproducts of the urban draining - and other functions of the urban processes which has not received attention and has contributed a lot for the contamination of the overburden enviroment. It is a good tool for urban planners and enviromental designers, while treating the esthetic values on which the formal landscape of the cities has based-developed. This values have a little connexion to the natural process dinamics and lead to mistaken attitudes, if they are not well known. It is also rich in questions like values enviromental perceptions and how we answer to the enviroment around us , if we can demonstrate that there are ways to adjust the urban landscapes in a very cheaper way, and with much more social value than the tradicional ones.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Poetics of Landscape Design, August 6, 2010

By 

Christopher Aiken (Collegeville, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Language of Landscape (Paperback)

I find this book to be truly inspired. It combines the ecological science and poetics of landscape design. Embedded within her book is a deeply sensitive understanding of the relationship between language and experience. Her exploration of language, both as a vehicle for communication, meaning and for an entry into the realm of the imagination, is powerful for artists in any field. When I am looking to share seminal books on the process of composition, I often tell them to get this book. I've read it and taught it many times, and it continues to inspire me and many others.

Get this book if you are interested in the relationships between nature, design, form, function, meaning and imagination.