Customer Reviews

Language of Landscape

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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.

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.

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.