Si la sculpture reste au coeur de sa pratique artistique, les intérêts et la production d'Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) couvrent un domaine exceptionnellement vaste qui comprend des meubles et des lampes, des décors pour la danse, des places, des cours et des jardins. Noguchi ne faisait aucune distinction entre le design, l'artisanat et les soi-disant beaux-arts. Bien que ses jardins comprennent plusieurs des aménagements paysagers les plus emblématiques du XXe siècle, Noguchi occupe néanmoins une place éloignée de la pratique normale de l'architecture paysagère. Dans cette étude complète et richement illustrée des jardins de Noguchi, le célèbre historien du paysage Marc Treib décrit et analyse ces projets réalisés principalement aux États-Unis, au Japon et en Israël.
The Shape of the Land: Topography & Landscape Architecture - the first book to centre on this subject - presents the contributions of 13 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 modelling 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 modelling 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 future - as 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.
Planting design is, rather obviously, a complex topic, spanning as it does art, science, social need, and morality - especially during these days of increasing planetary environmental threat. Although certainly not denying the importance of scientifically appropriate practices, the symposium "The Aesthetics of [Contemporary] Planting Design" addressed planting design today, proposing a renewed concern for the cultural and aesthetic aspects of the landscapes that result. This book, which has been developed from the original presentations at the symposium, presents the thoughts of a select international group of landscape architects and historians who discuss the subject of planting design through the lens of their own work as well as the work of others, both contemporary and historical. They suggest that, as in real estate, the most important factor in selecting plants is "location, location, location." Certainly the Californian situation is far more forgiving than the aridity and other restrictive environmental conditions endemic to the Sonoran desert, or the frost and short growing seasons of Nordic lands that direct Scandinavian landscape architects to rely on native birches, pines, rowan, and moss. Most of us would agree that there are plants sensible for each climatic zone. Addressing environmental conditions is but the first step in the equation, however. There are also the issues of combination and composition.
