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Cover: Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture

Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture

edited by Michel Conan

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More than forty years after the first signs of a new era in environmental thinking, landscape architects and the public at large continue to engage in ethical, practical, and metaphysical debates on what environmentalism really is and what it should be. The exchange of ideas has been characterized more by passion than by clarity, with definitive and persuasive answers hard to come by.

The papers presented in this volume cover a wide range of concerns and perspectives, including proposals for new design approaches, historical analysis of the relationship between the practice of landscape architecture and environmentalism, and the theories of early practitioners of landscape architecture embued by an environmentalist outlook.

The issues above are addressed through discussion of topics as eclectic as the design of American zoos (creating adequate environments for animals), the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority (defining a new role for the federal government based on an environmental ethic), road design and maintenance in Texas (engaging in civil engineering while also indulging in romantic celebration of the past), and criticism of relationships between the words and works of select landscape architects (examining the idioms and central terms used by them com-pared to the projects they produced).

This volume makes no attempt to be comprehensive in its survey of encounters between environmentalism and landscape architecture but, rather, it provides a fresh approach to the topic by allowing for a reframing of the issues through self-reflection instead of strategic debate.

Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture, 22

2001 292 pages 130 illus. 7 x 10 inches 0-88402-278-1 COEN $35.00, order

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