The Language of Landscape by Spirn Professor Anne Whiston (1998-12-11) Hardcover

by Anne Whiston Spirn

"The language of landscape," writes ecologist Anne Whiston Spirn, "is our native language." She 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 "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 "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

Genres: Landscape Architecture, Nonfiction, Gardening, Environment

Hardcover

First published December 11, 1998

Reviews

[Leticia Costa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leitura fundamental pra quem lida com paisagismo. Fica bastante confuso em alguns momentos, especialmente porque faz referência a muitos lugares diferentes, mas tem questões muito importantes.

[Mario Joaquín · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good a b c of the landscape concepts and experiences written by Anne after the Granite Garden

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spirn offers mind-opening perspectives on the relationships between people and our environments. The universal landscape elements and contexts she describes can be understood by a novice, and I suspect her ideas could apply to any art form, not just landscape. Spirn explains the context of her thoughts within the history of landscape architecture and urban planning. Her language is sometimes dense and her sentences and paragraphs sometimes unstructured, but this vagueness increases the reader's ability to interact with her text and ultimately shows Spirn's openness to others' interpretations.

[Keeshi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a unique book that is richly descriptive of landscape. In many ways, it is the best I have read for actually bringing a comprehensible vision of the layers of landscape to the fore. Unfortunately, the beauty of this book is masked somewhat by a stilted effort to categorize landscape elements into a literal, rather than metaphorical, definition of language. Also, the text wanders a bit and often lacks clear focus. Despite this, Spirn’s insight permeates her descriptions, and for those who are not put off by the package, it is a brilliant book well worth reading.

[Christy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anne Spirn is an amazingly cool landscape architect who really takes time to read landscapes and to discover the best fate for a space that is currently not working the way it should. She's been working on the West Phialdelphia Landscape Project for almost 20 years. Anybody interested in social and environmental change should read this.

[amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An important book, if not necessarily a wholly engrossing one... the hippie-dippy tone gets repetetive and I wish the writing were less consistently vague.

[LandscapeArchitect Books]

Recommended reading on theory from the Landscape Information Hub UK http://www.lih.gre.ac.uk/histhe/theor...

[Lisamary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, along with Francaviglia, helped solidify my belief that we shortchange landscape in the nature vs nurture debate for both individuals and cultures.