Designing the Earth: The Human Impulse to Shape Nature

by David Bourdon

Moving across space and time, from prehistory to the present and around the world, this fascinating volume explores the many ways in which the earth has been transformed by human effort. In discerning text, more than 150 fabulous photographs - many of them taken by some of the world's premier aerial photographers - and 21 arresting drawings, paintings, and other artworks, Designing the Earth examines such diverse works as clay dwellings in Chad and Mali, adobe pueblos in the American Southwest, mud-brick ziggurats in Babylon, ancient Egyptian funerary monuments, subterranean aqueducts in Iran, Native American effigy mounds, the Nazca lines of Peru, artificial islands in Japan, the Great Wall of China, Mount Rushmore, and earth-sheltered housing by Frank Lloyd Wright, as well as earthworks by contemporary artists such as Michael Heizer and Andy Goldsworthy.
By considering the works in a larger design context, and by discussing their meaning, import, and use, author David Bourdon opens the reader's eyes to the formal and functional characteristics of earthworks around the world as he explores how people on different continents, unknown to each other, demonstrated remarkable similarities in the recontouring of their landscapes.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1995

About the author

David Bourdon was born October 15, 1934, and earned his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1961. He immediately entered into a career as a journalist and art critic writing through his career for periodicals such as Artforum International Magazine, Art in America Magazine, Arts Magazine, and Time Magazine, among others. In particular he worked as an assistant editor at Life Magazine, 1966-1971, an associate editor at Saturday Review, 1972, and Smithsonian, 1972-1974, a senior editor at Geo, 1981-1983, and a senior features editor at Vogue Magazine, 1983-1986. Additionally, he served as art critic for the Village Voice, 1964-1966 and 1974-1977. Bourdon wrote numerous books on modern artists including works on Alexander Calder, Niki de Saint Phalle, Carl Andre, Christo & Jeanne-Claude, and Andy Warhol. David Bourdon died in New York on March 27, 1998.