Nature, Design, and Health
The renowned landscape architect David Kamp, FASLA, traces the first stirrings of his interest in landscape to his childhood in rural North Carolina. Kamp maintained his passion for nature through his architectural studies at the University of Virginia, and these in turn helped prepare him for his first design project, a landscape for Australia’s new […]
Boston’s Franklin Park
Frederick Law Olmsted designed Franklin Park in 1885 as the centerpiece of the Boston park system that later became known as the Emerald Necklace. Often cited with Central Park (1858) and Prospect Park (1865) as one of the three most important “large parks” he designed, Franklin Park was also the most mature expression of Olmsted’s […]
Olmsted and Yosemite
During the turbulent decade the United States engaged in a civil war, abolished slavery, and remade the government, the public park emerged as a product of these dramatic changes. New York’s Central Park and Yosemite in California both embodied the “new birth of freedom” that had inspired the Union during its greatest crisis, epitomizing the […]
Essays on Landscape
One of the most influential landscape architects in practice today, Laurie Olin has created designs for the Washington Monument grounds and the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., Bryant Park in New York City, Getty Center in Los Angeles, and many other iconic landscapes. More recent projects include the AIA award-winning Barnes Foundation in […]
Marjorie Sewell Cautley
Marjorie Sewell Cautley (1891–1954) was the first woman landscape architect to design state parks, the first to plan the landscape of a federally funded housing project, and the first to lecture in a university city planning department. In her absorbing biography, Sarah Allaback illuminates the life and work of this remarkable practitioner. Delving into diaries, […]
Beauty of the Wild
In Beauty of the Wild, Darrel Morrison tells stories of people and places that have nourished his career as a teacher and a designer of nature-inspired landscapes. Growing up on a small farm in southwestern Iowa, Morrison was transported by the subtle beauties of the native prairie landscape—the movement of grasses in the wind, clouds […]
The Greatest Beach
A volume in the series Designing the American Park In the mid-nineteenth century, Thoreau recognized the importance of preserving the complex and fragile landscape of Cape Cod, with its weathered windmills, expansive beaches, dunes, wetlands, and harbors, and the lives that flourished here, supported by the maritime industries and saltworks. One hundred years later, the […]
Robert Royston
A volume in the series Masters of Modern Landscape Design The first biography of the landscape architect Robert Royston (1918-2008) documents the life and work of a designer and teacher who shaped the postwar Bay Area landscape with visionary designs for public spaces. Early in his career, Royston conceived of the “landscape matrix,” a system […]
Hare & Hare, Landscape Architects and City Planners
When Sidney J. Hare (1860–1938) and S. Herbert Hare (1888–1960) launched their Kansas City firm in 1910, they founded what would become the most influential landscape architecture and planning practice in the Midwest. Over time, their work became increasingly far-ranging, both in its geographical scope and project types. Between 1924 and 1955, Hare & Hare […]
Landscapes of Exclusion
A volume in the series Designing the American Park An outgrowth of earlier park movements, the state park movement in the twentieth century sought to expand public access to scenic places. But under severe Jim Crow restrictions in the South, access for Blacks was routinely and officially denied. The New Deal brought a massive wave […]
Warren H. Manning
A volume in the series Critical Perspectives in the History of Environmental Design Warren H. Manning’s (1860–1938) national practice comprised more than 1,600 landscape design and planning projects throughout North America, from small home grounds to estates, cemeteries, college campuses, parks and park systems, and new industrial towns. Manning approached his design and planning projects […]
John Nolen
John Nolen (1869–1937) studied economics, philosophy, and public administration at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where his keen intelligence and remarkable administrative abilities were immediately recognized. In 1903, at the age of thirty-four, Nolen enrolled in the new Harvard University program in landscape architecture, studying under Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Arthur […]
New Towns for Old
A volume in the ASLA Centennial Reprint Series Rare and long out of print, John Nolen’s New Towns for Old (1927) is still of great interest to planners and urban historians. The well-illustrated study contains an overview of the development of American urbanism and a concise discussion of Nolen’s ideas for the improvement of towns and […]
Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England
Before he ever dreamed of becoming a landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) visited southern England and Wales during a month-long walking tour. A gifted writer, he recorded his impressions of the trip in this richly detailed volume, which has long been out of print. “In Walks and Talks,” writes Charles C. McLaughlin, author of […]