Modern Landscape is a truly innovative volume providing an in-depth analysis of contemporary landscape architecture. Over the last decade, the urban and rural architectural invention of the twentieth century has been augmented by a twenty-first century concern for the impact of ecological and climatic change upon the natural environment. This has begun to effect a radical re-ordering of landscape design priorities.

Landscape designers have historically collaborated with architects and engineers but it is the complementary role of land and installation artists and sculptors that especially characterizes contemporary project work. Modern Landscape showcases recent schemes by,among others, Bernard Lassus, Lawrence Halprin, George Hargreaves Associates, Itsuko Hasegawa, Martha Schwartz, Colvin & Moggridge, peter Latz & Partners, as well as by younger recognized designers such as Danadjieva & Koenig Associates, Mikyoung Kim, Gross Max, Jacqueline Osty, Bet Figueras and Toru Mitani. The remit of the book extends to include examples of how the new environmental thinking differentiates practice in the twenty-first century, illustrating this with examples of works by such eminent architects as Daniel Libeskind ( with Lutzow 7), Juhani Pallasmaa, Hans Hollein, Enric Miric Miralles, Chris Wilkinson and Glenn Murcutt.

Michael Spen's introductory section looks at historical and modernist precedents and his research shows that the sources of contemporary inspiration are often drawn from a more historic documentation of man's interaction with the environment through paintings, major landscape designs and the natural world. He has also defined four key categories of Landscape design and divided this book into corresponding sections – Parkland, Architecture as Landscape, Garden Landen Landscapes and Urban Inventions. Within each section the illustrated case studies of projects such as the Barcelona Botanic Gardens, the ETA Hoffman garden at the Jewish Museum, Berlin and Sudney's olympic Park, all completed in last decade, expand the discussion of landscape criteria across a diverse range of planning and design issues.

 

Michael Spens is Reader in Architecture at the University of Dundee, He has won several awards for architecture and written and lectured extensively on the subject of landscape, his special interest lying in the integration of buildings with landscape. His books include Landscape Transformed (editor, 1995), The Complete Landscape Designs and Gardens of Geoffrey Jellicoe (1994) and Viipuri Library by Alvar Aalto (1994). In 2001, he received a knighthood from Finland for his services to architecture.