In The Modern Architectural Landscape Caroline Constant examines diverse approaches to landscape in the work of architects practicing in Europe and the United States between 1915 and the mid-1980s. Case studies highlight landscapes in the public realm rather than the private garden, which had been a primary focus of much Western landscape theory and practice during the early decades of the century. These landscapes do more than accommodate the functional needs of the evolving mass society in parks, playgrounds, and places of assembly; they give formal expression to Modern Movement social and political ideologies, engaging the symbolic potential of the modern landscape-particularly in its ability to take on new, more democratic forms of social organization.

Constant probes the cultural significance of specific landscapes designed by architects, understanding them as ways of interpreting the world and the place of humankind in the world. The examples she scrutinizes extend widely across the century (from the works of Erik Gunnar Asplund and Joze Plecnik to those of Le Corbusier and Rem Koolhaas) and around the globe (from suburban Los Angeles to Barcelona and Chandigarh).

Approaching landscape as an essential component of modern architecture's constructive endowment of material with social value, The Modern Architectural Landscape focuses on the precise material forms and ideological underpinnings of landscapes conceived by architects, revealing them as salient to the formulation of both modern architecture and the modern landscape.

About the Author

Caroline Constant is professor of architecture at the University of Michigan and a fellow of the American Academy in Rome.

Reviews

"This is a book which architect aficionados of landscape design have long been waiting for, written by a critical scholar who has devoted the best part of the last twenty years to a progressive analysis of the interplay between modern architectural form and the landscape by which it has been invariably amplified." -Kenneth Frampton, author of Modern Architecture: A Critical History

Book Information
ISBN 9780816676354
Author Caroline Constant
Format Paperback
Page Count 344
Imprint University of Minnesota Press
Publisher University of Minnesota Press
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 178mm * 20mm