The Granite Garden Spirn

Landscape photography and the art of discovery 2014.

The granite garden spirn. To understand the meanings of landscape our habitat is to see the world differently and to enable ourselves to avoid profound aesthetic and environmental mistakes. Free shipping on qualifying offers. Dorothea lange s photographs and reports from the field 2011 asla honor award. It presents synthesizes and applies knowledge from many disciplines to show how cities are part of the natural world and to demonstrate how they can be planned and designed in accord with natural processes rather than in conflict.

Urban nature and human design. The granite garden is a book about nature in cities and what the city could be like if designed in concert with natural processes rather than in ignorance or opposition. Urban nature and human design argues that the language of landscape exists with its own syntax grammar and metaphors and that we imperil ourselves by failing to learn to read and speak this language. She is also the author of the granite garden 1984 asla president s award of excellence the language of landscape 1988 and daring to look.

This book may get a bit dry at parts for non urban designers but there is so much in the book that anybody will enjoy. Anne spirn makes a case that nature is in our built environment and recommends ways to work with our environment rather than against it. Anne whiston spirn fasla is a professor of landscape architecture and urban planning at mit.