The modern architectural landscape

Abstract

The Modern Architectural Landscape By Caroline Constant Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2012. 344pp. Black and white photos, notes. $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8166-7307-0; $30.00 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-8166-7635-4.In The Modern Architectural Landscape, Caroline Constant's main purpose is to interrogate the relationship between architecture and landscape architecture at both the theoretical and practical levels by highlighting the history and nature of the collaboration between both professions in the design of specific twentieth century modernist projects across the world, some renowned and some less well-known. How do architecture and landscape intersect conceptually and influence each other, and how do architects and landscape architects work together and conceive their respective roles in the design and realization of architectural projects? Moreover, when might the demands of a project push the architect into a landscape architect role? Constant's methodology to engage in the architecture-landscape continuum is to showcase a series of case studies that exemplify the practices, ideological underpinnings, social and political purposes, and physical challenges behind nine projects designed from the First World War to the 1980s, some of which were executed while others were not. These illustrative architectural undertakings cover a wide geographical and thematic range: from the planned communities of Sunnyside, New York, and Romerstadt, Frankfurt, to Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion, Asplund's Public Library in Stockholm, the Woodland Cemetery in Stockholm, the transformation of the Prague Castle, Farm Security Administration migrant labor camps and community homes in California, Le Corbusier's accomplishments in the planned city of Chandigarh, Punjab, Detroit's International Style Lafayette Park, and finally the Parc de la Villette in Paris. The value of this collection of independent essays, written over the last 25 years, is that together, they give a multifaceted response to the complex question of the relationship between architecture, landscape, planning, and urban design, and allow a comparison of the processes at play in the transformation of that relationship according to place, time, and intervention of influential individuals in the field.The book is divided into two parts. While the case studies constitute the essential part of the book, Constant's splendid introduction is critical in setting the stage to appreciate the projects she depicts in the rest of the book, and the historical narrative that laces them together. Indeed, she reviews and integrates decades of literature on landscape and landscape architecture, exposing how theorists have defined and envisaged the consequences of merging both fields in the designed transformation of place. Going back to the basic concepts and early landscape studies, she deconstructs the notion of landscape as theorized by geographers such as J.B. Jackson, John Stilgoe, and Denis Cosgrove, and that of its relationship with landscape architecture as examined by Christopher Tunnard, Charles Eliot, Garrett Eckbo, and James Rose, among a wide array of thinkers who have engaged in this debate. The richness of the theoretical background she lays out in the introduction is the perfect guide to the matter at hand and helps readers revisit those themes when assessing the case studies that follow. Also worth mentioning are the 60 pages of in-depth notes that further invite the reader into the relevant literature and history of place-making that is often ignored when simply looking at the realized project.The themes that emanate from Constant's introduction and exemplified in her choice of case studies are numerous. Among them, the issues of disciplinary boundaries, landscape agency (and agency in the landscape), scale, and aesthetics seem to cut across the narrative throughout the book. The projects she features all constitute opportunities to scrutinize the ways in which architects and landscape architects collaborate and cooperate, diverge and converge, and what needs to exist for this collaboration to be fruitful in landscape design. …