Landscape Architecture Criticism offers techniques, perspectives and theories which relate to landscape architecture, a field very different from the more well-known domains of art and architectural criticism. Throughout the book, Bowring delves into questions such as, how do we know if built or unbuilt works of landscape architecture are successful? What strategies are used to measure the success or failure, and by whom? Does design criticism only come in written form? It brings together diverse perspectives on criticism in landscape architecture, establishing a substantial point of reference for approaching design critique, exploring how criticism developed within the discipline. Beginning with an introductory overview to set the framework, the book then moves on to historical perspectives, the purpose of critique, theoretical positions ranging from aesthetics, to politics and experience, unbuilt projects, techniques, and communication. Written for professionals and academics, as well as for students and instructors in landscape architecture, it includes strategies, diagrams, matrices, and full colour illustrations to prompt discussion and provide a basis for exploring design critique.

Written as an advocacy of melancholy's value as part of landscape experience, this book situates the concept within landscape's aesthetic traditions, and reveals how it is a critical part of ethics and empathy. With a history that extends back to ancient times, melancholy has hovered at the edges of the appreciation of landscape, including the aesthetic exertions of the eighteenth-century. Implicated in the more formal categories of the Sublime and the Picturesque, melancholy captures the subtle condition of beautiful sadness. The book proposes a range of conditions which are conducive to melancholy, and presents examples from each, including: The Void, The Uncanny, Silence, Shadows and Darkness, Aura, Liminality, Fragments, Leavings, Submersion, Weathering and Patina.

Written as an advocacy of melancholy's value as part of landscape experience, this book situates the concept within landscape's aesthetic traditions, and reveals how it is a critical part of ethics and empathy. With a history that extends back to ancient times, melancholy has hovered at the edges of the appreciation of landscape, including the aesthetic exertions of the eighteenth-century. Implicated in the more formal categories of the Sublime and the Picturesque, melancholy captures the subtle condition of beautiful sadness. The book proposes a range of conditions which are conducive to melancholy, and presents examples from each, including: The Void, The Uncanny, Silence, Shadows and Darkness, Aura, Liminality, Fragments, Leavings, Submersion, Weathering and Patina.

Landscape Architecture Criticism offers techniques, perspectives and theories which relate to landscape architecture, a field very different from the more well-known domains of art and architectural criticism. Throughout the book, Bowring delves into questions such as, how do we know if built or unbuilt works of landscape architecture are successful? What strategies are used to measure the success or failure, and by whom? Does design criticism only come in written form? It brings together diverse perspectives on criticism in landscape architecture, establishing a substantial point of reference for approaching design critique, exploring how criticism developed within the discipline. Beginning with an introductory overview to set the framework, the book then moves on to historical perspectives, the purpose of critique, theoretical positions ranging from aesthetics, to politics and experience, unbuilt projects, techniques, and communication. Written for professionals and academics, as well as for students and instructors in landscape architecture, it includes strategies, diagrams, matrices, and full colour illustrations to prompt discussion and provide a basis for exploring design critique.

The present renewal of garden art demands a new approach to garden aesthetics. This book considers exceptional creations around the world and proposes new forms of garden experience. Using a variety of critical perspectives, the authors demonstrate a renewal of garden design and new directions for garden aesthetics, analyzing projects by Fernando Chacel (Brazil), Andy Goldsworthy (Great Britain), Charles Jencks (Great Britain), Patricia Johanson (U.S.), Dieter Kienast (Switzerland), Bernard Lassus (France), and Mohammed Shaheer (India). The first half of the volume begins with an argument for a return to John Dewey's focus on "Art as Experience," while the second half concludes with a debate on the respective roles of cognition and the senses, and of science and the visual arts.