The modern period in landscape architecture is enjoying the fascinated appreciation of scholars and historians in Europe and the Americas, and new themes, new subjects and new appraisals are appearing. This book contributes to the conversation by focusing on the work of a singular designer who spent his entire career in a province of the North Island of New Zealand. Ted Smyth practiced an assured landscape modernism without ever seeing the designs of his forebears or his contemporaries working in the UK, Europe and the United States. Designing in isolation from the mainstream of modernism, and a little after its high tide, Smyth produced a series of gardens that provoke a revaluation of the diffusionist model of influence. The book explains and describes the evolution of Smyth's design vocabulary and relates it to the development of tropical landscape modernism in other Asia-Pacific sites. It shows how a culture of garden modernism can be generated from within a particular locale, and highlights Smyth's engagement with Maori design traditions in search of a specific expression of the high modern essentialism of place.

The modern period in landscape architecture is enjoying the fascinated appreciation of scholars and historians in Europe and the Americas, and new themes, new subjects and new appraisals are appearing. This book contributes to the conversation by focusing on the work of a singular designer who spent his entire career in a province of the North Island of New Zealand. Ted Smyth practiced an assured landscape modernism without ever seeing the designs of his forebears or his contemporaries working in the UK, Europe and the United States. Designing in isolation from the mainstream of modernism, and a little after its high tide, Smyth produced a series of gardens that provoke a revaluation of the diffusionist model of influence. The book explains and describes the evolution of Smyth's design vocabulary and relates it to the development of tropical landscape modernism in other Asia-Pacific sites. It shows how a culture of garden modernism can be generated from within a particular locale, and highlights Smyth's engagement with Maori design traditions in search of a specific expression of the high modern essentialism of place.

All landscapes are complex systems which are continually changing as a result of relatively simple interactions. This condition of adaption and evolution is called emergence. Related to chaos theory and self-organising systems, emergence highlights the ever changing and developing urban and natural world - and the need to work flexibly within this. Just as an aborist must understand the development and functions of a tree in order to fully understand his actions in relation to it, so must a landscape architect understand the ecological functions of a specific terrain in order to appreciate how the landscape will respond to the conditions he establishes. This bottom-up approach is essential when dealing with the natural environment - and, as Barnett argues, the urban environment. Covering critically the theory behind emergence in landscape architecture, the author also uses practical examples from international landscapes as a key tool in his mission to explain the basis of emergence and how it is essential to our understanding of both urban and natural systems. Ideal for students and educators in landscape architecture, landscape urbanism and architectural theory, this book provides a full discourse on the theory and practice behind emergence in landscape and features full colour images.

All landscapes are complex systems which are continually changing as a result of relatively simple interactions. This condition of adaption and evolution is called emergence. Related to chaos theory and self-organising systems, emergence highlights the ever changing and developing urban and natural world - and the need to work flexibly within this. Just as an aborist must understand the development and functions of a tree in order to fully understand his actions in relation to it, so must a landscape architect understand the ecological functions of a specific terrain in order to appreciate how the landscape will respond to the conditions he establishes. This bottom-up approach is essential when dealing with the natural environment - and, as Barnett argues, the urban environment. Covering critically the theory behind emergence in landscape architecture, the author also uses practical examples from international landscapes as a key tool in his mission to explain the basis of emergence and how it is essential to our understanding of both urban and natural systems. Ideal for students and educators in landscape architecture, landscape urbanism and architectural theory, this book provides a full discourse on the theory and practice behind emergence in landscape and features full colour images.