“A tale about a dog, a bearded man and the thin fragile line between reality and fantasy”. A new book from Christopher David Ryan. Images via My Little Underground.

image via: Amazon.com

I was really excited when I recently picked up a few new books.  One them, Avant Gardeners, is a nice hardcover book that showcases 50 different visionary landscape architects from around the world practicing contemporary design.  A forward written by Martha Schwartz sets the tone for the following 350 pages as she talks about being in the “right place at the right time” in reference to the publishing of her Bagel Garden and in how her “early antics” as a landscape architect has shaped the face of contemporary design.  The designers in the book are categorized as conceptualist which author Tim Richardson defines as “harnessing an idea, or a set of related ideas, as the starting point for work that was characterized by colour, artificial materials and witty commentary on a site’s history and culture”.  

Unlike a book that primarily focuses on designs, this one chooses to focus on the designer while showcasing some images of a few projects.  Instead of acting as a mode of criticism or just merely putting forth beautiful imagery (although there are plenty of fabulous full-color images), this books seeks to delve into the why’s and the how’s behind each designers visionary talent.

While this book is focused on designers, there are also a few essays throughout which deal with various topics surrounding conceptualist landscape architecture.  The first in the series is, of course, “Concept: The theoretical basis for – and a definition of – landscape conceptualism”.  I particularly like the thought-provoking first paragraph, which is a perfect question to ask when looking at so many of the projects set forth in this book:

“It was Martha Schwartz who first stated, ‘A landscape can be about anything.’ This is perhaps the core idea of landscape conceptualism – the starting point – for it also begs the question: how does a designer go about making a landscape that is ‘about’ something, anyway?”

image via: Avant Gardeners

In furthering the discussion of exactly what is landscape conceptualism, the essay “Nature” takes a look at the difference between conceptualists and ecologists in how they view all things that grow.  “The fundamental difference between the conceptual and ecological attitude is that ecologists instinctively believe in the moral and redemptive value of ‘natural’ man-made landscape, while conceptualists maintain that to suggest a man-made landscape is ever going to be ‘natural’ is at best optimistic and at worst a con.”

What I particularly enjoy is the approach that was taken to showcase each designer.  The text is not just gathered facts or a simple biography, but a history that records the beginning of their career up to the present in day in a way that explains where they began, what events shaped them as a designer and what they have become in terms of their own personal outlook on design with notes on inspiration and approach as well as meaning.  As a young designer myself, I am constantly fascinated with how great designers and artists began their career and how they approach a design.  When I tour through art museums I often find myself more fascinated with early sketchbook scribbles than famous art works.  I thought some of Picasso’s early sketchbook figure studies in the museum in Barcelona were quite fascinating.  It is studies and concepts that we find meaning, purpose and are able to see through the eyes of the artist.

The book’s final essay covers Psychotopia which “represents a descriptive attitude to be used for examining what it is in experience that makes place seem special or unique to us.”  The essay covers everything from life, death, energy and the cosmos but ultimately brings it all full circle in taking what we now know about the designers and how they imprint some of themselves in their work which ultimately translates to a space that users experience in their own way… 

“The perceived properties of all objects depends on the personality and culture of the viewer; therefore, as we perceive a place visually, we instantaneously interpret its meanings.  Each person sees each place in a different way – in this sense, we see gardens not as they are, but as we are.”