History of Modern Gardens and Public Landscapes: 1800 to the present

This survey lecture course presents the history of landscape design in Europe and North America from early modern times to the emergence of modern landscape architecture after 1938. The course covers the formal, cultural, and environmental aspects of modern landscape design, including issues of theory, methodology, and the evolution of the profession. A sequence of case studies of parks, gardens, planned communities, and other designed landscapes, leads from Painshill to St. Ann\’s Hill and from Central Park to the Bronx River Parkway. A review of major exponents of theory and practice ranges from Humphry Repton to Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., and from P?ckler-Muskau to Christopher Tunnard and Dan Kiley.The multivalent forms of modern landscape design are examined in a variety of contexts that include: public and private, as well as rural and urban, spheres; the rise of technology, social reform, and ecological concerns during industrialization and urbanization; the emergence of ideologies of nature; the development of historicism, landscape preservation, and conservation; the role of women in the landscape profession; the rise of modern horticulture, planting design, and color theory; issues of regionalism and mobility; and changing attitudes to modernity and modernization.