Architecture and landscape1996

Architecture and Landscape is an innovative analysis of western European landscape design that is the first to provide an insight into conceptual thinking and the three-dimensional aspect. Design information using scientifically objective research methods is used to make topological comparisons of different plans taken from all influential periods of landscape design in Europe. This analysis has been implemented to examine the "rational plan" in the classic tableaux of the 15th- and 16th-century Italian Renaissance villa, the "formal design" that reached its zenith in the quintessential 17th-century French Baroque garden, and the "scenic composition" as expressed in the panoramic English gardens of the 18th-century classical revival period. Architecture and Landscape communicates the infectious excitement felt by the authors at one of Europe's leading schools of architecture and urban design, the faculty of architecture at the Delft University of Technology, on making new discoveries using their research methodology. Their findings are comprehensively documented and provide a clear model for future analyses. Architecture and Landscape provides a new tool for both present-day and future landscape and urban designers. It also facilitates a profound understanding of the design tradition in the West, and promotes landscape design as an autonomous discipline, distinguishing itself from architecture and urban planning.