The landscape architects and designers presented in this book have achieved it. This book is a survey of garden designs since about 1980 that signal what the private garden might be in the twenty-first century. The built and unbuilt projects here show the many and varied ways landscape architects and designers have responded to the multiplicity of cultural phenomena and contemporary realities of the last two decades, and hint at how they will respond in the coming years.

...

The last two decades have seen a great explosion in the diversity, function, and beauty of modern landscape architecture. Private commissions have been the testing ground for the most radical experimentation.This first major survey of contemporary private gardens explores the imaginative ideas behind landscape design today. Almost fifty projects from more than twenty-five landscape architects worldwide are thoroughly documented here.

Each of the four sections of the book-Exploration,Innovation, Tradition, Abstraction-reveals a distinct and original approach to the landscape. Acknowledged masters like Dan Kiley, lan Hamilton Finlay, and Jacques Wirtz stand next to today's most influential landscape architects-Martha Schwartz, Fernando Caruncho, Vladimir Sitta-as well as such young talents as Chip Sullivan and Dean Cardasis. The featured work in this volume is located in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Spain,Germany, Belgium, and Australia.

Diversity characterizes each designer's work. The modernist aesthetic, translated from art and architecture-especially the strains of cubism, the International Style, postmodernism, minimalism, and Earth Artgives form to a great number of the landscapes presented. Many designs have been equally influenced by the legacy of Luis Barragan, Isamu Noguchi, and Roberto Burle Marx. A consideration of the physical and social contexts is also evident in the designers' concern for the environment. The remarkable blend of projects in this volume captures contemporary landscape architecture at the moment when it signals what is to come in the twenty-first century.

Intrduction

Exploration

Robert Murase

lan Hamilton Finlay

Richard Haag

Shodo Suzuki

Susan Child

Motoo Yoshimura

Charles Jencks & Maggie Keswick

Innovation

V. J. Walker

Ludwig Gems

Dean Cardasis

Chip Sullivan

Vladimir Sitta

Tom Oslund

Martha Schwartz

Tradition

Dan Kiley

Fernando Caruncho

John Wong

G rissi m/Metz

Gilles Clement

Jacques Wirtz

Abstraction

Delaney & Cochran

Regina Pizzinini & Leon Luxemburg

Achva Benzinberg Stein

Ron Wigginton & Land Studio

Peter Walker

Kathryn Gustafson

George Hargreaves

Selected Biblioqraphy