• The Venetian City Garden
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The Venetian City Garden

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Key issues in garden design today No city has played a more seminal role in the development of "landscape" as a concept than has Venice. In a city where t...
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  • 19 June 2009
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Key issues in garden design today

No city has played a more seminal role in the development of "landscape" as a concept than has Venice. In a city where the land and gardens are reclaimed from a lagoon environment whose ecology is in jeopardy today, they are the very basis of life, dwelling, and culture. This book develops a typology of gardens distinguished by their predominantly small scale, all of which work with essential dimensions of landscape architecture: private and public space, usefulness and beauty, and open space in a densely built environment that is permeated with history.

From nearly one hundred city gardens, squares, and courtyards, public parks and temporary gardens, this book identifies garden layout and design elements that involve both material factors – spatial and design-related features – as well as the social circumstances of their use.

The areas presented include the Arsenale, where the Paradise Garden was created for the 2008 Biennale by Gustafson Porter, and the giardini and public gardens that – since their creation two hundred years ago – have served as a laboratory for making Venice into a modern city with a strong appeal to the "natural".

  • The city garden in a densely built, historical environment – a type of garden presented through one of its paradigmatic examples
  • Analyzes history, typology, and topography as essential elements of landscape design
  • By one of the world’s leading experts on garden history and landscape design
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Price: $35.00
Pages: 223
Publisher: Birkhäuser
Imprint: Birkhäuser
Publication Date: 19 June 2009
ISBN: 9783764389437
Format: Hardcover
BISACs: ARCHITECTURE / Landscape, GARDENING / Landscape, GARDENING / Garden Design, GARDENING / Urban & Community, Landscape architecture & design, Garden design & planning, Landscape gardening, Allotments / Community gardens
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John Dixon Hunt is Professor Emeritus of the University of Philadelphia School of Design at Pennsylvania. Among his many publications are: The Genius of the Place, MIT Press; The Picturesque Garden in Europe, Thames & Hudson; The Afterlife of Gardens, Reaktion Press); L’art du Jardin et son Histoire, Odile Jacob; Nature Over Again: the Garden Art of Ian Hamilton Finlay, Reaktion Press.

Preface.- APPROACHING THE VENETIAN CITY GARDEN.- I: Differing perceptions. II: Imagining and inhabiting the city.- III: On writing the history of the Venetian city garden.- GROUNDS OF BEING: GARDEN-MAKING AND THE LAGOON ECOLOGY.- I: Land from the sea.- II: A repertoire of garden-like spaces.- VENETIAN GARDENS IN THE YEAR 1500.- I: Gardens in Jacopo de’ Barbari’s bird’s-eye view.- II: Garden layout and design elements: descriptions by 16th-century painters and writers.- III: A typology of the Venetian garden.- CASE HISTORIES OF SELECTED SITES.- Cannaregio.- Castello.- Santa Croce.- Dorsoduro.- San Marco.- San Polo.- Giudecca.- GIARDINI MINORI.- Botanical and pharmaceutical gardens.- Monastic gardens.- GARDEN, THEATRE, AND CITY.- Spectacles and ad hoc gardens.- The Casino in the garden.- Layout of garden spaces.- THE INVENTION OF PUBLIC GARDENS FOR THE MODERN CITY. - Napoleon’s garden interventions.- A laboratory for the modern city.- The Royal Gardens and the Botanical Garden at San Giobbe.- OLD RUINED GARDENS AND NEW MODERN GARDENS.- "Ruin" and reality.- The advent of "Picturesque" designs.- A repertoire for future gardens.- POSSIBLE GARDENS: GROUNDS FOR CHANGE.