Publications

 

Design with Culture
Claiming America's Landscape Heritage

TCLF unveiled an important publication this year: Design with Culture: Claiming America's Landscape Heritage published by the University of Virginia Press. This book, published in May 2005 in paperback and hardcover, explores the work of early preservationists that has frequently been underrated by modern practitioners. Rather than considering these within their historical context, many modern preservationists judge their predecessors' work by contemporary standards, negating their legacy. In Design with Culture: Claiming America's Landscape Heritage, the editors, Charles Birnbaum and Mary Hughes present eight essays by well-known landscape historians that effectively argue against this diminution. By revisiting planning studies, executed works, and critical writings from the years 1890-1950, these authors explore the holistic stewardship ethic that drove pioneering landscape preservation advocates, revealing their goal to be the imaginative transformation, as much as the conservation, of material culture.

The essays, which range from accounts of the professional contribution made by such figures as Charles Sprague Sargent and Frederick Law Olmsted to consideration of the roles played by women's clubs and New Deal government programs, portray the spirit and tenacity of the early preservationists. In their focus on sites such as Mount Vernon and the White House, as well as the rural countryside along the Blue Ridge Parkway, early preservationists anticipated several key issues-such as tourism, ecological concerns, and vehicle access-that confront practitioners today. The editors illustrate not only the similarity of experience between early and modern landscape preservationists but also the immense impact that their decisions had and still have on our daily lives.

The book has been well reviewed, and has struck a chord with landscape architects, architects, planners, amateur and professional gardeners, conservationists, preservationists, and those interested in history, travel, and national parks. 

Contributors include: Charles A. Birnbaum, Mary V. Hughes, Catherine Howett, Phyllis Andersen,
Thomas E. Beaman Jr., Elizabeth Hope Cushing, David C. Streatfield, Cynthia Zaitzevsky,
Ethan Carr, and Ian Firth.