Clare Cooper Marcus – författare

From the Introduction: Consider these two places: Walking into Green Acres, you immediately sense that you have entered an oasis-traffic noise left behind, negative urban distractions out of sight, children playing and running on the grass, adults puttering on plant-filled balconies. Signs of life and care for the environment abound. Innumerable social and physical clues communicate to visitors and residents alike a sense of home and neighborhood. This is a place that people are proud of, a place that children will remember in later years with nostalgia and affection, a place that just feels "good." Contrast this with Southside Village. Something does not feel quite right. It is hard to find your way about, to discern which are the fronts and which are the backs of the houses, to determine what is "inside" and what is "outside." Strangers cut across what might be a communal backyard. There are no signs of personalization around doors or on balconies. Few children are around; those who are outside ride their bikes in circles in the parking lot There are few signs of caring; litter, graffiti, and broken light fixtures indicate the opposite.There is no sense of place; it is somewhere to move away from, not somewhere to remember with pride. These are not real locations, but we have all seen places like them. The purpose of this book is to assist in the creation of more places like Green Acres and to aid in the rehabilitation of the many Southside Villages that scar our cities. This book is a collection of guidelines for the site design of low-rise, high-density family housing. It is intended as a reference tool, primarily for housing designers and planners, but also for developers, housing authorities, citizens' groups, and tenants' organizations-anyone involved in planning or rehabilitating housing. It provides guidelines for the layout of buildings, open spaces, community facilities, play areas, walkways, and the myriad components that make up a housing site.

This comprehensive and authoritative guide offers an evidence-based overview of healing gardens and therapeutic landscapes from planning to post-occupancy evaluation. It provides general guidelines for designers and other stakeholders in a variety of projects, as well as patient-specific guidelines covering twelve categories ranging from burn patients, psychiatric patients, to hospice and Alzheimer's patients, among others. Sections on participatory design and funding offer valuable guidance to the entire team, not just designers, while a planting and maintenance chapter gives critical information to ensure that safety, longevity, and budgetary concerns are addressed.

Clare Cooper Marcus's Groundbreaking is a sweeping autobiographical memoir that spans nearly nine decades of personal history. Moving from a wartime childhood in England through her academic career in the United States, the book weaves together stories of resilience, intellectual discovery, and the healing power of nature. The narrative alternates between richly detailed life episodes-growing up as an evacuee during WWII, becoming a pioneering woman in academia, raising a family as a single mother-and lyrical "Garden Stories," meditations rooted in her Berkeley garden that serve as metaphors for growth, loss, and renewal. Through these interwoven strands, Marcus reflects on identity, motherhood, love, resilience, and the solace found in landscapes both cultivated and wild. Ultimately, Groundbreaking is a meditation on survival and thriving-on how land, gardens, and memory shape a life. It is as much a personal journey as it is a testimony to the enduring human need for grounding in place and nature.

Clare Cooper Marcus's Groundbreaking is a sweeping autobiographical memoir that spans nearly nine decades of personal history. Moving from a wartime childhood in England through her academic career in the United States, the book weaves together stories of resilience, intellectual discovery, and the healing power of nature. The narrative alternates between richly detailed life episodes-growing up as an evacuee during WWII, becoming a pioneering woman in academia, raising a family as a single mother-and lyrical "Garden Stories," meditations rooted in her Berkeley garden that serve as metaphors for growth, loss, and renewal. Through these interwoven strands, Marcus reflects on identity, motherhood, love, resilience, and the solace found in landscapes both cultivated and wild. Ultimately, Groundbreaking is a meditation on survival and thriving-on how land, gardens, and memory shape a life. It is as much a personal journey as it is a testimony to the enduring human need for grounding in place and nature.