Ian L. McHarg - Böcker

"Show me any civilization that believes that reality exists only because man can perceive it, that the cosmos was erected to support man on its pinnacle, that man is exclusively divine, and then I will predict the nature of his cities and its landscapes, the hot dog stands, the neon shill, the ticky-tacky houses, the sterile core, the mined and ravaged countryside. This is the image of anthropocentric man. He seeks not unity with nature but conquest, yet unity he finds, when his arrogance and ignorance are stilled and he lies dead under the greensward." Ian L. McHarg Multiply and Subdue the Earth, 1969 "No living American has done more to usher the gentle science of ecology out of oblivion and into mainstream thought than Ian McHarg—a teacher, philosopher, designer, and activist who changed the way we view and shape our environment." From the foreword by Stewart L. UdallPublished in cooperation with the Center for American Places, Harrisonburg, VirginiaA Quest for Life is the autobiography of a man who stands alongside Rachel Carson, Lewis Mumford, and Aldo Leopold as one of the giants of the environmental movement. In a robust and singular voice, Ian McHarg recounts the story of a life that has foreshadowed and eventually shaped environmental consciousness in the twentieth century. Along the way we meet prominent figures in the environmental movement, the design fields, and the government, from Walter Gropius to Lady Bird Johnson, all presented in rich and telling anecdotes.Early in A Quest for Life McHarg presents us with an arresting image. Describing the view from his boyhood home on the outskirts of Glasgow, he tells us that in one direction he could see the industrial miasma of smokestacks, tenements, and treeless streets, and, in another, the glories of the Scottish countryside. "I was born and bred," he writes, "on a fulcrum with two poles, city and countryside." Confronted with such a stark contrast, the man who was to become "the founder of ecological planning" began at an early age to turn literally from inhumane urban development and toward the beauty and power of Nature.Each chapter of this book illuminates key stages in McHarg's life and in the evolution of his environmental awareness. We see him as a youth standing on a hillside beside the impressive Donald Wintersgill who, with the wave of his cane, lays out an entire village complete with lakes and forests, and thus introduces the astonished McHarg to the profession of landscape architecture.In some of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War he witnesses the magnitude of human destructive capability. Later, when he faces a crisis of conscience over his religious training and its exhortation to gain dominion over life and subdue the earth, he begins to develop a deep spiritual appreciation for the sanctity of Nature itself. His training as a designer and planner in the Modernist Bauhaus tradition, with its neglect of the environment; his bouts with tuberculosis that showed him the link between public health and city planning; his famous "Man—The Planetary Disease" speech before powerful industrialists—all stand as emblematic of battles that are still being fought today.A Quest for Life also chronicles the many triumphs in McHarg's career. It offers fresh insight into the revolutionary design method behind his groundbreaking book, Design with Nature, and explores the development of geographical information systems. We learn firsthand about his work on the celebrated regional plans for Denver and the Twin Cities, as well as the Woodlands new town project. His most enduring contribution, however, may prove to be his four decades of teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. Through the generations of landscape architects, designers, and planners he taught there, his influence has spread around the world and into the future.As the compelling, first-person story of a remarkable individual who not only manned the barricades against environmental destruction, but helped lay the foundation for the barricades themselves, A Quest for Life is must reading for landscape architects, designers, conservationists, planners, and others concerned with the preservation of our communities and the natural environment.

"In presenting us with a vision of organic exuberance and humandelight, which ecology and ecological design promise to open up forus, McHarg revives the hope for a better world." --LewisMumford ". . . important to America and all the rest of the world in ourstruggle to design rational, wholesome, and productive landscapes."--Laurie Olin, Hanna Olin, Ltd. "This century's most influential landscape architecture book."--Landscape Architecture ". . . an enduring contribution to the technical literature oflandscape planning and to that unfortunately small collection ofwritings which speak with emotional eloquence of the importance ofecological principles in regional planning." --Landscape and UrbanPlanning In the twenty-five years since it first took the academic world bystorm, Design With Nature has done much to redefine the fields oflandscape architecture, urban and regional planning, and ecologicaldesign. It has also left a permanent mark on the ongoing discussionof mankind's place in nature and nature's place in mankind withinthe physical sciences and humanities. Described by one enthusiasticreviewer as a "user's manual for our world," Design With Natureoffers a practical blueprint for a new, healthier relationshipbetween the built environment and nature. In so doing, it providesnothing less than the scientific, technical, and philosophicalfoundations for a mature civilization that will, as Lewis Mumfordecstatically put it in his Introduction to the 1969 edition,"replace the polluted, bulldozed, machine-dominated, dehumanized,explosion-threatened world that is even now disintegrating anddisappearing before our eyes."

The Essential Ian McHarg brings together a series of short essays that reveal the full range of Ian McHarg's thoughts on design and nature. Adapted from the comprehensive book of his work, To Heal the Earth, these carefully selected essays provide an ideal reader for undergraduate and graduate students in planning and landscape architecture.