A Landscape Manifesto

Diana Balmori, an innovative and influential landscape architect in the field of urban design, makes the case for landscape as an art in her timely and provocative manifesto. This book presents Balmori’s most complete vision yet of the theory and practice of urban landscape design as a discipline that combines the science of ecology with the formal aspects of aesthetics. Here, Balmori advocates a new formal language that reflects a philosophical shift in our traditional understanding of nature, along with “realignments” in how humans relate to nature and live in our world today, changes that will shape the livable city of the future.

A Landscape Manifesto includes discussions of urban ecology, environmental conservation, and environmentally beneficial building techniques. Projects by Balmori Associates, which include the Memphis Riverfront and a port area newly reclaimed by the Guggenheim Bilbao, illuminate Balmori’s innovations. Featuring an introduction by Michel Conan, one of landscape architecture’s most respected historians, Balmori’s book heralds a significant development in the literature of landscape architecture.

Diana Balmori, an innovative and influential landscape architect in the field of urban design, makes the case for landscape as an art in her timely and provocative manifesto. This book presents Balmori’s most complete vision yet of the theory and practice of urban landscape design as a discipline that combines the science of ecology with the formal aspects of aesthetics. Here, Balmori advocates a new formal language that reflects a philosophical shift in our traditional understanding of nature, along with “realignments” in how humans relate to nature and live in our world today, changes that will shape the livable city of the future.

A Landscape Manifesto includes discussions of urban ecology, environmental conservation, and environmentally beneficial building techniques. Projects by Balmori Associates, which include the Memphis Riverfront and a port area newly reclaimed by the Guggenheim Bilbao, illuminate Balmori’s innovations. Featuring an introduction by Michel Conan, one of landscape architecture’s most respected historians, Balmori’s book heralds a significant development in the literature of landscape architecture.

Diana Balmori is an internationally recognized landscape and urban designer. She teaches at the Yale University School of Architecture and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She lives in New York. Michel Conan is director of the Garden and Landscape Studies program at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library in Washington, D.C.