ARCHITECTURE AND NATURE. CREATING THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE

This book offers an in-depth look at how changing ideas of what nature is and what it means for the country have been represented in buildings and landscapes over the past century. It begins with the close of the frontier and the rise of the conservation movement in the 1890s, and it ends with the opening of the "final" frontier of outer space and the rise of the ecology movement in the 1960s. In this seventy five year period, certain American myths about nature have endured while others have been invented, reworked or abandoned.The buildings and landscapes that have resulted from this dynamic process represent the dreams and ambitions of the country for its relationship to nature: the architecture of the National Parks, the streamlined dams of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the modernist dream houses of post war California, and the geodesic domes of the countercultural sixties. Each of these buildings and landscapes were iconic representations in their era - symbolizing a perfect ideal for life in harmony with nature.