26 August, 2016
This is published in the new journal Testing-Ground, by the Advanced Landscape and Urbanism research group in the Department of Architecture and Landscape at the University of Greenwich, London. Detail of Old London Bridge on 1632 oil painting “View of London Bridge” by Claude de Jongh. Image from Wikimedia Nearly sixty years ago, J.B. Jackson wrote one of the most […]
31 March, 2016
Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s ‘Big Fish Eat Little Fish’. In an increasingly predatory political world, we need professions more than ever. “A Word …” is my quarterly column for Landscape: The Journal of the Landscape Institute. Here in the Spring 2016 issue I address the importance of professions and institutions. In the middle of the 17th century, […]
20 September, 2015
“A Word …” is my quarterly column for Landscape: The Journal of the Landscape Institute. Here in the Autumn 2015 issue I warn against the use of the word ‘decant’ to describe the forcible ejection of people from their homes Wine is symbolic in a host of ways. A silver chalice of it can represent the […]
9 July, 2015
A strange tug-of-war between a gentrifying private world and the need for a public life and public space are being played out in tiny micro-aggressions on doorsteps in Fitzrovia. At our recent meeting of residents at the late-Victorian mansion block where I live, the other tenants expressed worries about the large numbers of people, especially at […]
25 April, 2015
This essay appeared in the Autumn 2011 issue of Landscape to accompany my talk at the Garden Museum entitled ‘Food in the Metropolis’. My research continues to explore questions of taste, prosperity, and the good life as key to a sustainable future. JacquesTati’s Monsieur Hulot in Mon Oncle comes face to face with sanitised, mechanised […]
5 June, 2016
The work of EMF – Estudi Martí Franch – in Girona, combines techniques of landscape management and architecture with garden design, maintenance, and planning, illustrating the need to conceive of a more ecological relationship between landscape disciplines, urban and rural, in the future. See my upcoming article this summer on EMF’s work in Landscape Architecture […]
7 December, 2015
“A Word …” is my quarterly column for Landscape: The Journal of the Landscape Institute. Here in the Winter 2015 issue I talk about how nurturing plants and creative and community interests are essential for both children and for the future of our landscapes. Seedlings growing in my North Sheen allotment greenhouse – sadly I had […]
28 July, 2015
This article appeared in the July 2015 edition of Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM), with the subheading “The Milan Expo raises unsought emotions about food, cities, the world.” The text and photos are both mine. The ‘Tree of Life’ is a sound and light spectacle every evening that includes dancing waters and a techno soundtrack. A […]
11 June, 2015
“The four horsemen of the apocalypse are always saddled up and ready to ride roughshod over population growth” – scene from Mad Max: Fury Road found at http://www.rygestop.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2015-Mad-Max-Fury-Road-Hi-Res-Wallpaper-up8cq-Free.jpeg “A Word …” is my quarterly column for Landscape: The Journal of the Landscape Institute. Here in the Summer 2015 issue I call for more hope, idealism, and striving […]
20 April, 2015
‘Bad Role Models for Landscape Architecture’ is a series of articles I wrote in 2012 for Landscape online and which led to much discussion (some angry) and a short appearance on the BBC where I criticised Charles Jencks’s earthwork Northumberlandia. Jencks believes that in a postmodern age any publicity, even negative, is good publicity. This, […]