Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History
by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers · Harry N. Abrams
A single-volume survey of designed landscapes from prehistoric sites through Islamic, medieval, Renaissance, Japanese, English landscape and modern public parks to contemporary work. It has about 630 illustrations and relates each period's designs to its culture and ideas. History and precedent are core to landscape architecture education.
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More resources on Landscape Architecture
Landscape Architecture: A Manual of Environmental Planning and Design by Simonds and Starke (5th edition)
The foundational text in landscape architecture — integrating the built environment with natural systems. Essential for understanding how the public realm merges with building design.
Landscape Performance Series: Case Study Briefs
The Landscape Architecture Foundation's free database of over 200 built landscape projects. Each brief documents measured environmental, social and economic results, such as stormwater captured, heat reduction, habitat and park use, with the methods research teams used to measure them. The field's standard free source of measured post-occupancy outcomes, moving the reader from principles (McHarg, Whyte) to evidence.
What's Out There: Cultural Landscape Database
A free precedent library: the most complete free collection of sourced parks, plazas and landmarks. The Cultural Landscape Foundation's free searchable database of more than 2,800 designed and cultural landscapes, 1,400 designer biographies and 14,000 images, filterable by designer, type, style and location, plus city guides and oral histories with practitioners.
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
William H. Whyte's 1980 field study of New York plazas. It uses time-lapse film and direct observation to show how seating, sun, water, food and street edges decide whether people use a public space. It became the empirical basis for NYC zoning rules on plazas.
Design with Nature
McHarg's landmark on ecological planning — overlaying natural systems to guide where and how we build. A founding text of landscape architecture and environmental design.