The Landscape Architecture of Richard Haag: From Modern Space to Urban Ecological Design - Hardcover

Way, Thaisa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0295994487 ISBN 13: 9780295994482

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 2015

Synopsis

Richard Haag is best known for his rehabilitation of Gas Works Park in Seattle and for a series of remarkable gardens at the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island. He reshaped the field of landscape architecture as a designer, teacher, and activist. In 1964, Haag founded the landscape architecture department at the University of Washington, and his innovative work contributed to the increasingly significant design approach known as urban ecological design, which encourages thinking beyond the boundaries of gardens and parks to consider the broader roles that landscapes play within urban ecosystems, such as storm water drainage and wildlife habitat.

Gas Works Park is studied in every survey of twentieth-century landscape architecture as a modern work that challenged the tenets of modernism by engaging a toxic site and celebrating an industrial past. Haag's work with ecologists and soil scientists in his landscape remediation and reclamation projects opened new areas of inquiry into the adaptive reuse of post-industrial sites.

Thaisa Way places Haag's work within the context of changes in the practice of landscape architecture over the past five decades in the Pacific Northwest and nationally. The book should be of interest to specialists as well as to readers who are interested in the changes in urban landscapes inspired by Haag's work.

About this title

From the Author

Urban ecological design has emerged as a leading framework for landscape architectural practice in the 21st century. A practice focused at mid-century on modernist approaches emphasizing architecture, it is now oriented to the complexities of the urban landscape and its cultural and natural ecologies. Richard Haag, founder of the University of Washington landscape architecture department and internationally recognized practitioner, played a critical role in this transformation. This project proposes the first monograph on the work of Haag and the role of his practice in shaping landscape architectural practice in the 21st century. It is a story of both a practitioner and of a transformative period in urban design and landscape architecture.In a career lasting over half a century, Haag reshaped landscape architecture by means of his role as a designer, a teacher, and an activist. His engagement with ecologists and soil scientists in his experimentations with landscape remediation and reclamation opened new areas of inquiry into the adaptive reuse of post-industrial sites. His project for Gas Works Park is described in every survey of twentieth-century landscape architecture as a work that was both modern and challenged the tenets of modernism by engaging a toxic site and celebrating an industrial past. Bloedel Reserve has been featured in more than sixty-seven publications.

From the Author

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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0295994487
• ISBN 13: 9780295994482
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 241