Designing the Earth The Human Impulse To Shape Nature

David Bourdon

ISBN 10: 0810932245 / ISBN 13: 9780810932241

Published by Harry N. Abrams, 1995

About this Item

Near Fine book is clean and solid. About Fine dust jackeet. Book would be almost like new except for a few minor ex-library marks, none visible on the outside. Explores all types of man made earthen structures. 240pp, index, many photos and illustrations. Shipped in sturdy cardboard box.

Seller Inventory # 008468

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Designing the Earth The Human Impulse To Shape Nature
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Publication Date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810932245
• ISBN 13: 9780810932241
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

Moving across space and time, from prehistory to the present and around the world, this fascinating volume explores the many ways in which the earth has been transformed by human effort. In discerning text, more than 150 fabulous photographs - many of them taken by some of the world's premier aerial photographers - and 21 arresting drawings, paintings, and other artworks, Designing the Earth examines such diverse works as clay dwellings in Chad and Mali, adobe pueblos in the American Southwest, mud-brick ziggurats in Babylon, ancient Egyptian funerary monuments, subterranean aqueducts in Iran, Native American effigy mounds, the Nazca lines of Peru, artificial islands in Japan, the Great Wall of China, Mount Rushmore, and earth-sheltered housing by Frank Lloyd Wright, as well as earthworks by contemporary artists such as Michael Heizer and Andy Goldsworthy.
By considering the works in a larger design context, and by discussing their meaning, import, and use, author David Bourdon opens the reader's eyes to the formal and functional characteristics of earthworks around the world as he explores how people on different continents, unknown to each other, demonstrated remarkable similarities in the recontouring of their landscapes.