Mediterranean Landscape Design

Book excerpt: “Presents work from throughout the region, whether a lushly layered property in the Tuscan countryside or a Zen-inspired plot on the French island of Corsica.” —Architectural Digest Human beings have been transforming Mediterranean landscapes into art for at least 30,000 years. Today, artists, sculptors, designers, architects, and gardeners explore age-old materials, skills, and sites to produce extraordinary landscape art that celebrates life in this multifaceted region. Each work here, whether in France, Greece, Italy, Morocco, or Spain, observes the logic of place as determined by climate, geology, flora and fauna, architecture, and land use. Creative talents from many contexts meet in these pages, such as Gilles Clément and Andy Goldsworthy, Nicole de Vésian and Ian Hamilton Finlay, Arnaud Maurieres and Eric Ossart, Mary Keen, herman de vries, and Paolo Pejrone. Illustrated with hundreds of photos by award-winning photographer Clive Nichols, and drawing on thirty years of exploration by Louisa Jones, this book offers an inspiring vision of the Mediterranean, linking cultural diversity and natural balance as discovered in its gardens, landscape design, literature, art, and architecture.