In landscape architecture, representation has become the subject of contention and much discussion. While computer techniques have been a catalyst for change across the field of design as a whole, nowhere have the conventions of representation been called into question more than in landscape architecture – which in itself is undergoing a process of reinvention. With the onset of rapid urbanisation and our shifting relationship with nature, landscape architecture has proved a potent lens for expressing a wider dialogue taking place in the world. It is, however, only through the introduction of innovative forms of representation – whether digital, analogue or hybrid – that one most vividly sees the emergence of the new.

In this book, Diana Balmori explores notions of representation in the discipline at large and across time. She takes us back to landscape design’s roots in the seventeenth century in France and the eighteenth century in England, when it first grappled with questions of imagined exterior space. She explores the discipline’s relationship to painting and the influence of cartography with its bird's-eye views, topographic sections and perspectives. She highlights how new attempts at representation by modern landscape artists such as Patricia Johanson, Ian Hamilton Finlay and David Hockney continue to wrestle with the depiction of landscape.  More specifically, she looks at the work of Bernard Lassus, Richard Haag, Stig L Andersson, Lawrence Halprin and Patricia Johanson, as well as that of some of the most influential landscape urbanists.

The narrative and rich selection of images illustrated here convey Balmori’s deep knowledge and ensuing pleasure and delight in the act of drawing. An inspiring and informative investigation of beauty in all of its forms, this volume provides landscape design students and professionals with creative perspectives on a crucial aspect of the design process.