Eastern Landscape Architecture Tradition: Part II This is the second part of a two-part series about the varied landscape architectural traditions of the Middle East and the West and the impacts of their differing climates on design. The first part analyzed the relationship that Western landscape architecture had with wet and cold climates. This second part […]
Tag Archives: history
The Divide Between Architecture and Landscape Architecture: Part I
The Western Tradition of Landscape Architecture: Recently, I came across Yale Professor and architect Joel Sander’s book, Ground Work. In it he discusses the divide between the architecture and landscape architecture. According to Sanders, “at least since the late nineteenth century, architecture and landscape architecture have been professionally segregated… more often than not, landscape architects are hired to […]
Paolo Soleri Dreamt of Green Architecture Before its Time
Urban innovator Paolo Soleri died at the age of 93 in Scottsdale Arizona, 70 miles south of Arcosanti, a city he started to build overlooking the River Agua Fria. His career was unorthodox, resting somewhere between Lebbeus Wood and Oscar Niemeyer, both of whom also passed away recently. Soleri preached community and conservation. Arcosanti was his experiment in that regard. He called the vision “arcology,” […]
Ibn Khaldun: The First Urban Sociologist
Ibn Khaldun belonged to an aristocratic family from Seville, Spain but he was born in 1332 in modern-day Tunisia. In 1362, at the age of 30, he moved back to Spain and entered into the service of the Sultan of Granada where he served as Secretary of State and an Ambassador to the court of Pedro the King of […]
Happy New Year!
In celebration of nascent 2013, below are some photographs of Times Square (or Longacre Square as it was known before 1904), from New York Public Library and the New York Historical Society, two organizations with some lovely photographic collections. Note that in these early images one can actually see the Times building! [Note that these […]
“New World” Maps
In honor of the Thanksgiving Holiday, here is a post of “New World” Maps to peruse while you roll around on your bloated belly, gravy flowing from your ears. First, let’s start off with an early map, pre-colonization, of the indigenous tribes: Then let’s see a Viking map from the 1400′s (a supposed copy from […]
Historical Hurricane Data
I have been looking around the internet at how hurricane data over time is shared and visualized and wanted to share some of what I came across… The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is typically the go to place for Americans and many others for any hurricane data. They happen to have an online […]
Mapping Relatives from Old Family Photos
After my great grandfather passed away in 2003 at the age of 102, my family had the task of going through many of his keepsakes. Included in this treasure trove of items was a massive collection of postcards and photographs dating back to the late 1800’s. Over the next couple of years, my father painstakingly […]
Historic Delhi – An Anthology chosen and edited by H. K. Kaul
An excerpt… Mark Twain and the monkeys: “Two of these creatures came into my room in the early morning, through a window whose shutters I had left open, and when I woke one of them was before the glass brushing his hair, and the other one had my note-book, and was reading a page […]
