| Unit name | Contemporary Gardens |
|---|---|
| Unit code | ARCHM0052 |
| Credit points | 10 |
| Level of study | M/7 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Emeritus Professor. Mowl |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of Anthropology and Archaeology |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
Extended from the previous ARCH M70115 seminar on Twentieth-Century Gardens, this new seminar will run a critical review of the evolution of gardens and landscape design from 1900 onwards, both public and private, with emphasis on its interaction with contemporary movements in art, architecture and popular culture. Starting from the development of the Modernist movement, but focusing, in particular, on post-war and contemporary garden designs in Europe and America, it will trace the parallel threads$�modernist thinking, changing aesthetics, postcolonial influence, scientific discovery, environmental concern$�which have interwoven into contemporary expression of the correlation between human beings and nature through garden and landscape. The following questions will be explored: What are the connections between art and garden? Which are the most influential art movements to contemporary garden design? How and why? What are the roots of modernist philosophy in the Industrial Revolution and the nationalist battles of late nineteenth-century Europe, and its twentieth-century acceptance, rejection and reappraisal in both America and Europe? What is the link between the post-war utility and the rise of landscape architecture? Did modernism happen in garden and landscape design the same way as in art and architecture? How did non-Western cultures enrich Western views of nature? How to read the cross influence between land art, environmentalism and landscape design? How does a quest for the contemporary garden aesthetic take place?
