ABSTRACT
Landscape writings of the period paralleled—almost always with a bit of a time lag—discourse on modern architecture. Focused on the evolving study of natural ecology, and rooted in landscape management, Ian McHarg cited the natural world as the only viable source of landscape design. Alexander Pope had enjoined Lord Burlington to consult the spirit of the place as a means of rooting landscape design in a particular locale. Landscape architecture becomes in the process a part of the ethos of the era, and its own identity as an art is confirmed. A Didactic landscape is supposedly an aesthetic textbook on natural, or in some cases urban, processes. Gilles Clement, the landscape architect responsible for a considerable section of the park, has also applied his idea of a “garden in movement” to one of its riverside zones. Differences in culture, in education, in life experience, in experience of nature, will all modify perception of the work of landscape architecture.
