Central organizations

When writing a book integrating architecture and landscape architecture, it can be challenging to find effective modes organizing subject matter. While architecture can easily be described in formal terms, landscape architecture also has a temporal factor affecting its development and understanding. Having taught many versions of the class for which this book was written, I have experimented with different organizations and topics. This book is organized as projects organized by centers, lines, grids, planes and volumes, integrating landscape and architecture content contiguously throughout each topic. Within each category is a mini chronology starting with the oldest developing to more contemporary topics. One benefit of these mini chronologies is to introduce contemporary topics earlier in the discussion of the course. Another important reason is to introduce links between newer projects and their formal organization connections to historical projects. There are a few exceptions in the chronologies when specific comparisons are emphasized. Also, within these five categories, most projects can be situated within more than one category. The selections have been curated to best make comparisons and evolutions of exploring architecture and landscape architecture.

The first category is projects of central organizations. These are projects related to a center, either circular or through axes. This section covers projects spanning five thousand years of history including architecture, landscape, drawings and unbuilt projects.