Japanese gardens are found throughout the world today--their unique forms now considered a universal art form. This stunning Japanese gardening book examines the work of five leading landscape architects in North America who are exploring the extraordinary power of Japanese-style garden design to create an immersive experience promoting personal and social well-being. Master garden designers Hoichi Kurisu, Takeo Uesugi, David Slawson, Shin Abe and Marc Keane have each interpreted the style and meaning of the Japanese garden in unique ways in their innovative designs for private, commercial and public spaces. Several recent Japanese-style gardens by each designer are featured in this book with detailed descriptions and sumptuous color photos. Hoichi Kurisu--transformative spaces for spiritual and physical equilibrium. Takeo Uesugi--bright, flowing gardens that evoke joyful living. David Slawson--evocations of native place that fuse with the surrounding landscape. Shin Abe--dynamically balanced "visual stories" that produce meaning and comfort. Marc Keane--reflections on human connections with nature through the art of gardens. Also included are essays on the designers and mini-essays by them about gardens in Japan which have most inspired their work, as well as commentaries by patrons and visitors to their North American gardens. The book focuses on recently-created gardens to suggest how the art form is currently evolving, and to understand how Japanese garden design principles and practices are being adapted to suit the needs and ways of people living and working outside Japan today.

The landscape painter George Inness (1825-1894) was one of the foremost American artists of his generation. Born in Newburgh, New York, Inness studied the works of the old masters and, as a young man, painted in the reigning style of the Hudson River School. Within a few years, however, he found himself more attuned to the gestural, expressive approach of the Barbizon School. He greatly admired the free handling of paint and the expression of soulfulness in the works of Theodore Rousseau. Equally important were Inness's philosophical and spiritual concerns. Along with contemporaries Ralph Waldo Emerson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Walt Whitman, Inness studied the writings of the Swedish scientist-turned-mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). During a trip to Italy in the early 1870s, Inness began to structure his landscapes around geometric forms, a development that may have reflected the Swedenborgian idea that the natural world corresponds to the spiritual world and that geometric forms possess spiritual identities. Through these and other compositional devices, Inness created paintings to inspire an almost "religious experience" in his viewers. George Inness and the Visionary Landscape includes forty color reproductions of Inness's most important paintings and presents both a chronological overview of Inness's life and a more focused treatment of the artist's main philosophical and religious preoccupations. It suggests resonances between Inness's visionary landscapes and the concurrent efforts, on the part of the psychologist/philosopher William James (1842-1910), to validate the existence of mystical states of mind. It shows Inness to have anticipated many of the most importanttenets of modernism, an achievement that continues to inspire contemporary audiences.

Imagine Our Algae Future. Visionary Algae Architecture and Landscape Designs. How will growing algae change the world and improve our lives?Imagine our future living in cities where buildings are covered with photosynthetic skins and vertical gardens, collecting the sun's energy and producing food and energy for urban citizens. Imagine greening desert coastlines and producing food for millions of people. Imagine algae systems that recycle polluting wastes into high value animal food, fuel and biofertilizers.This book reviews algae production, products and potential today and showcases some of the amazing visions of our future from the International Algae Competition. Our future with algae offers rich and diverse opportunities that will impact every aspect of our lives.International Algae Competition is a global challenge to design our future with algae food and energy systems. As a participatory design game, Algae Competition invited global citizens from around the world to design their own future with the foods they eat, systems that grow algae, and landscapes and cityscapes they dream of living in. 140 participants responded, representing 40 countries, and they submitted some amazing designs, projects and food ideas.Growing algae offers a future beyond scarcity toward sustainability and abundance. Here's a peek into this future.Imagine Our Algae Future chapters1. Introduction2. Algae Production, Products & Potential Today3. International Algae Competition AwardsExhibits from the International Algae Competition4. Algae Production Systems5. Visionary Architecture and Landscape Designs 6. Algae Food Development and Recipes7. References and Author Biographies

Basic principles : "Sustainability" in context -- Principle 1 : Keep healthy sites healthy -- Principle 2 : Heal injured soils and sites -- Principle 3 : Favor living, flexible materials -- Principle 4 : Respect the waters of life -- Principle 5 : Pave less -- Principle 6 : Consider origin and fate of materials -- Principle 7 : Know the costs of energy over time -- Principle 8 : Celebrate light, respect darkness -- Principle 9 : Quietly defend silence -- Principle 10 : Maintain to sustain -- Principle 11 : Demonstrate performance, learn from failure -- Sustaining principles, evolving efforts.

In America today we see rampant development, unsustainable resource exploitation, and commodification ruin both natural and built landscapes, disconnecting us from our surroundings and threatening our fundamental sense of place. Meanwhile, preservationists often respond with a counterproductive stance that rejects virtually any change in the landscape. In The Working Landscape, Peter Cannavò identifies this zero-sum conflict between development and preservation as a major factor behind our contemporary crisis of place. Cannavò offers practical and theoretical alternatives to this deadlocked, polarized politics of place by proposing an approach that embraces both change and stability and unifies democratic and ecological values, creating a "working landscape." Place, Cannavò argues, is not just an object but an essential human practice that involves the physical and conceptual organization of our surroundings into a coherent, enduring landscape. This practice must balance development (which he calls "founding") and preservation. Three case studies illustrate the polarizing development-preservation conflict: the debate over the logging of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest; the problem of urban sprawl; and the redevelopment of the former site of the World Trade Center in New York City. Cannavò suggests that regional, democratic governance is the best framework for integrating development and preservation, and he presents specific policy recommendations that aim to create a "working landscape" in rural, suburban, and urban areas. A postscript on the mass exile, displacement, and homelessness caused by Hurricane Katrina considers the implications of future climate change for the practice of place.