Cultural Landscapes often never get the praise that architecture receives, often looked at as no more than a garden. People often lack the understanding and knowledge of landscape architecture and its impact on day to day lives through creating liveable spaces that often hold more cultural significance as bare witness to numerous events in a landscapes history. However, due to the lack of understanding of cultural landscape architecture and its importance as a design profession; designs often loose their lusture as they are tweaked, modified, modernised or oblieterated from the urban fabric.
This leads us to the inspiring article that Kathryn Shattuck from the New York Times wrote on The Cultural Landscape Foundation and the
“….president of the foundation, based in Washington, Mr. Birnbaum, 47, is an advocate not only for historic landscapes, created or natural, but also for the visionaries who have shaped them.”
Mr Birnbaum in the article also summarises the Foundation’s roll as
“…..to begin to get people to recognize that the American landscape is in fact a cultural institution worthy of celebration,”
Shattuck also quotes Tom Fox of SWA Group as stating that Mr Birnbaum is
“….like a little Johnny Appleseed for the design professional and landscape architect,” said Tom Fox, a principal with SWA Group, a planning and landscape design firm in Sausalito, Calif. “He’s spreading the word.”
The main interest of the article is promoting the Photography Exhibition @ George Eastman House in Rochester New York from November 19 to January 4, 2009
read more of this great article by Kathryn Shattuck @ New York Times – Art – Saving Those Landscapes, in Pictures at Least, at the Cultural Landscape Foundation’s Show at the Eastman House –