Designing the Earth: The Human Impulse to Shape Nature - Hardcover

Bourdon, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810932245 ISBN 13: 9780810932241

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995

Synopsis

Moving across space and time, from prehistory to the present and around the world, this fascinating volume explores the many ways in which the earth has been transformed by human effort. In discerning text, more than 150 fabulous photographs - many of them taken by some of the world's premier aerial photographers - and 21 arresting drawings, paintings, and other artworks, Designing the Earth examines such diverse works as clay dwellings in Chad and Mali, adobe pueblos in the American Southwest, mud-brick ziggurats in Babylon, ancient Egyptian funerary monuments, subterranean aqueducts in Iran, Native American effigy mounds, the Nazca lines of Peru, artificial islands in Japan, the Great Wall of China, Mount Rushmore, and earth-sheltered housing by Frank Lloyd Wright, as well as earthworks by contemporary artists such as Michael Heizer and Andy Goldsworthy.
By considering the works in a larger design context, and by discussing their meaning, import, and use, author David Bourdon opens the reader's eyes to the formal and functional characteristics of earthworks around the world as he explores how people on different continents, unknown to each other, demonstrated remarkable similarities in the recontouring of their landscapes.

About this title

Synopsis

Explores the many ways in which the earth has been transformed by human effort throughout history. This book highlights the formal and functional characteristics of earthworks, and explores how people on different continents demonstrated remarkable similarities in recontouring their landscapes.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810932245
• ISBN 13: 9780810932241
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224