This is a useful, well-illustrated and attractive book. But, I would say, better suited to persuading non-landscape architects to join the profession than to 'doing what it says on the box', in the sense of setting forth the fundamentals of landscape architecture. Waterman studied in the US and teaches in the UK. The book has chapters which:
The illustrations and captions are the best feature of the book, leaving one with the feeling 'PLEASE, oh please, please let me have a go at projects like these!'
The weakness of the book is the fragility of its theoretical and historical underpinning. Waterman states (p.11) that ''as a profession, landscape architecture is relatively new, dating back only about a century and a half". But he then devotes pages 12-50 (approx 20% of the book content) to a history of the subject over the past 10,000 years! He is absolutely right to include this history but absolutely wrong to take the standard American line that the art of landscape architecture was invented by Frederick Law Olmsted in the mid-nineteenth century. Undermined by this historical error, the Americans who dominated twentieth century landscape architecture were unable to give a passable definition of the subject.
Note: an interesting aspect of the book is a note from the publishers on Ethics (which I would call Applied Ethics). Central Park in New York is given as an example and the following questions are asked:
They arise from the facts that about 1600 people 'most of whom were poor and either African Americans or immigrants' were evicted from the site, and that after completion of the park it fell into several periods of neglect.
