The central question animating Dieter Kienast’s anthology is: "Where better can we practice attentive interaction with the natural world than in its microcosm, the garden?"
From the start of his career as a landscape architect Kienast also wrote prolifically. Once he intensified his collaboration with architects and urban planners in the 1980s, his essays, commentaries, and statements found their true subject: landscape architectural design in the human habitat, beyond the ecological dogma of a supposedly untouched and self-unfolding nature.
Anyone looking for answers to the fundamental questions of the designed environment that are both profound and thought-provoking will enjoy this classic of contemporary landscape architecture.
Pages: 224
Language: German
16.5 × 23.5 cm
10 illustrations
Chair of Landscape Architecture, ETH Zurich
"Dieter Kienast war Vorbild und Hoffnungsträger für mehrere Generationen von Landschaftsgestaltern und Architekten in der Schweiz. Wie kaum einem andern gelang es ihm, die gegensätzlichen Pole von Natürlichkeit und Kultivierung, von Natur und Architektur in eine subtile Beziehung zu setzen. Aus dem Prinzip der Antithese gewann er gleichsam die Poesie seiner Entwürfe."
Arthur Rüegg