Nature Modern

The Place of Landscape in the Modern Movement

Nature is not simply "green” or the "opposite of culture.” Essentially, it is an intellectual construct. The relationship between man and Nature, for instance, articulates itself architectonically. Now what could one see as the possible role of Nature in projects of architects representative of the International Style (including successive echoes in postwar modernity), and how does Nature itself only become "visible” through the built environment? Based on key architecture projects, this fourth volume of the Landscript series attempts to instigate a change of perspective. In series of investigations, renowned researchers analyse architecture through the lens of its own inherent understanding of Nature. Their essays try to gain insights both into concepts of Nature in modernity, whose entire range of characteristics have yet to be explored, and into an architecture, whose relationship to Nature is usually only negotiated in disciplines like garden history. How does this finally relate to our present condition?