Looking Past Form to the Past: Reconsidering Modern Landscape Architecture Theory

This paper re-examines fundamental concepts inherent in Modernist architectural and landscape architectural theory. The author critiques Eco-revelatory theory and Modernist theory using space, transparency, structure, and the sciences versus the humanities comparatively. These ideas illustrate the differences between conceptual theory and physical form, showing Eco-revelatory design to be a truer expression of Modernist theory than mid-twentieth-century design. The author proposes that Eco-revelatory theory and design exist within the continuum of Modernism, and can benefit from the Modernist lexicon. This vocabulary can be valuable for arriving at a set of terms shared with architectural theory. This global theory, when applied to landscape designs and analyses, may yield physical forms highly attuned to local landscapes and buildings