Western Modernism and the Myth of Nature

California at the beginning of the twentieth century presented a unique cultural and physical landscape in which the seeds of a modern architecture defined by space could flourish. The complex reasons for this flowering are rooted fundamentally in the climate and topography of coastal Southern California and the apparently limitless possibilities it offered to designers of buildings and landscapes. Virtually everyone, from the earliest explorers on, saw California as a "promised land" where their particular vision of a better world could be realised (Starr, 1973: 11). The attraction was the possibility presented by the landscape for transformation to ranch, farm, orchard or garden. California was abundant, spacious, and above all, hospitable. It was ripe for the development of the attitudes toward the environment that I am collecting under the title, the "Myth of Nature"