“Constructing Nature: The Legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, edited by William Cronon (W.W. Norton, 1995).
Constructing Nature” is the product of twenty-five years of reflection on Olmsted, including research in the Library of Congress in 1971 and 1994 and in the archives of the Olmsted Historic Site in 1985. I am interested in Olmsted as a practitioner, in how he approached problems similar to those faced by designers today, in the methods he used, his line of reasoning, and the risks he took.
“Constructing Nature” is part of a book on “Rethinking the Human Place in Nature” and was written in dialogue with a group of scholars at the University of California Humanities Research Institute.