California history, as is told by its private, public and sidewaly landscapes, is examined in a book “California Eden: Heritage Landscapes of the Golden State”.
Most people are familiar with architectural history and how buildings reflect the time, the place and culture of the people they designed and designed them.
In California, all of this would include the cone-shaped Redwood bark houses of the coastal pomos to the Moorish, Spanish and Mexican-influenced Adobe buildings of the Spanish Padres to the modernist designs of Richard Neutra, which the elegant and cool tastes from cool taste Reflected California in the middle of the 20th century.
Now two scientists have decided to take a deeper look at the constantly changing cultural landscapes of California.
In a new book, the co -judges Christine Edstrom O'Hara and Susan Chamberlin, both architectural historians, take the readers on a tour of “California Eden: Heritage Landscapes of the Golden State”.
They make a lot of stops and visit great residential goods that were designed by landscape architects, such as Stanfords Hanna House, where both the interior and outdoor areas of Frank Lloyd Wright were designed, and public places where municipalities gather, like the emperor – Roof garden in Oakland.
However, they also look at around or everyday landscapes, which are described by the cultural geographer JB Jackson as consumer systems produced by humans that are overlaid in the country. Their function is to serve their communities and to make cultural changes over time.
“The idea was to explain to people what this rural landscape tells about our own culture,” said O'Hara, who did his doctorate in the landscape architecture of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
“We have stories in this area of Japanese gardens in San Diego and how they have changed over time, and the understanding of racism that participated, and how some of the people who built these places were sent to internment camps.
The book bridges a lot of California history, but it is told by the lens of the landscape – the California landscape.
The editors found that an ideal place to explore and demonstrate the idea of a local landscape consisted of the example of Sonoma County. An entire chapter in the book published by the Angel Press The Los Angeles Public Library is dedicated to the landscape history of Sonoma County.
“It was interesting to see how every culture in Sonoma changed the landscape to make it available for the land use of the next,” said O'Hara, who teaches Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. “For example, people who moved to California of places where a lot of forest was used in their construction from construction to say Mexico with Adobe Bricks. The trees fell the fields, which then made the country available to agriculture. The effects of each group on the landscape influenced how the Tine landscape changed from the next group as a culture. “
Janet Gracyk, a landscape historian from Petaluma who is a member of society, said the book was revealing.
“The book will satisfy those with informal interest in gardens and landscapes, garden enthusiasts and landscape experts. Those of us who immerse themselves in the topic read information layers when we see a landscape – all the way in which people influence our environment for good and sick, ”she said. “Fashion, political history, ambition, ecology, geology – everyone is present and overlaid in every garden or landscape. This book shows the many aspects of garden and landscape design in this extraordinary state of California by convincing about mandatory stories about different locations. “
Home owners who want to reinterpret their own rooms outdoors could be inspired by some of the great goods that were presented in the book, such as Green Gables, a country -free estate in English in Woodside, which was designed by Charles Sumner Greene With his brother like the Duo Greene & Greene, the arts of handicrafts in California perfected in the early 20. Century.
Marc Fleishhacker, whose great -grandparents, the philanthropes of San Francisco, Mortimer and Bella Fleishhacker, who commissioned Greene, provided original garden plans that stayed with the estate, said O'Hara.
The book also refers to El Novillero, a legendary landscape of the Thomas Church in the hills above the southern Sonoma Valley, which has one of the first kidney-shaped pools that reflect the wetlands underneath.
Also known as Donnell Garden, it has been examined and admired for around 70 years and kept intact by the Donnell heirs.
But more than design style, it is also interesting and valuable for the people to know the history of the country in which they live and how it developed, how it did, said O'Hara. This could mean everything, from plant life to the water sheath to the culture of the peoples that lived in one area one after the other.