A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
The Westward-moving house and other stories: J.B. Jackson reading and telling the landscape
John Brinckerhoff Jackson (1909-1996) was an important catalyst for modern cultural landscape studies in the United States. Inspired by European regional geography and by his own experiences working on a ranch in the Southwest, he developed a unique discourse on the American landscape. In 1951 Jackson founded Landscape magazine, which became an important mouthpiece for scholarly work and discussions on landscape, urban planning, and architecture. Although Jackson managed to remain an independent and critical voice - he entered the academic world only late in the 1960’s – he was a central figure in many contemporary debates. Jackson concluded the editorial of the very first issue of Landscape with the often-quoted words: ‘A rich and beautiful book is always open before us. We just have to learn and read it.’ To learn the American people how to read the landscape was indeed his primarily goal: he explicitly wanted to address ‘the intelligent layman’, not just a scientific or academic audience. In line with a descriptive tradition in geography and leaning on his own literary skills – he had published a novel in the 1930’s – Jackson’s description of the landscape was inherently narrative. He wrote many ‘stories’ on the landscape and the people who inhabit it, stories in which the overarching storylines of history and landscape evolution were told through the lives of individuals and the way they interacted with the world around them. One of his most well known texts is ‘The Westward-Moving House’, a tale of three generations of American farmers focusing on their houses and their changing relations with the land. The conference paper explores the literary means J.B. Jackson used to read and tell the landscape. It focuses on the texts he published in Landscape between 1951 and 1968, the period in which he was the editor-in-chief. Apart from the writings of Jackson himself, the paper will also consider articles from other contributors to the magazine. I will explore how narrative techniques entered urban planning ...
The Westward-moving house and other stories: J.B. Jackson reading and telling the landscape
John Brinckerhoff Jackson (1909-1996) was an important catalyst for modern cultural landscape studies in the United States. Inspired by European regional geography and by his own experiences working on a ranch in the Southwest, he developed a unique discourse on the American landscape. In 1951 Jackson founded Landscape magazine, which became an important mouthpiece for scholarly work and discussions on landscape, urban planning, and architecture. Although Jackson managed to remain an independent and critical voice - he entered the academic world only late in the 1960’s – he was a central figure in many contemporary debates. Jackson concluded the editorial of the very first issue of Landscape with the often-quoted words: ‘A rich and beautiful book is always open before us. We just have to learn and read it.’ To learn the American people how to read the landscape was indeed his primarily goal: he explicitly wanted to address ‘the intelligent layman’, not just a scientific or academic audience. In line with a descriptive tradition in geography and leaning on his own literary skills – he had published a novel in the 1930’s – Jackson’s description of the landscape was inherently narrative. He wrote many ‘stories’ on the landscape and the people who inhabit it, stories in which the overarching storylines of history and landscape evolution were told through the lives of individuals and the way they interacted with the world around them. One of his most well known texts is ‘The Westward-Moving House’, a tale of three generations of American farmers focusing on their houses and their changing relations with the land. The conference paper explores the literary means J.B. Jackson used to read and tell the landscape. It focuses on the texts he published in Landscape between 1951 and 1968, the period in which he was the editor-in-chief. Apart from the writings of Jackson himself, the paper will also consider articles from other contributors to the magazine. I will explore how narrative techniques entered urban planning ...
The Westward-moving house and other stories: J.B. Jackson reading and telling the landscape
Notteboom, Bruno (author)
2013-01-01
Writing place : conference on literary methods in architectural research and design, Abstracts
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
DDC:
710
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