Twenty-eight years ago I went to England for a three-month visit and rest. What I found changed my life.So begins this memoir by one of Americas best-known landscape architects; Laurie Olin. Raised in a frontier town in Alaska; trained in Seattle and New York; Olin found himself dissatisfied with his job as an urban architect and accepted an invitation to England to take a respite from work. What he found; in abundance; was the serendipity of a human environment built over time to respond to the lands own character and to the people who lived and worked there. For Olin; the English countryside was a palimpsest of the most eloquent and moving sort; yet whose manifestation was of ordinary buildings meant to shelter their inhabitants and further their work.With evocative language and exquisite line drawings; the author takes us back to his introduction to the scenes of English country towns; their ancient universities; meandering waterways; and dramatic cloudscapes racing in from the Atlantic. He limns the geologic histories found within the rock; the near-forgotten histories of place-names; and the recent histories of train lines and auto routes. Comparing the growth of building in the English countryside; Olin draws some sobering conclusions about our modern lifestyle and its increasing separation from the landscape.As much a plea for saving the modern American landscape as it is a passionate exploration of what makes the English landscape so characteristically English; Across the Open Field is "an affectionate ramble through real places of lasting worth."
#2658717 in eBooks 2011-11-29 2011-11-29File Name: B00B4FJCE0
Review
1 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Five StarsBy dina jonasI love the book.