The Riverway in 2016, Boston. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and constructed in the 1890s.
“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.
Boston's Riverway, during construction in 1892 and three decades later in 1920.
Even Niagara Falls is not only a phenomenon of nature, but also the product of design.
“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.
