Introduction
The title of the book is European Landscape
Architecture: The Details, and all the case studies
are drawn from European countries. The original idea
was to invite each contributor to submit two case
studies, together with a brief introduction, setting
these projects in the context of the historical deve-
lopment of landscape architecture in their own coun-
try. There are 49 states that can, for geographical
and historical reasons, be considered part of Europe.
Not all of them have a well-established profession of
landscape architecture, but there would still not be
space, within a single volume, to represent all those
countries in which landscape architecture is practised.
To a large extent, our contributors were self-selected,
in that they were the people who responded to that
first invitation from Copenhagen, but we sought out
a few other people later, in the interests of obtaining
a good geographical spread. Therefore, the book
includes chapters from as far west as Ireland, as far
east as Hungary, as far north as Sweden and as far
south as Spain. In some chapters, there is only one
case study. For the most part, the contributors are
resident in their lands of origin and they describe
work from their own country, but in a couple of
cases, compromise was necessary; the Irish chapter
is written by an Englishwoman and the French chap-
ter by a Swede educated in Denmark.
We asked our authors not only to describe, but also
to evaluate, so it was important that they should not
be writing about their own work. Again, we have to
report a compromise; Boudewijn Almekinders and
Ad Koolen worked on the two schemes described
in the Netherlands chapter. However, when it came
to the evaluation, we asked them to evaluate one
another’s projects, rather than their own.
Initially, we thought that the projects should all
be by indigenous designers, i.e. a British design
should be by a Briton and the Swedish design by
a Swede. If there were any national differences in
approach or style, this might help reveal them. In
the event, this too proved impossible to enforce,
since Ingrid Schegk was very keen to write about
the Landscape Park Riem, near Munich, which was
designed by a Frenchman, Gilles Vexlard.
This raises an interesting question. Does the title
of this book simply reflect the origins of its edi-
tors and authors, or is there something identifi-
able and distinctive about ‘European Landscape
Architecture’? Throughout history, design influ-
ence has flowed back and forth around the world.
Sixteenth-century Italian gardens influenced those
of seventeenth-century France, while the grand
manner of Le Nôtre was enviously copied by
German princes. In the eighteenth century it was
the turn of England to provide the dominant cultural
model, and the craze for the jardin anglais swept
around the globe. Nor should we underestimate
