The Vital Landscape : Nature and the Built Environment in Nineteenth-Century Britain

"The Vital Landscape explores the arrival of the biological sciences - most notably the sciences of?life? entailed in studies of botany and zoology, ecology and evolutionary science, physiology and psychology - in the nineteenth century and their impact on architecture and landscape architecture in Great Britain. Specifically, the book explores the idea of the contrived or artificial environment as an object of both scientific speculation and aesthetic reflection. Unlike specialist histories of biological science or environmental thought, this book is unique in locating one source for present-day concerns for the environment and human well-being in debates over proper housing and the growing popularity of domestic and public gardens in the nineteenth century. The book skilfully interweaves architecture and garden history, the history and philosophy of science, plant and animal physiology and human psychology, works of literature, popular science and domestic economy in a story that opens new opportunities for the study of architecture and gardens."--Provided by publisher hyper compress PDF online -> avepdf.com Cover 1 Half Title 2 Dedication 3 Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 List of figures 8 Acknowledgements 12 Preface 14 Introduction 20 1 Primitive huts and wild gardens 34 2 Vegetables in forcing-houses, humans in glasshouses 60 3 The vital landscape 86 4 Elemental existence 114 5 Patterns on the landscape 140 6 Characterizing life at home 174 7 Memory and the garden cemetery 198 Conclusion: Our (dys)functional environment 220 Notes 238 Bibliography 256 Index 268