Ian McHarg

Ian L. McHarg ( November 201920 - March 52001 ) was born in Glasgow, Scotland and became a landscape architect and a renowned writer on regional planning using natural systems. He was the founder of the department of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. His 1969 book Design with Nature pioneered the concept of ecological planning. It continues to be one of the most widely celebrated books on landscape architecture and land-use planning. In this book, he set forth the basic concepts that were to develop later in Geographic Information Systems.

His father was a local minister in the industrial city of Glasgow. McHarg showed an early talent for drawing and was advised to consider a career in landscape architecture. In Glasgow he gained an appreciation of the need for cities to accommodate the qualities of the natural environment better, which had been greatly lacking in the city (Corbett, 1Fact|date=July 2007).

It was not until after his term in the British Parachute Brigade, serving in war-stricken Italy during World War II, however, that he was able to explore this idea further. After working with the Royal Engineers during World War II, he traveled to America. He was admitted to the school of architecture at Harvard University where he received professional degrees in both landscape architecture and city planning.

Afterward, McHarg began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, where he developed the department of landscape architecture, as well as offering a new course entitled, "Man and Environment" (Pennsylvania Gazette, 1Fact|date=July 2007). In 1960, he hosted his own television show on CBS, "The House We Live In".

Ian McHarg was the original co-developer of The Woodlands, Texas, an unincorporated community in Montgomery County, Texas. This community was developed from timberland located thirty miles north of Houston, by George P. Mitchell, who hired McHarg to consult on the project and, as a result, the original plans featured many of his unique designs.

In 1966 he was involved with several other projects; the "Plan for the Valleys" in Baltimore County, Maryland begun in 1962; the "Inner Harbor" in Baltimore; the "Woodlands" in Houston, Texas; and regional plans for the "Twin Cities of Minnesota", Washington, D.C., and Denver, Colorado (Pennsylvania Gazette,1).

In 1969, he published, "Design with Nature", which was essentially, a book of step-by-step instructions on how to break down a region into its appropriate uses (Wenz, 2). McHarg also was interested in garden design and believed that homes should be planned and designed with good private garden space.

McHarg said his book, "Design with Nature" is sharply critical of the French style of garden design, which he saw as a subjugation of nature, and is full of praise for the English style of garden design, which he saw as a precursor of his 'design with nature' philosophy.

McHarg's own plans for urban expansion projects also were more 'English' than 'French' in their geometry. He favored what became known as 'cluster development' with relatively dense housing set in a larger natural environment.

Throughout his life, McHarg sought a new union between humans and nature, Fact|date=July 2007 perhaps as a reaction against his childhood experience in the industrial city of Glasgow. Ian McHarg died on March 5, 2001 at age eighty from pulmonary disease.

Books

*"To Heal the Earth: Selected Writings of Ian L. McHarg" 1998 ISBN 1-55963-573-8
*"A Quest for Life: An Autobiography" Ian L. McHarg 1996 ISBN 0-471-08628-2
*"Design with Nature" Ian L. McHarg 1969 ISBN 0-471-11460-X"Ian McHarg: Dwelling in Nature: Conversations with Students" 2007 ISBN 1-56898-620-3

ee also

*Landscape architecture
*Garden real estate
*History of gardening
*George P. Mitchell
*The Woodlands, Texas

References

External links

* [http://www.csiss.org/classics/content/23 Biography from Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science] John Corbett 2005
* [http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0501/mcharg.html Obituary at Pennsylvania Gazette]
* [http://www.ecotecture.com/reviews/mcharg2.html Book review of Design with Nature from Ecotecture] Philip Wenz 2003
* [http://digitalstudio.gre.ac.uk/content/view/112/58/ The Woodlands-The Second Look by Ann Forsyth