• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.26-37
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• 2003

Urban park are indispensable elements of contemporary cities. However, the structure and culture of contemporary cities is currently changing. There are prevalent discourses that Olmstedian parte are no longer relevant to our new societies and cultures. New kinds of parks have emerged with different forms and functions. In order to propose a new paradigm for parks in the 21st century, we need to look back to the origin of modem parks, which is to say, Olmstedian parte. This paper aims to trace the background of park movements in the 19th century America and to identify and describe Olmsted's idea of urban parks. In addition, the paper will clarify the limitations and reinterpret the meaning of Olmsted's idea of urban parks. One idea behind the development of urban parte was to mitigate urban problems such as public health, alcoholism violence and class conflicts in 19th century industrial cities. The aim of urban park was partially achieved at that time. However, those parse did not serve the use of diverse classes. Olmstedian parks were designed for passive and civilized recreation, and lower classes were more attracted by active theme parks and areas such as Coney Island and John Wood. The strengths of Olmsted's idea of urban parte can be outlined as follows: First, designing parte goes beyond shaping physical lands to embrace social reforms. This means that park designers should have a critical understanding of society and culture. Also, landscape designers should have a bold vision for the future. Without such a vision and social agenda, landscape architects cannot postulate alternative possibilities through engaging in new practices. Second, Olmsted successfully adapted British landscape aesthetic ideas such as the picturesque, the sublime and the beautiful into an American context. Finally, his vision and idea of urban parks show us that landscape architecture is not just technical work, but that it can create a locus to engage a new cultural praxis by inventing cultural products - parks.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.15
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• pp.7-30
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• 2013

This is a study on the ecological view of Robert Smithson's reclamation projects. Smithson was a pioneer of Earth art in the late 1960's. Robert Smithson believed that he could transform industrial wastelands, such as an abandoned oil rig and a no longer used quarry, into "Earth Art." In the early seventies, he conceived of land reclamation as a new art form and called this art "Reclamation Projects." His attention regarding industrial ruin started from the American political and social situations in the 1960's. In the late 1960's, American society was in chaos from the right of movement of African Americans, the women's rights movement and from the strike for renunciation of the Vietnam War. The intellectual class seemed to believe that it was the destiny of a closed system's society to run in the direction of entropy. Smithson, who was skeptical about the system of American society, also thought that entropy was the proper diagnosis to describe America's situation in the 1960's. The 1960's civic movements like the civil rights movement and antiwar movements expanded into the environmental movements based on ecological views of the 1970's. The government had also started to worry about environmental pollution. Thus, the reclamation act was also established in 1972. Smithson believed that the relation between art and social background are closely related and affect each other. He was concerned with how art can join society, and the result was reclamation projects. Such reclamation projects lie on man-made wastelands, like abandoned oil rigs and no longer used quarries, which was an allegory of entropy. He also thought that Frederick Law Olmsted was a pioneer of earth art. The aesthetic category of Olmsted's view of landscape is to be based on the picturesque of Uvedale Price and William Gilpin. So Smithson, who considered Olmsted as his touchstone, also accepted the picturesque. Such reclamation projects aim to change with nature by adapting the creative power of artists to the ruin which has the highest level of entropy in industrial society. Smithson wanted this to become the bridge between man and nature. His reclamation project's aim, which shows the system interacting between man and nature as a network, is not different from the ecological view of the 1970's environmental movement.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Traditional Landscape Architecture
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.13-26
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• 2023

Landscapes and gardens have emerged as an important medium of practice in contemporary cities. Among them, this paper examines the city through the frame of gardens. This is because gardens are being reconceptualized as a medium of activity for urban residents and have become an important subject of action in urban regeneration and the creation of urban villages. From this perspective, this paper examines and proposes an "integrated garden city theory" as a landscape theory suitable for the contemporary era by focusing on the urban structure and the behavior of urban residents through the medium of gardens, as well as the process and results. This is both a process and a result of looking back at the evolution of landscape for over a century and rethinking the identity of landscape. We first examined garden city theory, noting that Ebenezer Howard and Frederick Law Olmsted's positions on the relationship between gardens and cities were not so different, and that "working and responsive landscapes" were fundamental to cities and the beginning of landscape theory. We also examine how their ideals have not been fully realized in cities over the past century, but the prototype of gardens based on traditional garden culture is now being formed in East Asian cities, and the evolution of landscape theory in response. The conclusion is that a new version of the garden concept should be reestablished as a living infrastructure in our cities, and a new garden city theory is needed to make it work. To this end, each chapter examines three arguments, as follows First, the values of gardens and East Asian garden cultures in contemporary cities are shaped by the themes of community and integrity. Second, Korean communality, represented by apartments, is expressed through gardening and requires the reconciliation of city and life and the role of landscape architecture as a specialized field to support it. Third, we examine and consider an integrated garden city theory as a theory of practice in which city-based, everyday life, and garden mediums, i.e., city, life, and garden, are organic, based on an oriental view of nature. As a result, it is confirmed that contemporary gardens and cities are looking for important elements and values that still need to be rediscovered in East Asian landscape and garden cultures. Although the proposal of an integrated garden city theory cannot guarantee the continuation of landscaping, it can be an opportunity for all fields related to cities, not just landscaping, to collaborate and consider garden cities. Through this, it is hoped that "the concept of garden and city suitable for metropolitan or dense cities, ways to spread and support garden culture based on community, evolution of landscape theory/design theory suitable for lifestyle and terrain conditions, search for sustainable/resilient garden city theory that can respond to climate change, and establishing a new role for landscape in the 21st century" will be seriously considered.