2015•Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University)Requires access
The Pueblo House and the Mobile Home: J.B. Jackson's vernacular landscape and the sustainable redevelopment of Suburbia
Bruno Notteboom
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Abstract
John Brinckerhoff Jackson (1909-1996) was one of the most important catalysts for modern cultural landscape studies. Inspired by the French regional geography he developed a unique discourse on the American landscape after World War II, in the first place in his magazine Landscape, founded in 1951. Jackson was primarily interested in man-made landscapes and he considered the landscape to be a ‘rich and beautiful book’, not only consisting of natural landscapes, but of cities, villages, farmsteads, highways and suburban houses as well. Although the environmental movement in the US has its roots in the nineteenth century, the term sustainability was not yet common language during most of Jackson’s career. In Landscape, ecology was only one of the many subjects, among rural and urban planning, American history, anthropology, landscape design, vernacular architecture, etcetera. For Jackson, environmentalism should not place man outside of nature – the face of the earth was ‘a living design which changes and is eventually replaced by that of a future generation’. Although very much concerned with ecological questions, he also provided ample ammunition for battles against a narrow concept of environmentalism, solely based on preservation. Using the magazine Landscape as its main source, this text aims at developing a critical reflection on the concept of sustainability, cultural landscapes and vernacular architecture. In Jackson’s holistic vision on the relationship between man and nature, the vernacular American landscape, considered by many as the quintessential example of an ecological disaster area, is turned into an inspiration and context for contemporary design. I will address “material” sustainability issues as materials consumption as well as “immaterial” sustainability aspects like architectural and cultural expression and the creation of a built landscape that can be re-written by the generations to come.