Ian McHarg

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Ian McHarg

Ian L. McHarg ( November 20, 1920- March 5, 2001 ) was a landscape architect and the founder of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. After working with the Royal Engineers during World War II he was admitted to the architecture school at Harvard where he completed degrees in landscape architecture and city planning. His 1969 book Design with Nature pioneered the concept of ecological planning and 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 would later form the field of Geographic Information Systems. Ian McHarg was the original co-developer of The Woodlands, Texas an unincorporated community in Montgomery County, Texas, which was developed from timberland located 30 miles north of Houston by George P. Mitchell, who brought in the esteemed landscape architect to consult on the project, which resulted in many unique design features in the original plans.

Ian McHarg was born in 1920 near the industrial city of Glasgow, Scotland. His father was a minister there, while his mother, like most mothers at this time, was a homemaker. When McHarg was younger, people noticed how much he enjoyed drawing and walking, which is why he was advised to consider a career in landscape architecture. It was in his hometown of Glasgow that he gained an appreciation of the need for cities to better accommodate the qualities of the natural environmen, which had been largely shunned (Corbett, 1). But it was not until after his term in the British Parachute Brigade, serving in war-stricken Italy during World War II, that he was able to further explore this idea. After the war he traveled to America to attend Harvard University where he received his professional degrees in both landscape architecture and city planning. From here McHarg began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, where he developed the Department of Landscape Architecture, as well as offering a new course titled “Man and Environment” (Penn. Gazette, 1).

His accomplishments escalated after this point. In 1960, he hosted his own show on CBS, “The House We Live In.” In 1969, he published his book Design with Nature, which was essentially step-by-step instructions on how to break down a region into its appropriate uses (Wenz, 2). McHarg said about his book,

This book is a personal testament to the power of sun, moon, and stars, the changing seasons, seedtime and harvest, clouds, rain and rivers, the oceans and the forests, the creatures and the herbs. They are with us now, co-tenants of the phenomenal universe, participating in that timeless yearning that is evolution, vivid expressions of time past, essential partners in survival and with us now involved in the creation of the future (Corbett, 2).

Our eyes do not divide us from the world, but unite us with it. Let this be known to be true. Let us then abandon the simplicity of separation and give unity its due. Let us abandon the self mutilation which has been our way and give expression to the potential harmony of man-nature. The world is abundant; we require only a deference born of understanding to fulfill man’s promise. Man is that uniquely conscious creature who can perceive and express. He must become the steward of the biosphere. To do this he must design with nature (Corbett, 2).

Design with nature is sharply critical of the French style of garden design, which McHarg saw as a subjugation of nature, and full of praise for the English style of garden design, which McHarg saw as a prototype for his 'design with nature' philosophy. McHarg's own plans for urban expansion projects were more 'English' than 'French' in their plan geometry. He favored what became known as 'cluster development' with relatively dense housing in a natural environment. McHarg was also interested in garden design and believed that homes should be planned and designed with good private garden space.

In 1996 he published his autobiography, A Quest for Life. Besides writing he also was involved in many important projects; the 1962 Plan for the Valleys in Baltimore County, Maryland; 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 (Penn. Gazette,1).

Ian McHarg died March 5, 2001 at age 80 from pulmonary disease. Throughout his life McHarg sought a new union between man and nature. This was inspired by his childhood in the industrial city of Glasgow that largely shunned the natural environment. He has developed this union between man and nature through his teachings, projects, books, and desire to bring it about.

[edit] 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

To understand McHarg's work, one must look at what site-design too often means in practice even 30 years after McHarg's efforts began: design means restructuring sites to suit a client’s ego, a designer’s whimsy, a contractor’s convenience, and the dictates of financiers and lawyers. The belief that nothing in nature should constrain what humans do to the land they “own” is the ultimate hubris – which McHarg attempted to change. McHarg was “fierce,” to use his own word, about respecting ecosystems – which made him a star, but sometimes undermined him. His status as one of landscape architecture’s few celebrities, however, warrants neither blind adulation nor blindered attack. McHarg’s contribution encompassed three important values:
1 recognition that geographic and demographic patterns could be mapped in ways that make the designer’s eye a tool for visual analysis
2 advocacy for the land itself, in the face of a culture that insists landscapes are just another consumable commodity
3 and refusal to accept that landscape architecture should be subservient to architecture or engineering.

These concepts permeate today’s design professions – to our great benefit – and are taken for granted. GIS has made overlay analysis standard, often misconstrued as a hyper-rational, mechanistic tool. Critics need to consider how much “lack of holism” comes from the tool, and how much from those who mis-use it. McHarg intended all analysis as a first step – a platform on which to base creative design, not the cold planning algorithm that some of his technical followers occasionally make it. Yes, McHarg often failed to push beyond planning and to achieve the aesthetic, poetic, holistic design he personally most admired. A major reason was that he had to fight our culture’s accumulated hubris to get ecology onto the table at all. In some ways, that only makes his contribution more remarkable. [edited excerpt from Landscape Architecture Magazine, letters page, 2006; submitted by the author and copyright-holder, Kim Sorvig, Contributing Editor, Landscape Architecture.]