Miami Beach SoundScape West 8 2011 © Robin Hill for West 8
It could be argued that the pinnacle of urban landscape architecture was reached in seventeenth century France and the French formal gardens of Jacques Boyceau and André Le Nôtre, or in Britain in the nineteenth century, when Joseph Paxton and John Nash were transforming former Royal Hunting grounds into places for Victorian gentry to promenade. Contemporary urban architects and designers are rarely afforded the same amount of space, money and time as their antecedents and are more often tasked with transforming abandoned plots, redundant structures or characterless inner city areas into suitable places for public recreation. Here, Architonic looks at some recent successes that add value to their surroundings by pushing the boundaries of park design. (by Alyn Griffiths)
