Sometimes spending two hours wandering the architecture and LA section of the library can do WONDERS for your projects.
The first two ‘classic’ books that come to mind are ‘Infrastructures’ and ‘Groundswell.’
Infrastructures reads almost like a comic book with great loose watercolor and ink illustrations showing the fusion of infrastructure and architecture with landscape, all from an 80’s? perspective, but very forward thinking. I think the author is an architect.
Groundswell was ‘cutting edge’ landscape architecure like 5 or 10 years ago, but the projects in there still hold up. here’s a lot of architecture and land art in there to help get the juices flowing. Its sort of a must to have within reach from your studio desk just for the precedents and ideas, but don’t copy.
If you can find any of Michael Sorkin’s published books theres some good stuff in there. More on urban design and social agendas, but the imagery is really interesting. Sorkin is an architect who has proposed some pretty bizarro city concepts. I’m reluctant to say he’s a genius like many have told me, but he makes cool stuff that fits the landscape in unique and typically very organic ways.
You could also try looking at some of Andropogon’s projects for the ecologogical agenda.
I’d encourage you to get into the library and dig around. Go outside and go for a hike and look at how the natural world works and the forms that happen with little manipulation by humans. Dont spend too much time looking at others work.
Bon Voyage!
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