Landscape architecture requires an attention to topography and geology, to how land lies on the surface of the earth and to what the architect does to what they find. All landscape architecture is essentially and excitingly a “lie”, a falsehood, or what Shakespeare calls a “feigned truth”. To explore this paradox, Professor John Dixon Hunt will invoke six different designs from the 16^th and 20^th centuries.

John Dixon Hunt is Professor Emeritus of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and the former Director of Studies in Landscape Architecture at Dumbarton Oaks.  He is the author of numerous articles and books on garden history and theory, including a catalogue of the landscape drawings of William Kent, Garden and Grove, Gardens and the Picturesque, The Picturesque Garden in Europe (2002), The Afterlife of Gardens (2004), and A World of Gardens (2013), as well as editor of the journal Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes.  Professor Hunt is also the inaugural series editor of the Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture, in which was published his own theoretic study of landscape architecture, Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory (1999).

Date: Friday, 5 December 2020 - 6:30pm

Booking essential

$35 adult, $30 members of AGHS, BGANZ, University of Melbourne staff and students; valid on presentation of membership card.

Bookings available at Eventbrite.com
Tel: (03) 5990 2200 for more information.

Professor Hunt’s visit to Melbourne is supported by: The Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, The Australian Garden History Society, Sydney Intellectual History Network, The University of Melbourne, The Botanic Gardens Australia and New Zealand Network Victoria.