THE LANDSCAPE APPROACH.

By Bernard Lassus. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1999.$39.95 [pounds]30)

An artist, academic and philosopher, leading French landscape architect Bernard Lassus is relatively unknown in the UK. He brings unusual transformative philosophies to landscape architecture which are drawn from the kinetic artist's long term theoretical and practical investigations. The landscape designs of American artists such as Robert Irwin and James Turrell arise out of similar conceptual explorations.

In this delightfully illustrated, thought-provoking work, Lassus, and sometimes colleague Stephen Bann, describe the experimental progression and its realization in three sections: early concepts and explorations; landscape theory drawn from the above; and descriptions of the studies and projects.

Lassus' landscape projects are process driven. He creates a dichotomy of cultural/natural elements layered in the past, the present and the future forming 'narrative landscapes'. These contain elements of transformation, transposition and sensory connections resulting from sometimes surrealist substitutions stimulating new perceptual expectations. Research projects such as the 'Garden Game' encourage public interventions and feed into projects, questioning the relationship of elements and providing new metaphors. While some landscape projects resulting from the experiments are splendid, others do not translate into readable landscapes.

Ultimately, this difficult but ground-breaking text merits much more discussion than is possible in a brief review. For those interested in new theories of landscape design, The Landscape Approach is a must to glean the philosophies, the new perceptual approaches and paradigms which characterize end of twentieth-century landscape architecture.