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The Landscape of Utopia: Writings on Everyday Life, Taste, Democracy, and Design

Essays by Tim Waterman exploring the entangled nature of utopian imagination, landscape and design, from food and politics to the commons and civic life.

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  • The Landscape of Utopia: Writings on Everyday Life, Taste, Democracy, and Design

This publication is from the Bartlett School of Architecture.

Author
  • Tim Waterman | Professor of Landscape Theory, the Bartlett School of Architecture
About

A collection of short interludes, think pieces and critical essays on landscape, utopia, philosophy, culture and food, The Landscape of Utopia foregrounds the entangled nature of utopianism, landscape, design and imagination. Food, politics, anarchism, the commons, emancipation, conviviality and moral economies come together in an exploration of taste as the ability to ethically situate and orient ourselves amid complexity.

Exploring power and democracy, and their shaping of public space and public life, taste, etiquette, belief and ritual, and foodways in community and civic life, the book provides a critical approach to landscape imaginaries. It discusses landscape in its broadest sense — as a descriptor of the relationship between people and place that occurs everywhere on land, from cities to countryside, suburb to wilderness.

With more than 50 black and white illustrations interspersing the 26 chapters, this is a book for professionals, academics and students to spark discussion on new modes of thinking in the wake of unfolding global crises, including COVID-19, climate change and beyond. Ruth Catlow, artist, researcher and curator, and co-founder and director of Furtherfield, co-authored two chapters.

The Landscape of Utopia is published by Routledge (2022).

ISBN: 9780367759155

Further reading
  • Buy the book
  • Spicher, Michael, ‘The Landscape of Utopia’ (review), The British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 64 (2), April 2024, pp. 264–266
  • Firth, Rhiannon, ‘The Landscape of Utopia’ (review), Anarchist Studies, Vol. 32 (2), 2024, p. 123
  • Jalón Oyarzun, Lucía, ‘The Landscape of Utopia’ (review), Landscape Research, Vol. 48 (7), 2023, pp. 982–985
  • Majewska, Ewa, ‘The Landscape of Utopia’ (review), International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 7 May 2023

Image: Cover of The Landscape of Utopia, Routledge, 2022, Darkhorse Design/Tim Coleman

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