THE THEORY BETwEEN THE THEORY AND LECTURES
As a field of knowledge, a discipline, and a professionalactivity, modern landscape archi tecture has been a pragmatic enterprise, reveling in the contingencies of a site. The ener gies devoted to this enterprise have been translated as nontheoretical, anti-intellectual or nonexistent by many historians of art and architecture I would disagree, and argue that a close reading of the reports and treatises written throughout the nineteenth and twen tieth centuries supports another interpretation altogether our appreciation of modern land scape architectural theory has been hampered not by the work itself but by our reliance on the filters of certain modern art and architectural histories and theories. Landscape as an abstract concept and a real place was marginalized in the discourses of modern art and architecture. Hence our continued reliance on the interpretive lens of those fields which are not concerned with the integration of ecological thinking(or the environmentalist eye with physical form has limited our understanding of and appreciation for the complexity and form fullness of the nineteenth century urban landscape in particular