Ian McHarg’s confident skill

Abstract

Fifty years has passed since the publication of Ian McHarg’s Design with Nature. With “confident skill,” a quality that Mumford attributed to McHarg in the book’s Introduction, the text intermingled autobiographical notes and philosophical thoughts with chapters on ecological planning case studies and the use of the map overlay technique. Design with Nature provided limited indications about the authors or books that inspired and supported McHarg. The paper, through a literature review, investigates the contingent circumstances that fed the social milieu of the 1960s and 1970s as well as the individuals and ideas preceding or contemporary with McHarg that backed, validated, or substantiated his book and ecological planning. The paper considers the multiple influences that McHarg gathered from scientists and philosophers in the time preceding the preparation of Design with Nature when he created and led his Man and the Environment course and hosted The House We Live In, a CBS television show. It also reflects the multiple ways in which McHarg’s ideas influenced, and were influenced in return, by the development of academic ecology practice and education. McHarg recognized that the book borrowed from the thoughts and dreams of others and that his intention was to divulge his ideas to a wider audience than just academic insiders. The paper affirms that Design with Nature and its author catalyzed social, cultural, scholarly, and professional factors, started a chain reaction that had an undeniable impact on academia, practice, and government in the 50 years afterward, and became a central and fundamental academic reference for landscape architecture and planning.