Visual and Spatial Structure of Landscapes

In this imaginative and generously illustrated book, Tadahiko Higuchi applies a methodology to landscape that is similar to that developed by Kevin Lynch for investigating the extent to which urban settings are legible and "imageable" to their inhabitants. He identifies features such as landmarks, boundaries, paths, and nodes that enable people moving through a landscape to piece together a reliable mental map of their surroundings, beginning with major structural elements and filling in with successively finer detail.Higuchi's The Visual and Spatial Structure of Landscapes is an important book. In a sense, it is really two books: in the first section, he attempts to apply Lynch's concept of perceptual analysis not to the city, but to the landscape; in the second section, he advances a typology of historical landscape, and explicates its role in Japanese history and spatial design... a classic work that bears reading and studying by those involved with landscape from a design or from a historical/interpretive point of view.—Marc Treib, Design Book Review—Tadahiko Higuchi is Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering at Yamanashi University.