SELECTED ESSAYS ABOUT Landscape Design
From about 1990 through the early 2000s, Beardsley wrote many essays for Landscape Architecture Magazine, including what became, for a time, a bi-monthly column titled Critic-at-Large. Most of these essays are easily accessible through JSTOR. In addition, while teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Design from 1998-2013, he wrote extensively on contemporary design for Harvard Design Magazine and for anthologies and monographs on individual designers and design firms. A few of the harder-to-find essays are available here.
| Date | |
|---|---|
| 2021 | “Alchemy and Archetype? Bomarzo and Niki de Saint Phalle’s Tarot Garden,” Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 41, no.2 (2021), pp. 184-95. - Included in a special issue devoted to the sacro bosco at Bomarzo. |
| 2020 | “Sacred to the Memory: Richmond’s Cemeteries in Black and White,” Sitelines 16, no.1 (Fall 2020), pp. 14-17. - Racial disparities in the creation and preservation of Richmond’s cemeteries. |
| 2013 | “Designed and Written in Stone: Four Freedoms Park and the FDR Memorial,” Sitelines 9 (Fall 2013), pp. 14-16. - The last project of architect Louis Kahn. |
| 2012 | “Popular Aesthetics, Public History,” in Designed Ecologies: The Landscape Architecture of Kongjian Yu, William Saunders, ed. Basel: Birkhauser, 2012. |
| 2009 | “Being in Space,” in Where the Revolution Began: Lawrence and Anna Halprin and the Reinvention of Public Space, Randy Gragg, ed. Washington, D.C.: Spacemaker Press, 2009. |
| 2009 | “Dan Kiley in Public,” in Dan Kiley Landscapes: The Poetry of Space, Reuben Rainey and Marc Treib, eds. Richmond, CA: William Stout, 2009. |
| 2009 | “Lines of Work,” in Ken Smith: Landscape Architect. New York: Monacelli Press, 2009. |
| 2008 | “Improving Informal Settlements: Ideas from Latin America,” Harvard Design Magazine (Spring/Summer 2008), pp. 31-40; 62-63. |
| 2007 | “A Billion Slum Dwellers and Counting,” Harvard Design Magazine (Fall 2007/Winter 2008), pp. 54-59. |
| 2007 | “Conflict and Erosion: the Contemporary Public Life of Large Parks,” in Large Parks, Julia Czerniak and George Hargreaves, eds. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. |
| 2007 | “More than a Manicure” (Walter Hood’s design for the de Young Museum), Landscape Architecture 97 (July 2007), pp. 24-34. |
| 2002 | “Inhabiting Circumference,” in Mikyoung Kim. Washington, D.C.: Editions Ariel, Grayson Publishing, 2002 |
| 2000 | “Kiss Nature Goodbye.” Harvard Design Magazine (Winter/Spring 2000), pp. 60-67. - Reprinted in Nature, Landscape, and Building for Sustainability: A Harvard Design Magazine Reader, William S. Saunders, ed. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008, pp. 53-65. |
| 2000 | “A Word for Landscape Architecture.” Harvard Design Magazine (Fall 2000), pp. 58-63. |
| 1998 | “Making Waves” (Charles Jencks’s garden in Scotland). Landscape Architecture 88 (March 1998), pp. 64-71, 92-97. |
| 1997 | "A Mickey Mouse Utopia" (Disney's new town, Celebration, Florida). Landscape Architecture 87 (February 1997), pp. 76-83; 92-93. |
| 1996 | "Critic-at-large," Occasional column for Landscape Architecture magazine, 1996-2000. Essays include "Tin Soldiers" (Korean War Veteran's Memorial, Washington, D.C., February 1996); "The Haunting of Federal Plaza" (redesign of Tilted Arc site by Martha Schwartz, May 1996); "Doing Jefferson Wrong" (Robert A. M. Stern's Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, July 1996); "Unnatural Activities" (Indoor recreation, November 1996); "Virtual Confusion" (Rainforest Cafe, March 1997); “Postnuclear Wilderness” (Savannah River Nuclear Weapons Production Facility, April 1998); “Race and Space” (June 1998); “Showdown in Sepulveda Pass” (Robert Irwin’s Central Garden at the Getty Center, October 1998); “Thwarted Masterpiece” (Erickson and Oberlander, Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, August 1999) “Another Battle at Gettysburg” (National Park Service proposal to raze Richard Neutra’s Cyclorama Building, September 2000). |
| 1995 | "Poet of Landscape Process" (Profile of George Hargreaves). Landscape Architecture 85 (December 1995), pp. 46-51. |
| 1995 | "Into the Open" (new public spaces in Barcelona). Landscape Architecture 85 (October 1995), pp. 76-81. |
| 1994 | "Disney in the Old Dominion." Landscape Architecture 84 (July 1994), pp. 36-37. |
| 1993 | Mill Race Park" (Columbus, Indiana park by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates). Landscape Architecture 83 (September 1993), pp. 38-43. |
| 1990 | The Machine Becomes a Poem" (Landscapes of Isamu Noguchi). Landscape Architecture 80 (April 1990): 48-55. |
| 1990 | "Like a Mighty Stream" (Maya Lin's Memorial to Civil Rights activists). Landscape Architecture 80 (January 1990): 78-79. |