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PRESS RELEASES
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NEW BOOK BY PETER GISOLFI CELEBRATES SYNTHESIS OF ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE

5/27/08

“Most successful architecture relates clearly and unabashedly to setting – to landscape. The relationship of design to setting translates into graceful connection, natural integration. Form follows context and accommodates function.”
Peter Gisolfi, AIA, ASLA

In the new book, Finding the Place of Architecture in the Landscape(Images Publishing, Spring 2008) architect and landscape architect Peter Gisolfi eschews standard monograph styles and promotes a distinctive, definitive point of view: Architecture should always be connected to, and designed in harmony with natural and man-made landscapes. Buildings should unemphatically enhance the landscape, be disciplined by it, and reconcile the influences of context and program.

Put simply, Gisolfi posits, and practices, that architectural design should respond to–not overpower–settings including natural, man-made, and cultural environments. Sustainability is incorporated into every Gisolfi design; he believes living in harmony with nature starts with truly understanding and appreciating multiple environments.

“To me, landscape encompasses what currently exists, whether it’s the landscape of a city, or undisturbed land,” says Gisolfi. “As a society, we tend to locate buildings haphazardly, but, when landscapes and buildings are considered together, the built environment that results functions better and is more harmonious.”

With an academic background in architecture, landscape architecture, and music and experience in diverse geographic settings, Gisolfi’s vision was influenced by both people and places. He gleaned invaluable insights from noted architects, landscape architects, and teachers including Ian McHarg, Robert Venturi, Romaldo Giurgola, and Louis Kahn, all professors from the University of Pennsylvania; as well as Vincent Scully, professor of art history at Yale. Professor Scully describes Peter Gisolfi’s architecture as regional architecture, rooted in the Hudson River Valley. His sensitivity to regional influences informs his work even when he builds in other parts of the country.

Gisolfi’s unique academic background and experience result in a design philosophy, of which Yale University Professor Emeritus Vincent J. Scully comments, “…It tends to create intrinsically organized new communities that get along with the old ones and can themselves endure, where trees are as important as buildings and everything can age together, growing old and better suited to each other with the passage of years.”

Finding the Place of Architecture in the Landscapeis part of the Master Architect Series. The 292-page large format book (ISBN: 9-781864701654) contains over 400 full-color photographs, renderings, site diagrams and concept drawings, that provide clear insights into Gisolfi’s design ideas. The handsome new volume focuses on buildings and settings of many kinds, each reflecting the Peter Gisolfi Associates approach to design. Many of the projects detailed in the book have won major design awards, and been featured in many books, national magazines, and newspapers.

Gisolfi organizes the book by settings, a chapter format consistent with his approach to design and his theme for the book. Townscape is the landscape of a city, town or village: the shape of streets, buildings and the underlying landform. Understanding the subtleties of the urban landscape is essential to successful design, Gisolfi says. This chapter explores many townscape-related design solutions, including why Underhill Park in Brooklyn, NY, was designed as a town square, and how the new Public Library in Dobbs Ferry, NY was sited and configured to relate not only to the town’s main street, but also to the greater landscape of the Hudson River Valley stretching below.

Campus is a 700-year-old concept inherited from Europe and redeveloped in America. Campus addresses the interdependence of buildings and open space that creates a composite designed place. Gisolfi’s new buildings on campuses relate comfortably to existing buildings and to the landscape, and create appealing new quadrangles and courtyards — outdoor rooms — by redefining the edges of outdoor space. Examples here include the Middle/High School Community Campus in Irvington, NY, John Burroughs School in St. Louis, MO, Fox Lane Middle School in Bedford, NY, and many others.

Landscapes and Buildings deals with open green exurban landscapes, and the design of buildings or man-made landscapes that relate to nature. Gisolfi’s design for Guadalupe Center, a resort in Kerrville, TX, transforms an inward-looking courtyard scheme to an outward-looking complex of buildings and open spaces that engages the broader landscape of the Guadalupe River Valley. Other examples include Queens Botanical Garden in Flushing, NY, Newington-Cropsey Art Center in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, Lenoir Preserve and Education Center in Yonkers, NY, and more.

Gardens and Houses. The examples in this chapter are based on the idea of an Italian villa, a combination of indoor and outdoor space as the rationale for residence design. Gisolfi explores how this approach relates to residences of various sizes, from modest houses to elaborate estates.

Transformation, says Gisolfi, is the “adventure of changing a building or designed place” that already exists, essentially reinventing it for a new use. Usually, he says, the new design includes a strong landscape concept. White Hall, on the campus of Cornell University, was gutted completely, the interior then totally reconfigured to accommodate new uses, and to relate more directly to the Arts Quadrangle, the heart of the campus. More examples include Timothy Dwight College at Yale University, The Castle, an inn and conference center in Tarrytown, NY, and others.

Book Details:

Finding the Place of Architecture in the Landscape
Author: Peter Gisolfi
Publisher: Images Publishing
292 Pages
400 photographs and sketches/plans
Price: $65
ISBN: 9-781864701654

Peter Gisolfi, AIA, ASLA, founded the firm of Peter Gisolfi Associates, architects, landscape architects, and interior architects, in 1976 in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. He is principal-in-charge of design. Gisolfi is also a Professor of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at The City University of New York, where he is Chairman of the School of Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape Architecture. He was previously an Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture at Columbia University for 12 years. The work of Peter Gisolfi Associates has received many design awards and has been featured in national magazines, newspapers and numerous books. Gisolfi has written extensively on architectural issues.





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