Tomorrow's Landscape

Artist: Various 
Author: Sylvia Crowe 
Publisher: The Architectural Press 
Date: 1956 
Condition: A first edition hardback, with the original unclipped dust wrapper over red cloth-wrapped boards; the wrapper with a few chips and nicks to the edges and a little sunning to the spine and an ink blot to the front cover. Internally tidy and unmarked, there are three blocks of black and white illustrations. Loosely inserted is a black and white photograph of a landscape near Wakefield

This interesting little book takes on the still very contemporary problem of how we manage to create a balance between the use of the landscape, be that for housing, industry or transport and the preservation of natural beauty. Obviously the world of post-war reconstruction in which the author was working in 1956 was a very different one to that in which we find ourselves, but those concerns, especially the issues concerning the threat to green belt land and the return of the new town concept, have not gone away.

Dame Sylvia Crowe was a significant voice of the time; a renowned landscape and garden designer, she became President of the Institute of Landscape Architects and had been involved in the landscape element of the plans for Harlow, Basildon and Hemel Hempstead.