Great Atlas Gardens
In the East and West

by Lucia Impelluso and Philip Pizzoni
Review by Prof. Mario Pisani

A specialist rarely volume can inspire strong interest and participation.

To surprise with magnificent images that instill the desire to explore places - Some people still again - to keep them spellbound from the rare mergering between nature and architecture from the magnigicence of trees and plants.

By Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli to the Gardens Heian period in Japan; from those Islamic and Moorish ones, in which the Palm is ever-present and plays a his essential function, the watercourse. Since the Kamakura and Muromachi gardens period in the Japan running from 1100 to 1500, during the shogun, the Chinese influence is noticedc until the Renaissance garden with its masterpieces as the Medici Villa in Fiesole, one of the most evocative places in Tuscany, desired by Cosimo de' Medici and accomplished by terraces, in conformity with Leon Battista Alberti's suggestion, as it can be observed in the famous de Re aedificatoria . By Holy wood to Bomarzo, built by Vinicio Orsini not far from Viterbo, so he wanted to pass the memory of his prematurely disappeared wife, similar to the Emperor Moghul's wife Shah Jahan century late with the resounding Taj Mahal, one of the wonders of the universe.



And again, as not possible to mention Katsura Kyoto Imperial's villa or verzura theatres to reach Versailles and then the English landscape garden where the parterre of water marry with palladiane architectures in a splendid way to reach up to our days with the latest trends, launched by the garden Designers, whose results, sometimes uncertain but perhaps precisely for this, are rich of trials of new effects as those obtained from the West8, and then very evocative.

The book in 300 pages, accompanied by more than 350 images, also forwards the pleasure of the reading, not only for the known arguments, from which it can reach a confirmation of their beliefs, but especially for that unknown universe we know well worth exploring. The text in question, of two authors who we have little news on, is therefore a wonderful map, very comprehensive, both historical that geographical, which accompanies us from the sources to now a days in East and West . Conscious that the cartographers, as Herbert Marshall McLuhan said, will never match the reality, these pieces of the real are able to communicate a collection of rare intense sensations.

Mario Pisani