Mexican Landscape Architecture: From the Street and From Within
Published 1972
By Rosina Greene Kirby
University of Arizona Press, Tucson

About the Book

[from the book jacket] "Lavish color reproductions and authoritative commentary span six hundred years of Mexican environmental design to trace the intimate relationship of a people and their physical surroundings. First came the grandeur of the Aztecs - the superbly organized outdoor space of their capital, Tenochtitlan, and the serene garden villas of their emperors. Long after the Aztecs, Mexico displayed another exquisite tapestry of man living in harmony with nature, woven by patios, atrios, and plazas of the Colonial period. Today, the best of the old is blended with the innovations and concepts of the contemporary Mexican landscape architecture. New buildings, reaching for the sky, are famed by ageless trees and surrounded by verdant parks. But the past and present beauty is two-fold. The visual is obvious: a stunning panorama or color, texture, form, scale, and proportion. The hidden loveliness is the tranquil coexistence between man and his environment - a harmonious intermingling of a modern society and natural world as old as life itself."

About the Author

Rosina G. Kirby spent her childhood in Mexico, absorbing the aesthetics of the environment, developing a profound interest in the people, and becoming fluent in the Spanish language. She was an art student at the Institutio de Bellas Arte in Mexico City and graduated cum laude in art from the University of Arizona, where she also earned her master's degree in landscape architecture. An Arizonan since the 1950s, she is a professional consultant and teacher and in 1972 was chosen for inclusion in Outstanding Young Women in America.