NOTES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
In 1951 he founded Landscape and was its editor and publisher until 1968. It expressed the vision of a philosopher-tourist and offered an idiosyncratic blend of history, urban planning, landscape architecture, geography, anthropology and historic preservation. Although its circulation never exceeded 3,000, Landscape was influential in establishing the notion of what Mr. Jackson called the vernacular landscape, the geography of everyday places and plain-folks architecture.
Although he taught sporadically at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard’s School of Design, he was wary of the academy, and the academy of him…Rather than being appalled at shopping malls, he regarded them as rich sources of information about American culture, as expressive and characteristic of our time as Chartres was of its.
In addition to ”American Space” (1972), his best-known work, Mr. Jackson wrote ”Landscapes” (1970), ”The Necessity for Ruins” (1980), ”Discovering the Vernacular Landscape” (1984) and ”A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time,” which won the 1995 PEN Award in the essay collection category.
After retiring from teaching and lecturing in 1985, he did laboring jobs at construction sites, gas stations and gardens.
From John Brinckerhoff Jackson’s obit (NY Times, 1996).
