Serious Fun: The Landscapes of Claude Cormier
VANCOUVER: The League congratulates Marc Treib and Susan Herrington on the launch of their newly published book, Serious Fun: The Landscapes of Claude Cormier, the first book solely dedicated to Cormier’s work as a renowned landscape architect. You have likely seen, if not had the pleasure of experiencing one of Claude’s remarkable and provocative landscapes, and if you haven’t you need to seek them out for their wild creativity, innovation, thought-provoking experimentation, joyfulness, and serious fun.
Claude Cormier is a landscape architect and founding principal of Claude Cormier + associés, established in Montréal in 1995. “While always serious in the address of function, their designs often display a touch of humour in both method and form–in all, these are works marked by ‘serious fun.’ It is a unique practice in Canada, arguably in the world. That people use, and may even love, these urban landscapes testifies to the pleasure afforded by their design and the humanistic dimensions of the practice.” [1]
Susan Herrington is a licensed landscape architect in the United States and a landscape architect in Canada. She is a professor in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia. Her research concerns design theories of contemporary landscape architecture, including theories regarding children’s landscapes. She is author of Landscape Theory in Design, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Making the Modern Landscape, On Landscapes, and Schoolyard Park. She also led the Seven Cs guidelines, which have been used in communities throughout the world.
Marc Treib is Professor of Architecture Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, and a historian and critic of landscape and architecture who has published widely on modern and historical subjects in the United States, Japan, and Scandinavia. Recent books include Pietro Porcinai and the Landscape of Modern Italy (co-editor, 2016); Landscapes of Modern Architecture: Wright, Mies, Neutra, Aalto, Barragán (2017); The Landscapes of George Descombes; Doing Almost Nothing (2019); and Thinking a Modern Landscape Architecture, West & East: Christopher Tunnard, Sutemi Horiguchi (2020).
Serious Fun: The Landscapes of Claude Cormier
By Marc Treib and Susan Herrington
Published by ORO Editions
Released September 14, 2021
