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British Europe Garden/park/landscape

The Palm House at Kew Gardens: Iron, Climate Control and Commercialism

On the outskirts of London, UK, lies Kew, home to the Royal Botanical Garden and its Palm House conservatory. This significant glass house was designed by Decimus Burton and constructed by Richard Turner from 1844 to 1848, although there has been some debate as to who rightfully lays claim to the design1. The Palm House […]

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British Garden/park/landscape Religious

South Park Street Cemetery, Kolkata, India (1767-1790)

The life after death for a colonial British cemetery in India In the early nineteenth century, England was undergoing a period of rapid development due to industrialization. This led to an urban population boom in places like London especially, which ushered in changes to much of the city’s infrastructure in order to accommodate the new […]

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British Domestic/residential Europe Garden/park/landscape

Castle Howard, Yorkshire, 1699-1801

An English landscape garden using an eclectic combination of architectural typologies and building styles. Castle Howard is an English castle and landscape garden located in North Yorkshire. From a first glance, viewers tend to draw their attention towards the magnificent splendour of the castle, without paying much attention to the surrounding landscape. The ornamental architecture […]

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Asia Empire Garden/park/landscape Public/government

Changgyeonggung Palace Grand Conservatory (Ch’anggyŏnggung Daeonsil)

Changgyeong Palace (Ch’anggyŏnggung)1  first opened its doors to general public in November 1909. What was once the royal grounds of the emperor Sunjong had undergone a renovation by Hirobumi Ito the first Japanese Resident-General in Korea – replacing and altering existing traditional architectures and landscape to build a new botanical garden, a zoo and a […]

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Garden/park/landscape North America Race Settler colonialism

Central Park, 1858: “Public” Space and Black Land Dispossession in Antebellum New York

In 1857, Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux won the design competition for New York’s iconic Central Park with their “Greensward Plan”. This design carried a pastoral vision and the stated intent to “supply to the hundreds of thousands of tired workers,who have no opportunity to spend their summers in the country, a specimen of […]

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Asia Chinese Empire Garden/park/landscape Public/government

Yuanmingyuan: Empire and Image

The Garden of Perfect Brightness Much like the collections of colonial trophies in the Crystal Palace in London or the grounds of Versailles, the Yuanmingyuan in Beijing was a complex which housed an array of foreign objects, artwork, pleasure gardens and architecture expressing the Qianlong emperor’s political power.¹ The resulting collection of foreign treasures were […]

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