An Art of Instrumentality

Richard Weller is the Meyerson Chair of Urbanism and Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture and Executive Director of the McHarg Center at The University of Pennsylvania. His work has been widely exhibited in major galleries and awarded in many international design competitions.

Other contributors
Jillian Walliss
Dirk Sijmons

Book Trailer for An Art of Instrumentality

Behind-the-Scenes Factory Production Video of An Art of Instrumentality

Book Praise:
“While strengthening the academic roots of landscape architecture, Richard Weller also teaches by example, showing what this unique discipline can do when nurtured by an Australian cultural upbringing. That approach brings with it not only a unique sense of scale and respect for the might of nature, but also an early reckoning with the brutal history of most colonized lands––a fundamental feature of any contemporary landscape architecture practice.”
— Paola Antonelli Senior Curator of Architecture & Design, The Museum of Modern Art

“This is an important and timely summation of an individual’s evolution and that of a profession and a global situation. It should be required reading for faculty and students alike in every school teaching landscape architecture, architecture, and planning, as well as business schools globally. This is more than a good book, it is a necessary and compelling work, equal part diagnosis and manifesto, calling for landscape architecture to engage the global situation with a surplus of imagination, art, and instrumentality.”
— Laurie Olin Founding Partner, OLIN

“Richard Weller has spent his career defying the strictures of what he calls ‘the Church of Landscape Architecture.’ Now, he’s working to lead the profession out of complacency in a time of planetary crisis. His work and thinking is a critical contribution to the quest for new approaches that truly measure up to the challenge at hand.”
— Kongjian Yu President, Turenscape; Professor and Dean, Peking University College of Architecture and Landscape

“Weller’s is landscape architecture (thinking) at its best. Artful and artistic, bold and beautiful, deep and determined, fantastic and fun, inventive and intelligent, sustaining and substantive, witty and wild.”
— Sonja Dümpelmann Professor and Chair of Environmental Humanities, Rachel Carson Center, LMU Munich

“With verve and aplomb, Weller’s imagination coalesces into radically new forms of landscape. These landscapes exceed normative definitions and point toward important new ways of thinking about our environment and humanity’s co-existence with the natural world.”
— James Corner Founder and CEO, James Corner Field Operations

“The politics of planning or techno-aesthetics? Earthly cultivation or climate breakdown? Moral righteousness or generational failure? What is the future of landscape architecture? Richard Weller, in the pages of this new book, manifests the lively debate he is known for engendering as a revered critic, curator, and departmental chair.”
— Kate Orff Founding Principal of SCAPE; Professor, Columbia GSAPP

Size: 8.75” x 10.5” Portrait
Pages: 260pp
Binding: Hardbound
Publication Date: Fall 2023
ISBN: 978-1-957183-62-6
World Rights: Available