Just out is The Landscape Imagination, a companion book to James Corner's 1999 bestselling book, Recovering Landscape.

Over the past two decades, James Corner has enriched the field of landscape architecture. His highly influential writings of the 1990s together with a postmillennial series of built projects, such as New York's celebrated High Line, give some compelling evidence to suggest the best way to address the problems facing our urban centers is to embrace their industrial past.

Collecting Corner's written scholarship from the early 1990s through 2010, The Landscape Imagination (Princeton Architectural Press, May 27, $60) addresses critical issues in landscape architecture, while reflecting how his writings have informed the built work of his thriving NewYork-based practice, Field Operations. Projects discussed include the High Line and Fresh Kills Park in New York City, Santa Monica Civic Center Parks, University of Puerto Rico Botanical Garden, Qianhai Water City in China, and competition entries for parks in Helsinki and in Toronto.

These richly illustrated essays are a series of speculations and arguments aimed at advancing design, creativity and cultural ideas in landscape architecture. They are themed on landscape imagination. "After all," Corner says in the book's preface, "there is nothing natural about landscape: even though landscape invokes nature and engages natural processes over time, it is first a cultural construct, a product of the imagination."

These essays address the delights and challenges of working with the landscape medium. Key to this is the centrality of the imagination in understanding and projecting new forms of landscape, as well as the tools and techniques available for such a task.

Corner explains the reason for bringing these essays together in one volume: "It is my hope the thoughtful reader will find correlations that continue to inform, enrich, and broaden the landscape imagination"?uconjoining thinking with making in an effort to further advance the landscape project."

About the author: James Corner is founder and director of the NewYork-based landscape architecture and urban design studio James Corner Field Operations.