Associate Professor Georges Farhat will present the lecture "Le Nôtre and Versailles in Modernity (20th to 21st centuries)" as part of the Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscape Studies Public Lecture series in Washington on Monday, September 23, 2013.

From the beginning of the 20th century, the landscape architecture of André Le Nôtre (1613-1700), the famed designer whose 400th birthday we celebrate this year, has constantly inspired an inventive interplay between design practices, theories, and critique. Informed by innumerable cultural exchanges between different disciplines and historic eras, this interplay entails conceptual and technological mutations of an open-ended landscape type, an adaptive scheme that evolves according to place and time. The lecture will touch upon few expressions of such exchanges, including design projects and texts, looking first at gardens from Cubism to Minimalism, then at urban landscapes from the Mall in Washington (1901-1902) to Axe Majeur, west of Paris (1980-2006). It will show how Le Notre and Versailles remain key markers in the broader interaction between past, present and future that defines and renews modernity in the West.

Farhat is an architect and a historian and will speak about famed landscape designer André Le Nôtre (1613-1700) and his inventive interplay between design practices, theories, and critique. Farhat has edited André Le Nôtre, Fragments d’un paysage culturel: Institutions, arts, sciences et techniques (Musée de l’Île-de-France, 2006) and is the curator of André Le Nôtre in Perspective, the exhibition celebrating Le Nôtre’s 4th centennial at the château of Versailles (Oct. 2013-Feb. 2014) and editor of its companion book (Hazan and Yale University Press, 2013). He is the author of The French Formal Garden to be published by Birkhäuser in 2014.

Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscape Studies

Public Lecture

Le Nôtre and Versailles in Modernity (20th to 21st centuries) with Georges Farhat, University of Toronto

1703 32nd Street, NW, Washington

Monday, September 23rd at 5:30 pm

Reservations are required and are first-come, first-served. Please RSVP by Sept. 19 to: Landscape@doaks.org or 202-339-6460.