Bourdon, David. Designing the Earth: The Human Impulse to Shape Nature. Harry N. Abrahms, Inc.: New York, 1995.

David Bourdon begins his book with the following question:

Why is it, I wondered, that people on different continents, usually unknown to each other, demonstrated similar ingenuity in reconfiguring their landscapes? [p.10]

Unfortunately, the asking is as far as the analysis of the question goes.

The book is a straight forward history of human earthworks. It is interesting in that it focuses on earthworks, specifically, human constructions that are alterations to the local earth, such as shrines and domiciles carved into the living rock of cliff faces, or adobe, sod and other structures made of relatively unaltered earth. These are structures which David Bourdon considers to be overlooked by the traditional histories of architecture as being to humble and commonplace for consideration.

The topics covered are shelter, structures for transportation and commerce, defensive structures, tombs and necropolises, sacred places and earth art, from primitive attempts to build paradise to the modern minimalist-movement earth works which are arguably art. The only two aspects of why these structures exist that go beyond simple historical analysis (this was a shrine, that was a tomb, etc.) is a caveat about astroarcheology, which is the study of the astrological significance of ancient earth works and similar structures. David Bourdon points out that in trying to connect archeology to astronomy, the practitioners are often guilty of imposing current conceptions of the heavens on primitive peoples and their artifacts. This is a useful caveat in reading the rest of the book, as well as thinking about it. He also concedes that modern architectural form clearly shows our lack of connection with the earth. Even the structures of contemporary earth art seem to be based more on imposing a sense of order than on transforming into a new order that combines the natural order with the human order.

Although this book only discusses what in making to attempt to answer why, it is a very good spring board from which to leap into actually answering why. Why build these structures? What is our connection with the earth which we so modify? Although it does not answer these questions, it provides a topic for such discussion which, as the author claims, is an often neglected aspect of the history of architecture and the built environment, the humble moving of earth to build structures of human value and significance.