Jackson, John B(rinckerhoff) (1909–1996)

French-born US landscape historian who promoted the idea of the Americann scene based on the value structures have to those who build and use them, not on a comparison to European developments. This was the basis of his best-known concept, ‘the vernacular landscape’, which he came to appreciate through his travels and which he expressed in such books as The Necessity for Ruins (1980) and Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (1984). He was widely regarded as altering the way students of the American landscape perceived the interactions between humans and natural environments.

Born in Dinard of US parentage, he was educated in New England and Europe. He was in the US army 1940–46 and during World War II worked with maps for intelligence in Europe. He founded and edited Landscape 1951–68. He taught at Harvard and Berkeley 1961–77; he also taught at other universities and was resident at the American Academy in Rome in 1983. Often opposed by conventional designers as well as conservationists, he was a loner by temperament.