Ian McHarg: Innovative Environmental Thinker

"The strapping, red-haired Scotsman was a colorful character as well as a force for change in the stodgy field of landscape architecture, and his ideas have been implemented in small communities and large cities throughout the world, from Medford in the Pinelands to Nigeria's capital, Abouja.Before the age of Greenpeace and recycling, he developed what became known as McHarg's Method, in which planners inventory every level of detail about a place, from the rock layers to the vegetation to the hydrology - and then take this into account when developing the site."