Rocco Ceo & Joanna Lombard

Building Eden: The Beginning of Miami-Dad eCounty’s Visionary Park System is a concise and evocative introduction to the two men most responsible for the development of South Florida’s earliest parks and their beginnings as roadside improvements to what is today the nation’s third largest county park system. Building Eden tells the story of Depression-era Miami and two pivotal figures who came together to build South Florida’s most iconic parks.

Essays by editor Rocco Ceo and Joanna Lombard, the authors of Historic Landscapes of Florida, give context to the era and motivations of the county’s first parks director, A.D. Barnes, and his leading designer and associate of the Olmsted Brothers firm, William Lyman Phillips. Original essays by Barnes and Phillips offer their own reflections, and renowned naturalist Roger Hammer brings this original narrative to the present day to provide an understanding of how and why these parks are unique.

Profusely illustrated with archival photographs, as well as new views by award-winning photographer and book designer Steven Brooke, Building Eden also features new drawings of these memorable legacy parks.

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About the editor:

Rocco Ceo is an architect and Professor of Architecture at the University of Miami School of Architecture and founder and Co-Director of the School’s Design/Build program. His published work includes the post-Hurricane Andrew study, Redland: A Preservation and Tourism Planwhich won numerous awards including a Progressive Architectureaward in 1995, The Historic Landscapes of Florida co-authored with Joanna Lombard which won a Florida Trust for Historic Preservation Award Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Preservation Education/Media(2002),  and he is a contributing author to the New Civic Art(2003) published by Rizzoli, and Miami: Modern Metropolispublished by Thames and Hudson. His art and architecture can be seen at http://www.rocco-ceo.com/.

About the contributing authors:

Joanna Lombard is an architect and Professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture with a joint appointment in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Miller School of Medicine, a founding member of the UM Built Environment Behavior & Health Research Group, and a 2019-20 Abess Center Faculty Scholar. She is an author and co-author of articles, book chapters, and books, including The Historic Landscapes of Florida, with Rocco Ceo, Great Houses of Florida, with Steven Brooke and Beth Dunlop, and the introduction to Gardens of Miamiwith Steven Brooke, Elaine Mills and Julie Petrella Arch.

Roger L. Hammer is a naturalist and manager of Castello Hammock Nature Center for the Miami-Dade Parks Department since 1977. He also is a part-time instructor and field trip

leader for Fairchild Tropical Garden. He received the first Marjory Stoneman Douglas Awardpresented by the Dade Chapter of the Native Plant Society in 1982 and the Charles Brookfield

Medal by the Tropical Audubon society in 1996. Hammer is author of two guidebooks on tropical botany: Everglades Wildflowers(2002) and Florida Keys Wildflowers(2004) both published by The Globe Pequot Press in the Falcon guidebook series.

About the photographer:

Steven Brooke is an architectural photographer, writer and book designer. Winner of the Rome Prizefrom the American Academy in Rome and the National AIA Honor Award in Photography, he is also a Fellow of the Albright Institute in Jerusalem. He is the photographer of over 40 books on architecture, landscape and design, nine of which he has also written, on Rome, Jerusalem, Carrére & Hastings, Philip Johnson, Seaside, and historic homes of the American South. Steven is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture. His work may be seen at www.stevenbrooke.com.