Urban parks, Ecology and America

Question 1:

Michael Hough talks about two kinds of urban landscape: the first 'pedigreed' and the second 'fortuitous'. He also goes on to describe a third, a 'humanized', 'vernacular' landscape. Are all of these landscapes 'parks'? Are they 'green open space' or 'brownfield land'? Is it important, after all, what we call them?

I thought it was interesting that he separated the groups out and coupled the analysis of the traditionally derelict urban landscape and the ethnic neighborhoods in the city. His choice of words of pedigree and fortuitous are also very interesting and I'm still havent exactly wrapped my brain around what assigning these words do. I found myself disagreeing with parts of what he had written and his take on the ecology of the urban environment.

On one level I can understand his argument about diversity in run down and 'uglier' urban landscapes, i.e., ones that have not been professionally landscaped or set aside by the city as a 'beautification' project. I think that there is important diversity in these traditionally rundown and ignored landscapes but that I disagree with his statement that reclaiming or restoring an empty lot to a planned landscape would destroy or reduce the diversity that exists. I believe with careful attention payed to site analysis and ecological inventory that you can bring an empty lot around and enhance its diversity without completely mowing over it and eliminating what is already there. I believe that is what we should be focusing on in urban environments, taking the nature and ecosystems that have perservered in these rugged and untraditionally inhospitable landscapes and promoting their diversity and additionally making an area more aesthetically pleasing.

(Cape Cod National Seashore where I worked with Endgangered Species)

I wouldnt categorize all of the landscapes that he labeled as parks. I see parks as the American definition in that they are planned public spaces intent of bringing the public together and to provide joy and greenery in open space. I dont think its important what we call them. People can define their own idea of a park. If someone wants to call and empty parking lot a park then go for it but for me a park will always conjure up the vision of Central Park in NYC or even the mall in D.C., where I spent most of my childhood. My idea of a park is also heavily influenced by my time spent working for the federal and state park systems in America.



photo credits:
http://www.odt.co.nz/files/blog/2009/07/anna_s_blog_to_come_1669714187.JPG

Dan Kiley, Post Second World War Landscape Architect

Dan Kiley- New England born Landscape Architect that was at the forefront of the Modernism movement in America. Born in Massachusetts and worked both nationally and internationally on public parks and plazas. He is best known for his works completed in Washington D.C. ( outside space of the Smithsonian Botanical Gardens, Dulles Airport), the Dallas, Texas "Fountain Place" and for his private residential works done in the mid-west. He was my influential designer that I wrote about for site planning. He is a well respected designer of his time and continues to influence many contemporary landscape architects. He is an example of a designer that focused on bringing art and space together for the public to enjoy and was part of the public spaces movement that prevailed in the 20th century.

Home Sweet Home- a look at Washington D.C. in the 18th and 19th centuries

At the turn of the century Washington D.C. was getting a much needed restructuring and re-planning of the city area. The cornerstone for the new plans for the area were the from French architect Pierre L'Enfant. Thomas Jefferson recruited L'Enfant because his use of "traditional monumental planning" which Jefferson thought suited the young "truly liberal society". The 18th century French influence is still quite visible today with grand intersections with ornate fountains.

Mount Vernon, home of George Washington, shows influences of classic English architecture however the architects considered the surrounding natural landscape of the potomac river and the vista from the top of the hill where Mt. Vernon sits when designing the surrounding grounds and gardens.

L'Enfant's original plan for the City

Dupont Fountain

Circular intersection in D.C., Dupont Circle

Photo Credits:

http://www.freehillstudio.com/Dinner%20at%20Mount_Vernon_2004_-_150_dpi.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/103/290149216_6776d8a1d8.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/L%27Enfant_plan.jpg/752px-L%27Enfant_plan.jpg

Landscape Artist profile: Nancy Holt

I have chosen Nancy Holt as my land artist for the Admiral's Park project. Her work is large scale and has a large celestial component to her design and implementation of her pieces. Many of her pieces are found in the American Southwest and as a result of their rural location some of more well known and celebrated earthworks are not very accessible to the public. In addition to her work in America she has land art installed internationally including Spain and Austria.

photo references:
http://www.bookforum.com/uploads/upload.000/id02259/article00.jpg (sun tunnels)
http://ps1.org/images/newspaper/large/2006Fall/GRANAT_2.jpg

Assignment 1, Site Planning, Moonlit Garden

Assignment 1- Site Planning


I created a moonlit garden for a professor of music and violin a the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. These are my designs and image inspirations.

Site Plan- Moonlit garden

Pan's Labyrinth

Almost immediately upon reading John Hanson Mitchells piece from "The Wildest Place on Earth" I thought of the 2006 fantasy film by Guillermo Del Toro "Pan's Labyrinth". The story takes place after the Spanish Civil War and is shot mostly in the imagination of a young spanish girl and an overgrown labyrinth. Its a spectacular visual journey and I think speaks to what Mitchell was referring to when he talked about finding wilderness and adventure within the walls of a garden. In addition the prospect even greater wilderness and maybe even danger (!) in the surrounding landscape. I really enjoyed his analysis of the Renaissance garden when he said "Wildnerness or wild nature, was to the Renaissance mind a chaos that contained within it the essence of beauty, or possibility, which, with little human assistance, could be fully realized. The Italian garden was an abstraction of the cosmos, an image of a more perfect world." I really loved this statement and I tend to be drawn to a more wild, overgrown and unruly garden. I often wondered if this was my response to the sterile and boring American modern garden at every house and business but I also think its that constant yearning for adventure and fantasy that lures me to that design and approach.



I also think of the book the "Secret Garden" (Francis Hogson Burnett, 1910). The young girl at the center of the story finds a neglected and overgrown garden and grows to find refuge and healing in that same garden. The garden had been abandoned upon the death of the mistress of the house where she lives as an orphan and neglected little girl. The imagery of the unruly and unkempt garden in this story has an element of fear and death and embracing a place that is unconventionally beautiful. Perhaps the appeal of the garden in this story is finding beauty and refuge in something that is broken and overgrown but still holds on to the history of its days of being kept and tended.



I could sympathize with his approach to his own garden and when he says about his garden " I want it to look old. In fact, what i really want is a ruined garden, with fallen pillars, overgrown vines, and a mysterious past." Its the mystery that drives me and my affection for gardens of this type. This history and the unknown history of it is very seductive.
Additionally he talks about mazes and labyrinths and their representation in gardens and in history as a whole. Which led me to ask why as humans we seek a journey? The pilgrimage, the idea of finding the light at the end of the tunnel. What is it about the maze that makes us want to approach and seek the center, untangle and engulf ourselves in mystery and unknown? Or are we all seeking the answer to be at the center and the feeling of accomplishment and clarity when we navigate the labyrinth and reveal its meaning?

photo references:

http://2.media.tumblr.com/AXE04actIiu8wtn67Mb7Fk6Go1_500.jpg
http://img5.travelblog.org/Photos/27282/336108/f/2997882-The-Secret-Garden-0.jpg

Burle Marx

Question 1,

Both Laurie Olin and Peter Walker discuss the genius of Andre Le Notre. Simo and Walker say of him, via a discussion of Roberto Burle Marx, that he "...places objects on a plane not to glorify the object but to express the plane itself. And however enriched with patterning and planting the plane remains taut."

What is meant by this? Can you find examples in contemporary garden design or landscape architecture that express this?

I think Burle Marx using the landscape and the ground from which he built his art is a sort of metaphor for the constant struggle of man against nature, the man made sculpture on the natural plane of the ground. The landscape glorifies whatever is placed upon it and the beauty of the object built upon the plane is subject to the person viewing them. I think his art in his later years was also a response to the often overgrown and hard to manage landscapes that he created in his early years. The single object and the plane was a simple idea that exemplified the nature of landscapes and objects placed on them. He seems to use hostility in his art to show struggle. To me the single object on a landscape enhances the natural landscape more and shows the struggle between something that was not formed organically from the earth, such as a statue or wall in a garden, and the natural organic lay of the land. He was trying to call attention to the simple beauty of the land itself which I think is a beautiful approach. His simplification would make more of an impact on me than the density of his early work and to let the viewer see more clearly the inherent beauty and structure of the land that he was working with rather than it to be covered in dense vegetation. However I think the dense planting gardens of his early career was a direct translation of his view of the Brazilian landscape. It’s interesting to think about what might lay underneath all of that vegetation in the Amazon and to truly see the bare and naked landscape of South America. I could see how Marx could have progressed to minimalism from growing up surrounded by density and high growth. I think it was only natural for him to eventually reach a place where he was interested in glorifying the simplest of the land and its taut plane.

Nat Geo Manhatta Project

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/09/manhattan/miller-text

This is the link to the Nat Geo project if anyone finds two extra seconds to check it out. Its a beautiful project and the photo gallery is worth a glance and very relevant to our last project.

Question 1.

If an enclosed garden has "the character of an interior" how is it possible that it can also serve as a "spatial laboratory" for landscape design?

I think this question might touch on the existential thoughts of immensity versus the minuscule and the garden as a "paradox" in it of itself. Aben and de Witt talk about the idea of a microcosm and mentions "the whole and its parts analogous". I can understand the idea of the garden as a small representation of the larger lay of the land, especially when the garden seeks to complement the larger landscape around it and condensing the nature of that landscape into a small, walled area. I dont know what the character of an interior might be referring to, other than something with walls but I really don't classify many gardens as having character of an interior. I do like the term "spatial laboratory" and I like exploring the idea that a garden can be both literally something small and enclosed but at the same time allude to the vast space that may surround it. As complicated and confusing as the paradox can become I like to think about the reciprocity of the theory.

Gunston Hall Virginia, Plantation home of George Mason. This garden is one of my earliest memories of being outdoors in a garden space. This particular garden is made of boxwood and is maintained to the specifications of the original design during Mason's time at the plantation. The garden itself sits on a vast tract of land and although the garden feels rather large when you are navigating your way through its hard not to feel the immensity of the surrounding landscape. The smell of boxwood always reminds me of Virginia :)

Question 2.

Are there theories from the readings so far that have informed your project work in studio? If not, have there been other inspirations? If the latter, what were they?

I think the reading and the discussion about the ten different ways people look at landscape has influenced the way I am now approaching looking at landscape and evaluating it. I was surprised to learn that my approach is more from a problem solving point of view but I don't necessarily fall neatly into that category. I dont think I have done enough work in the studio yet for the theories that we have read to really translate to what I am currently working on. I think the session we had in sight planning on environmental psychology was very informative and has helped a great deal when planning and designing for the moonlit garden. I can also look at design and know with more clarity if it is pleasing to me and why.

Thought this was interesting!

courtesy of dailymail.co.uk

The stones are dolerite from the Preseli Mountains in Pembrokeshire.

Question 1,

In "Personal Dreams and Pagan Rituals", Robert L. Thayer, Jr. draws parallels between camping and the garden. Is this comparison apt? How is a garden like and unlike a campsite?

I do believe that this comparison is apt. I was able to envision what he was talking about very easily when I was reading his piece even though I've never personally looked at or built a garden to resemble a campsite. I have done a lot of camping and for people who find peace in an outdoor activity like that it would make sense to try to replicate that in a garden setting and have access to it anytime you like. It seemed to me that the most essential part of the camping experience to Thayer was the fire gazing and he was easily able to translate his feelings for camping to his personal garden space. His garden was about feeling and you could probably make a garden anything you want or compare it to anything you want, its how you feel and what inspires you that matters most. I think generally a garden is like a campsite in the fact that they are natural spaces that people seek out to enjoy nature, talk and visit with friends, maybe the opposite of that and find solitude and there is a strong connection to the earth. Thayer even says at the end of his piece that "Perhaps a garden is best considered as a precise point of connection between a human and the earth-a psychic umbilical to the earths spirit. I know mine is just that for me."


Question 2:

Mario Frascari's "technographies", quoted in James Corners "Eidetic Operations", separates images of the landscape into artifact, instrumental image, and symbolic image. D.W. Meinig makes further distinctions- a total of ten. Are these two frameworks at odds, or do they inform and support one another?

I think both authors were seeking to break down the idea of landscape into neater and easier ideas to help to understand why there is no clarity of definition about the landscape. It seems the approach of compartmentalizing into categories is a way to find clarity about the subject and understanding about why we do things a certain way in the profession (i.e. the act of representation as in Corners piece) or how we approach the profession emotionally (problem, historically etc..) in our own minds. Both pieces touch on the personal approach to landscape and how each individuals impressions and own ideas may skew or alter the reality of the landscape. I'm not sure I've completely digested everything that the James Corner piece has to offer so I am just throwing ideas out there of my interpretation of what I read. I do think the two pieces inform each other. Corner is talking about the "eidetic images" and that they "contain a broad range of ideas that lie at the core of human creativity. Consequently how one "images" the world literally conditions how reality is both conceptualized and shaped." Both authors are at times saying similar things and that is hard to separate the person and the personal interpretation of the landscape from what the actual reality is and that we may never know because every human will not be free from imparting their own past, present and future ideas and experiences on a space.

Question 1:

How would you define the difference between landscape architecture and garden design?

I liked the way John Dixon Hunt uses the analogy of the novel and the poem in the excerpt reading from "First Principles or Rudiments" Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory. Hunt says "Gardens focus the art of place-making or landscape architecture in the way that poetry can the art of writing." He goes on to say "...all these make poetry among the most concentrated and demanding of literary expressions;" To me, this is a very clear way to define the difference between landscape architecture and garden design. I can see how garden design might be part of the larger practice of landscape architecture. When I think of the garden design I think of specification. Garden Design is a more specific discipline with clear intentions as the name of the practice implies. That statement might warrant discussing the definitions of the words garden and landscape where landscape, in my opinion,is a more ambiguous word. When I think of the practice of landscape architecture I think of a larger picture and space in which to work which may include elements of design or it may not. Garden design to me, is a more focused, design specific practice and rarely takes in landscape as a whole.

Question 2:

What is the single most important function of a garden?

I think this can only be answered subjectively because the definition, judging by last class, of a garden is varied and we may all have different opinions on what a garden actually is. I personally think there are many functions but to me, the most important function would be a combination of aesthetics and providing habitat. I know that gardens are designed around different principles but most provide an element that is pleasing to the eye as well as on some level a bit of habitat for outdoor creatures, even if that is not the intention.

What Am I Doing Here?

There are several reasons for me wanting to become a Landscape Architect and it was somewhat of a long and winding road to get this point in my life where I am finally pursuing my Graduate Degree. I studied Environmental Science in college and believed from a young age in the value of being a responsible human and respecting the environment and protecting it with whatever means a person has. I was afforded the opportunity to structure my education around conservation and after school I worked very hard at continuing my commitment to environmental issues.

I have traveled quite a bit over these last few years and have continued my conservation education internationally. When I lived in Costa Rica for few months in 2007 I worked at a newly formed Biodiversity center that was located on the Osa Peninsula, near the Panama border. It was here where I learned the basic principles of Permaculture. My studies at the Biodiversity Center sparked my interest in the field of Landscape studies and specifically into Landscape Architecture. A common theme when I working in wildlife management was that the loss of habitat was single most important issue that needed to be addressed in order to restore balance and protect endangered species. I realized that Landscape Architecture could be a bridge for me to continue in conservation and protection of sensitive wildlife through the creation or planning to restore, expand and build natural habitat. I believe my education as a Landscape Architect will give me the tools to be a very effective and succesful conservationist.