A Philosophy of Landscape Construction

The Vision of Built Spaces

Bruce Ferguson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000336238
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

A Philosophy of Landscape Construction outlines a philosophy of values in landscape construction, demonstrating how integral structures, such as pavements and walls, constitute a key element to how people interact with and inhabit the final design.

The book discusses how these structures enable, assist and care for people, negotiating between the dynamic processes of site ecosystems and the soil on which they are founded. They articulate spatial, functional, cultural and ecological meanings. Within this theoretical framework, designers will learn to recognize and insert a set of core values into the most technical design stages to reach their full potential.

By offering a new perspective on landscape construction, moving away from the exclusively technical characteristics, this book allows landscape architects to realise the ideal vision for their designs. It is abundantly illustrated with examples from which designers can learn both successes and failures and will be an essential companion to any study of built landscapes.

1
INTRODUCTION

The call of values

This book’s title, A Philosophy of Landscape Construction: The Vision of Built Landscapes, comes from a passage in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Flight to Arras, which can be translated from the original French as:

A pile of rocks ceases to be a pile of rocks the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the vision of a cathedral.¹

‘A pile of rocks…’—that is the subject of landscape construction: rocks. Or, let us say, rocks and logs: raw materials out of which something might be made. ‘A single man’—that’s you; before you came, the pile of rocks was only a pile of rocks. It is you alone who makes the difference. ‘Contemplates’—your hope, study, analysis, and exploration. ‘A cathedral’—the high values toward which you seek to raise those materials.

Saint-Exupéry’s book records his memory of his reconnaissance flight over the town of Arras in World War II, as the German army advanced through it and threatened every plane that flew overhead. It is his contemplation of the work he did that night.

For hundreds of years, back to the high Christian civilization of medieval Europe, Arras had been the western world’s center for tapestry. Its raw materials were simple threads. It carefully arranged them in warp and weft, and from them wove together the warm and colorful fabric of the world. The name ‘Arras’ became a generic term used to refer to any large fine tapestry, a made product, and a symbol of civilization.

We designers try to do great things with our contemplation of materials. We seek the meeting of great Vision with these mundane physical things. To find the great things that could be made from them is up to us. We strive to grasp the Vision toward which they wait to be raised.

Saint-Exupéry had abruptly been assigned his project to do that night, the way we designers fall into unexpected projects with new clients. He had flown many different missions before; many had been routine labors, and some had been unusual adventures. But this one, in particular, made him wonder. He knew his new project’s dangers. He knew how many had failed. But he ascended into his flight, without complaint, and without hesitation. Amid the shouts of his navigator, he veered through the enemy’s ‘curtain of bronze’ of exploding anti-aircraft fire. He flew ahead until his lengthy mission was complete, and only then turned back toward safety and rest. While keeping his course, he contemplated. Why did he go forward? Why did he continue his job?

The reason was the building of civilization. The enemy below was destroying the homes and markets of his nation’s villages and towns, which had been founded on millennia of productive work, loving community, and evolving culture. With their roots gone, villagers and townsmen fled from the advancing enemy, clogging the southbound roads with their carts and families. Saint-Exupéry went forward because to do his job was his contribution to the maintenance of civilization—whether or not his army would make good use of his photographs when he got back—and whether or not he got back at all. As he flew forward and contemplated, he realized that he held within himself the vision of the grand edifice of civilization. His flight was the heavy stone that he carried toward it. By continuing to fly forward, he forced himself to discover the vision that he bore. ‘If this evening something is revealed to me, it will be because I shall have carried my heavy stones toward the building of the invisible structure’.²

What will you make out of your rocks and logs? What is the vision that is in your heart and mind, yet unrealized, that you are going to find in this landscape construction? Will your work seek it? Will you work even to find the right stones? What will the world become in your hands? What will you contribute to its warp and weft? Will you rise higher than the heavy rocks and logs themselves?

Built landscapes and landscape construction

Let me be clear about what I mean by built landscapes and landscape construction. This is a necessary digression because, in many people’s minds, the word ‘landscape’ suggests flowery gardens, leafy parklands, and scenic countrysides, where designers’ attention dissolves in the gentle care of delicate green plants. ‘Built landscapes’ and the structures that define them are different from that. They are made for direct human use and contact. They include all the outdoor surfaces and places that people touch, use, and benefit from in their everyday lives. They are heavy and hard. Their design is painstakingly technical. They are integral and abundant products of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. Construction is typically the final stage in their design; it is where interactions with values are conclusively determined.

Let me show you a few examples of built landscapes to make this venue of landscape design perfectly clear. As you will see, all of them are definitively characterized by structures: pavements, walls, and spanning structures like canopies and bridges.

City squares, for example, have large paved floors suitable for diverse uses. The one in Figure 1.1 has seats ready for large numbers of diners. The seats are arranged along the edge of the square alongside storefront cafés. They are grouped around tables and sheltered by umbrellas. From these seats, diners can watch the busy, interesting, diverse activities in the square’s large open area beyond. This square’s floor is large, open, and durable. People arrange their furniture, conduct their momentary actions, and find their passing experiences in a shared civil environment.

Figure 1.1 A city square³

The city square in Figure 1.2 is more centrally organized for group activity. This morning it is hosting yoga exercise. The instructor is elevated on a stage in front of the participants — nearby tents house supporting attractions. Trees frame the space, their roots stretching under the pavement like the exercisers’ legs stretch above. Pavements of different kinds shape perimeter streets and café spaces. This space as a whole is complex and dynamic. Each type of use activates and reinforces the others.

Figure 1.2 A city square⁴

Streetscapes are highly organized for multiple interwoven functions.⁵ The boulevard in Figure 1.3 meshes different uses safely and cooperatively into a functionally detailed space. Smooth asphalt carries motor vehicles in lanes clearly defined by curbs. A separate, softer surface carries bikes in a particular lane outlined by concrete bands. Lines of trees and shrubs separate the types of traffic. Broad concrete sidewalks give access to and from buildings. Bricklike surfaces hold artworks doubling as safety bollards and let air and water into tree rooting soil below.

Figure 1.3 A boulevard⁶

Alongside public streets, entry courts carry people through the gates of individual properties and up to the doors of individual buildings. They are the thresholds of the homes of individual families and specific functional organizations. They express the social character and role of those within. Visitors who come in adjust their expectations to the new type of experience they are entering. In Figure 1.4, one sees near the door downspouts bringing rainwater runoff down from the building’s roof. From them, rain gardens widen and stretch out toward us, calming the runoff with pools of native soil and vegetation. Bins hold different kinds of soil, with plants adapted to different water levels. Walkways weave among them, carrying us past safely controlled storm flows and dynamically restorative life, toward the institution’s warm interior. Concrete curbs shape the pools’ topography and outline the adjacent walkway floors.

Figure 1.4 An entry court⁷

In organized districts that blend different activities and experiences, mixtures of various kinds of landscape structures join to connect movement and organize spaces. The district shown in Figure 1.5 is a residential neighborhood. A loop road shapes a central green. Curbs separate cars in their vehicular lane safely from children on the grass. The houses follow the road and its sidewalk. Their front porches face each other across the green. Neighborly activities on the porches, sidewalk, and green invite everyone to communicate, building the community’s social networks. The shared space joins residents to their neighbors without intruding on their individual privacy.⁸

Figure 1.5 A residential district⁹

The district in Figure 1.6 unites a group of tall office buildings amid a city’s downtown. A wide walkway leads from busy city streets and sidewalks into the complex’s quiet central open space. Benches line the walkway. Curbs separate the walkway from areas of planting soil holding thick shrubs and tall trees, making a peaceful, quiet environment that contrasts with the hard-surfaced bustle outside. Along the length of the walkway, variations in paving patterns identify intersecting ways that carry people into building entrances. The district’s landscape structures connect the single-minded pursuits in its tall buildings to the diverse resources of downtown. The cloistered garden setting maintains dignified, undistracted focus within.

Figure 1.6 An office work district¹⁰

In parks and open spaces, constructed roads, pathways, and shelters open valuable landscape resources to access by people. By bringing people in, they activate the landscapes’ human experience. In Figure 1.7, a bridge-like walkway carries people past a pond into a public garden. Benches protect them along the edge. Arbors hold colorful flowers overhead. It is a work of comforting hospitality; it gives the garden’s visitors freedom of movement and experience.

Figure 1.7 Through a garden¹¹

In Figure 1.8, a cantilevered deck holds people safely as they overlook a powerful waterfall. Nearby shelters offer food, rest, and cover. The people have arrived here in the midst of a large state park. They left their cars behind in parking lots; networks of walkways carried them out to this destination.

Figure 1.8 Out to an overlook¹²

So, landscape structures follow people wherever they go outdoors. We human beings live in built landscapes. This is where we move, meet, listen, think, wait, and work. The human and ecological values that construction designs seek is a story that needs to be told.

Values waiting within

The values toward which we would strive are already inside us. We inherited them from our remote ancestors, who evolved them as they adapted and survived as individuals and as members of cooperative groups. They now drive our actions, large and small, all day long. They wait to be expressed in construction design as they are in other parts of our lives. While adhering to construction’s technical imperatives of stability and durability, we would design toward all the values that naturally urge us.

Psychologists have been studying human values for decades; they know they are there. They have found that virtually all people have a set of ‘core values’.¹³ Core values are the motivating drives for people’s actions. They are seen in operation, in the activities...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Between structure and vision
• 3 Building toward people
• 4 Building toward living things
• 5 Building toward meaning
• 6 Building toward thrift
• 7 The open way
• 8 Between stone and sky
• Bibliography
• Index