The Exploring Student Responds to Theory & Making Garden Places

The Exploring Student’s

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE STUDIES Response To Professor’s

DESIGN THEORY & MAKING GARDEN PLACES Student

Shanshan Yu

• Experience & exploration of the spatial expanse • Gaining design knowledge • Understanding landscape media • Making garden places

Professor

Joseph S.R. Volpe GIVEN BY THE EARTH SHAPED BY HUMAN HANDS

• Spatial Experience • Design Knowledge • Making Garden Places The LANDSCAPE

We Design Landscape for People — Joe & Shanshan

CONTENTS LANDSCAPE EXPERIENCE & THEORY OF PERCEPTION — PREFACE Joseph Volpe Fundamental Landscape Architecture in the Age of the Environment & Sustainability 1 Shanshan Looking Back & Discovering the Landscape at Yanjiang Park in Jiamusi Shanshan Searching for Her Education in Landscape Architecture

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RESEARCH METHODS Landscape Architecture Fundamental Studio

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Readings on Landscape Architecture Theory & Design Works

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Research on History of Modern Landscape Theory & Role of 3-D Landscape Models 14 Research Internship at James Rose Center Explores Landscape Media, Spatial Experience, & Human Activities

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Documenting, Caring, & Presenting the James Rose’s Garden House to Visitors Research of Anisfield Garden, New Jersey, Designed by James Rose Research of Van Ness Garden, New Jersey, Designed by James Rose

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DESIGN WORKS RESPONSE TO DESIGN THEORY & ASSIGNMENTS III

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CONTENTS DESIGN WORKS RESPONSE TO DESIGN THEORY & ASSIGNMENTS Modes of Perception — Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse Investigate geometry & expressions of form, outline & mass 28

Graphic Form & Sculptural Relief Transfer 2-D contour drawing into a 3-D sculptural relief 39

Contour study of rectangular figure 29 Rectangular form as field/ground contour

Sculptural reliefs from 5 contour drawings

Contour study of circular figure 31 Circular form as field/ground contour

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2-D drawing transforms to 3-D contour sculptural forms exploring convex, concave, & shallow reliefs 41 5 varied contoured sculptural reliefs form 1 contour drawing 42

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Contour study of geomorphic figure 33 Geomorphic form as field/ground contour 34

Contour study of biomorphic figure 35 Biomorphic form as field/ground contour

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2-Dimentional plane drawings transform into 3-dimensional objects 43

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Variations on rectangular solid circular solid 45 geomorphic solid biomorphic solid

Transformation of representational form from photo into contour drawing 37 People & animal photos represented as contour drawing 38 IV

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CONTENTS DESIGN WORKS RESPONSE TO LANDSCAPE THEORY & ASSIGNMENTS ­— Design Garden Places Garden places design program & environmental condition The subject is human: Focus on people in community, design 5 garden places — main points of design program framed by human activity, landscape media, form, & environmental context 48

Programmatic assignments of Shanshan’s five garden places 51

Shanshan Yu’s final design for each five garden places 52

Overview of principle design issues: anatomy of space, choreographic sequence, & human activities of gathering

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Processes & sequence for creating each of five garden places 53-56

Expression of landscape media: landform, water, plants,& structure Examples of garden places designed by students 50

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CONTENTS DESIGN WORKS RESPONSE TO DESIGN THEORY & ASSIGNMENTS — ­ Design Garden Places Landscape model 1 — Garden of Landforms 1.5 3-D diagram of ridge/valley & cut/fill that define the Garden of Landform 62

Examples of student’s Garden of Landform addressing the client’s program of a contemplative landscape place & the varied environmental context 57

1.6 2nd preliminary model advancing landform design by defining the edges of gathering nodes, corridors, gateway, & unfriendly context 63

1.1 Mass & void diagram addressing human activities of arriving, moving, rest, & gathering in a contemplative garden 58

1.7 Design with temperate climate in New England exploring comfort zone with suntrap & defense against cold winds 64

1.2 1st preliminary landform model addressing program of human activities with context on three sides unfriendly & one side friendly

1.8 Improving design with defensible ridge line & addressing universal access of corridor ramps 65

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1.3 Conceptual diagram to establish biomorphic form, gateway, corridors, & gathering nodes 60 100

1.4 Diagrammatic design engaging the landform & gradients of the slopes 61

100

1.91 Study of the degree of side slopes, height of the berms, & extent of the landform base 66 1.92 Final contemplative model design of Garden of Landforms 67

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CONTENTS DESIGN WORKS RESPONSE TO DESIGN THEORY & ASSIGNMENTS — ­ Design Garden Places Landscape model 2 — Garden of Structure Examples of student’s Garden of Structure addressing the client’s program of a contemplative landscape & responds to the environmental context 68

2.4 Model of Garden Structure exploring opening to the sky, connection to the friendly context, & materiality of the floorscape 72

2.1 1st diagrammatic study with 1st preliminary explorative model addressing human activities of arriving, moving, & gathering in a contemplative garden 69

2.5 Variations of the structural system, improving post & beams, adding diagonal supports & seating at corner walls 73 2.6 Extending the prominent gateway, development of structural system & tectonic expression of post & beam 74

2.2 2nd diagrammatic study with 2nd preliminary explorative structural system addressing program of human activities in an open friendly context 70

2.71 Final garden space frame supporting the contemplative garden, a “walk for a walk’s sake” in response to the friendly context 75 - 76

2.3 Diagram of post & beam structure & 2nd preliminary model 71 VII

CONTENTS DESIGN WORKS RESPONSE TO DESIGN THEORY & ASSIGNMENTS — ­ Design Garden Places Landscape model 3 — Hillside Garden with landform, retaining wall, & rainwater Examples of student’s Hillside Gardens addressing the client’s program of a reflective landscape & response to the varied environmental context 77

3.4 Advancing the landform design process from spot elevations to proposed contours to give shape & function to the landform design 81

3.1 Understanding existing site conditions of the hillside with universal access requirements for a switchback path system connecting top and bottom of the slope 78

3.5 Landform design of the gathering node with retaining walls, the path system with defensible ridge lines & valley forms for rain gardens 82 3.6 Establishing landing areas at the top & bottom entrances of the straight ramps, & securing privacy at the gateway 83

3.2 Collage on existing hillside model to explore circular design with radiating lines & arcs that define gathering node & universal ramps 79

3.7 Study of variations on the top and the end of the retaining wall 84 3.81-3.82 Final hillside garden with landform, retaining wall, & rain gardens addressing the client’s program of a meditative landscape & response to a friendly context on south side 85 - 86

3.3 Diagrams with grading, spot elevations, & cut/fill requirements of the hillside garden 80

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CONTENTS DESIGN WORKS RESPONSE TO DESIGN THEORY & ASSIGNMENTS — ­ Design Garden Places Landscape model 4 — Garden of Plants Example of student’s Garden of Plants addressing the client’s program of a contemplative landscape & response to the varied environmental context

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4.1 Study models exploring the vegetation to define the spatial volume, & articulate the edges of the garden anatomy

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4.2 Collage diagram of garden place with choice of serial ascending/descending geomorphic nodes with subtle variations of the form & path system

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4.3 3-D preliminary garden design in unfriendly context with spaces defined by trees, shrubs, ground covers, & grass

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4.41-4.42-4.43-4.44 Final Garden of Plants revealing the sitting areas & the varied experiences of the “walk for a walk’s sake”

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CONTENTS DESIGN WORKS RESPONSE TO DESIGN THEORY & ASSIGNMENTS — ­ Design Garden Places Landscape model 5 — Hillside Garden with all four media — landform, rainwater, plants, & structure Examples of students’ 2nd Hillside Garden with all four landscape media — landform, rainwater, plants, & structure addressing the client’s program, varied form, & environmental context 96

5.41 Final hillside garden design with variations of the tree canopy & shrubs to express the open spatial organization, & refinement of the terrace benches 100

5.1 Design diagram of the 2nd Hillside Garden, choice of serial spaces including collage of layout for a friendly context, proposed spot elevations on existing site, & contour grading of the landform 97

5.42 Design particulars of massing of plants & open space of the terrace gathering nodes 101 5.43 Aspects of shaping the terraces & articulation of landform & edges on the hillside terrain 102

5.2 Preliminary garden with progressive changes of size of the gathering terraces revealing & connecting to the open friendly context 98

5.44 Concluding the design of the client’s contemplative design of the hillside garden celebrating the “walk for a walk’s sake” 103

5.3 Continuity of the vegetative patterns that engage the landform, gathering nodes, path system, rain gardens, & friendly context 99 X

CONTENTS APPENDIX Excerpts from eBook

GIVEN BY THE EARTH SHAPED BY HUMAN HANDS Spatial Experience

Design Knowledge

Making Garden Places

The LANDSCAPE

JOSEPH S.R. VOLPE REFERENCE XI

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PREFACE

Fundamental Landscape Architecture in the Age of the Environment & Sustainability

the human goal of studio teaching and learning environment is experiential under the umbrella of the ecology model — physical, biotic, cultural — the learning objectives focus on engagement of the language of landscape design the process of making garden places for people in response to the environmental context through building of landscape models exploring elements of the landscape— landform, water, plants, structure— as the media of landscape design that defines spatial structure of the landscape gathering nodes, gateways, corridors, edges, to design edges of human space that shape places where human activities are nurtured Joseph Volpe 2

PREFACE

Joseph Volpe Fundamental Landscape Architecture in the Age of the Environment & Sustainability Consider the wonder of human perception, not merely the flat 2 dimensional surfaces, or the materiality of 3 D objects, or the enclosure and structure of architectural interiors, but to perceive the open continuous expanse of the rolling land surface as it reaches the horizon line and make union with the energy of the cosmic sky.

Opus 40, Saugerties, NY

Villa d’Este, Tivoli, Italy

In Oliver Sacks’s “The Mind’s Eye,” (Stereo Sue, pgs. 111-143, Alfred Knoff, NY, 2010) he explores his research into stereoscopic vision and notes the work of David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel who won a Nobel Prize in 1981 for advancing our understanding of stereoscopic vision, the spatial experience of volumetric space. In particular the scientists studied the neuro-physiology of the binocular cells of the visual cortex, which are necessary to construct a sense of depth from the retinal disparities of our two eyes. Sacks articulates the profound human experience of three-dimensional stereoscopic perception and the effects of the loss of spatial discernment on persons who only have two-dimensional vision.

Altered by behavior and environmental conditions the cause of the loss of stereoscopic vision varies from one person to another. Injury or illness may destroy or diminish depth perception. Isolation

Sisinghurst, Kent, England

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for some time in a very small room or prison cell greatly alters depth of vision. Recovering from bodily injury, Oliver Sacks is hospitalized twenty days in a small windowless room, he realizes his keen depth perception has diminished. When he leaves the tiny enclosure to reenter a more spacious hospital room with windows he is acutely aware of his disturbing newly acquired vision, spatial depth is only visible in the foreground and two-dimensionally flat in the mid and far background. It takes Sacks some weeks to recover this normal perception of space.

This raises another question; in our digital age, does spending an increasingly longer and longer time on increasingly smaller and smaller monitors alter our perception and understanding of actual spatial depth, particularly the environmental — physical, biotic and cultural —continuum of the landscape? James Rose expressed a similar concern in the age of the analog communication regarding maps, “Don’t confuse the map with the site.” Rose’s cautionary note is of equal or greater significance in the digital age. Based upon decades of studio teaching of beginners and advanced design students, particularly with those students who are advanced in digital training

PREFACE

Joseph Volpe Fundamental Landscape Architecture in the Age of the Environment & Sustainability

Claued Monet’s Giverny, Eure, France

Bunker Hill Stairs, Los Angles, CA

Dumbarton Oaks, Georgetown, Washington DC

(or excessively devoted to computer graphics communication) but profoundly lacking in the out-of-door experience in the landscape — in walking, observing, recording, and contemplating land formations, plant communities, states of water, and built structures of the landscape. It’s about becoming aware of (natural) landscape processes. Landscape architecture is planning and design of the land. It is not mere technical green engineering. We are human focused, connecting person to person, linking people to the land and sky.

Oliver Sacks advances his clinical research of to demonstrate that individuals have a measurable difference in the degree of spatial depth perceived from one person to another. This occurs while caring for his patient Sue Barry (Professor at Mount Holyoke College, who recorded her experience in Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist’s Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions), who from childhood suffered from strabismus. She was seeking help from knowledgeable professionals and Sacks invites two other specialists to assist him in exploring Sue’s perception with stereograms.

Sacks discovers that Sue, his two colleagues

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and he have different quantifiable lengths of stereoscopic depth perception. The consequence of this observation is yet to be fully explored.

But some designers have observed a similar phenomena in the ways designers like graphic artist, object makers, interior designers, building architects, and landscape architects approach and perceive creative work in their individual disciplines.

All design fields share in the basic approach to problem solving. Of course there is a difference in the materiality in surfaces, in buildings and in landscape. I am addressing the modes of perception and Sacks would be interested in the perception of spatial depth. The modes of perception are expressed in the way different design scholars and professionals exercise their design language and the action of making.

• •

Graphic artist engage the flat surface and any sense of space is a perspective illusion.

Object makers see space surrounding the mass of a functional or abstract solid form, or see mass and void in the in the wholeness of the object.

PREFACE

Joseph Volpe Fundamental Landscape Architecture in the Age of the Environment & Sustainability •

•

Building architects devise shelters with space enclosed in floors, walls, and ceilings; the enclosure itself a defense against the vicissitudes of the climate.

Landscape architects perceive the open continuous expanse of the living land surface as it reaches the horizon line and make vulnerable union with the energy of the cosmic sky.

Carrage House Garden, Amherst, MA

Sento Palace, Kyoto, Japan

Park Güell, Barcelona, Spain

Some would argue that design is design. Perhaps it is conditionally true in the general analysis of design works that support creative collaboration among different design and planning disciplines.

But even in the best of team work, each discipline does what they know best informed by their collaborative team planning. Individuals who are attracted to the landscape may not be conscious of space, but probably express interest in the outof-doors, attracted to living systems — the earth, water, vegetation, and sky are alive! Experience will win the day.

Growing up in Pennsylvania, I walk frequently in the woods, meadows, farms, and small towns of this beautiful state. Next to my aunt’s home, as a young child, I discover an amazing landscape right outside of the kitchen window. It wasn’t like 5

a native forest, not like a meadow in a farm. This was different. I stroll over the gentle rolling hills through the great open spaces of a golf course.

“I want to do this”, I blurt out but no one in my family knew what doing this was. In our small mining town, as an adolescent I, frequently cruise over the vast spread of a slate waste dump, an industrial residue from anthracite coal mining. Like a quarry it is strangely beautiful. Rainfall collects in the scattered pockets of valley landforms to create spontaneous wetlands filled with life — green plants, buzzing insects and birds of the season. The abandoned site, made off-limits by some parents, was a spatial mystery. Some dared to explore it to roam over the great stone desert expanse. Inventing games not found on the street or ball fields, boys found targets for our forbidden bb guns. We played roughhouse sport, slinging pebbles over a long distance — thrilling stone fights in the desert-like expanse.

Joseph S.R. Volpe

“Nothing is a mistake.

There is no win and no fail, there’s only make.”

Sister Corita Kent

PREFACE

Shanshan Looking Back & Discovering the Landscape at Yanjiang Park in Jiamusi

Shanshan’s childhood experience on the Yanjiang Park with its high dam that steps down to the flowing Songhua River

Shanshan’s winter play ground in Yanjiang Park

Hand drawing of interior space at HZAU in China Photo resourse: http://www.jms.ccoo.cn/

Deep in my earliest memory we ran along the edges of Songhuang River in Yanjang Park, Jiamusi, Heilongjiang, China. The long linear landscape with a 30-foot high dam steps down the upper riverbank to a lower terrace floodplain and to the flowing river below. The ground, trees, & structures created a flat park corridor on top of the dam connecting several gathering areas for people to meet, play, and rest.

With my childhood friends we played with mud to create houses, animals or people. in the summertime under the canopy of great trees. We climbed down the steps of the high dam to play games along the riverbank and swim in the water. In wintertime, my favorite season, we created snowballs for playful fighting and skated on the frozen river. Throughout the year the fluctuating water level of the river provided an unconscious intuitive awareness of the landscape process. Walking, playing, and browsing along the corridor river park during the four seasons were my favorite outdoor activities. I found myself deeply influenced by the spatial connection the park had to the earth, sky, water, and plants.

I sensed the silent language spoken between the landform and plants, the snaking river and the articulated structures. I sensed the park’s creator spoke this language of landscape. I knew then I wished to speak it as well.

My interest favored a loving of nature & enjoying outdoor activities that urged me to choose landscape architecture as my major. I chose Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan because of their 6

well know horticulture program. Upon entering, I believed the school would provide me the tools to build a landscape place like Yanjiang Park, creating unforgettable experiences like my happy childhood memory of people in the park. However, completing my first year of study at Huazhong left me wondering: What is landscape design? What is its purpose?

While an emphasis was placed on critical skills like graphic design and crucial knowledge about plant biology, design theory was sorely lacking.

Botany only introduced me to living plants as fragmented objects. Agriculture showed me plants as food and cash crops. But where were the spirit of the willows overlooking the Songhuang River?

How did they fit in? Courses in graphics taught me hand drawing, including sketching, watercolor, and engineering drawing. This proved to be a valuable foundation in visual communication. But where was “landscape design, the experience of the people in landscape”?

Landscape architecture was introduced in my second year; the first course assignment was a gateway to our campus, but the assignment was understood as a gate, a structure, next to a plaza in a park-like setting.

But there was no landscape foundation; no expression of landscape elements, media, & materials; no talk about the experience of arriving, & moving in the landscape. The focus of landscape design courses was graphic presentation. For all the assigned projects the end result remained creating

PREFACE

Shanshan searching for her education in landscape architecture

Entrance plaza design from undergraduate work at HZAU

2-dimensional graphic expression. In addition there was no studio culture of student-groups addressing analysis of the site and environmental context; no research on collecting spatial examples of landscape design precedents; no viewing and commenting on fellow student’s proposals. The emphasis was on individual work. In a bubble I found myself trying to advance my craft. My designs were meticulously detailed, colorful, yet eventually flawed. I thought back to Yanjiang Park. What was I missing?

Four years of study, and despite the skills and techniques gained throughout my bachelor education, the question of landscape design and its purpose still lingered. I could not find the answers in dazzling 2-dimensional graphics. I could not find it alone, not in the isolation.

The elements of landscape — landform, water, plants, & structures are the media of landscape architecture

Ecology Model — dynamics of the physical, biotic, & cultural environment

My curiosity about the nature of landscape design drives me to pursue further study. I am attracted to the culture modern landscape architecture.

Acceptance to the graduate school in landscape architecture at the University of Massachusetts proved at first to be a challenge. There was a new language of design that explored the environmental nature of the site as physical, biologcial, & cultural processes , as illustrated by professor Joseph Volpe’s Ecology Model. The elements of landscape — landform, water, plants, & structures are introduced as the media that articulates landscape architecture. I began seeing the landscape as the 3-D volumetric space form connecting people with the earth & the sky. Avidly, I began reading the photographs of James Rose in 7

The Creative Garden, followed by images & texts by Garrett Eckbo, & Dan Kiley. There is a gradual change in my design works. No longer am I focusing on mere objects, & the shallow details that dominated my previous work.

There is a change of emphasis: • 2-D graphic presentation is changed to 3-D spatial experiences; • Complex form expression is changed to simple but strong spatial landscape design ideas; • High technical utilization is changed to human environmental landscape solutions.

Had I learned the language of gardens? No. As James Rose states in Gardens Make Me Laugh, “I said a garden was like speech (?)…Not that it was…I could have said a great garden was more like silence than speech.... It’s the luxury of not saying something. It’s the “something” between the lines.”

My search led me to choose professor Joseph Volpe as my advisor and to take the fundamental landscape studio taught by Joe and Elizabeth Thompson. As a further challenge, I engaged in a deeper level of research, photographed and recorded the works of my design process (in the sequence as they actually occurred bumps and all), and, to present this as education materials to be analyzed and engaged in the teaching of the fundamentals of landscape architecture. In Volpe’s lecture course, “Roots & Branches of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Art”, I completed additional scholarly works in the history of the contemporary built landscape works.

RESEARCH METHODS

Landscape Architecture Fundamental Studio Fundamentals of Landscape Architecture Elements of landscape — landform, water, plants, & structures — the defining media of landscape architecture exploring human activities in response to the varied contexts in the creation & social structure of garden places.

Joseph S. R. Volpe professor of landscape architecture Elizabeth Thompson lecturer & landscape architect 8

RESEARCH METHODS

Readings on Landscape Architecture Theory & Design Works Appleton, Jay The Experience of Landscape, “Behavior and Environment”, Chapter 3, Wiley, 1979, pp. 5-80

Appleton, Jay

• Habitat theory addresses the ability, through observation & contemplation on a place, that the place can satisfy essential human biological needs.

• Appleton extends Lorenz’ prospect-refuge theory, seen & not being seen, to postulate a fundamental principle in landscape planning & design.

• The landscape elements — landform, plants, & structures — are the landscape media that defines the physical attributes of prospect & refuge.

• Prospect-refuge theory provides a frame of reference for exampling the aesthetic properties of the landscape but should not supersede other frames of reference.

Bracken, John, Planting Design, 1957, self-published, digital vision by University of Michigan: <http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015035213670;view=1up;seq=5> Bracken, John

• Bracken emphasizes plants & plant communities as scientific & aesthetic characteristics.

• Pants are a living & growing materials subject to biological laws.

• By engaging the living characteristics of plants & vegetative communities, the designer expresses the aesthetics of the living media of the landscape.

Condon, Patrick “A Designed Landscape Space Typology, A Theory Based Designed Tool”, University of Minnesota, pp. 33-46.

Condon, Patrick

Tree clumps on the left, once a dominate feature in the landscape are reduced in stature with the installation of communication towels.

Where trees and masts are equi-distant from the eye, the trees are dwarfed. But trees near the view point merge the masts into the pattern of their trunks.

• Given to order & classification, but not abstraction, Condon purposed volumetric landscape space types that embody meaning & experience of the everyday outdoor environment.

• Landscape types may change or are changeable with any particular cultural group.

Crowe, Sylvia “Landform”, Space ‘60, edited by Joseph S.R. Volpe, self-published student journal, Department of Landscape Architecture, University of California, Berkeley, 1960 The Landscape of Power The Architectural Press, 1958 • In “Landform” Crowe singles out landform as the foundation media of creative landscape design • Crowe understands & manipulates the media of landscape — landform, plants, structure, & water — to address landscape solutions to the impact of the large scale modern industrial & communication structures.

• She fearlessly, creatively, & lovingly explores the design of modern corporate/state landscape.

• Crowe understands the modern landscape of power and addresses human scale by expressing the creative power of the landscape media in regional design.

Corwe, Sylvia

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RESEARCH METHODS

Readings on Landscape Architecture Theory & Design Works Goldfinger, Erno “The Sensation of Space”, The Architectural Review, Nov. 1941, pp. 129-131.

• Spatial sensation table — 2-D flat, 2-D convex, 3-D concave.

• The enclosing agent & enclosed space — the qualitative & quantitative variations are the essence of sensation.

Goldfinger, Erno

Lynch, Kevin The Image of the City “The Image of the Environment”, MIT Press, 1960, Chapter 1, pp. 1-13.

“The City Image and Its Elements”, MIT Press, 1960, Chapter 3, pp. 46-90.

• Recognizing the complexities of urban spatial environments, Lynch emphasizes legibility & reading the landscape on the ground.

• Lynch identifies five legible elements of the urban landscape — path, edge, node, landmark, & district, fundamental concepts, which is adopted by landscape scholar designers.

Lynch, Kevin

Meyer, Elizabeth K. “Sustaining Beauty. The Performance of Appearance A Manifesto in Three Parts”, Journal of Landscape Architecture, Spring 2008, pp. 6-22.

• Meyer goes beyond the three pillars of sustainability, environmental health, social justice, & working economy to establish that beauty has the central role in sustainability.

• Meyer transforms revelatory designs as a landscape expression of performance where the landscape processes all reviewed in the media of earth, water, & plants.

Meyer, Elizabeth K.

Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks “Stereo Sue”, The Mind’s Eye, Alfred A Knopf, New York, Toronto, 2010.

• Oliver Sacks, a clinical neurologist, explores the brain & human perception with a unique focus on three-dimensional vision of space.

• Sacks examines the dual vision with the human pair of eyes & their neurological link to the cluster of cells in the cerebral cortex that allows the stereoscopic vision or the ability to see three-dimensional volumetric space.

• Sacks demonstrates that depth perception of space varies from one person to another, some people can see very deep in space & a few people have no spatial vision. A loss of stereoscopic vision from a person who originally had normal vision results in a deep physiological deprivation.

• David Hubel & Toreten Wiesel won the Nobel Prize for demonstrating that binocular cells in the visual context are necessary to construct the sense of depth from the retinal disparities of our two eyes.

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RESEARCH METHODS

Readings on Landscape Architecture Theory & Design Works Rose, James “Freedom In The Garden — A Contemporary Approach to Landscape Design” Pencil Points, Oct. 1938.

“Plant Forms and Space — Materials Create Volume by Definition of Space” Pencil Points, Nov. 1938.

“Integration — Design Expresses the Continuity of Living” Pencil Points, Dec. 1938.

“Articulate Form in Landscape Design” Pencil Points, Feb. 1939.

“Landscape Models” Pencil Points, Jul. 1939.

“Why Not Try Science — Some Tec[h]nics for Landscape Prodv[u]ction” Pencil Points, Dec. 1939.

• Contemporary design represents a change in kind, conception, & expression derived from the industrial & economic revolution.

• Plants are the great connecting link between structural materials & the uncontrollable outdoors, not man-made but man-contorted.

• Rose explores the continuity & change in the design of the living garden as analogous to the changes of the family life cycle.

• The experience of the landscape expanse provides the opportunities & limitations for the design of space/form in garden places.

• A 3-D scale model is the closest to the actual site of the purposed design, which allows the designer to explore the spatial alternative that serves the users of the purposed garden place.

• Rose briefly & inconclusively explores scientific developments in structures & building materials in contrast to the science of plants.

Rose, James Creative Gardens, New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation; 1958.

• Rose advances the definition of garden, the sense of being immersed in the landscape, always dealing with spatial volume — surface, sides, & top open to the sky.

• He explores the modern landscape in design theory and the practice of making garden places.

• Rose addresses the making of a garden, to create a kind of space, a concept as a volumetric form, a framework of thinking to address the manipulation of the outdoor environment that fuses the patterns of landscape elements with the social & econometric structures of society.

Rose, James

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RESEARCH METHODS

Readings on Landscape Architecture Theory & Design Works Rose, James Gardens Make Me Laugh, Norwalk, CT: Silvermine Publishers; 1965.

• In Gardens Make Me Laugh, Rose examines with wry humor & contradiction in making a garden in contemporary culture.

• The sweet sardonic wit of Rose is reflected in the cutting but humane cartoons of Robert Osborn.

Rose, James The Heavenly Environment, Hong Kong: New City Cultural Service, LTD; 1985.

• With a huge number of photographs, Rose covers the design of a series of gardens, casting the client as a figure in a play & the designer as the playwright.

• In the full rich script on the challenges in the design process, Rose’s landscape concepts & garden making reach a lucid expression in addressing the physical design changes in James Rose garden home. Rose records & documents over decades of time the transformation & modification of his living environment as an expression of the changing landscape.

A garden is not a fixed icon but a dynamic aesthetic reflecting the living process of the individual, family, & community.

Rose, James

Sekler, Eduard “Structure, construction, tectonics” Structure in Art and Science, Gyorgy Kepes, ed., New York: George Brazilier, Inc., 1965, pp 89-95.

• Sekler explores structure, construction, & tectonics experience. In architectural built works.

• Structure is a general & abstract concept, refers to a principle of arrangement destined to cope with forces at work — it is a system.

• Construction refers to the concrete realization of a principle or system — it is how to build the system.

• Tectonics make visible, a spatial experience of the built works.

Sekler, Eduard

Thiel, Philip “Processional Architecture”, of Architects Journal, Feb. 1964, pp. 23-28.

“A Sequence-Experience Notation”, Town Planning Review, April 1961, pp. 33-52.

• • • • •

Thiel explores processional movement as a choreographic landscape experience.

Thiel expands Lynch’s five types of elements as the volumetric “anatomy of space”.

Over, side & under describes the elemental position of the spatial volume.

Defining the size of the elemental position the space establishes — surface, screen, & objects.

Vague, space, & volume.

Thiel, Philip

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RESEARCH METHODS

Readings on Landscape Architecture Theory & Design Works

Volpe, Joseph S.R. “The Carriage House Garden”, Pocket Garden: big ideas for small space, William Morrow and Company, INC, New York, 2000.

• A three story Carriage House on a very small in-town multi-leveled site is recycled & transformed into a living unit with attendant garden terraces.

• Sensitive to the existing trees, the terraced landscape is regarded & connected with the garden stairs, walls, & tall trellises to define the garden stroll as a choreographic sequence that connects to the upper & lower entrances of the Carriage House.

• The existing stone is recycled on the site & materials of the ground surface in the garden are largely gravels & dry-laid stone which allows the rainwater to permeate into the ground.

• At the bottom land of the lower terrace is constructed a Wetland Garden shaped by earthen berms & richly planted with a diverse association of native species.

Volpe, Joseph S.R. “Private Spaces in Public Places, The Path System and Gardens of Mount Cook Village”, Landscape Architecture — Private Places In The Landscape, edited by R. Austin, Van Nostrand Rienhold, 1984.

• With the rise of the Common Market in Europe & a changing economy in New Zealand that foretells the decline of agriculture revenue & the growth of international tourism, the government calls forth planning and development of the national parks to maintain the balance of international trade.

• The expansion of the service & development staff at Mount Cook requires the planning & design for housing for the new service community.

• Governed by a previous policy of the National Park Board a subdivision plan of single-family detached units was under construction before the landscape architect arrived to analyze & assess the environmental consequences.

• The subdivision was built upon an altered gravel stream bed of Black Birch stream that is exposed to the harsh elements of the Southern Alps. The landscape architect modifies the plan by designing a landform shield to wrap around each home to protect it from the fierce winds and to secure the privacy of the family inhabitants.

• To meet the needs to unify the community landscape of the national park resort, Volpe, through the shaping of public & private spaces, builds a network path system that links together all past, present, & future developments of Mount Cook Village.

Volpe, Joseph S.R.

13

RESEARCH METHODS

Modern History of Design Theory â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Conceptual Diagram of Bauhaus Teaching Objectives

Conceptual Diagram of Bauhaus Design Foundation Teaching, 1937

Conceptual Diagram of Bauhaus Fundamentals Teaching, 1922, developed by Walter Gropius http://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/das-bauhaus/lehre

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/bauhaus-ninety-years-of-inspiration/

14

RESEARCH METHODS

History 3-D Physical Models from the Bauhaus

“Licht-Raum-Modulator”

by László Moholy-Nagy, 1922-30

Johannes Itten, Foundation Course, Composition of Cubes, 1922

http://coletivominimo.com/2015/07/03/os-fotogramas-de-laszlo-moholy-nagy/

http://labcut.tumblr.com/page/36

Walter Gropius, Work model for the memorial for the ‘March Heroes’, 1921 http://www.wallpaper.com/gallery/lifestyle/bauhaus/17051265#574

Walter Gropius, Architecture model, 1924

http://thecharnelhouse.org/2014/08/25/walter-gropius-international-architecture-1925/

Walter Gropius, Architecture model, 1922

http://thecharnelhouse.org/2014/04/01/object-lessons-from-the-bauhaus/

15

Balance study from László Moholy Nagy’s Preliminary Course, 1924 (replica 1967) http://www.bauhaus.de/en/ausstellungen/sammlung/204_unterricht/441

RESEARCH METHODS

History 3-D Physical Landscape Models

Garden model by Hans Dieter Schaal

Eckboâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 18 Models for the modern private rowhouse residential garden, 1937

http://archimodels.info/post/123785730691/hans-dieter-schaal

http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6g50073x&chunk.id=d0e92&toc.id=d0e92&brand=ucpress;query=architecture

Landscape models by James Rose

16

http://jamesrosecenter.org/

RESEARCH METHODS

History 3-D Physical Landscape Model of James Rose Center

17

RESEARCH METHODS

History 3-D Physical Landscape Model of James Rose Center

18

RESEARCH METHODS

Contemporary Professional 3-D Physical Landscape Study Models

Equestrian Centre design model, 2012

Riedmatt Ebikon, 2015

http://davidhannafordmitchell.tumblr.com/page/188

http://www.landezine.com/index.php/2015/06/riedmatt-ebikon-by-asp-landscape-architects/

FalconergĂĽrden Gymnasium design model, 2010 http://www.deve.dk/p062-falkonergarden-gymnasium/

COBE Unveils Design for Danish Red Cross, 2014 http://www.archdaily.com/540541/pwferretto-design-an-activemonument-for-seoul-s-seosomun-memorial-park

19

50 Avenue Montaigne, Paris, France, 1993 http://www.mvvainc.com/project.php?id=43&c=gardens

House by a River Karjat, Mumbai, India, 2015 http://architecturebrio.com/projects/house-by-a-river-24

RESEARCH METHODS

Contemporary Professional 3-D Physical Landscape Study Models

Museum of Old and New Art, by OCULUS, 2012

The Infinite Bridge by Gjøde & Povlsgaard Arkitekter, 2015

http://www.landezine.com/index.php/2015/07/the-infinite-bridge-by-gjode-povlsgaard-arkitekter/

http://www.landezine.com/index.php/2015/02/mona-museum-hobart-oculus-landscape-architecture/

Multifunctional Sport & Event Center,1999 http://behnisch.com/projects/90

Garden House, Tochigi Nosu-gun, Tochigi, Japan, 2008

Helsinki Central Library, 2012 http://www.arquitecturabeta.com/2013/07/12/helsinki-central-library-we-architecture-jaja-architects/

http://www.elcroquis.es/Shop/Issue Details/42?ptID=1&shPg=4&artID=976

20

RESEARCH METHODS

Fight of Angles â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Choreography 4 Landscape Edges Study Models for Award Winning Competition by Joseph Volpe

21

RESEARCH METHODS

Fight of Angles â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Choreography 4 Landscape Edges by Joseph Volpe Award from International Competition on Unbuilt Work by Land Forum Magazine

22

RESEARCH METHODS

Internship at James Rose Center Explores Landscape Media, Spatial Experience, & Human Activities The James Rose Center

for Landscape Architectural Research and Design

Street Sidewalk

Kitchen Court

Entry Court & Entrance

Kitchen Entrance at West Side of House & Garden

Evening View of the House from the Main Garden

23

Introduction of JRC James Rose built his home in Ridgewood, NY, 1953, and improvised on it for over thirty years. After Rose’s death in 1991 The James Rose Center (JRC) for Landscape Architecture Research and Design was established by Dean Cardasis. He reversed the decay of Rose’s magnum opus & embarked on a mission that promoted Rose’s design as an inherent sustainable environmental concept.

The Center found new life as a landscape architecture educational center. JRC is not a fixed static icon, but a garden place that has evolved & continues to change to meet new scholarly & caring needs, wants, & desires as a singular landscape expression.

Mission of Internship

• Maintain JRC as a living center & a place to visit & study.

• Lead guild tours of JRC, addressing the life of James Rose as he continuously evolved the form & function of his dwelling & garden to meet his professional & family’s changing needs.

• To explore & study Rose’s garden house, through living there, experiencing the spatial choreography, the defining landscape media, & expression of materials.

• Read the written works of Rose & making a photograph record of the internship experience.

RESEARCH METHODS

Documenting, Caring, & Presenting the James Rose’s Garden House to Visitors Research Findings

Central Garden Space

Rose’s Living & Dining Room

Buddha Garden

Roof Garden

Exhibition & Study in Rose’s Sister’s Former Home

24

• To maximize the living space of the tiny site, James Rose’s original unified concept developed the house & garden to serve three independent individuals.

• To create a “large“ spatial perspective in a tiny site, Rose used transparent glass to present a visual connection between indoor rooms & outdoor garden.

• To promote varied levels of natural lighting in the interior Rose articulated translucent screens throughout the architecture & garden edge.

• Keeping existing trees and choosing local perennials, Rose created his home to celebrate the comfort of the shelter & the dynamic connection to the garden place.

• Addressing expansion, Rose developed a geomorphic unified shelter & garden on the roof.

• Over time Rose played with contrasting forms, rectangular on the first floor of the architecture, geomorphic form of the garden, & “explosive” triangular forms of the roof garden & shelter.

• To cool temperature, Rose kept the spreading canopy of the existing American Lindon trees to give shade to the house in summer time.

• Rose set his dwelling as an integral part of the garden & employed all four elements of landscape — landform, plants, water, & structure as the media that defines the garden place of the Rose center.

RESEARCH METHODS

Anisfield Garden, New Jersey, Designed by James Rose

Stone Riprap Retaining wall

Garden Entrance

Arriving at the Gateway

Earth Works & Plants at the Garden Terrace

Terraced Stairs Followed Existing Contour Line to Protect the Tree Root

Series of Geomorphic Terraces Connect Rain Garden Conserving Rainwater Upper & Lower Floors of the Home from Roof

25

Gravel & Stone Pathway Through the Forest Garden

Drainage Way Through Forest with Common Groundcovers

RESEARCH METHODS

Van Ness Garden, New Jersey, Designed by James Rose

Stone & Gravel Path Connected to the Side Entrance to Home

Pervious Stone & Gravel Path

Gathering space with great geomorphic wooden deck defining the edges of the stone terrace with the floating slabs in gravel.

Main Entrance to Home

Grass Open Space with Curving Pond with Water Fountain Rhododendron Defined Forest Edge Defined by Geomorphic Slabs

Variations of the Garden Corridor Design by James Rose

26

Shanshan Yu’s

Design Works Response to Landscape Theory & Assignment

COMMUNICATION & DIALOG Joseph Volpe’s landscape theory & assignments as poem

design process embodies development of landscape architecture works as primary research

The subject is people Their activity is a walk The modes of perception — 2-D flat, 3-D object, enclosed dwelling, landscape expanse The object is a space The environment is ecological — physical, biotic, cultural The demands of sustainability respond to the environment, work economy, social justice The function is privacy versus community Their surrounding is supportive or hostile context The design response engages prospect or secures refuge The landscape is a continuous expanse loaded with sky The space is shaped by mass The elements of landscape — landform, water, plants, structures — are the media of landscape architecture The mass is modified by form, pattern, texture, and tone In figure/field studies the ground is dominant The place is altered by season, sun, wind, and moisture The ordering is dominant/subordinate hierarchy versus egalitarian patterning The capacity of resilience promotes a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize ecosystem The poetic force is a discreet event, environmental analogy or landscape metaphor The space is a personal place The process may be rational The exploration employs design knowledge The experience is sensuous

Graphic Form & Sculptural Relief — Investigate geometry and expressions of form, square, circle, triangle, ellipse Contour drawing of the rectangular, circular, geomorphic, biomorphic, & representational forms as figure/ground explorations Transform contour drawings into sculptural reliefs 2-D plane drawing transform into 3-dimensional object Variations on rectangular, circular, geomorphic, biomorphic solids

Landscape expressions of elements — landform, water, plants, structure as the media that defines garden places Design Five Garden Places — physical 3-D landscape models 1. Garden of Landform 2. Garden of Structure 3. Hillside Garden with Landform, Retaining wall, & Rainwater 4. Garden of Plants 5. Hillside Garden with Landform, Structure, Plants, & Rainwater

27

Modes of Perception — Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

Investigate geometry & expressions of form, outline & mass

The geometry of form — rectangle, circle, triangle, & ellipse and their parts as line drawing

Variations of form — rectangular, circular, geomorphic, & biomorphic — as mass & void

2-D contour drawing — variations on the four basic geometric forms as field/ground 28

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

Contour drawing exploring the rectangular figure

Prof. Volpeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s comments: As a 2-D contour expression, Shanshan interpreted form as an object on the surface with a common ground for all the figures.

29

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

Contour drawing of the rectangular form as field/ground

Comments: In contrast to previous page, Shanshan explores the right angle contour as a dynamic ground/field.

30

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

Study of contour drawing of the circular figure

Comments: Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s early design exploration of the circle, like most students, expresses the delight & dominance of the circumferential arc.

A deeper understanding of the geometry investigates the generating power of the center point & resultant straight lines of the radius & diameter that both animates & fixes the curvature of the perimeter. Exploring the tangent & secant would expand design alternatives of circular form.

31

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

Contour drawing of the circular form as field/ground

Comments: Shanshan explores, in a limited way, radial, tangent, & diameter straight-line extensions with the arcs & perimeters of the circle.

Note, the geometry of circle is more than the curvature of its circumference.

32

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

Contour drawing investigating the geomorphic figure

triangular base of the geomorphic polygon & extent of acute & obtuse angles in more complex geomorphic forms

2

33

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

Contour drawing exploring the geomorphic form as field/ground

2

34

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

Contour drawing studying the biomorphic figure

Comments: The distinction between the fixed curve of the circle & the dynamic complex curve of the ellipse is an aesthetic perceptual challenge too subtle for many students. There is a difference between the fixed curve of the oval & the dynamic curve of the ellipse.

It only matters if the designer makes it perceptible; otherwise a curve is a curve.

35

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

Contour drawing exploration of the biomorphic form as field/ground

Comments: Generally, seven of these eight drawings are distinctly elliptical biomorphic forms â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the curves are compound elliptical curves.

36

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

Transformation of representational form from photo into contour drawing

37

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

Transformation of people & animal images from photo into contour drawings

38

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

The vertical value between the space of two contour lines equals one (+1/-1), transfer 2-D contour drawing into a 3-D sculptural relief

The geometry of the four foundational forms

2-D surface contour drawing

3-D surface sculptural relief Comments: Students are required to develop abstract convex, concave, & planar reliefs as 3-D works of art.

39

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

5 contoured sculptural reliefs from 5 contour drawings

3-D contour sculptural forms exploring convex, concave, & shallow reliefs 40

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

2-D drawing transforms to 3-D contour sculptural forms exploring convex, concave, & shallow reliefs

41

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

5 varied contoured sculptural reliefs from 1 contour drawing

From the same contour drawing, various convex, concave, & shallow 3-D reliefs with different high, low, & mid-points with shifting ridge & valley forms.

42

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

2-Dimentional plane drawings transform into 3-dimensional objects

2-D Surface

Cube 3-D Object

Sphere

Pyramid

43

Ellipsoid

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

Variations on rectangular solid

44

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

Variations on circular solid

45

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

Variations on geomorphic solid

46

Modes of Perception â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Flat 2-D, 3-D Object, Enclosing Shelter, Open Landscape Expanse

Variations on biomorphic solid

47

Garden places design program & environmental condition

The subject is human: Focus on people in community, design garden places — main points of design program framed by human activity, landscape media, form, & environmental context • Client/ User: People activities in a “walk for a walk’s sake” in a contemplative garden

• Landscape media/elements — landform, water, plants, & structure

• Geometry/form

• Environmental context — all sides unfriendly, all sides friendly, three sides friendly with one side unfriendly 48

Garden places design program & environmental condition

• Anatomy of landscape places/

Gateway

Area

Edge Edge

Overview of principle design issues: anatomy of space, choreographic sequence, & human activities of gathering

Single Space

Co rrid

Gathering Node

or

Multiple Spaces

spaces — edges, gateway, corridor, gathering node

• Choreographic sequence — Serial

arriving, moving, coming to rest, leaving

Variations on the edges

Axial Symmetry

Ascending/ Descending Seriality

Asymmetry

• Spatial organizations

• Clusters of people gathering to communicate with each other • Nodes are created to serve human activities of gathering

49

Garden places design program & environmental condition

Samples of student’s landscape design of garden places — context, form, media, & organization EN VI

FO

R

R

C

L TA EN M T N X O TE N O

M

Rectangle

Circle

Geomorph

Biomorph

all sides unfriendly

Junbo Zhang

Wenjie Liu

Jing Pan

all sides friendly

Henry Wilson

John Milos

Garrett Stone

Justin Cooper

3 sides unfriendly & 1 side friendly

Laura Eisner

Matthew Gallagher

Tricia O’Grady

Adam Fearing

50

Meilan Chen

Garden places design program & environmental condition

Assignments for Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s five garden places e lac nP n rde sig Ga De ram g Pro

1. Garden of Landform

2. Garden of Structure

3. Hillside Garden with

5. Hillside garden with

Landform, Retaining wall,

Landform, Structure,

& Rainwater

Form

Environmental Context

51

4. Garden of Plants

Plants, & Rainwater

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 1 — Garden of Landforms

Examples of students’ Garden of Landform addressing the client’s program of a contemplative landscape place & the varied environmental context

Meilan Chen Adam Fearing

52

Wenjie Liu Roger Washburn

Roger Washburn Jing Pan

Shanshan Yuâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s landscape design proc Landscape Model 1 Design landform garden Biomorphic form Flat site 3 sides unfriendly & 1 side friendly context

Landscape Model 2 Design garden structure Rectangular form Flat site all sides friendly context

Landscape Model 3 Design hillside garden with 112

landform,

112

structure, & rainwater Circular form Hillside site all sides unfriendly context

53

Five garden places design overview

cesses & sequence for creating each of five garden places response to the assignment & requirements

54

Shanshan Yuâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s landscape design proc Landscape Model 4 Design garden of plants Geomorphic form Flat site all sides unfriendly context

Landscape Model 5 All four landscape media, landform, structure, plants, & rain water garden design Geomorphic form Hillside site all sides friendly context

55

Five garden places design overview

cesses & sequence for creating each of five garden places response to the assignment & requirements

56

Garden places design program & environmental condition

Shanshan Yuâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s overview design of 5 garden places as the concluding response to the design process

1. Garden of Landform

2. Garden of Structure

4. Garden of Plants

3. Hillside Garden with Landform, Retaining wall, & Rainwater

5. Hillside Garden with Landform, Structure, Plants, & Rainwater 57

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Garden of Landforms

1.1 Mass & void diagram addressing human activities of arriving, moving, rest, & gathering in a contemplative garden

Node

Corr id

or

Node

Site boundary Mass/earth form Void/spaces as gateway, corridor, & gathering node Comments: Shanshan needs to address the full program of requirements including unfriendly context on the north, south, west sides & the friendly connection beyond the east boundary. The unfriendly context on three sides requires a defensible edge made with landforms since it is the only landscape media in this landscape design problem. In diagramming the anatomy of space Shanshan needs to engage the linking of the gateway, connecting corridor, & gathering nodes.

58

Gateway

Node

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 1 — Garden of Landforms

1.2 1st preliminary landform model addressing program of human activities with context on three sides unfriendly & one side friendly

Comments: Shanshan’s landscape design needs to establish a defensible edge with landforms on the three unfriendly sides of the context and support friendly connection on the east side. To meet the client’s demands for a garden walk, the gateway, corridors, & gathering nodes need to be linked to establish the continuity of the anatomy of the garden spaces.

59

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Garden of Landforms

1.3 Return to the conceptual diagram to establish the continuity of the gateway, corridors, & gathering areas of the garden; choosing to simplify the biomorphic form of the nodes Corridor

r rrido o C

Node Node

rri Co

d

or Node

Gateway

Site boundary Mass/earth form Void/spaces

Comments: Shanshan articulates the arrival into the garden, the circuitry of the walking function, and the coming to rest in the gathering places; she chooses to simplify the biomorphic form as an ellipse for the gathering areas, rejecting the equally valid more complex biomorphic form of the node. Shanshan needs to understand the nature of landform design and give a broad base of the landform that shapes the three defensible ridges on the north, east, & west sides of the garden.

60

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 1 — Garden of Landforms

1.4 3-D diagrammatic design explores the contour elevation 100 at the boundary of the site, three terrace levels of the gathering nodes, & the circuitry of the connecting corridor ramps 104

3 10

10

10

4

4

100 100

2

3

10

5 10

100 100

10

6

10

103

104

106

10

5

103

104

104

102

106

10

4

103

2 0 1 10

1

103

102

100 100

100

100

100

Comments: Shanshan’s 3-D diagram manipulates the landform only through “filling” but the design program requires cutting into the flat site to gain fill of earthen materials and greater variety in gradient levels of the three terraces of the gathering nodes. This requires one or more terrace to be below the 100 foot elevation.

61

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Garden of Landforms

1.5 3-D conceptual diagram of ridge/valley & cut/fill that define the nodes, corridors, & gateway of the Garden of the Landforms Defensible edge to unfriendly context 100

100

Rid

Cuttin gc

100

orr id or

rridor

95 terrace level

tin g

Filling co

103 terrace level ut c y

Valley

r Valle o d i Filling corr

e 100

ga

rea s

co

100 terrace level

rrid or

g

Cu g Rid

tti ng

s

ar ea s

ar ea

fil lin

n tti cu

g

fil lin

Defensible edge to unfriendly context

Defensible edge to unfriendly context 100

ge fi g areas lli n

areas

100

100

Open edge to friendly context 62

dg i R

e

100

100

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 1 — Garden of Landforms

1.6 2nd preliminary model advancing landform design by defining the edges of gathering nodes, corridors, gateway, & unfriendly context

t

x te

n

y dl

e fri

c

on

on se e c e an ins ide Problem area

Unfriendly context

one can see outside

one ca see o nnot utsid e

n

U

one cannot see inside

dly c

one can xt on south see inside ern c onte xt

onte

one can see outside

ext

dly cont

Unfrien

Frien

Comments: Analysis of the preliminary design to the program of activities, the environmental context, and the expression of the landform media.

One can see both in and out from the western node to the unfriendly context, which destroys the intimacy of the contemplative garden.

One cannot see in and out of the eastern gathering space which preserves the contemplative peacefulness of the garden.

One can see in and out to the friendly context from the southern gathering node, which meets the requirements of the clients.

The universal gradient of the corridor ramps need to be consistently 1’/20’.

The landform design needs to take advantage of the whole site, including the four corner areas strengthened with earthen berms.

The side slopes of the landforms could be expressed with more varied gradients exploring convex, concave, & planar side slopes.

63

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Garden of Landforms

1.7 Reviewing & making explicit the design with climate in temperate New England Exploring the suntrap advantage for the garden clients to extend the comfort zone with solar radiation & defense against cold winds

Afternoon Light

Morning Light Noon Light

L o w ang le

s of the winter sun

The suntrap captures solar radiation over the course of the day, the earth mass which defines the space absorbs the radiant energy and reradiates it as heat waves. The scoop space directs the heat within the gathering node.

Northwest cold wind Blocked by defensible edge

Prevailing wind

64

Easterly wind

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 1 — Garden of Landforms

1.8 Improved design changes of the landform with a higher ridge line Meet the client’s needs for privacy, particularly in the western node & address universal access of corridor ramps

Comments: Continue to vary the high & low points of the ridge lines in the landform design — the underlying problem is the landform needs a wide foundation. Create a stronger earth form definition to the gateway of the garden.

65

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 1 — Garden of Landforms

1.91 Study of the degree of side slopes, height of the berms, & extent of the landform base

Vari e

100

Ang le of

repo

se

d gr

Outside site

adie

nts

of th

e si

de s

lope

Alternative proposed gradients of the slopes on the site are dependent upon the various widths of the landform base — the more shallow the gradient the longer base of the landform.

100

Inside site

Comments: Making the base of the mound (2X or greater) wider than the height (X) can give more variety to the side slope gradients & additional possible height to the ridge lines. Shanshan would need to add about two inches to each side of the base model.

Shanshan explores the asymmetrical paradigm of hierarchy spatial order — dominant vs subordinate relationships of the forms, which would follow with greater contrast of distinct sizes & proportions of the floor and walls of the gathering nodes & corridors.

66

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 1 — Garden of Landforms

1.92 Final contemplative design model of Garden of Landforms

Comments: The final design meets the requirements of the activities of the garden place — “a walk for a walk’s sake” with gathering spatial proportions in the nodal areas. The floor & wall of garden design expresses the nature of the earthen landform media to enclose or open towards the unfriendly vs friendly environmental context beyond the limits of the contemplative garden.

67

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 2 — Garden of Structure

Examples of students’ Garden of Structure addressing the client’s program of a contemplative landscape & respond to the environmental context

Zhuoya Deng Roger Washburn Tricia O’Grady Phil Cassidy 68

Zhangkan Zhou

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Garden of Structure

2.1 1st diagrammatic study with 1st preliminary explorative model addressing human activities of arriving, moving, & gathering in a contemplative garden Gateway

Gateway

Corridor

Gateway

Gathering node

Corridor

Corridor

Corridor Gateway Comments: The diagram of the concept for the garden structure needs to make clear the solid mass of the defining structural material as black mass and depicting the human social space as open white.

Shanshan needs to understand the structural principles of the post & beam and organize the system throughout the concept. The ceiling of the open garden structure or space frame needs to be simplified & integrated with the beam and supported with adequate number of posts.

Shanshan should consider the human scale of garden structure and simplify the design of the gateway & fence.

69

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Garden of Structure

2.2 2nd diagrammatic study with 2nd preliminary explorative structural system addressing program of human activities in an open friendly context Serialized gateways

Prominent entrance

corridor

Serialized gateways

Gathering node

corridor

Circuit corridor

corridor

Serialized gateways Comments: The 2-D diagram followed by the 3-D study model makes clear that the right angle alignment of the upright supports would make a logical post & beam structural system. The four corners of the interior structure with solid walls that support benches create a comfort zone within the dynamic movement of the open friendly context. Within the space frame of the garden, a unified structural system would link the rich program of activities with a tectonic experience of the structure.

70

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Garden of Structure

2.3 Diagram of post & beam structure & 2nd preliminary model

Post

re Tri in an fo g rc ul em ar en t

Beam

71

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Garden of Structure

2.4 Model of Garden Structure exploring opening to the sky, connection to the friendly context & materiality of the floorscape

Comments: The effort to integrate the floor of the space frame with the openings to the sky is a positive development but the design concept of the structural system needs further refinement. The system, including the east gateway of posts & beams, needs structural triangulation to support rigidity of the space frame. The solid fence at the four corners of the structure would merit further study of materiality addressing articulate expressions of transparency, opacity, veil, & screen.

72

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Garden of Structure

2.5 Variations of the structure system, improving post & beams, adding diagonal supports, & seating at corner walls with light-emitting screens

Comments: The light-emitting screens or grills of the walls on the four corners add a rich variation of light, shade & shadow.

Expanding the incomplete east entrance would integrate the construction with the overall structural systems.

The materiality of floor needs to return to the spirit of the unified floor pattern reflecting the spatial design open to the sky.

73

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Garden of Structure

2.6 Extending the prominent east gateway, further development of structural system & tectonic expression of post & beam

Comments: Integrate the cross-beams in the extended east entrance & strengthened post & beam structural systems at the four cantilever corners of the garden space frame. Recognize the limits of the horizontal dimensions of the beams & create discernible patterns of length & width that reflect the rhythm of the serialized gateways.

74

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 2 — Garden of Structure

2.7 Final garden space frame supporting the contemplative garden, a “walk for a walk’s sake” in response to the friendly context

Comments: Very successful conclusion of the preliminary design of the garden of structures. Further refinement of the post & beam structural system would occur in the design development stage of the design process & would follows this conceptual design.

75

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 4 — Garden of Plants

76

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 3 — Hillside Garden with Landform, Retaining wall, & Rainwater

Examples of students’ of Hillside Garden with landform, retaining wall, & rainwater addressing the client’s program of a contemplative landscape & response to the varied environmental context

Matt Crosby Meilan Chen

Elyse Couture

John Milos

Henry Wilson

77

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 3 — Hillside Garden with Landform, Retaining wall, & Rainwater

3.1 Understanding existing site conditions of the hillside with universal access requirements for a switchback path system connecting top and bottom of the slope Top entrance landing area

Model of basic hillside site existing conditions

Top entrance landing area 118 117 116 115 114

8 11

ng

gra

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152

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sid

Entrance Landing area

e1

’/8’

Ma

isti

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19’ Height

152

Ex

idth

8 11

pe o l ’s p 2 1 1’/ t ram um aigh m i x tr Ma r a s fo

ngt

100

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100

ary d n ou line b e ty Sit oper Pr

p

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113 112 111 110 109 108 107 106 105 104 103 102 101 100

Bottom entrance Bottom entrance landing area landing area Study of alternative switchback ramps meets universal access requirements & to traverse the hillside site.

Existing gradient of hillside 1’ high / 8’ run is too steep to satisfy universal ramps, which is not steeper than 1’/12’ to 1’/20’.

78

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 3 — Hillside Garden with Landform, Retaining wall, & Rainwater

5

11 6

2

10

3

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100

108

110

109

107

4

10

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101

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102

113

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108

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109

111

110

114

112

nt of Gradie s 1’/12’ h ht pat straig

117

5 11

111

10

Gradient

Gathering node

7 11

6 11

112

115 114

8 11

3.2 Study with collage on the 3-D of basic hillside site to explore the location of the gathering nodes connected with a circuit of universal ramps, to traverse the garden from top to bottom, & to understand the fullness of the circle including the radiating straight lines & curvature of the arcs

10

6

100

Exploring the gradients along the circuitry of the path system

Study of the spot elevations of the path system & gathering terrace

Comments: Diagram of the arcs & radiating ramps are too complicated & too close to each other, so that there is not enough room to express the nature of landforms that would define the path system. The continuity of the ridge line needs to create a defensible landform for the gateway and all four sides of the hillside garden to meet the unfriendly context beyond the limits of the site.

79

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 3 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Hillside Garden with Landform, Retaining wall, & Rainwater

3.3 2-D scaled conceptual diagrams with spot elevations on the gathering node & along the accessible circuit of the ramps Exploration of cut & fill of the hillside, including the terrace gathering node, the path system, baffled entrance, & defensible landform ridges at the edges of the site De

fe

ns

ib

Ridge fill

le

ed

ge

Cu

t

112

Co

rrid

r

o rrid

or

Co

Fill al ley c

Fill

ut

Cut

Fill Gateway

Gateway

Comments: Increase the size of the hillside base on all four sides to meet the requirements of the defensible ridge lines.

See similar problem in the garden of landform proposal, model #1 stage 4 final illustration, with the explanatory diagram.

80

Defensible edge

Gathering node

Cut

V

Defensible edge

112

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 3 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Hillside Garden with Landform, Retaining wall, & Rainwater

3.4 Advancing the landform design process from spot elevations to proposed contour drawing Enlarging the hillside site on all four sides to meet the requirements of the defensible ridge lines Moving beyond the preliminary technical stage by refining the contour lines to give shape to the landform design A preliminary technical step in the landform design process Preliminary distance on north & south sides

simply connects existing contour lines at the property lines with the proposed spot elevations along the ramps & gathering node.

Final lengths of base on north & south sides

n g in

w a ll

81

Final lengths on east & west sides

Reta i

Preliminary distance on east & west sides

Preliminary distance on north & south sides

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 3 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Hillside Garden with Landform, Retaining wall, & Rainwater

3.5 Landform design of the gathering node with retaining walls, the path system with defensible ridge line, & valley forms for rain gardens

Problem landing areas

Comments: Gateway is open to the unfriendly context, & students usually do not recognize this problem until they build the 3-D landform model.

The radial straight paths need flat landing areas ( ) at the top & bottom of the ramps when there is a change in direction. The retaining walls with the earthen terrace have significant merit but the height of the retaining wall is a little high, somewhat out of scale, & the earthen footings on the downhill side of the wall appear thin, therefore requiring further study.

82

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 3 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Hillside Garden with Landform, Retaining wall, & Rainwater

3.6 Continuity of the hillside garden design process, 3-D preliminary landscape model advancing the landform design of the gathering node with retaining walls, the circuitry of the path system with defensible ridge line, & valley forms as retention basins for rain gardens

83

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 3 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Hillside Garden with Landform, Retaining wall, & Rainwater

3.7 Study of variations on the top and the end of the retaining wall Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s retaining wall design

Variation on the top of retaining wall

Variation on the end of retaining wall

Alternative1 Flat horizontal straight line at the top of retaining wall

Alternative1 Vertical ending of retaining wall

Alternative 2

Rise & fall in a angular straight line at the top of retaining wall

Alternative2 Inclined angular ending of retaining wall

Alternative 3 Steps up & down top of retaining wall

Alternative3 Stepped ending of retaining wall

Alternative 4

Alternative4 Curved ending of retaining wall

Curved top of retaining wall

Comments: Outstanding study of the variations on the top & end of the retaining wall. Consider alternatives to the top of the retaining wall perimeter as it supports the cut, transition, & fill sides of the terrace. Consider the continuity of the top & end of the retaining wall as it holds in place the retained earth on the cut, transition, & fill sides of the hillside terrace.

84

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 3 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Hillside Garden with Landform, Retaining wall, & Rainwater

3.81 Final hillside garden with landform, retaining wall, & rain gardens response to a friendly context on south side

So

uth

sid

e

85

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 3 — Hillside Garden with Landform, Retaining wall, & Rainwater

3.82 Final hillside garden addresses the client’s program of a contemplative landscape & meets the activity demand for the “a walk for a walk’s sake”

Comments: The merits of Shanshan’s circular proposal for the hillside garden, model #3, is the richness of the switchback ramps that gain access for walkers to the whole site. Truly, it meets the client’s demand for “a walk for a walk’s sake” on the small hillside site.

The challenge is to simplify the arcs & radials of the switchback ramps & to set the round gathering node more firmly into the mounded landform.

86

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 4 — Garden of Plants

Student’s examples of Garden of Plants addressing the client’s program of a contemplative landscape & response to the varied environmental context

Jing Pan Zhuoya Deng

87

John Milos Junbo Zhang

Garrett Stone Matthew Gallagher

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 4 — Garden of Plants

4.1 Plants floor, plants wall, & plants ceiling in the design of a garden place Study models exploring vegetation to define the spatial volume, & articulated edges of the place Tree height

Canopy height

ee trunks

Shrub defining edge Ground cover floor

Open pattern of tr

en to Scoop space op

view

Tree mass frames the open sky

Comments: Study could be somewhat refined & enriched.

Opaque shrub mass Tree trunks emerging from ground hidden in shrubs 88

Revealing tree trunk’s emergence from the ground

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 4 — Garden of Plants

4.2 2-D collage of (mass/void) concept of garden place defined with plants on a flat site Exploration of 5 serial ascending/descending geomorphic gathering nodes Study of subtle variations of the form & size of the irregular pentagon social areas

Node

Corri

dor

Corridor

Corridor

Node

r

do Corri

Node

Node

Node

Corridor Node

Node Vegetation mass

Gateway

Gateway 89

Vegetation mass

Node

Node Comments: The development of 2-D concept has advanced the design thinking with greater ease and speed compared to the previous three garden places.

The 3-D concept — befitting the living habit of vegetation — needs to be developed in the 3-dimentional landscape model.

Vegetation mass

Corridor

Vegetation mass

Vegetation mass

Node

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 4 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Garden of Plants

4.3 3-D preliminary garden design with plants explores in detail the size, structure, & habit of particular trees, shrubs, & ground covers to create unique associations of plants defining the path system & gathering nodes Defensible edge

G gathatewa erin y to g no de

Defensible edge to unfriendly context

Defensible edge to unfriendly context

Gateway to the garden Comments: With considerable ease, compared to the previous three garden designs, Shanshan advances the design of a single landscape media, a vegetated garden place, model #4. The advanced spatial concept can be further enhanced by making vivid the linear aerial space above the hedges that is open to the sky on the full north/south length of the garden. The gateway to the garden needs to be truly baffled to meet the requirements to the unfriendly context.

90

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 4 — Garden of Plants

4.41 Final Garden of Plants Revealing the sitting areas & the varied experiences of the “walk for a walk’s sake”

Comments: The zigzag path system reveals a rich vegetated association of trees, shrubs, & ground covers as a connection to the five ascending/descending serial gathering nodes along the beautiful sequences of the garden. Benches in the gathering areas support a coming-to-rest in sun or shady connections to the earth & sky.

91

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 4 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Garden of Plants

4.42 Five ground nodes & aerial canopy open space are articulated by the great masses of east & west trees

Comments: Shanshan has advanced the rich spatial design with plants by making clear the linear aerial space above the hedges that is open to the sky on the full north/south length of the garden. Both the aerial space & five ground nodes are articulated by the great east & west masses of the trees.

92

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 4 — Garden of Plants

4.43 The zigzag walk comes to rest in five serial garden places

Comments: The zigzag walk, an active line on a walk, moving freely, without a goal, “A walk for a walk’s sake”. “The mobility agent is a point”, a person “shifting its position forward”, coming to rest in a garden place. Thanks to Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook.

93

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape Model 4 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Garden of Plants

4.44 The problem, beyond the boundary of the site, of an unfriendly environmental context is solved with a defensible edge of trees & shrubs

94

Shanshan’s Landscape Model 4 — Garden of Plants

95

Shanshan’s landscape Model 5 — Hillside Garden with all four media — Landform, Structure, Plants, & Water

Student’s examples of the 2nd Hillside Garden with all four landscape media — landform, rainwater, plants, & retaining wall addressing the client’s program, varied form, & environmental context

Weijie Liu

Matt Crosby Julia Sim

96

Student, fundamental studio Student, fundamental studio

Shanshan’s landscape Model 5 — Hillside Garden with all four media — Landform, Structure, Plants, & Water

5.1 Design process of the 2nd Hillside Garden with collage diagram of layout for a friendly context, proposed spot elevations on existing site, & final shaping of the landform 128

Gateway

Ridg

Earth mass & Vegetation

e

125

Node 126

or

id orr

C

121

Gateway

122 120

Node

ining a t e R wall

119 122 117

117 118

Node

115

or

114

rid Cor

117 113

Node

109

111

or

id orr

C

Gateway

108

100

Node

113

108

104

Gateway

Node

116

113

104

Rain garden 100

Comments: Excellent sequence illustrating landscape design process of the hillside garden with all four media—landform, water, structure, & plants.

97

Shanshan’s landscape Model 5 — Hillside Garden with all four media — Landform, Structure, Plants, & Water

5.2 3-D preliminary Hillside Garden with open friendly context Advancing the landform design of gathering nodes, ridges, valleys, & accessible switchback ramps Exploratory design of terraces, their gateways, retaining walls, & patterns of serial rain gardens

Friendly context

Friendly context

Friendly context

Friendly context

Comments: Continued excellent sequence of landscape design process. Make the four entrances stronger with defined gateway footprints.

98

Shanshan’s landscape Model 5 — Hillside Garden with all four media — Landform, Structure, Plants, & Water

5.3 Continuity of the design process, exploration of the vegetative patterns of trees, shrubs, & ground covers that engage the landform, gathering nodes, path system, & rain gardens

Comments: The design process needs to analyze & strengthen the views from the gathering nodes to the friendly context beyond the garden limits. Along the central axis of the shifting serial landforms explore possible wider canopy spread of the great trees.

Continue the excellent study of the tree & shrub community on the east & west landforms of the hillside garden.

Make clear the articulation of wetland plants in the rain.

99

Shanshan’s landscape Model 5 — Hillside Garden with all four media — Landform, Structure, Plants, & Water

5.41 Final garden design with variations of the tree canopy & shrubs to express the open hillside spatial organization, & refinement of the terrace benches

100

Shanshanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s landscape Model 5 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Hillside Garden with all four media â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Landform, Structure, Plants, & Water

5.42 The particulars of the gathering nodal terraces of the hillside garden with the supporting landforms, retaining walls, benches, segments of the path system, & the community of living plant materials

Comments: Strong unifying landscape design meeting the challenges of the hillside garden with universal access. One of the satisfying expressions is the human scale of the garden places with the varied articulation & interplay of the landscape media.

101

Shanshan’s landscape Model 5 — Hillside Garden with all four media — Landform, Structure, Plants, & Water

5.43 Aspects of shaping landform design & articulation of terraces on the hillside terrain

Comments: Within the larger framework of developing the hillside for universal access, the switchback path system is handsomely expressed with a series of earthforms that articulate & define the pathway as “a walk for a walk’s sake”.

102

Shanshan’s landscape Model 5 — Hillside Garden with all four media — Landform, Structure, Plants, & Water

5.44 Concluding design process & exploration of the landscape characteristics of the final garden Interplay of friendly context with landform, water, plants, & structures that define & articulate gathering nodes, corridors, & gateways of a garden place

103

Excerpts

Appendix

GIVEN BY THE EARTH SHAPED BY HUMAN HANDS Spatial Experience

Design Knowledge

JOSEPH S.R. VOLPE Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

Making Garden Places

The LANDSCAPE

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A105

Introduction

Given by the earth, shaped by human hands • spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The subject is people •Their activity a walk •A walk through being, nurturing, teaching, learning, work, play, and contemplation Moving towards a pause, to rest

The object is a space The particulars signify a place, a place people inhabit The program calls forth activities reflecting needs, wants, and desires The function is mundane The purpose is spiritual knowing, oneself, I and thou, knowing the land, the creator

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

poem

Modes of spatial perception & sensation: surface, object, shelter, and expanse The modes of spatial experience, a body thing, more than mere visual, the human sensation of space •Flat surface, two-dimensional, comprehended from without by the roving, scanning eye •Three-dimensional object, things, may be

sculpture — convex, concave, and planar — comprehended from without by one moving around the object to understand it •Enclosure, the shelter of floor, wall, and ceiling —

sensate envelopment from within refuge against the battering of the cosmos •The expanse, the open continuous landscape loaded with sky, powered by the sun —

an earth-bound freedom of openness, horizon bound, under, vulnerable to, and

celebrating the celestial sphere

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A2

Introduction

Elements/media of the landscape: Landform, water, plants, and structure Elements because they can’t be reduced to anything more primary and still be considered landscape Media because they’re found, studied, manipulated, and arranged to create our earth space — garden and landscape: •Landform molded and shaped — it’s plastic •Water flows, falls, sprays, mists, pools, channels, and seeps — it’s fluid, its wet •Plants, living, vegetative communities,

associations, arranged and nurtured, a life cycle

an abundance powered by the sun — they grow •Structures assembled material and constructed tectonics — they’re static Mass and void, the yin and yang of landscape beyond figure and ground The mass, solid, edge, the media/elements that defines the void , transformed into space for people Articulated by form, pattern, texture, tone, and color

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

The principle of relative distance: form, pattern, texture, tone, and color both relative & absolute values based on

the distance of the participant observer Visual elements: •Form generated by the dot and the line, outline, shape, and mass gives rise to structure

and systems •Pattern replicates form, is repetition and rhythm

of outline and shape •Texture is the tactile-visual expression of coarse

through fine •Tone varies the degrees of light to dark •Color is a burst of light: The spectrum of light— RGB Pigment for the eye ­— hue, value, chroma Environmental assault on variations immersed in reference, relative values

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A3

Introduction

The environmental model is ecological: the interdependent processes of the physical earth, biotic community, and cultural milieu wrapped in time, motion, and change •Physical base of the earth and cosmic energy­— geologic foundations, topographic patterns, and climatic forces engaging landform and water altered by season, sun, moon, wind, wet, and dry •Biotic community of the living world — communities and association of microorganisms plants and animals, the earth as a cell •Cultural milieu of the human economy — gender, sexual, family, local, national, and global

The politics, spiritual will, history, characteristics, and activities of the individual, the tribes, and state

Understanding the Site: reading the landscape The physical-biotic factors and the processes Personal, family, communal habitation of the site Territoriality, ownership, and claims on landscape Political power partitions the private domain and the public common •Individual ownership of private property •Public ownership of common property

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

•The claim on territory that engages a dynamic range of proxemic and distemic occupancy •The claim of gang, tribe, and neighborhood is proxemic — territory distinct by claim of group identity, •The claim universal and catholic is distemic — place for everyone — diverse and contrary individuals and groups accepting common behavior •Beyond the site, beyond the program of activities, beyond the contract limit line.

Context as degrees of supportive or hostile surroundings engages prospect and secures refuge An environment that determines a prospect response claims the openness to the expanse An environment that determines a refuge reply protects with enclosure The archetype response of hide and seek shapes physical design and planning decisions on the land

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A4

Introduction

•Discrete event — it is what it is and that is good,

self-evident, singular, not dependent on or explanation Sequence of experience over the landscape progresses •Functional — the purpose for which the design is thru a spatial construct. Beyond the visual, beyond objects especially fitted or used and things, beyond architecture, the ordering of landscape •Narrative — tells a story or episode moves towards spatial structure of the expanse: •The landscape as poetic force — named and •Symmetry orders along an axis like the mirror assigned relationships through analogies, images of animal forms metaphors, and symbols •Asymmetry plays dominance and subordinate Analogy: the space or media is inferred games of hierarchy to be similar to something other •Serial replication generates egalitarian patterning Metaphor: two ideas are joined regular, cell-like repeated spatial beats together to make a new idea

•Graduated Serial ascending/descending Symbol: when one thing represents progression of incremental changes of space/form another thing, often immaterial Meaning, simple or profound, is revealed in landscape space through a discreet event, functional imperative, narrative episode, or poetic force:

The search seeks the form of sustainability and the sustainability of form The pursuit seeks to understand and expand design knowledge The process may be rational The experience is sensuous The landscape space is a personal place

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A5

Design Theory

Ecology model

THE ECOLOGY MODEL — A BASIC DIAGRAM

I

N

BIOLOGICAL COMMUNITY

M

O

T

O

T I M E

CULTURAL MILIEU

POINT OF VIEW OR AREA OF CONCERN

PHYSICAL BASE

C H A N G E

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A6

Design Theory

Integration of the sustainability & the ecology models

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A7

Design Theory, Principles, Fundamentals, & Expression

Ecology, sustainability, & landscape architecture principles

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A8

Design Theory

Four modes of perception and sensation summary table

PICTORIAL

PLASTIC

ENCLOSURE

EXPANSE

2-dimensional (flat)

3-dimensional (convex)

3-dimensional (concave)

4-dimensional (time changing)

Static

Stereoscopic

Kinetic

Cosmic

Apprehended consciously from without

Apprehended consciously from without

Apprehended subconsciously from within

Conscious to subconscious continuous expanse loaded with sky

Surface

Object

Shelter

Open

Extension of Erno Golfinger’s “Sensation of space” includes the open continuous landscape expanse Joseph Volpe

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A9

Design Theory

Modes of spatial perception and sensation

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A10

Design Theory

Modes of spatial perception and geometry of form — Rectangle, Circle, Geomorph, & Biomorph

TWO DIMENSIONAL SURFACE

THREE DIMENSIONAL OBJECT

ARCHITECTURAL ENCLOSURE

OPEN LANDSCAPE EXPANSE UNDER THE COSMOS

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A11

Design Theory

Understanding & accommodating human activities in the landscape

Universal human activities •Loving, caring, and nurturing •Working and creating

•Learning and teaching •Resting, playing, and recreating

•Contemplating — what is it all about?

Ordinary everyday activities

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A12

Design Expression

THE LANDSCAPE EXPENSE

Design of the landscape expanse, open & defined

RECTILINEAR SPATIAL VOLUME EXPERIENCED IN THE LANDSCAPE

SPHERICAL SPATIAL VOLUME EXPERIENCED IN THE LANDSCAPE Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A13

Design Expression

THE LANDSCAPE EXPENSE

Design of the landscape expanse, open & defined

BIOMORPHIC SPATIAL VOLUME EXPERIENCED IN THE LANDSCAPE

GEOMORPHIC SPATIAL VOLUME EXPERIENCED IN THE LANDSCAPE Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A14

Design Theory

Every space requires a defining agent and sets in a large environmental context

ENVIRO

NM EN

TA L

Elements of landscape — land, water, plants, structure are defining agents of landscape places Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A15

Design Principles

Yin-Yang represents an extension of the concepts of figure/ground, mass/void & positive/negative

YANG Mass/Media

YIN Void/Space Figure/ Ground Positive/ Negative

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A16

Design Theory

Landscape mode of perception & degrees of enclosure and openness

Open, Engaging and Subject to the Forces of the Sky: Sun, Wind, Rain and Climate

Under Dome of Sky Vulnerable to Cosmic Forces MAXIMUM OPENNESS Induces a sense of agoraphobia

Landscape Architecture Planning and Design Functions between Boundaries of Agoraphobia and Claustrophobia

Plaster

Closet

Cave

MAXIMUM ENCLOSURE Induces a sense of claustrophobia

Grounded in the Earth

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A17

Design Fundamentals

Design with climate

A SUN-TRAP IS BASICALLY A SCOOP SPACE WITH 3 SIDES (2700) ENCLOSED, 1 SIDE (900) OPEN. ORIENTED TOWARD THE EQUATOR, AND PROVIDING A BARRIER AGAINST THE PREVAILING WINDS.

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A18

Design Fundamentals

Phil Thiel advances the design language on the degree of enclosure

VIRTUAL

APPARENT

GENUINE/VERITABLE

ENCLOSED

Phil Thiel advances the design language on the degree of enclosure

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A19

Design Principles

Explicitness of establishing the agent or edge of the space

PLAN

PLAN

SPATIAL VOLUME

VAGUE

PLAN

PLAN

ARTICULATE SPACE—EDGES AS VEIL, SCREEN, BARS, CURTAIN

SCOOP SPACE

Joseph Volpe extends Phil Thiel’s concept addressing how explicit is the space established

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A20

Design Theory

Degrees of enclosure & openness to the sky

INSCRIBED UPON THE GROUND (MINIMUM ENCLOSURE)

WAIST-LEVEL (SENSE OF BOUNDARY)

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

CURB-HIGH

KNEE-HIGH

EYE-LEVEL (DIVIDES SPACE INTO INTERIOR/EXTERIOR)

ABOVE HEAD (TOTAL ENCLOSURE)

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A21

Design Fundamentals

Landscape space engages a defining agent

WAIST-HIGH

SHOULDER-HIGH

ABOVE HEAD Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A22

Design Theory

Plan view

Extent and degree of enclosure and openness to the cosmic sky

MASS VOID

The enclosing agent is a mass — landform, water, plants, structures or any combinations of the landscape media Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A23

Design Theory

Plan view

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

Altering the mass — landform, water, plants, & structures of surrounding agent creating varied patterns of landscape expanse

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A24

Design Theory

Surrounding degrees of enclosure and openness

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A25

Design Fundamentals

VERTICAL WALL PLANE

Degrees of enclosure and openness expressed with vertical wall plane

PLAN

SINGLE WALL

PLAN

‘L’ SHAPED WALLS

PLAN

PLAN

‘U’ SHAPED WALLS

PARALLEL WALLS

PLAN PLAN

FOUR ENCLOSED WALLS

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

CORNER WALLS

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A26

Design Fundamentals

Degrees of enclosure with the four media of the landscape VIRTUAL

APPARENT

GENUINE/VERITABLE

ENCLOSED

EARTHFORM

WATER

VEGETATION

STRUCTURE

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A27

Design Principles

Explicitness of establishing the space with the edge as the media of the landscape after Philip Thiel VAGUE

SPACE—ARTICULATED EDGES

SCOOP SPACE

SPATIAL VOLUME

LANDFORM

WATER

VEGETATION

STRUCTURE

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A28

Design Theory

Articulation of material edges

r

ing l i e •c

• veil

• sc

ree n

• pe rfo r

ed at

oo l f •

a ll w •

• solid

over side

elemental position side

under

tu c ru

re

e aqu • op

•

tra ns luc ent

• tr ans pare nt

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

face r u s •

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

ct e j • ob

•s

t

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A29

Design Theory

Articulation of landscape edges ing l i e •c

• veil

• sc

ree n

• pe rfo r

ed at

r oo l f •

a ll w •

• solid

over

elemental position side

side

e aqu • op

under

•

tra ns luc ent

• tr ans pare nt

ce a f r u •s

ct e j b •o

re u t uc r t •s

How explicit are the edges of the space—floor, wall, ceiling—established?

How explicit are the edges—earth, water, plants, structure—established?

How explicit does the landscape media—earth, water, plants, structure—establish the space?

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A30

Design Theory

Articulation of edges with plants • veil

• sc

ree n

• pe rfo r

ed at

r oo l f •

a ll w •

ing l i e •c

• solid

re

e aqu • op

tu c u tr

•

tra ns luc ent

• tr ans pare nt

ce a f r u •s

ect j b •o

•s

Complex plant community of trees, shrubs, & ground covers defining the landscape floor, wall, & (canopy) ceiling Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A31

Design Theory

Volumetric size & proportional scale of space

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A32

Design Theory

Diagram of spatial choreographic organizations A S C E N D I N G

SINGLE SPACE

SIMPLE EDGE

SYMMETRY

ASYMMETRY

SERIAL

MULTIPLE SPACES

SYMMETRY

ASYMMETRY

D E S C E N D I N G

SERIAL

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A33

Design Theory

Anatomy of space expressed by four media of the landscape NODES

GATEWAYS

CORRIDORS

EDGES

LANDMARKS

LANDFORM

WATER

VEGETATION

STRUCTURE

Volpe adds ‘‘GATEWAYS” to Kevin Lynch’s spatial structure to complete the concept as the anatomy of space.

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A34

Design Principles

Variations on the height of the landscape media that articulates the anatomy of the expanse NODES

GATEWAYS

CORRIDORS

EDGES

LANDMARKS

LANDFORM

WATER

VEGETATION

STRUCTURE

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A35

Design Principles

Elements of the landscape are the media of landscape architecture

LANDFORM

VEGETATION

STRUCTURE

WATER

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A36

Design Fundamentals

Joseph Volpe

Landform expression

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A37

Design Principles

Landform

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A38

Design Theory

Contour expression of landform

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A39

Design Expression

Joseph Volpe

Mount Cook National Park, Aorangi, New Zealand, Aoraki

Mount Cook Village Designed by Joseph Volpe

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A40

Design Expression

Joseph Volpe

Historic terrace design by Morai on a volcanic landscape at One Tree Hill Park in Auckland Pathways at Mount Cook National Park, Aorangi, New Zealand, Aoraki

One Tree Hill Park, Auckland

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

Aorangi National Park, Aoraki Designed by Joseph Volpe

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A41

Design Principles

Joseph Volpe

Native & design expression of water

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A42

Design Principles

Water is everywhere before it is somewhere

WATER as liquid WATER as solid WATER as gas Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A43

Design Expression

Joseph Volpe

Hampton Court, Richmond, England Water wall at Villa d’ Este, Tivoli, Italy

Villa d’ Este

Hampton Court

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A44

Design Expression

Joseph Volpe

Claude Monet’s water garden at Giverny, France Rain garden at Anisfield residence by James Rose, New Jersey

Giverny Water Garden

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

Anisfield Garden

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A45

Design Expression

Joseph Volpe

Tree

Vegetation — trees, shrubs, & ground covers

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A46

Design Expression

Joseph Volpe

Shrub

Clipped hedges defining corridors & gateway spaces

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A47

Design Expression

Various vegetative covers

Joseph Volpe

Ground Cover & Grasses

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A48

Design Expression

Joseph Volpe

Herbaceous materials

Rich variations of low herbaceous & woody materials

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A49

Design Expression

Plants association

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A50

Design Expression

Plants association detail

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A51

Design Expression

Joseph Volpe

Herbs plant community defining a corridor at Laven’s Court, England Katsura, historic garden place, Kyoto, Japan

Laven’s Court

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

Katsura

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A52

Design Expression

Joseph Volpe

Double corridor at Baldwin Hills Village, Los Angeles, CA

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A53

Design Expression

Joseph Volpe

Landscape structure defining nodes, corridors, & gateways

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A54

Design Expression

Joseph Volpe

Open teahouse at Katsura Rikyu, Katsura Imperial Villa, Kyoto, Japan Newgrange, Ireland Burial mound dual gateways for the Winter solstice sun & restricted human entrance

Katsura Imperial Villa

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

Newgrange

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A55

Design Expression

Joseph Volpe

Larry Halprin’s urban design of Bunker Hill Steps, Los Angeles, CA Harvey Fite’s biomorphic landscape structure, Opus 40, Saugerties, New York

Bunker Hill Steps

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

Opus 40

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A56

Design Theory

Rectangle ­— axis & ordinate

ordinate

Ordinate & abscissa — parallelogram with four right angles and four straight lines

90° abscissa

4

y

3 2 1 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 -1

x 1

2

3

4

-2 -3 -4

CO-ORDINATE SYSTEM

SQUARE

GOLDEN RECTANGLE RATIO SIDES 1:1.618

Rectangle—Cartesian co-ordinates are powered by the right angle of the axes of the abscissa and the ordinate, to form the quadrilateral, the horizontal x and vertical y axes. Descartes’ profound co-ordinate system established the foundation of modern analytic science, technology, and art. The square with four equal dimension sides is the elemental shape of the rectangle with all interior angles 90 degrees. The golden mean rectangle with the proportion or ratio of sides 1:1.618 has captured the imagination of

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

RECTANGLE RATIO SIDES 1:2

mathematicians and artist since the ancient Greeks and established the foundation of classical aesthetics. In our technological world look around you at the products of our modern culture to see the ubiquitous four-sided right angle shapes that are prodigiously represented. The power of the rectangle holds steady in contemporary design. Variations abound from the many-sided right angle polygons and the network of the varied-dimensional 90 degrees serial grids.

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A57

Design Theory

Variations on the rectangular form Additive or/and subtractive variations of the rectangle

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A58

Design Theory

Circle ­— power of the center Center point, radius, diameter, circumference, chord, secant, tangent, arc, sector, and segment

Per im

Circumference

Center

Se

d

Ra

ca

Diam

nt

eter

r

Sector

ent

Radius

m Seg

ius

Tang

rd o h C

ent

ete

Arc

Power of the center ­— circle and component parts Circle—power of the center—a center point with the fixed length of its rotating radius describes the form of the circumference, and the distance around the outside or perimeter. Diameter is formed by the straight-line extension of the radius connecting two sides of the circumference. The nature of the circle also gives rise to other straight-line components including the cord, secant, and tangent. A chord is a line whose two endpoints lie on the curve of the perimeter. The diameter is the longest chord in a circle. A secant, an extended chord, is a straight line cutting the circumference at two points.

Tangent to a circle is a straight line that touches at a single

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

point on the perimeter and is 90 degrees to the diameter.

The arc of a circle is any portion of a continuous curve of the circumference. A sector, a pie shape, is a region bounded by two radii and an arc lying between the radii.

A segment is a region bounded by a chord and an arc lying between the chord’s endpoints. Designers in history have understood that a circle is more than the curve of the circumference, and that in design, employing the radius, diameter, secant, and tangent as a part of the geometry liberates the designer to more fully explore the curve of the arc.

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A59

Design Theory

Sample variations on circle form Segments off set

Meeting of two tangents

Variation of sector, radius, & arc

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A60

Design Theory

Geomorph — dynamic angularity of the power of crystalline earth forms Triangle — the base angular form of the polygon <90° >90°

<90°

<90°

EQUILATERAL

ISOSCELES

Three equal sides Two equal sides Three equal angles, always 60° Two equal angles

SCALENE

90°

ACUTE TRIANGLE OBTUSE TRIANGLE

RIGHT TRIANGLE

No equal sides No equal angles

Geomorphic form based upon polygons with acute and obtuse angles Geomorph—figures of the earth are geologic forms analogous to angular rock and crystalline earth formations. Configured from the elemental form of the triangle, the geomorphic polygons are conceived as shapes with acute and obtuse angles. Putting aside temporarily the right angle triangle, consider the three-sided polygons—equilateral, isosceles, scalene, acute, and obtuse triangles—with the emphasis on the geometrics of the acute and obtuse angles. Compare these triangles with the normative right angle triangle, where one angle is 90 degrees and plays a unique role in the history of geometry and technology. Regular polygons are both

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

equiangular and equilateral. Irregular polygons vary the degrees of the angles and the length of the sides. Explore the variations of the quadrilaterals, or four-sided polygons of the rhombus, trapezoid, kite, and parallelogram. (Note, unlike the triangular forms, four- or more-sided polygons have an area more conducive to room or nodal gathering proportions.)

The many-sides of the polygons can increase as infinitum.

Consider the series of regular five- to twelve-sided polygons— pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, nonagon, decagon, undecagon, and dodecagon. Explore irregular variations of these multi-sided geomorphic forms.

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A61

Design Theory

Geomorphic forms — acute & obtuse interior angles

Da

rt

Kite

Conc ave q u

adril

atera l

Triangle Rhombus

Rhomboid Parallelogram Nesting basic geomorphic polygons

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

Trapezoid Convex quadrilateral Simple quadrilateral

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A62

Design Theory

Sample variations on geomorphic form 5 sided polygons

5 , 6 and 7 sided polygons

8 and 9 sided polygons

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A63

Design Theory

Biomorph — complex curvature of life forms

Arc

Major axis

Focus

-3 -2 -1

0 1

2

3

Seca

nt

Tan g

Focus

ent

rd o h C

Minor axis

Per

r

te e m i

Generated by the elemental form of the ellipse and spiral Biomorph—life forms are shapes similar to or resemble living organisms. Composed of complex curves the organic forms are generated by the elemental form of the ellipse or the dynamic line of the spiral or helix. A dynamic “radius” moving between two foci generates the closed complex curve of the elliptical form. The ellipse is symmetric about its horizontal and vertical axes. A creative and varied method for drawing an ellipse is to use two pushpins, a string, and a pencil. Place the pushpins on the major axis, which will establish the two foci points of the ellipse. Cut a piece of string several inches longer than the total length of the ellipse, and form a big loop using a slipknot.

Tension the loop of string with the pencil, as you draw the arc of the ellipse, all the way around the two pushpins. Change the distance of the foci or/and the length of string and you change

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

the ratio of the major and minor axes, which allows you to investigate the varied proportions of ellipse. A spiral or helix is an open curve on a plane that winds around a fixed center point at a continuously increasing or decreasing length from its center.

Consider the geometry of life, the biologic form of plants, animals, and humans that are shaped by this dynamic life force.

The simple power of the ellipse can morph into very complex biotic configurations that are associated with the idea of free forms.

The oval and ellipse are two similar closed curved forms that the designer deserves to understand and engage the difference: the oval is two arcs of two circles connected by two tangent points; the ellipse is formed by a spiral curve.

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A64

Design Theory

Sample variations on biomorphic form Biomorphic form

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A65

Design Theory

The principle of relative distance RELATIVE DISTANCE - SURFACE PHENOMENA

FORM

PATTERN

TEXTURE

TONE

RELATIVE DISTANCE - PLANT LEAF, BRANCH, & TREE

Form, pattern, texture, tone, & color

are “at one and the same time both absolute and relative values dependent upon the several planes of distance from the observer”.

— John Bracken

FORM

PATTERN

TONE

RELATIVE DISTANCE - TREE, TREES, & FOREST

FORM

PATTERN

You can’t see the tree for the woods.

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

TEXTURE

TEXTURE

TONE

You can’t see the woods for the tree.

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A66

Design Expression

Joseph Volpe

Student’s explorations in making garden places in Volpe’s fundamental studio

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A67

Design Theory, Principles, Fundamentals, & Expression

Assignments — model study proposal — design of landscape space FUNDAMENTALS OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE PLANNING AND DESIGN

THE SUBJECT IS PEOPLE You the individual Your intimate family, neighborhood, community, town, city, region, nation, your global family PURPOSE: To design a garden place — the landscape a space for human experience connects with significant knowing yourself the person connects with the earth and the sky To explore the site and environmental context of the site/area/region that determines significant aspects of the design proposal To engage the elements of the landscape as the media of landscape architecture that defines landscape space To create a space that has legibility, shape and form created by the media of the landscape:

Landform

Water

Plants

Structures

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A68

Design Theory, Principles, Fundamentals, & Expression LANDSCAPE SPACE MODELS EMPLOYING THE LANDSCAPE MEDIA 1. Landform 2. Plants 3. Structures 4. Landform and Plants 5. Landform and Structure 6. Plants and Structure 7. Landform and Water 8. Landform, Structure, and Water 9. Landform, Water, Plants, and Structures To create a spatial structure as a concept exploring the anatomy of landscape space:

Arriving/ Leaving Gateway(s)

Connecting Corridor(s)

Gathering Node(s)

Defining Edges(s)

Landform

Water

Client: Members of a collective or a corporation who produce a product or a service who will use the garden.

Purpose and Human Activity: People centered to rest, to meet others, to meditate in a contemplative garden, to walk, “a walk for a walk’s sake”. Each model is a garden— complete landscape experience in itself.

Human Scale: Begin with a cutout figure of a person to establish the scale of the model. Change the size of the figure to get the desired scale. Populate your model with your client users of the garden.

Plants

Structure

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

Joseph Volpe

Landscape Expression: Explore the synthesis of the landscape media and geometry of form. Consider the unique character and native expression of the media of the landscape—landform, water, plants, structures, and also engage form itself—to support a deeper understanding of each form, a single geomorphic form is employed for each model.

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A69

Design Theory, Principles, Fundamentals, & Expression

Geometry of Form Rectilinear—axis and abscissa (ordinate) – 90 degree angle Circular—the power of the center and its integral parts, radius, diameter, secant, and tangent Geomorphic based on the triangle—non-right angle polygons, obtuse and acute angles, Biomorphic based on the ellipse—complex and compound curves, the shape of living things Communal Connections and Privacy—Consider the landscape response to the demands for both community and privacy for each of the garden proposals.

Prospect and Refuge Response to Context: Consider how the site and its context contribute to the shape and configuration of the garden proposal. The region is New England and your client has many varied sites and the surroundings of each can be characterized in one of the following archetypes: 1. 360 Degrees Supportive. An environment friendly to the users contemplative activities in every way. Open, beckoning and therefore desiring connections to the prospect.

2. 360 Degrees Unfriendly. A surrounding that is totally incompatible, unfriendly to the clients’ contemplative activities and therefore requiring a garden refuge.

3. Three Sides (270 degrees) with One Side (90 degrees) Supportive: A community that is supportive and beckoning on one side of the site but unfriendly towards a contemplative proposal on three sides and therefore needing protective enclosure on three sides and a open friendly connecting space of the fourth side.

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A70

Design Theory, Principles, Fundamentals, & Expression

Climate: Establish a North Arrow on each model to indicate the effects of climate during the four seasons of the year, and during the day the position of the sun determining light and shade. See A.I.A. Supp. “Regional Climate Analysis and Design Data X. Boston Area”.

Organizational Alternatives: Explore both single volumes of space and multiple spaces. In the course of your design sequence this semester, explore a different archetype of spatial arrangement for three of your five models: 1.

2.

3.

4.

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

Axial symmetrical space.

Asymmetrical or dominant and subordinate spaces.

Egalitarian repetition and patterning of spaces.

Ascending/descending serial incremental changes.

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A71

REFERENCE

Appleton, Jay The Experience of Landscape, “Behavior and Environment”, Chapter 3, Wiley, 1979, pp. 5-80.

Bracken, John , Planting Design, 1957, , self-published, digital vision by University of Michigan: <http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015035213670;view=1up;seq=5> Condon, Patrick “A Designed Landscape Space Typology, A Theory Based Designed Tool”, University of Minnesota, pp. 33-46.

Crowe, Sylvia “Landform”, Space ‘60, edited by Joseph S.R. Volpe, self-published student journal, Department of Landscape Architecture, University of California, Berkeley, 1960.

The Landscape of Power The Architectural Press, 1958.

Goldfinger, Erno “The Sensation of Space”, The Architectural Review, Nov. 1941, pp. 129-131.

Klee, Paul Pedagogical sketchbook, Praeger, 1977.

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A72

REFERENCE

Lynch, Kevin The Image of the City “The Image of the Environment”, MIT Press, 1960, Chapter 1, pp. 1-13.

“The City Image and Its Elements”, MIT Press, 1960, Chapter 3, pp. 46-90.

Meyer, Elizabeth K. “Sustaining Beauty. The Performance of Appearance A Manifesto in Three Parts”, Journal of landscape Architecture, Spring 2008, pp. 6-22 Oliver Sacks “Stereo Sue”, The Mind’s Eye, Alfred A Knopf, New York, Toronto, 2010.

Rose, James “Freedom In The Garden — A Contemporary Approach to Landscape Design” Pencil Points, Oct. 1938.

“Plant Forms and Space — Materials Create Volume by Definition of Space” Pencil Points, Nov. 1938.

“Integration — Design Expresses the Continuity of Living” Pencil Points, Dec. 1938.

“Articulate Form in Landscape Design” Pencil Points, Feb. 1939.

“Landscape Models” Pencil Points, Jul. 1939.

“Why Not Try Science — Some Tec[h]nics for Landscape Prodv[u]ction” Pencil Points, Dec. 1939.

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A73

REFERENCE

Creative Gardens, New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation; 1958.

Gardens Make Me Laugh, Norwalk, CT: Silvermine Publishers; 1965.

The Heavenly Environment, Hong Kong: New City Cultural Service, LTD; 1985.

Sekler, Eduard “Structure, construction, tectonics” Structure in Art and Science, Gyorgy Kepes, ed., New York: George Brazilier, Inc., 1965, pp 89-95.

Thiel, Philip “Processional Architecture”, of Architects Journal, Feb. 1964, pp. 23-28.

“A Sequence-Experience Notation”, Town Planning Review, April 1961, pp. 33-52.

Volpe, Joseph S.R. “The Carriage House Garden”, Pocket Garden: big ideas for small space, William Morrow and Company, INC, New York, 2000.

“Private Spaces in Public Places, The Path System and Gardens of Mount Cook Village”, Landscape Architecture — Private Places In The Landscape, edited by R. Austin, Van Nostrand Rienhold, 1984.

Given By The Earth Shaped By Human Hands

• spatial experience • design knowledge • making garden places

The Landscape

Joseph S. R. Volpe

A74