ARC252 - Post-Modernism

Reading: New American Landscape

Landscape arch catching up to arch movements

- modernism and landscape arch didn't comfortably fit

- Picturesque and ecological movement blended too much with nature

Walker and Schwartz: be trained visually, influence of art, make landscape visible, functional and sculptural

Hargreaves: connect to large env of time and space, landscape and people, make new ideas

Valkenburgh: landscape as civic element, strong geometry to highlight abstract space

Reading: Kathryn Gustafuson, Sculpting the Land

-landscape arch and env artist, primarily in France

- combines herioc impulse of the land mover and freeway builder with the graceful elegance of curvaceous sculpting

- synthesize the intellectual and the physical with the psychologically provocative

- balance b/n historic movements, artistic disciplines, and different countries and cultures

- providing creative solutions to earth excavated from major eng projects

- designs with enormous quantities of displaced earth

- materials: water, stone, steel, manipulated earth and veg

Reading: Martha Schwartz - Landscape and Common Culture

- Modernism movement has been disastrous visually and ecologically

- landscape doesn't need to be romanticised

- embrace tech

- embrace cheap materials, we don't always need "fine" ones

- simple geometries like circles or squares are best used in landscape because they make mental maps

- geometry allows us to recognize and place ourselves in space and is more formally sympathetic to arch

Reading: Hargreaves - Landscape Works

- Inspired by Robert Smithson's earth sculptures

- didn't like that landscape arch was based on preconcieved design principles and placed into categories

- change and impermanence, decay and disorder

- raw materials and natural processes

- landscape as idea

- restoration of abused landscapes

Reading: Hirsch - From Open Space to Public Space

Halprin: civic engagement in landscape arch, integration of APS to become creative

Friedberg: reclaiming leftover spaces of the city to connect the city through play

Linn: incorporating marginalized citizens into both design and construction of their own collective spaces, self-evaluated his own failures

- All: how to bring back diversity, continuity, and connection to open spaces of the city

Reading: Duisburg-Nord - Landscape Park

Combining landscape arch with industrial/abandoned industrial sites

- "to compile a regional policy programme for sustainable ecological and aesthetic renewal for an industrial region that had been exploited to the full."

Post-Modernsim

- env conscious

- human connection to landscape arch

- some return to picturesque

- inspired by earth artists

- How can landscape arch help bring cultural narrative that makes people aware of env issues - nature that has been sculpted by a designer, can see the work of the landscape arch (not just natural)

- participation and community

- process and how the landscape changes overtime - layering ideas - narrative

J Austin Floyd

- transitioned from modern to post-modern

Sheraton Centre Hotel:

- terrace waterfall garden

- uses recycled water from hotel

- looks more like a natural ecosystem

Peter Walker

- how to make a connection to earth/landscape in a formal way

- analyzed site: history, human use, typology, etc

- natural landscape determines plan

- incorporates history (ex french garden)

- forms and materials of the place

- cultural patterns

- sculptural elements for narrative

- blurring automobile and pedestrian circulation

- Tanner Fountain, IBM Headquarters, South Coast Plaza Town Centre

Necco Garden

Schwartz and Walker

- temporary garden installation

- inspired by French garden

- local and mundane materials to create pattern

- blurs art making and garden making

- grids talk about history of the city

- Playfulness aspect - local candy

- Recognizable materials that make people question their landscape

Splice Garden

Marth Schwartz

- applies to site = dangers of gene splicing

- convey a sense of planted garden with enough signals so site reads as garden (low budget and no water access)

- like an art type installation

- inspired by Japanese garden

King Country Jailhouse Plaza

- plaza gardens of concrete

- objects reference forms of hedges

- idea of a foyer, a place to meet

- colour and human scale of objects brings sense of comfort

- no maintanence availble to create garden = create a sense of a garden

George Hargreaves

Harlequin Plaza: crazy patterning, making connections to building through its mirrored surface, plaza skews and disconnects you from landscape = critique on office building landscaping

- signature is geometrical mounds

- connection to the city grid

- cultural connection from now but also grabbing ideas from history

- Using veg that makes sense with the area but also strong patterning

- Building, landscape, and artworks all given equal prominence

Michael Van Valkenburgh

- horiticulture background = strength in plants

- theoretical take on things

- landscape archs need to know the history of plants

- how landscape would change and grow

- mimics ecological processes (ex. burning meadow to create new growth)

- helped parks that flooded to be able to sustain it

- made ice walls - "look this is the env you are in, notice it"

Tiaga Garden

Cornelia Hahn Oberlander

- nature imitating art imitating nature

- uses slabs of rock that had been unsettled during the excavation of building, how they inteacted with space

- using trees that have been bent and distorted

Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly Building

- Sensitivity to the delicated tundra landscape

- how to minimize distrubance

- local species to revive biodiversity

- invisible mending = replacing landscape so you never knew it had been

- blending into natural landscape

- narrative

Gerrard and Mackars

- influenced by natural history of site

- inspired by lines of city grid

- commentary on upper and lower class

- researched ecological and historical data

- sculptures represent urban tranformation

- many layers of history

PMA landscape archs

- as environmental as possible

- make parking into smaller pods and bring as much green in and around it as possible

James Floyd

Son of J Austin Floyd

- what impact would mine be visually for a landscape

Michael Hough

- Book called Regeneration to restore Don = restore water quality, bring back river to nautral state and make it accessible to the public

Earth Sciences Courtyard

- different plant communities to represent different plants of ontario

- microecologies that would grow and change overtime = a changing landscape

Bruce Corban

St George St

- Planting = people would use it as public open space

- slow down traffic so safe for students

- bicycle and vehicle circulation

Cornell Open Space

- new urbanism

- streets play a multi-functional roel

- Environmentally sensitive features and heritage areas

George Dark

UofT

- major green spaces, spaces to grow, plazas, and connecting spaces

- framing important heritage buildings

- reviving pond because of the historical creek

UofT landscaping

- decrease congestion

- common green

- historic buildings complimented with veg

- landscape as connective tissue

- reconnecting to surrounding neighbourhoods

- paving compliments natural sotne of historic building

Reading: Gordon and Tamminga - The Markham Experience

- env restoration is best approached on a regional basis , with plans and financial incentives in place before land is subject tp development pressure

Reading: Lawrence Halprin - RSVP Cycles

Scores: Symbolization of processes which extend over time

- process oriented

- allows many people to enter into the act of creation together, allowing for participation, feedback, and communications throughout the entire process

-Resources, Scores, Valuaction, Performance

Reading: C A Mills - Life on the upslope

The significance of the changing meaning of the inner city to the process of gentrification

1. lack of theoretical understanding of cultural meaning in relation to urban landscapes and how this relates to gentrification and redevelopment evidenced by literature on advertising

2. need to explore the relationship between social and cultural categories, with a focus on the production and self-production of these categories

3.meaningful connections between the features of a postmodern landscape and the characteristics of the social groups associated with it. The literature on postmodernism has often connected new cultural practices with the economy but has overlooked their connection to social relations

Reading: Albert Pope - Last Horizon

Urban Horizon: where the world comes into being and is thereafter systematically redefined, site at which the natural and the urban egage and through this engagement are revealed

- urban and natrual are interrelated and cannot exist without one another

- transition from grid iron city to discontinuous cul de sac city

- consequence of grid iron was residual spaces (neither urban nor natural)

- unprecedented shift from universal space to residual space and the subsequent need to comprehend this new relation and need for cultural change to overcome the exploitative practices of the past and address the environmental crises we face today.

Reading: North and Waldheim - Landscape Urbanism

Rational Planning: ecological function of projecti is the main method used to make design decisions, Ian McHarg

Complex Relationships: conceptual principles of ecology are used to understand complex relationships in a design problem

Landscape as Medium: ecological strategies with social/civic amenities with clear form to show conceptual design intent creating functional and meaningful spaces

Reading: Alissa North - Processing Downsview Park

- park was supposed to be based on a conceptual plan, formed by process

- however it was not clear enough to understand,visualize, and implement

- new plan was traditional and clear but created a static landscape and is not unique

Reading: Shelley Long - Working in the Wild

- National parks must address the fundamental issue of preserving ecological states for people to experience, while paradoxically contending with the inevitability that increased human access accelerates their degredation

- we still need to restore nature in cities

- more research is needed to further the relationship between urban nature and national parks as interconnected systems of managed landscapes

Reading: Robert Sullivan - Wall-E Park

Turning a landfill into a park

- not any type of style

- instead of designing, they are growing the park

- landfills are also part of our ecologu

Bradely Johnson

Humber Bay Park

- creating new conditions at mouths of rivers

- modernist design paired iwth ecological ideas

- allow ecologies to thrive and keep people programmatically in certain areas

Gas Work Park - Richard Haag

- first demonstration of biomediation

- adaptive reuse of gas works structures

- importance of preserving history of site

- narrative

Lawrence Halprin

- landscape as process

- civic involvment and participation

- modern in style but post modern in connecting city infrastructure

- abstracted topography and geography of site

- Humanist perspective and participation = NOT MODERNIST

- idea of the SCORE

- collaborative building

Richard Strong

Devonian Square

- monumentality

- ideas of bigger canadian geology narrative

- layering of programming

- about the bigger story of the place rather than design style

Steven Moore Head - Trinity Square

- trinity of squares connected by a plaza

- thinking about the church and its materials

- grid structure came from lines of church that form 3 spaces

- remnant gates and waterfall speak to historical components = layers of history

Don Vaughan

- modern components with post mod thinking

- waterfalls and stepping down to separate from city

- reference historic natural geology and power of nature

Patrick Li - Scarden Park Redevelopment

large burden on storm water systems in Scarbrough = create storm water pond that functions as a landscape and park

- telling the story of storm water and not hiding it

Richard Haag - Bloedel Reserve

- celebrate cycles of growth, decay, and regeneration

- formerly logged site, pool relfects the forest and displays the regrowth = beauty of process

George Hargreaves - Byxbee park and candlestick point park

commentary on env conditions through narrative

- "scrappy" site allows processes to happen overtime

- not a pristine, manicured landscape

- display power and force of nature

Mario Schjetnan

- in Mexico

- Recognize archaeology and include cultural and historical references in site

- ecological and poetic

- establish nature place, collaboration, sustainability

Patrick Bollenberghe

Bay Adelaide Park

- Work with artists to create sculptures to honour trades that build the city

- interdisciplinary approach to park design

- how to create different spaces in a flat mundane site

Martha Schwartz - Yorkville park

- Many layers of stories

- pulled from Victorian grid of city

- East to west coast veg

- different types of bricks to represent Ontario

Janet Rosenberg

- revitilized historic green spaces

- sculpture, water elements and types of plants used to reference history

High Park

- Burned so that the oak tree ecosystem is not taken over

Andre Plante

Avenue Honore-Mercier

- transform highway to boulevard

- make it more inviting

- slow down traffic through design interventions

- connect to oringinal lot lines

- reference history of Quebec (cannons)

Kathryn Gustafson

- telling a narrative and sculpting of landform

- fashion background = how she designs and plans

- finding physical form in history

Chris Reed

- Scrappier and random ecologies

- departure from formal planting scheme

- how can a small scale park function ecologically

- contemporary and sustainable design

- replace underutilized spaces

- consider where materials come from

A.E.Bye

-influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright's native prairie landscape

- how to emphasize topography in subtle way

- recognize the work of landscape arch - not just natural looking

- designed by intuition over intellect

- amplification that makes you see the landscape even more

Cornelia Hahn Oberlander

- minimize site disruption

- planting is native, but can still be sculptural

- balance between touching and not touching site

- sympathetic to landscape

- preserve nature

Martha Schwartz

- playful and sculptural

- trained as an artist

- layer references throughout the site (ex. historical)

- famous for bagel garden

Shim Sutcliffe

- pavilion with leaf shaped roof

- transition piece from mod to post mod

- how to recognize your env even more

PlANT

- enhance natural features

- installation based work

- interventions with materials found in site

- Specifically constructed moments to recognize the site beyond

- Network that gives you heightened association with forest, marsh, topography

Luis Barragan

- Bold colours and sculptural elements = new era

- Close association between horses and people

- Elemental powers of water and earth - characteristic of his work

Ian McHarg

- on the env side

- Scientific and analytic method of site

- Strong site observation and making argument before green infrastructure was even a term

- What you could solve environmentally would also be economical

Connectivity, Edmonton Airport

- walkable community

- how to work around height restriction from airport

- connecting to nature, family and neighbourhood, history of airstrip = layering of ideas

Walter Hood

- references to character of the history of the street

- layering of many things to tell the narrative of site

- deep community involvement to empower them