understanding landscapes midterm

Reading: Stilgoe - outside lies magic

Argues to really look outside and notice the nature around you. Exploration encourages creativity, serendipity, and invention. Go without purpose, go for the going.

Reading: Meinig - The Beholding Eye

How we see and interpretate the landscape based on our differences and lived experiences. Dynamic relationships with natural landforms and human cultural groups.

Ecology definition of landscape

A landscape is a kilometers wide area where a cluster of interacting stands or ecosystems is repeated in a similar form

Basic definitions of landscape

1. a picture of a view

2. an area of land

3. the features of a situation

Cultural landscapes

Landscapes that have been affected, influenced, or shaped by human involvement

Natural landscapes

Landscapes that haven’t been affected influenced or shaped by human involvement. VERY rare at this point.

Three categories of cultural landscapes defined by UNESSCO

1. clearly defined landscape designed and created intentionally by man

2. Organically evolved landscapes, reflect evolution (fossil landscape, material evidence still present) (continuing landscape, evolution still in progress)

3. Associative cultural landscape, elements that have important religious artistic or cultural associations

U.S national parks recognized categories of cultural landscapes:

1. historic defined landscapes: artistic creations

2. Historic vernacular landscapes: reflect patterns of settlement, use, and devlopoment

3. Historic sites: associated with important events or people

   1. Ethnographic landscapes: associated w/contemporary groups that use and value land in ways that continue cultural practices

Vernacular landscape

Landscapes that evolved through use by the people whose activities or occupancy shaped those landscapes

Historic sites

Cultural landscapes significant for their association with a historic event, activity, or person

Ethnographic landscape

Cultural landscape containing variety of natural and cultural resources that associated peoples define as heritage resources

Landscape as nature

Idea of the untouched wilderness. Romanticism, landscape paintings. Compared to human works it is primary, fundamental, dominant, enduring

Landscape as habitat

Blending of humans and nature in harmony. Humans are part of landscape, it is home. Domesticating the earth

Landscape as artifact

Humans as creators and conquerors of nature. Seen on technological and engineering solutions

Landscape as system

Dynamic equilibrium of interacting processes. Networks, flows, interactions, input-output matrix. Very science outlook.

Landscape as problem

Condition in need of correcting, seen in environmental activism and politics, and design professions. Every landscape may induce an itch to alter it to bring more pleasing harmony and efficiency.

Landscape as wealth

Viewed in relation to its value within a market economy. Seen in American capitalist ideology (properties for sale).

Landscape as ideology

As medium for cultural values, ideas, and philosophies. Seen in cultural landscape studies. A symbol of the values, the governing ideas, the underlying philosophies of a culture

Landscape as history

Complex cumulative record of the work of nature and humans. Seen in historic preservation. Past has significance.

Landscape as place

Distinct locality among a rich and varied world of other unique localities. Seen in travel writing, cultural geography and aspects of postmodern thought

Landscape as aesthetic

Identity and function are lesser considerations than artistic qualities. Seen in abstracted landscape painting and Japanese garden design. Belief that there is something close to the essence, to beauty and truth, in the landscape.

Landscape perception

how we make sense of the environment and what it offers

What affects someone’s perception of landscape?

Knowledge, identity, ideas, lived experiences

The high line - NYC USA

Linear park built on historic elevated railroad spur. Demonstrates how cities can transform existing infrastructure into public spaces. Supports sustainability and economic development

Central Park - NYC USA

Motivated by: urban health and welfare, forward looking urban planning in response to NY rapid growing population, real estate speculation, inspiration from Britain. A pastoral landscape, intended to allow people to experience a rural aesthetic

Pastoral

Idealized view of life in rural landscapes

Federick Law Olmsted

Father of landscape architecture in US. Believed his parks as democratic spaces for people of all backgrounds

Myths about central park

1. Construction of central park benefitted all new yorkers

   1. Previously home to communities who were then displaced, free black new yorkers

2. Central park is a fragment of nature preserved within the city

   1. It was all built by hand, still a picture but in three dimensions (a design in space, evoking the qualities of a picture)

Lewis’s axioms for reading the landscape

1. Landscape as clue to culture

   1. Culture of a society is reflected in its ordinary landscapes

2. Cultural unity and landscape equality

   1. Ordinary items in the landscape may say as much about culture as iconic ones

3. Common things

   1. It is hard to study ordinary things by traditional academic means

4. History

5. Geography

6. Environmental control

   1. Cultural landscapes respond to physical conditions

7. Landscape obscurity

   1. Cultural messages in the landscape are usually not obvious

Axiom

An established rule or principle or a self-evident truth

Effigy Mounds national monument, IA

Mound building was practiced by variety of indigenous american cultures across midwest and southeast. Purposes not fully understood, some formed platforms were for structures or used for burial

Conical mounds

Oldest - up to 2500 years old, 2-8 feet tall. Often used for burials.

Effigy mounds

Shaped as animals, primarily birds and bears, 2-4 feet high

Prairies

Located on valley floors, south facing slopes, and patches within forest. Less than 2% remains today

Upland forest

Mainly in northern valley and foothills

Savanna

Sparse trees with grassy understory and a few shrubs, no unaltered examples

Woodland

Located at edges of upland forest, include shrubs and understory vegetation, no unaltered examples remain

Riparian forest

Dense stands of deciduous trees along waterways, now narrowed in width and impacted by invasive species

Strategy habitats

Ecologically Significant habitats that are a focus for state conservation efforts

Culturally fire was used to:

Concentrate prey for hunting, stimulate berry nut and root production, gather insects, fertilize cultivated plots.

For landscapes it: functioned as regular ecological disturbance, maintained grassland habitats, supported species diversity, and prevented major wildfires

Kincentric Ecology

Nature is kin to humans, not removed from natural world but have a relationship and responsibility to it. Sustainability and ecological health depend on humans having healthy relationships with the natural world

Tholos, Temple of Athena - Delphi, Greece

Tholos = greek style of round building, was a greek landscape example as well as Amphitheaters

Roman villas

Country houses of the wealthy, had peristyle gardens (courtyards) within homes.

Walled gardens

In secular and religious contexts, metaphor for virgin mary, symbolic of love and pleasure

Islamic paradise gardens

Chahar-bagh - four part garden

Axial intersecting waterways

Focal point (usually a fountain at center)

Gardens of China and Japan

Raked stones, manicured gardens

Italian Renaissance Gardens

Renaissance humanism: revived interest in the classics, importance of intellectual pursuits and inquiry, villas provided this, blended with inspo from Islamic landscapes

Formal French gardens

Monumental scale

Axiality

Appearance of infinity

Cartesian geometry

Parterre

French for “on the ground”, enclosed beds made to be seen from above with low, often ornate plantings

Allée

French for “alley”, rows of identical trees flanking a walkway

Stourhead Gardens

Folly: a decorative non-essential landscape structure, often evoking classical themes

Gardenesque style

Large green house designs. Adds to charms of the picturesque, all trees and shrubs are arranged that may best display natural form and habit of each

Modernism

New materials

Rejection of ornamentation

Emphasis on form

Efficiency and practicality of use

Post-Modernism

Rejection of modernist principles

Return to ornamentation

Use of historic vernacular precedents

Birkenhead Park - England

The world’s first “public park”

1. Rational recreation: moral project based on belief that certain positive physical activities would mitigate undesirable behaviors in working class

2. Victorian values were translated into the park

   1. Seek improvement of mind and spirit and body

   2. Fascination with scientific knowledge of natural world

   3. Presented nature as organized and civilized

3. Pastoral landscape surrounded by the city

Parc de la Villette - Paris, France

Postmodernist, deconstructivism landscape

How is it postmodern:

1. Retains fragments of past

2. Responds to social context

3. Includes collaboration across disciplines

4. Allows for flexibility and diversity of uses

How is it deconstructivist

1. Questioning the geometries we use to design

2. Form and function are not related

3. Questions figure/ground dichotomy

Hood Design Studio

Landscape architecture and social art practice

1. Everyday: takes over mundane elements of landscape and rethinks our relationships with these spaces

2. Lifeways: studies the social patterns and practices of a place and introduces provocations to enhance civic life

3. Commemoration: seeks to remember, embrace, and celebrate

The three lenses allow studio to understand idiosyncrasies of each place and respond with an approach adaptive to the particulars of place and its people

Unity

A sense of completeness or harmony when all parts of design work together to support a whole. Not the same as monotony or symmetry

Diversity

Variety and difference within a design. Too much can lead to visual chaos, too little can lead to monotony

Genius Loci

The spirit of the place, or quality that makes a place unique or different from another

1. Emotional and subconscious

2. Challenging to articulate

   1. Often easier to conserve than to create

Fabric

Refers to integrated spatial structure of whole landscapes

Forms

refers to the components or parts that make up the fabric.

Landscape forms

Components that make up the landscape fabric: spaces, paths, edges, thresholds, foci

Spaces

Defined or enclosed areas of land

1. ground plane

2. walls

3. sky plane

Qualities of spaces: scale, proportion, enclosure, relationship between spaces

Paths

Linear landscape elements that form circulation networks

Edges

Linear interfaces between two spaces

Common edges: building to landscape, ecotones (ecological transition zones), the horizon

Edges may: create barriers, interlock between spaces, be a gradient

Thresholds

Transition zones that serve as inbetweens or links between two spaces.

Common thresholds: entries, gateways, building entrance zones, places of arrival and departure, windows or framed views

Foci

form or landmark that is visually distinctive and different from context

Function as: natural stopping points, places to gather, landmarks or orientation

911 Memorial

Use of landform and water creating two large voids

Vegetation includes survivor tree, tree rescued from ruins at ground zero

Structures: include six stone monoliths w/steel from World Trade Center buildings embedded in them

Outside Lies Magic by John Stilgoe

Main ideas;

1. visual acuity is a skill that can be developed

2. This skill was valued taught and learned historically

3. With the print media, looking at real world diminished in importance

4. Many people today need a teacher to be encouraged to develop these skills

Reading: Verdant Land - Kathya Landeros

Photos of landscapes tell story of migration, labor, and community that remains unseen in the predominant white construction of the nation.

Reading: The Lay of the Land - J. Drew Lanham

Beyond the beauty of blah blah blah, thousands of people can’t afford a square foot of the soil that their ancestors paid for with their lives

Cues to care

Design signals that change how people perceive the landscape from uncared for to serving and intentional ecological purpose

The Picturesque

The wildly dramatic, replete with ravines, dead trees, and artificial ruins

The beautiful

As seen in the rolling pastoral designs of Lancelot

What the American Society of Landscape Architects deals with

Climate and biodiversity action

Cultural landscapes

Diversity, equity, and inclusion

Health and well-being

Parks and rec

Residential design

Transporation

Water and stormwater

African Ancestors Memorial Garden - Charleston, SC

Importance of acknowledging out collective history, an act of reconciliation and significant testament to the african diaspora’s rich and profound history. Paths depict layout of slave ship.

Reading: Notes toward a history of black landscape architecture - Kofi Boone

How can landscape architecture better serve Black communities, but also how the profession might be radically reconceptualized, how can we remake our discipline so that black landscapes matter? The campus quadrangle enabled interactions between black people from across the nation and world.

Physical places catalyze political and economic transformation, there is power in the landscape

“For a long time now most of our theory, history, and projects have applied European precedents to American design challenges. Moreover many of these precedents are landscapes of privilege, environments often as not underwritten by colonialist exploitation; thus we marvel at the art and craft, but edit the meaning and context.”

Landscape elements: the basic palette of spatial design

Landforms, water, vegetation, structures

Crown Sky Garden - Chicago, IL - Mikyoung Kim

1. Allow children to engage in Chicago’s storied historical and natural environment

2. Create safe environment for kids with immune deficiencies

3. Create wide range of interactive opportunities that mitigates stress

4. Provide access to natural materials and light