History of Landscape Architecture Unit 1 Vocabulary Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering key sites, terms, concepts, and historical periods from Unit 1 of History of Landscape Architecture.

Sennufer's Garden

Walled estate of a high Egyptian official of Amenhotep III (c. 1400 BCE) featuring a structured, symmetrical grid layout organized on a central sight-line, with a central vineyard pergola, sunken water basins (ponds with lotus), and rows of sycamore figs, date palms, and doum palms.

Mortuary Temple Queen Hatshepsut

Terraced temple built c. 1400 BCE at Deir el-Bahri, Egypt, designed by Senenmut, featuring three monumental terraced platforms linked by central ramps set against steep limestone cliffs, with porticoes and columned terraces planted with frankincense and myrrh trees imported from Punt.

Teotihuacan

Planned pre-Columbian city in Mexico (c. 100 BCE - 750 CE) laid out along a grand north-south axis called the 'Street of the Dead,' featuring the Pyramid of the Sun and Temple of the Moon.

Cahokia

Large Mississippian culture earthwork site in Illinois (c. 800-1400 CE) featuring Monk's Mound and Woodhenge, a celestial circle of timber posts used as an astronomical calendar aligned with solstices and equinoxes.

Pueblo Bonito

The largest semicircular, D-shaped Ancestral Puebloan great house complex in Chaco Canyon (c. 800-1150 CE), featuring a large open plaza housing numerous circular, subterranean kivas containing sipapu emergence holes.

Delphi

Panhellenic sanctuary of Apollo in Greece (c. 600 BCE) located on the slopes of Mt. Parnassus, featuring the Sacred Way, Treasury of the Athenians, Temple of Apollo, Castalian spring, circular tholos, and omphalos stone.

Athens

Organic, unplanned city-state of ancient Greece (c. 500 BCE) centered around the Agora and the Acropolis, connected by the Panathenaic Way processional route.

Pergamon

Hellenistic acropolis city in Turkey (c. 280-133 BCE) built on a steep mountain ridge, featuring theatrical terraces sequentially framing vistas, a fan-shaped theatre carved into the hillside, temples, and palaces on the upper citadel.

Miletus

Ancient port city on the Aegean coast of Turkey planned on a strict rectangular grid system by urban planner Hippodamus of Miletus (c. 450 BCE), featuring a Greco-Roman theatre overlooking the Theater Harbor.

Florence

Medieval Italian city-state developed on a rectangular grid foundation of its Roman castrum origins, characterized by dense organic urban development, walled defense, and public piazzas.

Timgad, Algeria

Roman military colony (colonia) founded c. 100 CE following a castrum grid template, featuring a square outer wall, a cardo (N/S) and decumanus (E/W) street layout, and a public forum at their intersection.

Rome

Walled imperial Roman capital featuring the Roman Forum and Imperial Fora, utilizing axial symmetry, grand porticoes, temples, basilicas, and triumphal arches to express imperial power.

House of the Vettii

Roman domus in Pompeii preserved by Mt. Vesuvius (c. 79 CE), featuring an atrium with an impluvium pool and a peristyle surrounding a central garden (hortus) decorated with fountains, sculptures, and trompe-l'oeil murals.

Villa at Boscoreale

Roman country estate near Pompeii (late 1st c. BCE/CE) functioning as a villa rustica focused on active agriculture, featuring wine presses, olive crushers, a fermenting yard, stables, and a residential wing.

Villa of Poppaea

Luxurious Roman villa urbana at Oplontis near Pompeii (c. 79 CE) built for summer retreat (villeggiatura), organized around vast courtyards, a massive swimming pool, and peristyle gardens decorated with second-style trompe-l'oeil garden frescoes.

Tuscan Villa

Roman country house estate of Pliny the Younger set in a natural amphitheater formed by the Apennine mountains, featuring terrace gardens, topiary, and a hippodrome garden, embodying villeggiatura and otium.

Laurentinum

Pliny the Younger's seaside country house near Naples designed as a villa urbana with dining rooms, heated rooms, and covered porticoes capturing sea views and breezes.

Grotto of Tiberius

Imperial Roman grotto built c. 1st c. CE in a natural seaside cave at Sperlonga serving as a nymphaeum and dining pavilion, featuring a circular pool (Charybdis) and Polyphemus group sculptures.

Hadrian's Villa

Emperor Hadrian's vast retreat at Tivoli (c. 117-138 CE) featuring the Canopus canal reflecting the Egyptian canal of Alexandria, terminating in the Serapeum dining hall decorated with caryatid statues.

Castle garden (pleasance)

Walled pleasure garden of nobility in Medieval Europe featuring straight walks, trellises, fruit-bearing trees, flowers, turf seats, a flowery mead, and a mount to overlook walls, used for courtly love and relaxation.

Cloister garden

Enclosed monastic courtyard garden surrounded by a covered colonnade, designed for prayer and contemplation, often divided into four quadrants by water channels or paths with a central well or fountain.

St. Gall Monastery

Planned Benedictine monastery in Switzerland (816 CE) featuring a central cloister garden, a kitchen garden (hortus), an orchard/cemetery (viridarium), and a physic garden for medicinal herbs.

Medieval squares/piazzas

Public urban open spaces in medieval cities often located in front of cathedrals (parvis) or civic palaces, used for trade, political assemblies, and public life.

Piazza del Campo

Central shell-shaped sloping brick public square of Siena, Italy, divided into 9 radiating sectors, dominated by the Palazzo Pubblico and Torre del Mangia, and featuring the Fonte Gaia.

Chahar bagh

Four-square garden layout with Persian roots adapted by Islamic cultures to represent the Islamic heavenly paradise (Jannah), featuring a walled square/rectangle, central pool/fountain, and four water channels.

Court of the Oranges (Cordoba)

Courtyard garden of the Great Mosque of Cordoba in Moorish Spain featuring a grid of orange trees irrigated by ground-level stone water channels fed by large cisterns.

Alhambra (& Court of the Lions)

Walled Moorish palace complex in Granada, Spain (c. 13th-14th c.) containing the Court of the Myrtles and Court of the Lions, which features a chahar bagh with 12 stone lions supporting a central fountain.

Generalife

Moorish summer palace on the hillside above the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, featuring the Patio de la Acequia (Court of the Canal) and Patio de los Cipreses (Court of the Cypresses).

Wangcheng

Ideal Chinese capital city plan outlined in the Book of Documents (Zhou Dynasty) that is square-shaped, cardinally oriented, with nine squares, three gates per wall, and a nested layout placing the imperial palace compound at the center.

Chang'an

Planned capital city of Tang Dynasty China built as a rectangular grid with nested walled layers and oriented to cardinal directions, featuring the Daming Palace containing the Taiye (Grand Fluid) Pond and Penglai Island.

Shanglin Yuan

Imperial hunting park and pleasure reserve of the Han Dynasty incorporating artificial lakes, canals, and Daoist islands to replicate the mystical Realm of the Immortals.

Wangchuan Villa

Retirement estate of Tang Dynasty poet-painter Wang Wei memorialized in landscape paintings showing an eremitic scholar's retreat integrated with wild mountain scenery.

Heian-kyo

Classical Japanese capital (Kyoto, c. 794 CE) selected via geomancy with mountain defense to north, east, west, and water south, featuring a rectangular grid with Sakyo and Ukyo divisions, Suzaku Road, and the Daidairi palace complex.

Byodo-in (Phoenix Hall)

Pure Land Buddhist temple in Uji, Japan (c. 1052 CE) featuring the Phoenix Hall reflecting in a large pond shaped like a Sanskrit character to recreate Amida's Western Paradise.

Joruri-ji

Pure Land Buddhist temple garden in Kizugawa (1150 CE) featuring the Amida Hall on the west, a pagoda on the east, and a Jodo teien (reflecting pond) in the center.

Landscapes

The land, including natural elements and human modifications, shaped by both geological forces and human culture.

Cultural landscapes

A natural landscape fashioned by a cultural group, where culture is the agent and natural area is the medium (Sauer), reflecting cultural values (Melnick), combined works of nature and humankind (UNESCO), and regional identity (TCLF).

Designed landscapes

A landscape significant as a design or work of art, consciously laid out by a trained professional or amateur according to a recognized style or design principle.

Vernacular landscapes

A landscape whose use, layout, or construction reflects endemic traditions, customs, beliefs, and values of ordinary people over time.

Cosmological landscapes

Natural and constructed landscapes attributed with astrological alignments and spiritual significance (e.g., Stonehenge, Woodhenge, Devil's Tower).

Axis mundi

A cosmological model of the universe connecting heaven, earth, and the underworld, typically aligned to the four cardinal directions.

Earthworks (henge, geoglyph)

Earthen modifications of the terrain. A henge is a circular earthwork with a ditch and bank, while a geoglyph refers to large designs drawn on the ground.

Gardens (attitudes, themes)

Enclosed piece of ground appropriated for the use and pleasure of man, cultivated and enriched by art, indicating attitudes of control over nature, reverence, celebrating beauty, or symbolizing mystery.

"Classical" Greek & Roman civilizations

Historical period (c. 800 BCE to 500 CE) valuing simple form, harmonious proportion (golden mean $1.618$), ornament highlighting structure, architectural symmetry, humanism, and the ideal of the city (polis).

Genius loci

The 'spirit of place' - the unique, identifiable character of a site, adapted to describe design adapted to the distinctive character of a natural setting.

Stoa

Ancient Greek covered portico with columns serving commercial, civic, social, and religious functions, typically framing agoras.

Agora

The central urban open public space in Greek city-states used for commercial, civic, social, and religious activities.

Acropolis

'Highest city' or 'city on the edge' - the fortified hilltop sanctuary at the center of Greek cities containing temples and sacred shrines.

Greek city characteristics

Unplanned, organic, self-organized layout structured around public civic spaces with simple, non-monumental residential housing.

Hippodamus

5th-century BCE Greek urban planner from Miletus who developed the rectangular grid plan (Hippodamian plan) used for planning new colonies and ports.

Roman city characteristics

Highly organized city layout based on a grid system (castrum), featuring monumental civic infrastructure like public fora, basilicas, public baths, theaters, amphitheaters, and aqueducts.

Castrum (cardo & decumanus)

Roman military camp template used as a planned city layout, divided into quadrants by the cardo (N/S) and decumanus (E/W) streets intersecting at the forum.

Forum

The central public open space in Roman cities used for assemblies, legal courts, market trade, and civic administration.

Basilica (Roman)

Large, rectangular civic building in the Roman forum used for judicial courts, public administration, and business assemblies, serving as a model for early Christian churches.

Domus

Typical urban courtyard house of the wealthy upper class in Roman cities, focused inward around a central atrium and peristyle garden.

Peristyle court & hortus

A covered colonnade portico walkway (peristyle) surrounding a central courtyard garden (hortus) inside a Roman domus.

Trompe-l'oeil

'Trick of the eye' painting technique employing realism and perspective to create three-dimensional illusions of depth, popular for garden wall frescoes in Roman villas.

Roman villa (urbana & rustica)

Country estate and retreat; villa urbana focused on luxury and views, while villa rustica was an agricultural working farm.

Otium

Roman concept of industrious leisure; pursuing intellectual, artistic, and physical studies away from urban business and political distractions.

Pliny the Younger

Roman writer whose detailed written letters describing his country estates (Tuscan and Laurentinum villas) heavily influenced European villa and garden design.

Grotto & nymphaeum

A grotto is a natural or architectural cave with a rustic/aquatic theme containing sculptures, while a nymphaeum is a grotto shrine associated with water nymphs.

Influence of Garden of Eden

Medieval European garden concept representing earthly paradise, innocence, enclosed sacred space, and physical/spiritual abundance.

Hortus conclusus (Mary)

'Enclosed garden'; a medieval artistic representation of the Virgin Mary symbolizing her purity and the closed womb.

Romance of the Rose & Decameron

Medieval literary works highlighting the walled pleasure garden (pleasance) as a safe setting for courtly love, music, games, and escape.

Medieval city characteristics

Densely developed urban spaces characterized by high stone walls, narrow winding organic streets, bastides, and public plazas.

Bastide

New planned grid towns constructed in medieval France (1200s) with a central square at the main street intersection, following the Roman castrum model.

Piazza

Italian term for a public town square serving as a civic, commercial, and religious gathering place in medieval cities.

Jannah

Arabic term for 'garden,' representing the Islamic heavenly paradise as a walled, lush, shaded garden oasis with flowing rivers.

Persian garden influence

Four-square garden design (chahar bagh) with central water features and channels introduced at Pasargadae c. 550 BCE that heavily influenced Islamic gardens.

Moors in Spain

Muslim rulers of Spain (711-1492 CE) who integrated advanced gravity-fed water irrigation and courtyard design in cities like Cordoba and Granada.

Geomancy & feng shui

Traditional practice of aligning cities, palaces, or dwellings with natural landscape features to harness an auspicious flow of energy.

Chinese imperial city planning

Plan featuring square or rectangular shapes, cardinal orientation, nested walled layers, and the imperial palace at the center (Wangcheng model).

Chinese imperial gardens

Large, naturalistic landscape parks built by Chinese emperors incorporating vast lakes with islands representing the Realm of the Immortals.

Realm of the Immortals

Daoist concept of three mountainous islands in the eastern sea (Penglai, Fangzhang, Yingzhou) where immortals reside, serving as inspiration for imperial garden lakes.

Chinese private gardens (scholar garden)

Contemplative retreats built by scholar-officials integrating rocks, water, and plants to recreate wild nature based on poetry, painting, and eremitism.

Gongshi

Scholar's rocks prized for their grotesque, sculptural, and expressive qualities, particularly limestone rocks from Lake Tai near Suzhou (Taihu rocks).

Shan shui

Chinese word for landscape, literally meaning 'mountains and water,' which heavily influenced landscape poetry, ink scroll painting, and garden design.

Heian period imperial city planning

Urban plan of Heian-kyo (Kyoto) oriented cardinally with a gridded street network based on the 3.5-acre machi block, featuring Suzaku Road and the Daidairi palace complex.

Heian period gardens

Aristocratic estate gardens characterized by naturalistic arrangements of rocks, streams, and ponds (chisen teien) used for boating parties, poetry contests, and festivals.

Chisen teien & shinden-zukuri

Chisen teien refers to the pond-and-island garden style; shinden-zukuri refers to the Heian aristocratic architectural style with a main hall facing a southern courtyard and boating pond.

Sakuteiki

Earliest known garden design manual (late 11th c.) written by Fujiwara Toshitsuna, detailing principles of reproducing wild nature interpretatively and geomantic warnings.

Jodo teien

Buddhist Pure Land paradise garden style developed in the late Heian period to recreate the Western Paradise on earth using reflecting ponds and Amida halls.