Parks

This week’s readings on the scale of parks and cemeteries exemplified what composition in a landscape can accomplish on the park and cemetery scale. Frederick Law Olmstead was a pioneer in building large parks in urban environments. His inspiration drew from art and the natural environment. He saw these two things as different and always sought to create a harmonious relationship between the two.

His parks gained inspiration and were birthed, according to Olmstead, from hunting grounds. Here, he found beasts most happy and recognized that people were happy to get away from the urban landscapes and enjoy the bucolic, vast expanses. These hunting grounds were interesting because they themselves evolved further. Soon people began to simply visit these places without the hunt. These places were used for garden parties and relaxation.

Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY

http://www.nycgovparks.org/about/history/olmsted-parks

Olmstead was smart to describe this process in his proposal for the Brooklyn Park because he basically justified why his plans made sense. Furthermore, it helped justify his recommendations to sell smaller properties in the vicinity and buy others. This of course was carried by Olmstead’s clout.

Olmstead carefully planned the modes of movement that were to be taking place in the park such as carriage rides, play areas, walking areas, relaxation, etc. Olmstead also uses topographic conditions to distinguish the city and the park. He looks for specific conditions to exaggerate. Several streets run from the urban area to the park. I feel he wanted his visitors to experience the border of the urban and park landscape. He exaggerated natural topography like the mound in the middle of the park to direct attention and provide views for visitors. This was done to add to the visual experience, but also make the park feel larger. Olmstead is very influential still today and I greatly enjoyed reading his proposal for the park.

David Leatherbarrow is a professor of architecture at UPenn. I found his article interesting because he writes about modernism in Latin America. His idea in the piece is that designers in Latin America don’t use post-modernism techniques because the symbols remind people of colonial times. He explains that the modern movement in Latin America is an “unfinished project.” Many architects explained what they meant in their work by referring to ancient precedents. Loos said that he was a modern architect who built in the manner of the ancients. I found this quote very interesting in that modern architects were giving kudos to ancient structures and recognized their magnificence. I think the intent was to not only pay respect to the ancients, but toot their own horns by explaining that they designed with the utmost attention to detail and for purpose. I like this notion and hope that I can incorporate such detail and thought into my work one day. 

Orquideorama, Medellin, Colombia

http://inhabitat.com/waxing-architectural-on-columbias-orquideorama/

Gardens are control

Readings for Week 8 on gardens made me think not only about gardens in a new light, but also the human condition. The three readings were about slaves’ gardens on working plantations, ancient Mayan gardens and some of Burle Marx’s gardens. According to Catherine Benoit, slave-owned gardens or dooryard gardens were quite profound on working plantations. According to Benoit, the slave masters allowed slaves to work small plots of land. Potentially African in origin in layout and character, these places probably served as a means of escape from the harsh realities of slavery and as places where slaves could bond over communal and maybe ritualistic activities. Interesting Benoit points out that the items that slave masters prohibited slaves from owning such as trinkets, etc. would often be stored in secret locations in these gardens. It is difficult for me to imagine, but I would think these gardens to be a sanctuary for an oppressed person; they would be a place closed off to the harsh oppression and confines of the world around them. Benoit points out that the gardens were picturesque to the landscape, but they were also probably allowed for control. If someone is allowed brief moments of escape from the harsh governance, he/she is probably more likely to be subdued and less likely to revolt. This is something I’m sure slave masters considered – how to keep the slave population at bay, so they awarded them small plots of land and brief times when they could keep to themselves.

Ancient Mayan rulers used gardens for control as well. I will not attempt to understand the daily life of an ancient Mayan, but according to Susan Evans, as the Mayan civilization advanced, they created gardens that ordinary citizens could visit and behold. According to Evans this would have been a powerful statement to the ruler’s subjects showing his power over the land and connection to the gods. This would have been an astonishing statement of strength for any ruler to his subjects.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/866

The third article is a transcribed speech that Burle Marx gave about his gardens in Brazil. His gardens encompassed the beauty of Brazil playing on form, texture and context. In a way it was giving back to the people and very existential. Each experience was for the individual. But in another light, Burle Marx was about control as well. He controlled the land, people’s movement and wanted to evoke particular emotions, thoughts and feelings about Brazil and the world through his gardens. In some ways, by controlling movement and having carefully thought out abstract gardens, he was using gardens for control the most out of the three articles. Is this good or bad?

All landscapes have value and meaning to groups of people and the individual, and I think carefully designed gardens for humanitarian and environmental reasons are the best ways to control minds in an already carefully controlled, manufactured space. 

Frontiers: Post to Modern

The history of the United States’ and American landscapes are convoluted, violent and often misunderstood. Recent readings help to solidify this notion and make understood the intricate stories that were unfolding all over the Western hemisphere during this pivotal time in human history.

http://launiusr.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/john-gast-american-progress-or-manifest-destiny-1872.jpg

Growing up as a child in the United States, I remember being taught mainly of the United States’ conflicts abroad and at home. The history lessons were U.S.-centric, singularly focused and therefore misleading – at least they only taught a small portion of the whole story. By using the term “singularly focused” I mean that the lesson plans described the United States’ independence was the most important event to everyone in the world of the time. While it probably did rock many corners of the world, it was interesting to read Herbert E. Bolton’s Wider Horizons of American History that helped to put the event in context of what else was taking place in the world – much of which was in the Americas. Bolton downplays the American Revolution by stating,  “Then came the American Revolution. This too was by no means a local matter. It lasted half a century – from 1776 to 1826 – and it witnessed the political separation of most of American from Europe” (19-20).

Bolton does an excellent job of explaining the revolutions that occurred throughout the Americas during the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, what preceded them, and how they were interconnected.  His explanations show that the frontier was not simply a border moving across the country with time, but rather pockets of intense fighting and political upheaval.  

Frontiers are interesting places of study because they are often where cultures smash together - often violently for resources and political power. Walter Prescott Webb helps us envision these frontiers as dangerous places full of political strife in The Great Frontier. New ideas and economic principles came from the frontiers of the Americas. For instance, Europe was richer than ever before due vastly to resources coming from American frontiers. There was so much money that national banks had to be set up. Commodities were circulating faster than precious metals, which meant that eventually money would be scarce. People would soon need a substitute for gold and silver (235-6). Obviously, this would become the paper currency that we know and love today. Furthermore, John Law established the idea of credit, but he was ultimately ruined by watering his stock – also a new concept.

Many think of frontiers as a distant phenomenon in human history – a place that represented a different world, one of mystery, danger, wildness and adventure to the unknown. However, Brian Davis helps us understand that modern frontiers may well exist, and be a lot closer than we think.  American frontiers exist today in the remnants of old industrial cities where abandoned water fronts and large warehouses possess their own environmental constraints, problems and opportunities. They are places where danger lurks in the form of crime, falling debris and dilapidated structures. These are often places of political disfigurement and at locations in cities where cultures clash. As designers, the modern frontier possesses great challenges but also vast opportunity to provide economic and environmental rejuvenation in these areas. 

Technology, in our DNA?

Whether you like it or not, technological advances have always captured our imagination in folk lore and reality. Last Saturday I saw John Oliver from the Daily Show at Bailey Hall perform his stand-up comedy routine. In the midst he described a hilarious bit in which he ruined Fox News’ telecast of the last space shuttle launch in Florida by accidentally cursing in front of their camera. Oliver confessed his obscenities were simply the only reaction he could muster to the most amazing thing he had ever witnessed. He explained that “It was almost ungodly” to witness people fighting gravity and even God to venture into the heavens where humans aren’t naturally built to inhabit.

Visualizing Oliver’s rant made me consider several points from the readings this week. Cosgrove’s article made me think about whether the American landscape was an American invention or a European imposition on the landscape? I think early urban centers where people congregated were European in their ancestry, but as the U.S. won its independence, the most democratic allocation of power was to plot the land in a decentralized way through grid systems and using natural barriers such as large rivers. Even if lands were not completely explored, wealth was awarded through property.

Cosgrove’s article made me think about the give and take that occurs between technology and landscape. Large American rives enabled deforestation on massive scales that caused vast environmental degradation, but also helped the United States attain economic and militaristic superiority. As the U.S. grew, the vastness of the continent created enormous infrastructural problems. To overcome these hardships created by landscape, I would argue that people’s fortitude, creativity and ambition was put to the test. The railroad and telegraph are closely associated with moving west. These two advances enabled people to experience the landscape and send information, resources and people like never before.

Another increase in technology has been the airplane. No other vehicle, besides its cousin the spaceship, has allowed mankind to view our planet like never before. The plane has cut travel by severe margins, making trips that took months and years in the past to mere hours. The airplane has allowed us to rationalize our actions on a global scale.

While landscape can provide the hardship and vehicle by which human ingenuity propels technological advancement, a culture’s mode of production is the driver. For instance in the Web article, the author describes how several ranchers, Joseph Glidden and Jacob Haish, invented barbed wire as a response to the lack of wood needed for fence building. In this wonderful case of technological discovery, the landscape presented a particular challenge for these ranchers. Because their mode of production was incumbent on creating a productive landscape for monetary and social prowess, they invented ways to propel this within the constraints of the landscape that they were in. People had lived on the plains for thousands of years, but did not invent the barbed wire fence – not because they weren’t smart enough, but because they were not driven to as part of a capitalistic society.

The question has to be asked then, is humankind smart enough to prevail over everything nature can throw at it? It seems that at our core essence, landscape presented a challenge to human ancestors when they first climbed down from the trees in search of food. Just as it does today, the landscapes of then presented many challenges. Those early hominoids had the presence of mind to be creative and overcome. Today this continues in the face of environmental disaster. Technological advancement has not only created a mess environmentally, but has also given us the means to understand the scale of this destruction. Inevitably, our creative ability to use our minds to create ways to overcome hardships we encounter in the landscapes we inhabit will probably save us – if history is any indication. Perhaps it’s simply in our DNA?

http://whataphotos.com/common/human-evolution-funny-wallpaper/