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.