Space in Landscape Design
Encyclopedia
Space in landscape design refers to theories about the meaning and Nature
of Space
as a volume
and as an element of design
. The concept of space as the fundamental medium of landscape design
grew from debates tied to modernism
, contemporary art
, Asian art and design- as seen in the Japanese garden
, and architecture
.
Essay on Gardens (1774) as perhaps the first reference to space in garden/architectural theory. Andrew Jackson Downing
in 1918 wrote “Space Composition in Architecture”, which directly linked painting
and gardens as arts involved in the creation of space.
The origins of modern northern European thought is a German aesthetic philosophy of the 1890s. By the 1920s, Einstein’s
theories of relativity were replacing Newton’s conception of universal space. Practitioners such as Fletcher Steele
, James Rose, Garrett Eckbo
, and Dan Kiley
began to write and design through a vocabulary of lines, volumes, masses and planes in an attempt to replace the prevalent debate, centered around ideas of the formal and informal, with one that would more closely align their field with the fine art
s.
According to Adrian Forty
, the term “space
” in relation to design was all but meaningless until the 1890s. At that time two schools began to develop. Viennese Gottfried Semper
in 1880 developed an architectural theory
based the idea that the first impulse of architecture
was the enclosure of space. Camillo Sitte
extended Semper’s ideas to exterior spaces in his City Planning According to Artistic Principles (1889). Concurrently, Friedrich Nietzsche
built on ideas from Kant which emphasized the experience of space as a force field generated by human movement and perception. Martin Heidegger
would later contradict both of these schools. In his 1927 Being and Time and 1951 “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” he claimed that space was neither a construct of the mind nor a given, but was “that for which a room has been made” and was created by the object within a room rather than the room itself. Henri Lefebvre
would call all of this into question, linking designers’ notions of themselves as space-makers to a subservience to a dominant capitalist
mode of production. He felt that the abstract space
they had created had destroyed social space
through alienation, separation, and a privileging of the eye.
James Rose and Garrett Eckbo
, colleagues at Harvard in the 1930s, were the pioneers of a movement which adopted ideas about space from artists such as Wassily Kandinsky
, Kurt Schwitters
, Naum Gabo
and the Russian Constructivists
, and from architectural ideas based om Mies van der Rohe’s
free plan
. Seeing gardens as outdoor rooms or sculptures to be walked through, they prioritized movement. In analogy to painting
and sculpture
, Rose in particular saw elements of landscape
as having architectural volume, not just mass: “In pure landscape, we drop the structural shell and the volume is defined by earth, paving, water and ground cover; foliage, walls, structures and other vertical elements on the sides, and sky, branching and roofing above.” Eckbo adopted the grid of columns and thin wall
s of the free plan to make a statement about the social function of the garden
as a place where the individual
and the collective
coincide.
By the 1940s, writings about space in landscape design had proliferated. Siegfried Giedion, in his Space, Time and Architecture, reframed the history of architecture as that of the history of space. Erno Goldfinger
wrote several influential articles in Architectural Review addressing the subconscious effect of the sizes and shapes of spaces. He notes that perception
of space happens in a state of distraction: we are required to move through a landscape in order to fully experience it. Dan Kiley
absorbed these writings and built upon the work of Rose and Eckbo, promoting asymmetry over symmetry
, balance over hierarchy
, multiple centers, and figure-ground ambiguity.
would have a profound influence on designers of the 1960s such as Peter Walker
, Martha Schwartz
, and Hideo Sasaki
. On the one hand, Sol LeWitt’s
space-frame sculptures and Carl Andre’s
floor sculptures of mass-produced objects
allowed a re-thinking of the necessity for wall
s in the formation of space
. Geometry
, repetition, and changes in ground plane created a “field of making” in which walls and even plantings were questioned as essential elements of landscape. Equally at issue in applied practice was the perception
on the part of Sasaki that landscape had come to be seen as “open space”, a white sheet of paper on which to display International Style
buildings. This disconnection with the landscape
was especially notable in corporate office parks, and Sasaki and Walker addressed this through an attempt to connect interior and exterior spaces.
James Corner
considers landscape spatiality to be one of the three things that distinguish the medium of landscape (the others are landscape temporality and landscape materiality). He refers to Gaston Bachelard
in emphasizing the role of scale and psychic location, which distinguish the space of landscape from that of architecture
and painting
: “the immediate immensity of the world from the inner immensity of the imagination, the inner space of the self”.
Augustin Berque analyses landscape space by comparing Newtonian universal space
and Cartesian dualistic space
, in which there is a distinct separation between subject and object, and Chinese mediumistic space, in which a unity of landscape and environment corresponds to a unity of mind and body. Thus postmodern thought
brings together the concepts of space as product of mind
, body
and culture
. Rather than being the negative of the objects that occupy it, space can be seen as its own volume with undeniable importance as a design tool. In contemporary design, it is considered a palpable, lived phenomenon
that contributes to our perception
and experience
of the world in subtle but often intentional ways.
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
of Space
Space
Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum...
as a volume
Volume
Volume is the quantity of three-dimensional space enclosed by some closed boundary, for example, the space that a substance or shape occupies or contains....
and as an element of design
Design
Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...
. The concept of space as the fundamental medium of landscape design
Landscape design
Landscape design is an independent profession and a design and art tradition, practised by landscape designers, combining nature and culture. In contemporary practice landscape design bridges between landscape architecture and garden design.-Design scope:...
grew from debates tied to modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
, contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
, Asian art and design- as seen in the Japanese garden
Japanese garden
, that is, gardens in traditional Japanese style, can be found at private homes, in neighborhood or city parks, and at historical landmarks such as Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines and old castles....
, and architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
.
Europe
Elizabeth K. Meyer cites Claude-Henri Watelet’sClaude-Henri Watelet
Claude-Henri Watelet was a rich French fermier-général who was an amateur painter, a well-respected etcher, a writer on the arts and a connoisseur of gardens. Watelet's inherited privilege of farming taxes in the Orléanais left him free to pursue his avocations, art and literature and gardens...
Essay on Gardens (1774) as perhaps the first reference to space in garden/architectural theory. Andrew Jackson Downing
Andrew Jackson Downing
Andrew Jackson Downing was an American landscape designer, horticulturalist, and writer, a prominent advocate of the Gothic Revival style in the United States, and editor of The Horticulturist magazine...
in 1918 wrote “Space Composition in Architecture”, which directly linked painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
and gardens as arts involved in the creation of space.
The origins of modern northern European thought is a German aesthetic philosophy of the 1890s. By the 1920s, Einstein’s
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
theories of relativity were replacing Newton’s conception of universal space. Practitioners such as Fletcher Steele
Fletcher Steele
Fletcher Steele was an American landscape architect credited with designing and creating over 700 gardens from 1915 to the time of his death....
, James Rose, Garrett Eckbo
Garrett Eckbo
Garrett Eckbo was an American landscape architect notable for his seminal 1950 book Landscape for Living.-Youth:...
, and Dan Kiley
Dan Kiley
Daniel Urban Kiley was a noted American landscape architect in the modernist style.- Life and career :Kiley was born in Boston, Massachusetts...
began to write and design through a vocabulary of lines, volumes, masses and planes in an attempt to replace the prevalent debate, centered around ideas of the formal and informal, with one that would more closely align their field with the fine art
Fine art
Fine art or the fine arts encompass art forms developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery"....
s.
According to Adrian Forty
Adrian Forty
Adrian Forty is Professor of Architectural History at The Bartlett, the Faculty of the Built Environment at University College London. He is the Programme Director of the MSc programme in Architectural History....
, the term “space
Space
Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum...
” in relation to design was all but meaningless until the 1890s. At that time two schools began to develop. Viennese Gottfried Semper
Gottfried Semper
Gottfried Semper was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture, who designed and built the Semper Opera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841. In 1849 he took part in the May Uprising in Dresden and was put on the government's wanted list. Semper fled first to Zürich and later...
in 1880 developed an architectural theory
Architectural theory
Architectural theory is the act of thinking, discussing, or most importantly writing about architecture. Architectural theory is taught in most architecture schools and is practiced by the world's leading architects. Some forms that architecture theory takes are the lecture or dialogue, the...
based the idea that the first impulse of architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
was the enclosure of space. Camillo Sitte
Camillo Sitte
Camillo Sitte was a noted Austrian architect, painter and city planning theoretician with great influence and authority of the development of urban construction planning and regulation in Europe.- Life :...
extended Semper’s ideas to exterior spaces in his City Planning According to Artistic Principles (1889). Concurrently, Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
built on ideas from Kant which emphasized the experience of space as a force field generated by human movement and perception. Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
would later contradict both of these schools. In his 1927 Being and Time and 1951 “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” he claimed that space was neither a construct of the mind nor a given, but was “that for which a room has been made” and was created by the object within a room rather than the room itself. Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre was a French sociologist, Marxist intellectual, and philosopher, best known for his work on dialectics, Marxism, everyday life, cities, and space.-Biography:...
would call all of this into question, linking designers’ notions of themselves as space-makers to a subservience to a dominant capitalist
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
mode of production. He felt that the abstract space
Abstract space
Abstract space, in geography, refers to a hypothetical space characterized by equal and consistent properties; a geographic space that is completely homogeneous. All movement and activity would be equally easy or difficult in all directions and all locations within this space...
they had created had destroyed social space
Social space
A social space is physical or virtual space such as a social center, Facebook, or other gathering place where people gather and interact. Some social spaces such as town squares or parks are public places; others such as pubs, websites...
through alienation, separation, and a privileging of the eye.
James Rose and Garrett Eckbo
Garrett Eckbo
Garrett Eckbo was an American landscape architect notable for his seminal 1950 book Landscape for Living.-Youth:...
, colleagues at Harvard in the 1930s, were the pioneers of a movement which adopted ideas about space from artists such as Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...
, Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as...
, Naum Gabo
Naum Gabo
Naum Gabo KBE, born Naum Neemia Pevsner was a prominent Russian sculptor in the Constructivism movement and a pioneer of Kinetic Art.-Early life:...
and the Russian Constructivists
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...
, and from architectural ideas based om Mies van der Rohe’s
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....
free plan
Free plan
The free plan, as it relates to architecture refers to an open plan with non load-bearing partitions dividing interior space. In this structural system, the building structure is separate of interior partitions...
. Seeing gardens as outdoor rooms or sculptures to be walked through, they prioritized movement. In analogy to painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
and sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
, Rose in particular saw elements of landscape
Landscape
Landscape comprises the visible features of an area of land, including the physical elements of landforms such as mountains, hills, water bodies such as rivers, lakes, ponds and the sea, living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation, human elements including different forms of...
as having architectural volume, not just mass: “In pure landscape, we drop the structural shell and the volume is defined by earth, paving, water and ground cover; foliage, walls, structures and other vertical elements on the sides, and sky, branching and roofing above.” Eckbo adopted the grid of columns and thin wall
Wall
A wall is a usually solid structure that defines and sometimes protects an area. Most commonly, a wall delineates a building and supports its superstructure, separates space in buildings into rooms, or protects or delineates a space in the open air...
s of the free plan to make a statement about the social function of the garden
Garden
A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The garden can incorporate both natural and man-made materials. The most common form today is known as a residential garden, but the term garden has...
as a place where the individual
Individual
An individual is a person or any specific object or thing in a collection. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires. Being self expressive...
and the collective
Collective
A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together on a specific project to achieve a common objective...
coincide.
By the 1940s, writings about space in landscape design had proliferated. Siegfried Giedion, in his Space, Time and Architecture, reframed the history of architecture as that of the history of space. Erno Goldfinger
Erno Goldfinger
Ernő Goldfinger was a Hungarian-born Jewish architect and designer of furniture, and a key member of the architectural Modern Movement after he had moved to the United Kingdom.-Biography:Goldfinger was born in Budapest...
wrote several influential articles in Architectural Review addressing the subconscious effect of the sizes and shapes of spaces. He notes that perception
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
of space happens in a state of distraction: we are required to move through a landscape in order to fully experience it. Dan Kiley
Dan Kiley
Daniel Urban Kiley was a noted American landscape architect in the modernist style.- Life and career :Kiley was born in Boston, Massachusetts...
absorbed these writings and built upon the work of Rose and Eckbo, promoting asymmetry over symmetry
Symmetry
Symmetry generally conveys two primary meanings. The first is an imprecise sense of harmonious or aesthetically pleasing proportionality and balance; such that it reflects beauty or perfection...
, balance over hierarchy
Hierarchy
A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...
, multiple centers, and figure-ground ambiguity.
Minimalism
Minimalist artMinimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
would have a profound influence on designers of the 1960s such as Peter Walker
Peter Walker (architect)
Peter Walker is a landscape architect in the United States.-Biography and Influences:Peter Walker grew up in California and attended the University of California, Berkeley. Walker initially started out in Journalism but quickly changed his field...
, Martha Schwartz
Martha Schwartz
Martha Schwartz, born 1950, is an American landscape architect. Her background is in the fine arts as well as landscape architecture, and her projects range from private to urban scale. She studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and graduated from the University of Michigan...
, and Hideo Sasaki
Hideo Sasaki
Sasaki Hideo was an influential American landscape architect.-Biography:Sasaki Hideo was born in Reedley, California, on 25 November 1919. He grew up working on his family's California truck farm, and harvesting crops on Arizona farms. He began his college studies at the University of California,...
. On the one hand, Sol LeWitt’s
Sol LeWitt
Solomon "Sol" LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism....
space-frame sculptures and Carl Andre’s
Carl Andre
Carl Andre is an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear format and grid format sculptures. His sculptures range from large public artworks to more intimate tile patterns arranged on the floor of an exhibition space Carl Andre (born September 16, 1935) is an American...
floor sculptures of mass-produced objects
Mass production
Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines...
allowed a re-thinking of the necessity for wall
Wall
A wall is a usually solid structure that defines and sometimes protects an area. Most commonly, a wall delineates a building and supports its superstructure, separates space in buildings into rooms, or protects or delineates a space in the open air...
s in the formation of space
Space
Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum...
. Geometry
Geometry
Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....
, repetition, and changes in ground plane created a “field of making” in which walls and even plantings were questioned as essential elements of landscape. Equally at issue in applied practice was the perception
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
on the part of Sasaki that landscape had come to be seen as “open space”, a white sheet of paper on which to display International Style
International style (architecture)
The International style is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. The term originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style...
buildings. This disconnection with the landscape
Landscape
Landscape comprises the visible features of an area of land, including the physical elements of landforms such as mountains, hills, water bodies such as rivers, lakes, ponds and the sea, living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation, human elements including different forms of...
was especially notable in corporate office parks, and Sasaki and Walker addressed this through an attempt to connect interior and exterior spaces.
James Corner
James Corner
James Corner is a Landscape Architect and theorist with numerous works to his credit which explore the contemporary meaning of architectural landscaping, with a focus on "developing innovative approaches toward landscape architectural design and urbanism." His designs of note include Fresh Kills...
considers landscape spatiality to be one of the three things that distinguish the medium of landscape (the others are landscape temporality and landscape materiality). He refers to Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break...
in emphasizing the role of scale and psychic location, which distinguish the space of landscape from that of architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
and painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
: “the immediate immensity of the world from the inner immensity of the imagination, the inner space of the self”.
Augustin Berque analyses landscape space by comparing Newtonian universal space
Universal space
The term Universal space was established in Computer Science the mid 1960's by John Holland. It refers to a singular system of representation or communication, "as the spaces used in physics to study its various mechanics", to enable our focus on the information processing performed by the active...
and Cartesian dualistic space
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
, in which there is a distinct separation between subject and object, and Chinese mediumistic space, in which a unity of landscape and environment corresponds to a unity of mind and body. Thus postmodern thought
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
brings together the concepts of space as product of mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
, body
Body
With regard to living things, a body is the physical body of an individual. "Body" often is used in connection with appearance, health issues and death...
and culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
. Rather than being the negative of the objects that occupy it, space can be seen as its own volume with undeniable importance as a design tool. In contemporary design, it is considered a palpable, lived phenomenon
Phenomenon
A phenomenon , plural phenomena, is any observable occurrence. Phenomena are often, but not always, understood as 'appearances' or 'experiences'...
that contributes to our perception
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
and experience
Experience
Experience as a general concept comprises knowledge of or skill in or observation of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event....
of the world in subtle but often intentional ways.
See also
- Genius lociGenius lociIn classical Roman religion a genius loci was the protective spirit of a place. It was often depicted in religious iconography as a figure holding a Cornucopia, patera and/or a snake. There are many Roman altars found in Western Europe dedicated in whole or in part to the particular Genius Loci...
- Spirit of placeSpirit of placeSpirit of place refers to the unique, distinctive and cherished aspects of a place; often those celebrated by artists and writers, but also those cherished in folk tales, festivals and celebrations...
- Sense of placeSense of placeThe term sense of place has been defined and used in many different ways by many different people. To some, it is a characteristic that some geographic places have and some do not, while to others it is a feeling or perception held by people...
- Roji-en Japanese GardensRoji-en Japanese GardensThe Roji-en: Garden of the Drops of Dew, The George D. and Harriet W. Cornell Japanese Gardens consists of six gardens representing different periods in the development of the Japanese garden. It occupies 16 acres of the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Morikami Park in suburban Delray...
- Borrowed scenery
- Japanese rock gardenJapanese rock gardenThe or "dry landscape" gardens, often called "Zen gardens", are a type of garden that features extensive use of rocks or stones, along with plants native to rocky or alpine environments that were influenced mainly by Zen Buddhism and can be found at Zen temples of meditation.- Overview :Japanese...