Acuities in Landscape Architecture

Alessandro Giulio


INTRODUCTION
Located in the quiet seclusion of London's Hyde Park, lies the Diana Memorial Fountain designed by the architect Kathryn Gustafson. Since its opening in 2004, the Diana Memorial Fountain has attracted the masses in pursuit of both respects to the late Princess Diana and for personal contemplation. The fountain plants itself ambiguously within the spectrum between organic and engineered landscape architecture. The acuities between Space and the Senses are (in my opinion, of course) the hidden details that make the fountain an exceptional example of contemporary sensory landscape architecture.



ACUITIES between SPACE and the SENSES
When we construct walls around a given location, we create space; closed, clearly defined and often conditional space. But how does one design and ultimately provide for a sense of place without enclosing space? This is an issue landscape architecture continues to address. By consequence, landscape architecture projects range in their success of providing a sense of space. For this reason, sensory implementation allows for Kathryn Gustafson’s Diana Memorial Fountain to be a success project of landscape architecture. It should go without saying that the fountain holds a contemplative experience from approach to interaction. The following text is an experiential narration intended to portray the acuities between space and the senses.

You make your way into the grounds of Hyde Park. You wander through the tranquil landscape and suddenly you stumble upon the fountain in the distance. The fountain, an organic egg-shaped form, cuts across the Hyde Park landscape; a small collection of people are gathered at the form’s edge. You make your arrival to the fountain, where you would be greeted by a contrast in materiality and a sense of space. The architecture of the fountain, as you begin to examine, is slightly receding in the distance and provoking within you a sense of demarcation as the fountain gently carves out the ground in which you stand on. Standing on the outside perimeter of the fountain, you feel outside. You give a glance around the perimeter, where you quickly notice the footbridges that could bring you into the inside of the fountain. So you make your way around the fountain, closely admiring the changes in the waters speed and sound, briefly looking up to realize your place between the park and fountain. You reach a small footbridge that gently leads you into the fountain’s inside. The space you encounter is quiet and as welcoming as you would want it to be. You easily find yourself in a relaxed state of contemplation once inside the fountain; distanced from the perimeter of the fountain, yet within the fountain and its reaches of sound from the waters movement. At the fountain’s edge you see the collection of people from before, yet their voices are reduced to murmurs by the soft noise of water movement. A softscape path marks your return to the outside of the fountain, but you find yourself content with your position. Sitting on the lawn, on the inside of the fountain, you realize something. You are neither in or out of the any given space, but rather you are simply within the space sensorially.

OMA Versus Tschumi: The Parc de la Villette

By Jordan Grant

Last week I wrote about the brilliant design of Rem Koolhaas in Berlin at the Netherlands Embassy; this week is dedicated to a competitor of OMA for the winning design of the Parc De La Villette in Paris- Bernard Tschumi Architects.

First, a bit of history about the site itself- the Parc De La Villette was put forth as a design competition by the city of Paris in 1982-1983. The site had previously been a place for slaughterhouses, but the clearing of the structure put the largest remaining empty space back on the map in Paris. As you might imagine, architects worldwide jumped at the opportunity to submit their entries, and over 470 international entries we received.

Among those entries were works from both OMA and Bernard Tschumi Architects. These two plans were extremely different in almost every imaginable way; it’s interesting to imagine what the space would have been like had Tschumi not been chosen as the architect of one of Paris’ largest parks.

OMA’s submittal for the Parc De La Villette is extremely complex; the plan itself consists of five different stages to develop the site. As OMA’s website describes the project, “The program by the city of Paris was too large for the site, leaving no space for a park. The proposed project is not for a definitive park, but for a method that - combining programmatic instability with architectural specificity - will eventually generate a park.”

The five steps laid forward by OMA were 1) to organize the major programmatic elements in horizontal bands across the site, 2) to place kiosks, playgrounds, barbeque pits, and other facilities mathematically on grid points, 3) the addition of a round forest as an architectural element, 4) to provide connections between the points, and finally 5) to introduce superimpositions.

It’s not surprising that the OMA entry was disregarded when a closer look is taken at that of Tschumi. The winning entry can be described quite simply, as Bernard Tschumi Architects’ website does- “La Villette could be conceived of as one of the largest buildings ever constructed — a discontinuous building but a single structure nevertheless, overlapping the site’s existing features and articulating new activities. It opposes the landscape notion of Olmstead, widespread during the 19th century, that ‘in the park, the city is not supposed to exist.’ Instead, it proposes a social and cultural park with activities that include workshops, gymnasium and bath facilities, playgrounds, exhibitions, concerts, science experiments, games and competitions, in addition to the Museum of Science and Technology and the City of Music on the site.”

This concept of a cultural park rather than the garden-like parks of the past, but instead it was exciting and new and most likely helped this entry stand above the rest. The park today is famous for the red follies (a folly is a building that is constructed primarily for decoration, or is overly ornate or exaggerated compared to its purpose) that are arranged in a grid over the site. The Parc is also noted as one of the first pieces of deconstructivist architecture since Tschumi was greatly influenced by deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida.

The Parc has received its fair share of both praise and criticism, yet no matter what opinions are shed upon the space it is an undeniable fact that Tschumi has created an iconic and successful space in Paris that attracts almost 8 million visitors a year. 

Information and photo sources: http://www.tschumi.com/projects/3/#, http://oma.eu/projects/1982/parc-de-la-villette

Future Landscapes

By: Khris Kirk

The population of today's world is over 7 billion people and growing (World Population Clock). The amount of births in the world far exceeds the amount of deaths, which is the reason why the population is growing very rapidly. In 2045, the world population is predicted to reach 9 billion people. As the population grows so do the cities that these people live in. Over the centuries, the people of the world have slowly been moving towards more urban areas rather than the rural areas. A statistic done in 2010 shows that 50.5% of the world is urban population (World Demographic Profile). With the consistent growth of the world, eventually most of the world will be urban areas. By having an urbanized world, that means there are few gardens, parks, or green spaces. This is a major problem. The world depends on having forests, gardens, and vegetation. The world needs to have plant life because it helps regulate the air, provides food, houses homes for wild life, and provides soft spaces in comparison to the hard spaces of buildings.

            With the constant growth of cities, there are only a few options to having gardens, parks, or plant life. One option is for the cities to set aside land specific for botanical gardens like Catherine Mosbach’s jardin botanique in Bordeaux. Mosbach’s botanical garden is in an industrial area, which is probably how many future gardens will be placed. It also houses the original vegetation from around France. Therefore, the garden has become a museum, promenade, and a soft space among the industrial background. More of these types of gardens will start rising up over the years, as a means to preserve the plant life of countries.

            Another type of garden that will arise will be hortus conclusus. Hortus conclusus comes from the term used for gardens of monks. They are personal, meant for meditation, and transform a small space into a garden. As cities grow, there are small spaces available for garden areas. They would either be in squares between buildings, alleyways, or on roofs of buildings. One example of a roof garden is Ken Smith’s Moma Garden in New York. Although this garden is using completely artificial and recycled materials, it is still a garden. This garden provides texture to the top of the inaccessible roof of the Taniguchi building (ASLA Awards). The Moma Garden creates a visual appeal against the harsh landscape of the skyscrapers of New York. Eventually many roofs will become gardens and provide that soft space within the urbanized world. They will become people’s personal oasis.

            Overall, constant growth of the world’s population is causing people to rethink how their surroundings will be. As the cities get bigger and more urbanized, the rural areas start to get smaller. Landscape architects have to be more creative with the amount of space available, materials to use, and feel they want to implement for a person within the space they are creating. In the future, these spaces will become very popular and much needed to bring nature back into the forest of buildings. The future awaits these new gardens.    

Links:

World Population Clock
World Demographics Profile 2012
Ken Smith, Moma Garden, New York