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.

Serpentine Gallery and Princess Diana Memorial Fountain: Thresholds That Speak

Thresholds That Speak

By Rachel Gamble

         In every public outdoor space, there exists some form of entrance. This threshold is the break in the border between the natural and urban textures, and plays a vital role in the experience of a visitor within a park or garden. It establishes the mood of the visitor towards the space inside and prepares him mentally for the rest of the space. An entry point into a garden or park can be literal – a physical entry point such as a gate – or implied – a figurative entrance caused by subtle design details like a slight opening in a row of trees, or even a difference between grass and the surrounding urban pavement. Through the entry point, landscape designers like Kathryn Gustafson and Piet Oudolf can communicate much about the rest of their designs.

The number and style of entries points, for instance, can be very telling, and are design features that a landscape designer can use to create first impressions for the rest of the space. A garden like that of Piet Oudolf in the Serpentine Gallery – one that is surrounded by a protective wall, broken up selectively in spots – suggests perhaps a secluded park for only a few people. On the other hand, a space like Kathryn Gustafson’s Princess Diana memorial has no clear border or entrance and implies an open landscape with uninhibited circulation that will not restrict the users inside to only one path but instead allows them to wander freely. Additionally, the entrance can say much, stylistically, about the space within. A carefully enclosed park could perhaps suggest a cultivated and orderly space, while a park with no entrances could indicate a more natural and less humanized landscape. A closer glance at Oudolf and Gustafon’s landscapes reveal clearly that the ways in which you arrive in the park can paint a telling picture of what is inside.

         The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park is an example of a public urban space that takes its entrance into careful account. The memorial has no entrance or clear border but blends and merges with the park surrounding it harmoniously. Its designer, Kathryn Gustafson, wanted the space “to be accessible and to reflect Diana's 'inclusive' personality” (BBC News). Thus, visitors are encouraged to wade right into the shallow water to reach the center of the circular fountain – reminiscent of how Princess Diana was a very warm and open person and welcomed everyone. Free of walls, gates, or railings, the space encourages people to walk into and through the park on their own volition.

The entrance to the Princess Diana memorial stands in clear contrast to Piet Oudolf's garden at the Serpentine Gallery pavilion, in which user circulation is heavily restricted. The Princess Diana memorial is unobtrusively integrated with what already exists in its site, whereas the Serpentine Gallery pavilion introduces a new dimension to the site in which its sits. This garden is meant to be arrived at sequentially and not directly. It is enclosed on all sides by Peter Zumthor’s pavilion. To reach Oudolf’s garden at the center, visitors must enter through small doorways in the bare pavilion walls and wind through the dark corridors until they reach the open-roofed courtyard space inside. By being hidden from all sides with only a few strategically placed entrances, a meditative, cloister-like space is produced. Visitors enter through dark, claustrophobic spaces, and thus the open garden inside becomes all the more beautiful once the visitors arrive at it.

In these two landscapes, we see how the periphery and entry points of a site can play an important factor in the way a visitor interacts with the rest of the space inside. It is at the entry point that an urban landscape becomes a natural one and that a visitor establishes his first impression of the space. The entry point also reflects the circulation through the rest of the site. As such, designers should carefully consider what they want to say with the edge of their outdoor space

Princess Di Memorial: No Borders

Serpentine Pavilion: Center Garden Enclosed

Sources

"Queen Unveils New Diana Fountain." BBC News, 2004. Web. 7 Sep. 2012 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3866863.stm>