When a Garden Loses its Function

For centuries, gardens have been used to relax the body, and the mind, and allow people to connect back to nature whether that be in a suburban neighborhood or in an urban area.  With the expansion of cities and urban centers, people have sought this connection back to nature with the creation of urban gardens and roof top gardens in urban centers.   However, when does the design of these gardens start to hinder their purpose and functionality?  At what point does the garden become more of a design experiment and less of a functional space.

A good example of this is the rooftop gardens on the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York.  The MOMA contracted famous landscape architect Ken Smith to design a rooftop garden to spice up the roof.  The new garden was scheduled to open at the same time as the Groundswell exhibit.  Many were expecting great things from Smith and many were disappointed by what the final product was.  The product was a 17,000 sq. ft. artificial garden consisting of 85 plastic rocks. 560 artificial boxwoods. 300 pounds of clear crushed glass. 4 tons of recycled rubber mulch.  The garden is not open to public use or circulation of any sort and may only be seen from the adjacent buildings.  While this garden requires little to no maintenance or upkeep, at what expense is this achieved? The essence of the garden here, in my opinion, is completely lost.  The intimacy, the exploration, the tranquility, and the connection to nature are lost because the garden is not occupiable. That is why I believe this piece became a test of how far someone could push the meaning of a garden.  In this case, it was pushed too far.  I believe that, if anything, this has become more of a piece of contemporary art, something just to look at, than a garden.  Are garden is meant to be enjoyed and experienced, not looked at from far away.

This begs the question of the viability of an artificial garden to be used as a garden.   Is it possible to have such a garden that can create the same feeling as a true rooftop garden?  In this case, I believe that there was a disconnect between this installation and the true purpose of a garden.  A much more successful green urban installation, in my opinion, was the Lincoln Center’s green roof in the Hypar Pavilion. This piece of green work can be explored and used by the public every day during the warmer months of the year.  It allows the public to sit and enjoy a lawn much like the one they might find in a less urbanized area.  In this sense It is much more successful than the artificial garden on the roof of the MOMA.  This is a green installation that you can feel, touch, and enjoy.  Architecturally this piece of work is still very interesting as it is a twisted parabolic plane that is suspended by what only seems like glass.  While this green installation does not boast the impressive size of the MOMA garden, it can be used and enjoyed by the public.  It is not held up on a podium for the public to look at but not touch.

http://agreenliving.org/tag/lincoln-center/

http://laud8.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/the-museum-of-modern-art-roof-garden-new-york/

http://serenityinthegarden.blogspot.it/2010/07/ken-smith-landscape-architect.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/mar/23/entertainment/et-moma23

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/garden/11NATU.html

http://www.greenroofs.com/projects/pview.php?id=423

Gardens of the Age

By Seth Oliver

                “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson. Gardens have transformed over the centuries into more pieces of art for public use rather than private. These landscaped features can be compilations of many materials to form miniature, condensed and sculptural pieces in themselves. Gardens can have architectural elements surrounding them but also have the plants be the architecture. The dichotomy of this ideology has come about in different ways. A few in particular that follow the notion of structure around the focal pieces are the Tanner Spring Park and Park Westergasfabriek. A few that counter this and have the focal pieces be the gardens are represented in the Serpentine Pavilion and the Lincoln Center Roof Garden.

                Architecture to contain the wild is a path to showcase the natural environment in a way that is controlled with the illusion of frivolity. Tanner Spring Park makes a miniature of an ecological process of the cleansing water. From the rough hills to the edge of the pond, the plants and landscape dominate the scene. The paths are placed on top of the show off the piece of the natural elements. It is almost as if floating above it is to admire the process at work below the bridges. The Culture Park of Westergasfabriek also fosters the idea of paths added to nature, but isolates most of the nature to preserve them from Human interaction. A visual stimulus rather than a physical one. This park also displays the cleansing of the water, but from a distance. The other difference would be the large pool at the very end of the park that engages the public. Tanner Spring Park engages people from the trails and the earth but the Culture Park of Westergasfabriek engages people from the water. Many other gardens have followed these ideas of displaying nature, but these two are of the ends of the spectrum and very unique.

                On the contrary, more modern gardens have popped up as pieces of architecture as well as natural wonders. The Serpentine Pavilion in London by Peter Zumthor and Piet Oudolf was literally a box. The dark corridors of the ambulatory surrounding the garden were completely articulated. Not only the structure, but also the pants were specifically cultivated for the height and color. Giving the illusion of wild and natural but in reality it is all planned and carefully calculated. The plants became a part of the architecture. They were integral in filling a void of the inner rectangle and shaped the experience within. The Lincoln Center Roof Garden uses plants as a building material as well. The sections of the field, pond and forest all became three separate “buildings.” The roof of the first is a vast slope of grass. The pond is a reflective rectangle flush with the ground. And the forest is a composition of the grid lined trees to shape a box building outline. All three are individual pieces of the same sculpture, but all add a different aspect of the personality of the space. This idea incorporates the city into the garden rather than the garden into the city. Blending the spaces into a modern take on the “garden” and to push the limit of what materials can be used to create architecture and landscape.

                The designing of garden spaces still centers on the public experience. This has not changed for centuries. The new gardens try to blend the materials of the featured pieces and the structures that frame them. The realization of materiality and how to use it is key to successfully composing a landscape for the modern world. Whether the flora is the main attraction, or just a thread in the fabric, gardens are pushing the boundaries of the norm further than ever before.  

Crafting Landscapes: How Design Controls Function

By: Chris Melton

This week our Contemporary European Architecture course discussed how architects have the power to create new landscapes using various tools and styles to generate different spaces and forms. These new types of landscapes can be very varied and often serve very different purposes. The five categories that we discussed are: Agriculture, Urban Culture, Hortus Culture, Promenade, and Natural Architecture. For this week's blog post I would like to discuss the differences between two of these categories by comparing and contrasting a few specific examples and how their design relates to, and in fact controls, their function.

The first work I would like to talk about is one from the Agriculture category, which usually has the strongest drive or goal of any of the categories of landscape architecture we discussed. From what we viewed and studied, the main concept for Agriculture works was to give the land a new purpose other than just inhabitation. This form of architecture requires that the architect must know not just the site, but the true culture of the land itself. The architect must know not only the site and city, but the area's soil, weather patterns, the seasonal changes that occur, and etc. Deemed "Urban Waterscape," designed by Altelier Dreiseitl, the system of green roofs and pools on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Germany is a great example of an agricultural landscape. As shown in the diagram below, the 19 green roofs in the system both use the collected rainwater for functional purposes as well as for visual purposes. About half of the collected water is used for irrigation, for the pools and canals in the area, while the rest is used to flush lavatories and by fire extinguishing systems in the buildings. This system also is equipped with cisterns that store the extra water in the event of excess rain. While this project doesn't necessarily 'give' the land back to the citizens, the idea is to use the land in a more efficient way that current. Also, one should note that the urban waterbody is certainly an attraction in itself, and one cannot deny the lasting sustainable effects this project will have for Berlin in the future.

The next project that I would like to discuss is the newly constructed Hypar Pavilion in front of the Lincoln Center in Manhattan, NY. This project would fall under the Urban Garden category, which usually have the following elements in common: some sort of programmatic component, usually one or more facades, as well as a strong 'connection' component, connecting the urban structure with its surroundings. The goal for this type of landscape architecture is to convert the land used into its own architectural element that could stand on its own without other functions and etc. Well, the Hypar Pavilion by Diller Scofidio & Renfro certainly fulfills all of these and more; in a very sleek and modern way. As shown in the picture below, the strongest component in this structure is the 7,200-square-foot green roof, which unlike the Urban Waterscape by Dreiseitl, was made to be inhabited. This became one of the strongest elements of the project, using nature as a surface, which combined the wants for a jungle, roof, and a pizza all into one. It should be mentioned that underneath this roof is a high-class dining experience, and together these components help bring both citizens and tourists into the area that otherwise might not frequent there at all. This pavilion is most certainly a true rendition of an Urban Garden. 

While both of these projects are aesthetically and functionally very different, I feel like they both serve their intended purpose beautifully. The Urban Waterscape by Dreiseitl gives the citizens something to view, whily using the already inhabited real estate of 19 buildings to give back even more to Berlin; providing a lasting sustainable model for other architects to follow. While the Hypar Pavilion literally gives visitors of the Lincoln Center a green respite from the concrete jungle that surrounds it, which would certainly be a stop on my list if I were to ever visit Manhattan. The architects for both of these projects should be very proud. For they each used their designs to meet the needs of the city, respectively, and by doing that, they controlled and impacted how the people will use these spaces for years to come, which in my opinion, will be for the better.