Forming 42 between 1967 and 1968 to illuminate the actions involved in creating sculpture. The list contained, among others, to roll, to crease, to fold, to store, to bend, to shorten, to twist, to dapple, to crumple, to shave, to tear, to chip, to split, to cut, to sever, to drop, to remove, to simplify, to differ, to disarrange, to open, to mix, to splash, to knot, to spell, to droop, to flow, to curve, to lift, to inlay, to impress, to fire, to flood, to smear, to rotate, to swirl, to support, to hook, to suspend, to spread, to hand, to collect – of tension, of gravity, of entropy, of nature, of grouping, of layering, of felting – to grasp, to tighten, to bundle, to heap, to gather, to scatter, to arrange, to repair, to discard, to pair, to distribute, to surfeit, to complement, to enclose, to surround, to encircle, to hide, to cover, to wrap, to dig, to tie, to bind, to weave, to join, to match, to laminate, to bond, to hinge, to mark, to expand, to dilute, to light, to modulate, to distil – of waves, of electromagnetism, of inertia, of ionization, of polarization, of refraction, of simultaneity, of tides, of reflection, of equilibrium, of symmetry, of friction – to stretch, to bounce, to erase, to spray, to systematize, to refer, to force – of mapping, of location, of context, of time, of carbonization – to continue.64 Serra also used nouns that referred to structural conditions such as gravity and equilibrium.65 Decades after Casting first appeared, Serra was invited to create a similar process piece for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.66 The castings are similar, but not exact, and in this way he was inviting chance to enter the process. Since process art emphasizes the process of creation over fixed forms and compositions, chance features in the art. Since chances are instances of events in the absence of any apparent intention to cause such events, process art challenges predetermined designs and forms. Moreover, process art also includes events and forces that are part of natural processes, which are continually subject to chance.67 Why form generation matters Form generation can be very constructive for students just beginning to design. The employment of action verbs as proxy to form, in particular, equips students with a method to aid in the production of design. By shifting the emphasis from predetermined forms to different actions resulting in the generation of form, students can dissipate limitations and explore new opportunities and relationships with the site. Form generation matters to landscape design because it liberates the design process from a concern with final forms to forms as a result of processes and methods. Another valuable dimension of process art to landscape design is its inclusion of time as part of the process. Faye Ran differentiates Process Art from Minimalist Art noting, “Often Process Art works incorporated the influence of natural forces such as gravity, or that combined disintegrative Do you think if Serra created castings again he would get the same results?
Forming 43 forces of time and nature. The timelessness and structural stability of Minimal Art was supplanted by a Process Art focused on event, sequence, change and impermanence, creative variability and mutability.”68 Thus, the inclusion of natural forces and unrepeatability also play a role in the generative process. In fact after Casting, Serra was known for his sculptural work placed outdoors and comprised of CorTen steel, a material that oxidizes over time and gives the material’s surfaces a rusty colour. Since chance and the influences of natural forces can be made part of form generation, the design anticipates this change. This is highly relevant to landscapes because they do not exist inside climate-controlled buildings. They are outside where processes of growth and decay, fluctuations in weather, gravity, wind, fire, and so on play an influential role in form generation. Form generation in action Action verbs as proxy Serra’s use of verbs in his work is linked to form generation. When an artist is able to work directly with materials, verbs enable this design process. Yet, unless you are engaged in design build (or if you’re like the landscape architect A.E. Bye who sometimes designed his landscapes with his pickup truck) the act of design is typically separated from the act of constructing the landscape. To more directly link these two processes, the landscape architects Kathryn Gustafson and Neil Porter use clay models to design. While clay is not the surface of the earth, it approximates the material, and the act of form generation. Look at the image of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain, located in Hyde Park, London. Gustafson’s and Porter’s design was eventually modelled digitally, but initial explorations in clay enabled a starting point for creating forms that called forth the actions of Princess Diana. For Gustafson, “This memorial expresses the concept of ‘Reaching out – letting in’,” which reflects the actions of an inclusive, people’s princess. She let people into her life by reaching out to them. It is composed of 545 sections of Cornish granite; the memorial’s design also generates more diverse actions, such as “bubble” and “swoosh,” and since these forms shape the water, there is an auditory component to the design as well.69 Abstract archaeology Hargreaves Associates also works extensively with sand and clay models to generate what they refer to as an “abstract archaeology.” This approach does not attempt to blend in with the existing terrain of the site; rather the designed landscape is abstracted from both the cultural and natural artefacts of the site – Can you see the verbs described by Gustafson in the design?
Forming 44 1.22 The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain (2004) by Gustafson Porter, Hyde Park, London, England 1.23 Guadalupe River Park (1990) by Hargreaves Associates, image courtesy of Hargreaves Associates, San Jose, California, USA
Forming 45 its topography, past use, geomorphology, and hydrology. The landscape architect Karen M’Closkey notes, “Clay models are not images in the way that drawings and diagrams are. The clay is not notational or pictorial; rather, it is a transformable, malleable, and homogenous substance . . . the clay enables the designers to focus on the form of the ground and the importance of sectional change for guiding movement.”70 Look at Hargreaves Associates’ Guadalupe River Park just after grading was performed. Miniature and panorama Scaling informs the landscape architect Günther Vogt’s theory of Miniature and Panorama. Conducting extensive fieldwork as part of the design process, Vogt notes, The geographer works through a survey scope, the botanist through a lens and the biologist through a microscope. They all share the same starting point, in that proximity to and distance from the analysed object is first conveyed via different scientific methods of analysis . . . Concentrating on detail activates several senses. In course of close examination, we see, smell and taste a complex entity of landscape.71 Miniature scales down while Panorama scales up elements of the existing landscape (natural and cultural) to create new forms. Look at the image of Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout created by the artist Dan Graham with Günther Vogt. Here, the rooftop landscape of the Metropolitan Museum of Art provides multiple scales of discovery. The hedges refer to the American suburban gardens and the architectural glass represents the glass buildings of midtown Manhattan. The rooftop looks just above the treeline of Central Park and continues the panorama, while the skyline of Manhattan is reflected in the glass as well as the visitor herself looking at the work. Look at the image of the Plaza for SIA Hochhaus (the Swiss Engineers and Architects Association) by Vogt Landscape Architects, in Zurich. Here, naturally occurring pebbles found near the river were brought to the Vogt office and studied. They eventually gave form to five larger-than-life site features, some containing water or plants.72 The irregular placement of these features play against the repeated lighter sandblasted circles, whose dimensions are based on manhole covers. Can you see how the clay played a role in its form generation? Why do you think the forms of these elements mimic their opposites? For example the curving architectural glass stands in for a rectilinear glass box, while the rectilinear hedge references the organic greenery of the park?
Forming 46 1.24 Hedge Two-Way Mirror Walkabout (2014) by Dan Graham with Günther Vogt, image courtesy of Vogt Landscape Architects, New York City, USA 1.25 The Plaza for SIA Hochhaus (2006–2008) by Vogt Landscape Architects, image courtesy of Christian Vogt, Zurich, Switzerland
Forming 47 Patterning Patterning gives a regular reoccurring arrangement to form. In the Language chapter you will read about natural landscape patterns serving as a language and in the System chapter patterning is discussed as part of digital systems. Patterning, here, refers to form generation sampled from architectural geometries. Look at the image of the garden conceived by Gabriel Guevrekian (1892–1970) for the Villa Noailles designed by Robert Mallet-Stevens. According to the landscape architectural historian Dorothée Imbert, “In spite of its contrasting forms and colors, the garden established a relation between the site and the villa’s architecture, the former determining the overall triangular shape, the latter, the points from which the garden would be seen. As a pattern extending outward from the interior, the garden was purely deocrative.”73 The square terraces originally contained tulips and coloured tiles, as well as a pool. Today the terraces contain ice plants with tiles coloured yellow, red, blue, grey, and the architectonic ensemble is still distinct from the rough stones walls and olive trees that now dominate this hilltop site. Do you see how these features of the landscape express Vogt’s notion of panorama? 1.26 Garden for the Villa Noailles (restored) by Gabriel Guevrekian, Hyères, France What forms remain constant in this pattern created by Guevrekian?
Forming 48 Garden of movement One of the most basic form generators available to landscape architects is the growth and movement of plants. While plants are frequently thought of as stationary, particularly in the creation of a planting plan, many plant species move creating their own formal qualities. Gilles Clément’s theory of the Garden of Movement employs this idea. According to Clément “plants travel. Especially Herbs. They move in silence, nothing can be done about the wind.”74 At SaintNazaire, France, Clément instigated three gardens (Le Bois de Trembles, Le Jardin des Orpins et des Graminées, Le Jardin des Étiquettes) for three different areas of a former German submarine base. Look at image of Le Jardin des Étiquettes. Clément installed a thin layer of soil that will receive seeds brought by the wind, the birds, and by visitors. Twice a year, the new plants are identified and labelled to record this process. Form generation debated In the art world it has been charged that openness to chance and natural processes was sometimes quite narrow, as artists often limited their work to one process while controlling the others. Consider Walter De Maria’s Lightning Field (1977) in 1.27 Le Jardin des Étiquettes (2012) by Gilles Clément, image courtesy of Jean-Pierre Dalbéra https:// creativecommons. org/licenses/by/2.0/, Saint-Nazaire, France How did Clément generate form in this project, by the shape of the soil layer?
Forming 49 New Mexico, where electrical discharges of high voltage between clouds and the ground is the art form. The Field that is the selected art process consists of 400 polished stainless steel columns installed in a grid array. The columns are spaced approximately 67 meters apart. At first glance this may seem like a Minimalist Art work but it is the chance occurrence of the natural electrical discharge that was the goal of the experience of Lightning Field. James Nisbet argues, Although the poles are grounded for electrical charge, they are not standard, manufactured lightning rods, but two welded pieces of type 304 stainless steel, a material most notable for its resistance to oxidation. Though the poles are effectively lightning rods, their design speaks more to guarding against the appearance of time than to the capture of lightning.75 One of the most heavily debated projects, however, was the installation and removal of Serra’s Tilted Arc at the Federal Plaza in New York City. Serra’s 40-meter-long and 4-meter-high, 15-ton steel slab of CorTen steel cut across the Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan blocking the plaza’s use by tenants of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building and Court of International Trade (later Customs Court) and neighbouring community members.76 Tenants also argued that they were given no opportunity to voice their opinions on Tilted Arc before it was installed under the direction of the General Service Administration. The controversy over Tilted Arc changed the way the public was involved in the selection of art in the landscape. After the removal of Serra’s sculpture, the landscape architect Martha Schwartz designed a new landscape and her design proposal was displayed in the building lobby before its installation, so people could give their opinions.77 Primary reading for form generation Georges Bataille, “Formless.” Laura Petican, “The Arte Povera Experience: Nature Re-presented.” Faye Ran, A History of Installation Art and the Development of New Art Forms: Technology and the Hermeneutics of Time and Space in Modern and Postmodern Art from Cubism to Installation. Richard Serra, Carmen Gimenez, and Hal Foster, Richard Serra: The Matter of Time. THEORETICAL GROUNDINGS OF INTERVENTIONS Streets for paint-brushes we’ll use, our palettes – squares with their wide open space. Revolution’s days have yet to be sung by the thousand year book of time. Into the streets, the crowds among, futurists, drummers, masters of rhyme! (excerpt from “An Order to the Art Army,” Vladimir Mayakovsky, March 1918)78
Forming 50 To intervene means to come between events in order to alter them. You could intervene in an argument among friends to prevent a fight, for example. Interventions in art and design follow a similar trajectory in seeking to alter what people think, or know. This is a poem by the poet, playwright, and actor Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930), who was one of the founders of Russian Futurism and spokesperson for avant-garde art emerging after the Russian Revolution. One of the aims of the Soviet avant-garde during the early twentieth century was the production of art within the folds of the public sphere.79 Mayakovsky and his comrades sought to unite daily life and art and to provoke the public. Thus, interventions are located in between, on top, or within existing sites or objects in the site. They are highly relevant to forming in design because their forms respond to existing forms at the site of interception. They are also “site specific” works in publically accessible locations, taking advantage of the public as an audience. As Malcolm Miles notes, “One of the implications of interventionist art, and the point at which it departs from integrated urban design is its expansion of the definition of the location of art from physical site to public realm.”80 Thus, form is directly related to the interventionist strategies to communicate with people. Interventions also build upon the conceptual art movement. Conceptual art “rejects traditional artistic media because it locates the artwork at the level of ideas rather than that of objects.”81 Thus, a defining feature of interventions is the goal to engage viewers cognitively. This doesn’t mean I am unable to find conceptual art beautiful or ugly, but this is not the main intent of the conceptual artist, or the interventionist. This dimension of interventions, changing the way a landscape is understood or perceived, is an important aspect of interventions. The criticality of interventions can be traced to Marxist, feminist, and ecological critiques. In the 1980s, for example, the Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous feminist collective, began papering the walls outside of major museums with posters and stickers that highlighted the underrepresentation of female artists in museums all over the world. Using statistical information and humour in posters they decried: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.”82 The Guerrilla Girls underscored the discriminatory practices of the art world that are not considered by the average museum patrons. By revealing cultural practices that might have been overlooked, they prompt you to pause and reconsider these practices. Look at the image of Michael Pinsky’s intervention, Plunge, at the Duke of York Column. Pinsky placed a ring of low energy, blue LED lights at the highest elevation predicted by scientists for the sea level rise in 3012. What do you think he meant by “Streets for paint-brushes we’ll use, our palettes – squares with their wide-open space”?
Forming 51 Interventions do not require a redesign of the site. Pinsky did not redesign Waterloo Place and Gardens where the Duke of York Column is located, rather he attached the ring to the column itself drawing attention to this particular space and its vulnerability for inundation with the rise in sea levels over time. In other words interventions typically exploit what they are intervening on as part of their critique. Pinsky selected iconic vertical elements of the London landscape (he also installed rings around the Seven Dials Sundial Pillar and the Paternoster Square Column). In addition to acting critically, interventions can also inject humour and playfulness into the landscape. Agustina Woodgate created Hopscotch with 1100 1.28 Plunge (2012) by Michael Pinsky, produced by Artsadmin and LIFT, image courtesy of Kristian Buus, London, England Why do you think he did this? Would you start to see the city of London in a new way if you encountered this intervention, underwater perhaps? Do you see how the form of his intervention responds to existing forms? Why do you think he intervened on these objects, instead of others? Are their locations significant as well?
Forming 52 Numbers, as part of a site-specific street intervention for the Playpublik Festival, in Krakow, Poland.83 The intervention travels hundreds of meters along the sidewalk, in and out of drains and through parks and plazas in the city. People play along the hopscotch changing their daily use and interactions with the urban landscape. Similar to process art, interventions emerged as a way of shifting value from the end process of an object to process itself.84 Thus many interventions are often temporary. Yet, temporality is not required for something to be an intervention. Pinsky’s rings were temporary, but they could have been installed permanently. Lastly, interventions don’t necessarily need to be sanctioned by the institution or municipality that owns and maintains the landscape. Examples of guerrilla interventions entail intervening in places often unbeknownst to the general public or even the owner of the landscape. Why interventions matter Interventions seldom alter the entire existing site, and they are rarely permanent. Thus, interventions can potentially create less physical disturbance to an existing site, and they can also be less expensive. In fact many established landscape architects began their careers by designing interventions. Yet, most importantly, interventions enable design to operate critically. In contrast to other theories, such as functionalism, interventions don’t seek to resolve an issue, rather they attempt to bring to bear an issue or practice, or – in the case of Pinsky’s Plunge – an impending event, in order to prompt people’s awareness and ultimately action. Unfortunately, interventions are not always successful. In 2011, 30 years after their original interventions, the Guerrilla Girls found that “4% of the artists in the Modern and Contemporary sections were women, and 76% of the nudes were female.”85 In many ways the rise of interventions in the 1980s parallel concern over the expression of public art and public debate prompted by the translation of the sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. 86 Habermas’s account links the rise of mass media and consumer culture in Britain, Europe, and the United States with the decline of the liberal bourgeois public sphere in those countries. The public sphere transformed from a culturedebating public where the liberal bourgeois learned to critically reflect upon and debate aspects of society to a culture-consuming public sphere where the liberal bourgeois were simply spectators and consumers of images. Habermas found emancipation in the culture-debating public, and some types of art and landscape interventions seek to recover this debate literally within public space. Interventions in action Temporality Interventions are often temporary, lasting one day or a few months, and some interventions exploit their temporality. The urban intervention artist Néle Azevedo
Forming 53 uses the melting of ice to do just this in numerous interventions throughout the world. Look at the image of Minimum Monument. She created 1,000 figures of men and women, around 20 cm in height, out of ice, and placed them on the steps in the central Gendarmenmarkt Square in Berlin. Their placement coincided with the release of a report by the Geneva conference on global warming and climate change, and the miniature figures began to melt within minutes of the installation and didn’t even make it through the afternoon. Manyness Interventions can also involve manyness, or the state of being many in number, numerousness, or multiplicity. In Italy workers from different industries came together to install 10,000 yellow construction helmets at the square outside the stock exchange in Milan. The day of installation was called La Giornata della Collera, or The Day of Anger. Participants ranged from construction workers to architects – industries all crippled by the economic turmoil of 2008. For the artist Ai Weiwei numbers play a haunting role in remembering. He used 9,000 children’s backpacks to intervene on the façade of the Haus der Kunst in Munich, 1.29 Minimum Monument Urban Intervention © Néle Azevedo, image courtesy Néle Azevedo, Santiago de Chile, 22 August 2012 What do you think the artist’s intent was? How did the temporality of the ice enhance this concept?
Forming 54 Germany. Entitled Remembering, each backpack represents a life lost in the earthquake that occurred in the Chinese province of Sichuan in 2008. Borrowing the colour scheme (blue, red, green, yellow) from the Toys ‘R’ Us Logo,87 Ai Weiwei wrote with the bags a quote from one of the mothers of the earthquake victims. “Seven years she lived happily on this earth.” Look at the image of Remembering. Subtraction Interventions do not necessarily add to the landscapes, they can also subtract. Look at the image of Bunker 599, by Atelier de Lyon & Rietveld ArchitectureArt-Affordances. The bunker dates to 1940 and it is one among 700 that were constructed as part of the Dutch military line of defence commencing in 1815. The designers cut out and removed a section of the heavy concrete structure. They also designed a walkway running through the cut section and out to the water, which was integral to the original defence strategy. The subtraction of a slice of the bunker enables visitors to inhabit the bunker’s interior, which is typically cut off from view completely. Ronald Rietveld explained, “Our aim with the 1.30 Remembering, So Sorry (2010) exhibit by Ai Weiwei, image courtesy of Sanfamedia https:// creativecommons. org/licenses/ by-nd/2.0/, Haus der Kunst, München, How do the numbers factor into this project? Germany What is the significance of the colours?
Forming 55 project was to question the policies on monuments by doing this intervention.”88 By slicing through the heavily fortified bunker, the public can see the secretive quarter, which at one time housed 13 soldiers. Subversive Sometimes interventions can be subversive, meaning they to seek to undermine an established practice, system, or institution. In most North American cities people are prohibited from using fruit-bearing trees as street trees. As a result in cities such as San Francisco thousands of ornamental varieties of cherry and pears trees are planted, which do not provide food for human consumption. The Guerrilla Grafters, a grassroots collective, attempted to challenge this practice by grafting fruit-bearing plant branches onto the branches of ornamental fruit trees lining the streets of San Francisco. Guerrilla Grafters Tara Hui argues “We don’t have a supermarket and we have very few produce stores here . . . What better to alleviate scarcity of healthy produce in an impoverished area than to grow them yourself and to have it available for free.”89 1.31 Bunker 599 (2010) by Atelier de Lyon & Rietveld ArchitectureArt-Affordances, image courtesy of Kees Lokman, Culemborg, The Netherlands How do you think their intervention was challenging policies on monuments?
Forming 56 Interventions debated Interventions that engage the public or are constructed with guerrilla tactics prompt ethical considerations. Miles differentiates interventions from integration, in that intervention “ruptures the illusions of consensus,”90 while an integrated design scheme organizes forms so as to provide a harmonious, interrelated whole. The standard design for street trees involves a selection of tree types that are usually regulated by municipalities with the consensus idea that the trees should be low maintenance with minimal litter and reduced height so as to not interfere with power lines and drainage. Guerrilla Grafters challenge this assumption by grafting fruit-bearing twigs onto the sterile trees. The philosopher Jennifer A. McMahon argues for a pragmatist version of site-specific installations or interventions. She notes that they “raise our awareness of the kind of inferences we make regarding certain objects, and that when left unexamined, we treat as simply a given.”91 Most people probably think that it is a given that we should not expect the public realm of streets to provide us with fresh fruit. Yet, the public are not always keen to be challenged by interventions. Some interventions have resulted in lawsuits. In Baltimore, a landlord attempted to sue Carol Ott for property damages because of her collaboration with artists belonging to the Wall Hunters, who painted over abandoned buildings. Ott was accused of trespassing and causing “a mural to be erected.”92 Wall Hunters artist Nether argued that the murals were a type of civil disobedience to highlight how the city of Baltimore had failed to address the deleterious condition of the Greenmount East and Sandtown neighbourhoods. Fortunately, a judge dismissed the case. Primary reading for interventions Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Nato Thompson and Gregory Sholette with Joseph Thompson, eds., The Interventionists User’s Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. NOTES 1. Henry Vincent Hubbard and Theodora Kimball, An Introduction to the Study of Landscape Design (New York: Macmillan, 1917), 109. 2. Nick Zangwill, The Metaphysics of Beauty (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 56. What do you think the Guerrilla Grafters are subverting? What complications might arise out of this subversive intervention? The Grafters usually find people living or working near the grafted tree who agree to maintain it, but what happens when these people move?
Forming 57 3. Clive Bell, Art (London: Chatto & Windus, 1914). 4. Noël Carroll, “Formalism,” The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, third edition, eds. Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes (New York: Routledge, 2013), 87–95 (87). 5. Ibid., 91. 6. James Rose, “Freedom in the Garden,” reprinted in Modern Landscape Architecture: A Critical Review, ed. Marc Treib (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), 68–71 (70). 7. See Clement Greenberg, “Towards a Newer Laocoon,” Partisan Review 7, no. 4 (July–August, 1940): 296–310 and Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” Artforum 5 (June 1967): 12–23. 8. Caroline A. Jones, “Form and Formless,” A Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945, ed. Amelia Jones (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 127–142 (128). 9. Garrett Eckbo, Landscape for Living (New York: Architectural Record with Duell, Sloan, & Pearce, 1950), 73. 10. Michael Schreyach, “Conference on the Goals and Limits of Formalism“ (Berlin, 28 November 2014), ArtHist, 3 November 2014 (accessed 18 January 2015), <http:// arthist.net/archive/8823>. 11. Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1966). Foregrounding postmodern architecture, Venturi argued that modern design was actually a dishonest demonstration of functionalism. Modern buildings and cities were made to look functional with pared-down simple lines and regimentally organized spaces. Yet, people’s actual behaviours and the workings of society were complex. This was the contradiction for Venturi. The spaces that looked functional were often dysfunctional. 12. Richard Payne Knight, The Landscape: A Didactic Poem (London: W. Bulmer, 1795), 43. 13. David Jacques, “The Picturesque Debate,” Georgian Gardens: The Reign of Nature (London: B.T. Batsford, 1983), 150–155 (151). 14. Uvedale Price, Essays on the Picturesque: As Compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful (London: J. Mawman, 1810), 296. 15. Ibid., 59. 16. Alan Colquhoun, Modernity and the Classical Tradition: Architectural Essays, 1980–1987 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 14. See also Philip Junod, Transparence et Opacité. Essai sur les fondements théoriques de l’art modern (Lausanne: L’Age d’homme, 1976). 17. Nelson Goodman, Grove Art Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), accessed 2 June 2015, https://www.moma.org/collection/details.php?theme_id=10946 18. See the Information Portal to European Sites of Remembrance, a project of the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, accessed 2 June 2015, www. memorialmuseums.org/eng/staettens/view/973/Shoes-on-the-Danube-Promenade. 19. Catherine Dee, To Design Landscape: Art, Nature and Utility (New York: Routledge, 2012), 30. 20. Rosalind E. Krauss, “The Double Negative: A New Syntax for Sculpture,” in Passages in Modern Sculpture (New York: Viking Press, 1977; 1981), 243–288 (245). 21. Douglas C. Allen, “Tanner Fountain,” in Peter Walker, Experiments in Gesture, Seriality, and Flatness, ed. Linda L. Jewell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1990), 14–19 (16). 22. John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (New York: Wiley & Halsted, 1857), 114. 23. Ibid., note 35. 24. Lassus attended workshops by Fernand Léger who argued for “color was not subordinated to mass but seen as its necessary compliment.” See Mohsen Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow, On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 92. 25. Michel Conan, Crazannes Quarries by Bernard Lassus (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2004), 101.
Forming 58 26. Ibid., 110. 27. Marc Treib, “The Content of Landscape Form [The Limits of Formalism],” Landscape Journal 20, no. 2 (2001): 119–140 (124). 28. Joan Iverson Nassauer, “Messy Ecosystems, Orderly Frames,” Landscape Journal 14, no. 2 (1997): 161–170 (168). 29. Ibid. 30. Heinrich Wölfflin, “Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture,” Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893, eds. and trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou (Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1993), 149–189 (151). 31. Kimberly A. Smith, “Introduction,” The Expressionist Turn in Art History: A Critical Anthology (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 1–51 (13). 32. Manuela Lenzen, “Feeling Our Emotions,” Scientific American (2005), accessed 2 June 2015, www.scientificamerican.com/article/feeling-our-emotions/. 33. Derek Matravers, “Art, Expression and Emotion,” The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, third edition, eds. Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 404–414 (407). Here, Matravers is distancing contemporary expression theory from the writer Leo Tolstoy’s theory of expression. Tolstoy held that art expressed what the artist was feeling, sometimes even when in the act of making something, but this theory has been refuted (see Leo Tolstoy, What is Art? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969)). 34. Ibid., 410. 35. Dominic McIver Lopes, Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 84–86. 36. Susan Herrington, “Gardens Can Mean,” Landscape Journal 26, no. 2 (2007): 302–317. 37. See Jan Slaby “Emotions and the Extended Mind,” Collective Emotions: Perspectives from Psychology, Philosophy, and Sociology, eds. Christian von Scheve and Mikko Salmela (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 38. Laurie Olin, “What did I mean then and now?” Meaning in Landscape Architecture and Gardens, ed. Marc Treib (New York: Routledge, 2011), 72–81, 79. Original article: Laurie Olin, “Form, Meaning, and Expression in Landscape Architecture,” Landscape Journal 7, no. 2 (1988): 149–168. 39. Belzec Memorial, accessed 3 June 2015, www.deathcamps.org/belzec/memorial. html. 40. See Philip Jodidio, Landscape Architecture Now! = Landschafts-Architektur heute! = Paysages contemporains! (Cologne: Taschen, 2012), 74. 41. David Haney, “‘No House Building without Garden Building!’ (‘Kein Hausbau ohne Landbau!’): The Modern Landscapes of Leberecht Migge,” Journal of Architectural Education 54, no. 3 (2001): 149–157 (150). 42. Thorbjörn Andersson, “Erik Glemme and the Stockholm Park System,” Modern Landscape Architecture: A Critical Review, ed. Marc Treib (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), 114–133 (131). 43. Ibid. 44. Adrian Forty, “Function,” Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 174–195 (180). 45. Louis H. Sullivan, “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,” Lippincott’s Magazine (March 1896): 403–409. 46. See David Jacques and Jan Woudstra, Landscape Modernism Renounced: The Career of Christopher Tunnard (1910–1979) (New York: Routledge, 2009), 32. Tunnard even appeared in the BBC in March of 1938 describing how to lay out a modern lot. 47. Christopher Tunnard, Gardens in the Modern Landscape (London: The Architectural Press, 1938), 69.
Forming 59 48. Forty, “Function,” 184. 49. Tunnard, Gardens in the Modern Landscape (1948), 102. 50. Ibid., 103. 51. Norman T. Newton, An Approach to Design (Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley Press, 1951), 113. 52. Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson, Functional Beauty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2008), 126–127. They charge that Immanuel Kant’s formalism and the way philosophers of art interpreted his theory of disinterestedness excluded function from aesthetic appreciation. 53. Ibid., 78. 54. Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 34. 55. Alissa North, Operative Landscapes: Building Communities through Public Space (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2013), 6. 56. Anneke Bokern, “Water Squares Rotterdam,” Topos 90 Resilient Cities and Landscapes (2015): 78–83. 57. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961), 18. 58. See Peter Eisenman, “Post-Functionalism,” Oppositions 6 (Fall 1976): i–iii. 59. Anita Berrizbeitia, “Hargreaves Associates: Key Words and Phrases,” Hargreaves Associates: Landscape Alchemy (San Francisco: ORO Editions, 2009), 60–66 (65). 60. Udo Weilacher, Between Landscape Architecture and Land Art (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1996), 105. For the debate between Treib and me see Susan Herrington, “Gardens Can Mean,” Meaning in Landscape Architecture and Gardens, ed. Marc Treib (New York: Routledge, 2011) 174–204 (181). Also see Marc Treib, “Must Landscapes Mean? Approaches to Significance in Recent Landscape Architecture,” Landscape Journal 14, no. 1 (1995): 46–62. 61. Marc Treib, Settings and Stray Paths: Writings on Landscapes and Gardens (New York: Routledge, 2005), 80. 62. The Arte Povera was coined in 1967 by the Italian art critic and curator, Germano Celan. Arte Povera artists employed materials not normally associated with traditional art, such as animals, vegetables, and plants. See Laura Petican, “The Arte Povera Experience: Nature Re-presented,” Meaning of Abstract Art between Theory and Nature, eds. Paul Crowther and Isabel Wunsche (London: Routledge, 2012), 184–197. 63. Richard Serra and Clara Weyergraf-Serra, Richard Serra, Interviews, Etc., 1970–1980 (Yonkers, NY: The Hudson River Museum, 1980), 181. 64. See Lisa Saltzman, Making Memory Matter: Strategies of Remembrance in Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 91. 65. Richard Serra, Carmen Gimenez, and Hal Foster, Richard Serra: The Matter of Time (Gottingen: Steidl Verlag, 2006), 49. 66. Kenneth Baker, “Richard Serra and the Materiality of Sculpture,” SFGATE, 11 April 2010, accessed 3 June 2015, www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Richard-Serraand-the-materiality-of-sculpture-3267846.php. 67. Douglas Crimp, “Richard Serra: Sculpture Exceeded,” October, 18 (Autumn, 1981): 67–78 (78). 68. Faye Ran, A History of Installation Art and the Development of New Art Forms: Technology and the Hermeneutics of Time and Space in Modern and Postmodern Art from Cubism to Installation (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 166. 69. Landezine, “Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain by Gustafson Porter,” accessed 3 June 2015, www.landezine.com/index.php/2014/11/diana-princess-ofwales-memorial-fountain-by-gustafson-porter-landscape-architecture/. 70. Karen M’Closkey, Unearthed: The Landscapes of Hargreaves Associates (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 13.
Forming 60 71. Günther Vogt, “Visual Essay,” Miniature and Panorama: Vogt Landscape Architects, Projects 2000–12 (Zurich: Lars Müller, 2012), 24–27 (24). 72. Vogt, Miniature and Panorama: Vogt Landscape Architects, Projects 2000–12, 258– 265 (259). 73. Dorothée Imbert, The Modernist Garden in France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 132. 74. Gilles Clément and Philippe Rahm, Environ(ne)ment : manières d’agir pour demain, ed. Giovanna Borasi (New York: Rizzoli, 2006), 17. 75. James Nisbet, “A Brief Moment in the History of Photo-Energy: Walter De Maria’s Lightning Field,” Grey Room 50 (Winter 2013): 66–89 (76). 76. Clara Weyergraf and Martha Buskirk, Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc (Eindhoven: Van Abbemuseum, 1988) 110. For a legal description of Tilted Arc’s removal see Barbara Hoffman, “Law for Art’s Sake in the Public Realm,” Art and Public Sphere, ed. William J. T. Mitchell (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 113–146. 77. Harriet F. Senie, The Tilted Arc Controversy: Dangerous Precedents? (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). 78. See “Vladimir Mayakovsky: The Poet of the Revolution,” Socialist Worker, accessed 20 January 2016, http://socialistworker.co.uk/art/2935/Vladimir+Mayakovsky%3A+th e+poet+of+the+revolution. 79. Gregory Sholette, “Interventionism and the Historical Uncanny,” The Interventionists User’s Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life, eds. Nato Thompson and Gregory Sholette with Joseph Thompson (North Adams, MA: MASS MoCa Publications, 2004), 133–141. 80. Malcolm Miles, Art, Space and the City (New York: Routledge, 1997), 207. 81. Elisabeth Schellekens, “Conceptual Art,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (2014), accessed 5 November 2014, http://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/win2014/entries/conceptual-art. 82. Guerrilla Girls, accessed January 31, 2015, www.guerrillagirls.com/posters/venicewallf. shtml. 83. Woodgate has created hopscotch installations in other cities we well. See Agustina Woodgate, “Temporary Contemporary,” accessed 3 June 2015, https://www.bassmuseum.org/tc/agustina-woodgate-tc-temporary-contemporary-2/. 84. Miles, Art, Space and the City, 205. 85. Christopher Bollen, “Guerrilla Girls,” Interview Magazine, accessed 20 January 2015, www.interviewmagazine.com/art/guerrilla-girls#_. 86. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1962; 1989). 87. Ai Weiwei with Anthony Pins, Ai Weiwei: Spatial Matters, Art Architecture and Activism (London: Tate Publishing, 2013), 418. 88. “Movie Shows Concrete Bunker Cut in Half by RAAAF and Atelier de Lyon,” dezeen magazine, accessed 3 June 2015, www.dezeen.com/2013/12/11/ movie-concrete-bunker-cut-in-half-raaaf-atelier-de-lyon/. 89. Lonny Shavelson,“Guerrilla Grafters Bring Forbidden Fruit Back to City Trees,” The Salt (7 April 2012), accessed 3 June 2015, www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/04/07/150142001/ guerrilla-grafters-bring-forbidden-fruit-back-to-city-trees. 90. Miles, Art, Space and the City, 205. 91. Jennifer A. McMahon, Art and Ethics in a Material World: Kant’s Pragmatist Legacy (London: Routledge, 2014). 92. Edward Ericson Jr., “Judge Dismisses Landlord’s Suit against Housing,” City Paper (10 September 2014), accessed 4 June 2015, www.citypaper.com/blogs/the-news-hole/ bcp-judge-dismisses-landlords-suit-against-housing-blogger-20140910,0,1002646.story.
61 2 Spatial practices Space – its characteristics, measurements, and consequences – witnessed significant changes during the twentieth century. The subject of space not only occupied those working in physics, math, and psychology, but also in landscape architecture, as space became a central feature in design. While modern landscape architects sought to construct theories of enclosed space and space as a continuum, these conceptions gave way to more fluid ideas of embodied space, and the way space figures prominently in human memory. Space is immaterial, meaning that it does not consist of matter, but rather its perception is shaped by it. Regardless of this fact, however, space correlates with power and spatial theories regarding power and landscapes include individuals or groups who are often excluded from power relations. Indeed, their status as Other might offer unique insights into the nature of space for landscape architecture students. THEORETICAL GROUNDINGS OF SPATIAL CONSTRUCTS We all carry the dominant coordinate of the axial system within ourselves in the vertical line that runs from head to toe . . . The spatial construct is so to speak, an emanation of the human being present, a projection from within the subject, irrespective of whether we physically place ourselves inside the space or mentally project ourselves into it.1 (August Schmarsow, “Essence of Architectural Creation,” 1893) This is the art historian August Schmarsow (1853–1936) attempting to describe the art of architecture as a corporeal, spatial experience, and thus, an explicitly spatial construction by the designer. Schmarsow sought to devise a theory of sensory space as an alternative to theories on form and vision espoused by Wölfflin discussed in the Forming chapter, and which posited that form in architecture derived from the empathetic responses of human form.2 What do you think he means by “a projection from within the subject, irrespective of whether we physically place ourselves inside the space or mentally project ourselves into it”?
Spatial practices 62 As the architect Harry Francis Mallgrave explains, “Because of the organization of the human body, we always give space direction; the orientation of the face and limbs determine what is ahead and whether we are moving backwards or forward.”3 Spatial constructs are anticipated because you understand space, 2.1 Brovaktarparken (2014) entrance from urban area by Nod Combine, Stockholm, Sweden 2.2 Brovaktarparken (2014) entrance from the park side, by Nod Combine, Stockholm, Sweden
Spatial practices 63 according to Schmarsow, by moving through it, usually forward. Some designers exploit the directional movement of the body through space. Compare the two images of Brovaktarparken, designed by Nod Combine, in Stockholm. According to the landscape architect and architect, Magnus Schön, the heavily planted entrance to the small park relates to people moving from the Hornsberg park system along the river, while the stone landscape refers to access coming from the city centre. Historically, landscape architects were early adopters of “space” and its organization became a salient dimension of design.4 Charles Downing Lay (1877–1956) in his 1918 article for Landscape Architecture magazine noted space composition as a common trait among the arts, and he stressed the importance of its perception in the landscape. “It is not so much, as might be thought, the arrangement of objects with relations to each other (as we might say spacing) so that they will seem agreeably disposed and not crowded, but it is rather such an arrangement as makes the total space immediately apprehended by the mind.”5 In essence, space in landscape design not only requires organization, but its arrangement into a structured whole should be comprehended by those experiencing the landscape. Space served as a theoretical currency among designers, artists, and scientists during the twentieth century, and it became a basic vocabulary in the design professions because it stressed design as an intellectual activity over its association with physical labour. By associating design with the composition of space, designers hoped to distinguish themselves from those engaged in the building trades. The historian Adrian Forty notes, “In so far as architecture had always suffered the slur of being no more than a trade, or a business, the claim to deal with the most immaterial of properties of – ‘space’ – allowed decisively architects to present their labour as mental rather than manual.”6 Moreover, both architects and landscape architects stressed the important psychological contributions made by spatial conditions. Concepts mined from aesthetics, such as empathy, gave psychological import to their work. Translated from the German word “einfühlung” (meaning “feeling into”) in 1909, empathy made possible the idea that something as ethereal as space could shape people’s perceptions and feelings. Tunnard, who was quick to see the design potential of this theory, introduced empathy to landscape architects. Writing in Gardens in the Modern Landscape (1938/1948) he contended that an empathic approach (along with functional and artistic) was key to designing modern landscapes. In his conception of an emphatic approach, Do these seem like two different parks? Do you see how the design exploits the directional quality of movement by the human body?
Spatial practices 64 nature is not to be copied or sentimentalized, neither is she to be overridden. The banishment of the antagonistic, masterful attitude towards Nature, of excessive symmetry, a recognition of the value of tactile qualities in plant material, a grasp of the rhythm and accent, contribute to the supple and fluid adaptation of the site, which is the landscape architect’s chief arbiter of design.7 After the Second World War, space was viewed as a universal sensation that should be emphasized over the styles that attempted to represent feelings. As Treib notes, “space (makes me feel), rather than style (representation of a feeling).”8 Eckbo argued, “We live continuously subjected to space, wherever we go, indoors and out, from birth to death. The experience of space is a common vital human experience, comparable to those of food, sleep, clothing, or sex.”9 Like the basic forms preferred by modern landscape architects discussed in the Forming chapter, it was agreed that average people didn’t need to interpret feelings represented in an object, rather they could feel something from an experience with space. Compare the two images: the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Three Servicemen, both on the National Mall in Washington, DC. 2.3 Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) by Maya Lin, image courtesy of Dave7, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/2.0/deed.en, National Mall, Washington, DC, USA
Spatial practices 65 Look at the image of the Three Servicemen statue. The Three Servicemen statue was erected in response to Lin’s design. 2.4 Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Three Servicemen (1984), also a Vietnam Veterans Memorial by Frederick E. Hart, public domain, National Mall, Washington, DC, USA Can you see how Maya Lin used space to generate a feeling of sombre despair in the visitors? Can you see how the sculptural figures represent feelings for you? Can you think why?
Spatial practices 66 Why spatial constructs matter Landscape architects, whether they are designing on the computer or in-situ, conceive their designs as part of the physical site and site features usually have their own spatial qualities. A project on a vast open prairie landscape will have a spatial condition that is completely different from a small urban lot. Also, the landscape, unlike other spatial practices, is literally open to the sky, which makes understanding the existing spatial conditions of a site challenging. The landscape architect Dame Sylvia Crowe (1901–1997) posited, “Scale in the landscape has to contend with the limitless expanse of the sky,”10 and the presence of the sky in the experience of landscapes should prompt designers to consider scale beyond the human body. These spatial considerations may comprise elements like trees, which can greatly exceed the human scale. Second, the material frequently employed to define space, such as plant material, changes seasonally and over time, making exact definition difficult. At the same time, these challenges have made defining space in landscape architecture all the more interesting. In fact, the perceptive landscape architect exploits the time and the changing shape of space in the design process. The landscape architect Michel Desvigne has analysed time and spatial change using plan and section drawings of his design for Greenwich Millennium Park. His analysis demonstrates the remarkable spatial transformations that are anticipated after the trees were planted. Noel van Dooren notes, “The drawing does 2.5 Arabesque Tree Planting 75-year time-lapse for Brooklyn Bridge Park by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, image courtesy of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Brooklyn, New York, USA 300 Ft. 100% otTotal Trees 330 ft' of Soil Per Tree 5 ft o.c. Planting o YEARS 90% of Total Trees 380 ft3 of Soil Per Tree 6 ft O.c. Planting 5 YEARS 60% of Total Trees 630 ft' of Soil Per Tree 10ft o.c. Planting 30 YEARS 20% of Total Trees 1260 ft' of Soil Per Tree 20 ft o.c. Planting 75 YEARS Arabesque Tree Planting 75 Year Timelapse Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. Landscape Architects P.c. Brooklyn Bridge Park 02 March 2007
Spatial practices 67 not simply explain the development of the forest. It mainly states that there are several independent stages of maturity which have an individual quality in terms of design.”11 Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates has conducted this type of analysis in their design for Brooklyn Bridge Park. At the start of the project the park has 100 percent coverage of planted trees at 5 feet on-centre and 75 years later they anticipate 20 percent tree coverage with trees located at 20 feet on-centre. Spatial constructs in action Enclosing Enclosing space is often one of the first design tasks for students of landscape architecture. The idea of enclosing with vertical and horizontal planes can be traced back to August Schmarsow’s conception of humans as vertical axes who move directionally through a depth of spatial volumes. The base planes, overhead planes, and vertical planes typically define spatial volumes, and during the past four decades these planes have been described in detail in numerous textbooks dedicated to landscape design. Yet, spatial enclosure remains a powerful design tool. The philosopher Stephanie Ross stresses the impact that spatially defined outdoor spaces impart. She notes, “Enclosure brings about a focused attention. It redirects us to the microscopic features of our surroundings and encourages us to reflect on our sensory and bodily engagement with them . . . Enclosure prompts us to imagine, heightening and intensifying the experiences framed by the boundary that encloses and surrounds us.”12 Look at the Geometrical Gardens/Musical Gardens conceived by the landscape architect C. Th. Sørensen (1893–1979). They were composed as a series of hedge-defined rooms shaped in: an ellipse, a circle, a pentagon, a triangle, a square, a hexagon, a heptagon, and an octagon, and pruned at varying heights. Sørensen was inspired by the geometric landforms of the Vikings.13 During the 1950s the Danish manufacturer and art collector Aage Damgaard (1917–1991) was so enthralled by the design that he hired Sørensen to create the garden at a smaller scale at his shirt factory in Herning. Damgaard’s commission, as well as other works of art, was intended for the enjoyment of his factory workers.14 Twenty years ago in memory of C. Th. Sørensen the Association of Danish Landscape Architects planted the Musical Garden at the scale originally intended by the landscape architect. Can you see how the drawings reveal an understanding of the spatial changes to come as part of the conception of the landscape project?
Spatial practices 68 The grid In her essay, “The Originality of the Avant-Garde,” the art critic Rosalind Krauss exposed the fiction of originality perpetuated by avant-garde artists in the 1970s. She pointed out that many of these artists employed similar techniques in their work. She noted, “one figure drawn from avant-garde practice in visual arts, provides an example. This figure is the grid . . . the absolute stasis of the grid, its lack of hierarchy, of center, of inflection, emphasized not only its antireferential character but – more importantly – its hostility to narrative.”15 Indeed, the grid can be seen as a recurring strategy in a number of landscape spatial practices. For example, Dan Kiley believed that the gridded spaces of his landscapes expressed a non-hierarchal spatial continuum of nature and humans. He described his work as “constructed with layers of pattern, volume and time woven together . . . the essence of infinity, the perpetration of nature’s mystery.”16 To weave these patterns together Kiley typically overlapped layers of gridded space with other features. Marc Treib calls this practice slippage, an approach that he has also identified in the work of the architect Mies van der Rohe.17 2.6 Geometrical Gardens/Musical Gardens (1983) by C. Th. Sørensen, image courtesy of Gina Crandell, Herning, Denmark Do you think Tunnard would have described the garden as empathetic?
Spatial practices 69 Slippage Slippage is also employed by Peter Walker and Partners. Using distinctive patterns and landscape elements that slip by each other, they create a design that layers the programmed spaces together. Look at the image of Novartis Headquarters Courtyard, by Peter Walker and Partners, in Basel, Switzerland. Here, a radiating quincunx of Himalayan birch trees, pool, and grass overlap to create slippage. Syncopation Spatial continuum, defined as the flow of space and how the designer controls the experience of this flow, is exemplified by the theory of syncopation. Borrowed from music, syncopation displaces “expected” beats with delay, and this delay invites anticipation.18 Transferred to the design of landscapes, syncopation involves manipulating what people can see, usually with grading or plants, as they move through space. By concealing and revealing views, anticipation and mystery are brought into the experience of the landscape. Several modern landscape architects gleaned this theory from studying Japanese stroll gardens. Cornelia Hahn Oberlander was introduced to syncopation by her landscape architecture professor Lester Collins, who had visited Asia and developed an oeuvre 2.7 Novartis Headquarters Forum 1 Courtyard (2004) by Peter Walker and Partners Landscape Architecture, image courtesy of Peter Walker and Partners Landscape Architecture, Basel, Switzerland Can you see the use of slippage, how the spatial borders of the water channel, tree quincunx, and grass spaces slip by each other?
Spatial practices 70 that blended modern and Chinese garden aesthetics. Oberlander has continued to employ syncopation as it has helped her to think of how people are led through space by design.19 Look at the image of the path, which climbs up to the highest point of Cabecera Park. The hill serves as a visual cue to mark the 90 degree bend of water flow of the Turia River before it is channelled through the city of Valencia. Atop the hill affords expansive views of the city and the designers used a classic syncopation technique to prompt your anticipation as you wind your way up. Living tectonics Expanding Kenneth Frampton’s tectonic theory of architecture to landscape architecture, Jane Hutton stresses how the growth and maintenance of a landscape must be part of its conception. Using Central Park as her focus, she describes the often hidden but constructive role played by the ground layers of the park and the dynamics of living tectonics. She also proposes maintenance as construction. Hutton writes, “subtraction of vegetation through maintenance is paradoxically linked to growth.”20 At Central Park Frederick Law Olmsted, “wagering that the removal of 300 cords of wood would stimulate the same amount of re-growth within two years cited thirty-nine sources in a directive for continued removals.”21 This is an interpretation of tectonics that is unique 2.8 Cabecera Park (2004) by Eduardo de Miguel Rabones, Arancha Muñoz Criado, and Vicente Corell Farinós, Valencia, Spain
Spatial practices 71 to landscape architects and it can play a powerful role in changing the spatial dimensions of a landscape. Look at the image of the campus landscape at Shenyang Jianzhu University. Designed by the landscape architecture firm Turenscape, this part of the campus was conceived as a rice field, which the students harvest every year and sell. Not only has Turenscape preserved the site’s agricultural function and maintained the cultural tradition of this region in producing the special, Northeast Rice, but they have also exploited the spatial change of living tectonics.22 As a plant material rice typically grows to approximately two meters (6 feet) in height during a growing season. Thus, this rapid production of biomass dramatically transforms the spatial qualities of the landscape. 2.9 Shenyang Jianzhu University landscape (2004) by Turenscape/ Kongjian Yu, image courtesy of Kongjian Yu, Liaoning Province, China Can you imagine how the spatial qualities change before and after the students have harvested the rice? Do you think this why Turenscape placed social spaces in the middle of the rice field?
Spatial practices 72 Miniature and panorama In the Forming chapter you read about Günther Vogt’s theory of miniature and panorama. This theory can also be thought about in terms of spatial scale. Miniature involves the scaling down of landscape spatial types and panorama entails the scaling up of landscape spatial types, and this approach can be seen in numerous designed landscapes. MINIATURE The landscape theorist Elizabeth K. Meyer analysed Dan Kiley’s design for the Miller residence as a case of scaling down. When the project was first conceived in the 1950s the Miller property was situated at “the seam between three spatial fields” – an urban grid, a larger suburban grid, and the half-milesquare agrarian lands, which are the hallmark of the Midwestern landscape of the United States.23 Kiley scaled down the dimensions of this meta-landscape to approximately 5.7 hectares (13.5 acres) as part of his design response. More recently, miniaturization has been used to adjust a site’s microclimatic conditions. Michel Desvigne, in his experimental garden with Patrick Blanc at the Ministry of Culture in Paris, found that the microclimate of the existing courtyard space, with its glazing and light levels, mimicked high-altitude southern forests 2.10 Garden for the Ministry of Culture (2004) by Michel Desvigne Paysagiste and Patrick Blanc, image courtesy of Michel Desvigne Paysagiste, Paris, France
Spatial practices 73 and their undergrowth. For Desvigne, “Thus the idea was formed to adapt and miniaturize one of these forests in a small surface area – a box of 170 square meters set within a larger courtyard. Over twelve strata, 1000 plants from 100 species selected by the botanist.”24 Desvigne transformed Kiley’s formal miniaturization of landscape spatial types to a miniaturization of a landscape spatial type based on environmental conditions. According to Desvigne, one of the reasons he used miniaturization is “to make the compositional device disappear.”25 Look at the image of the Ministry of Culture garden. PANORAMA For the designers of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, panorama provides a very interesting approach to the planting design scheme. According to Sarah Price, George Hargreaves, the lead designer, envisioned “a linear chronological sequence based on plant families.”26 The design team, with Andrew Harland and Neil Mattinson of LDA Design, sought to build upon the British Do you think they have made the compositional device disappear? Why do you think this was their intention? 2.11 Queen Elizabeth 2012 Olympic Park Planting Concept, Hargreaves Associates lead designers with LDA Design, image courtesy of Hargreaves Associates, London, England
Spatial practices 74 tradition of collecting plants from around the world, and William Robinson’s Wild Garden of the 1870s.27 Plants from numerous regions of the world were grouped and laid out based on Robinson’s approach, which involved the careful study of a plant’s habit of growth as well as the microclimate conditions and the hardiness of selected plants (not necessarily native). Robinson’s loose style is distinguished by large drifts of hardy perennial plants for woodland areas, around bodies of water, and in meadows. Robinson’s Wild Garden was typically employed at a residential scale, but at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, this approach was scaled up to a park scale. Coloured air Coloured Air is part of Bernard Lassus’s theory of “minimal intervention.” Lassus stresses, “Minimal intervention doesn’t mean not wanting to do anything, but using ‘espace propre’ carefully. When in 1965 I used a red tulip to carry out the important experiment ‘Un air rosé’ . . . This is the principle of minimal intervention: the place is not altered physically in any way and nevertheless, you change the landscape.”28 In essence, intervening within space can change the sensory perception of that space. For Lassus, the white card placed in the red tulip caused the air and the white card to be perceived as red. The role of colour has 2.12 Queen Elizabeth 2012 Olympic Park, Hargreaves Associates lead designers with LDA Design, image courtesy of Hargreaves Associates, London, England
Spatial practices 75 also figured prominently in the work of Claude Cormier. From Blue Stick Garden to his more recent Pink Balls installation in Montréal, Claude notes, “we have taken into our practice the notion of color. We realized early on that color is actually extremely loaded, and we challenge that aspect within each project.”29 Look at the image of Cormier’s Pink Balls 2012 in Montréal. The temporary project consists of more than 170,000 pink resin balls suspended along 1.2 km of Sainte-Catherine Street in the East Village. Look at the background of the image. Spatial constructs debated Theorists examining modern housing projects, in particular, questioned the neutrality of space. As you will read in Contested Spaces in the final section of this chapter, Henri Lefebvre’s theory of “the production of space” revealed how spaces created in the urban landscape and made possible by capitalist systems – such as the appropriation of geographical territories, the allocation of land 2.13 Pink Balls 2012 by Claude Cormier + Associés, image courtesy of Stéphane Mabilais, Montréal, Canada Do you see how the space is coloured, but at a different scale than Un Air Rosé? Do you think the pixel-like qualities of the balls enables this colouring?
Spatial practices 76 uses and infrastructure, and the distribution of labour and materials – were not simply neutral, abstract entities. For Lefebvre, these spaces of modern urbanism reinforced social relations, and served as a tool to be employed by a hegemonic class to reproduce its own dominance in society. Thus, architects and planners engaged in this production were complacent in upholding the dominant power structures. In this sense, space was conceived as ideological, rather than as an unbiased dimension of design. The universal effects of space on people were questioned as well. Some critics argued that perceptions or emotions produced by spaces were culturally constructed. As such, the effects of space on individuals differed based on cultural background, gender, age, and class. In essence, people from diverse cultural backgrounds will perceive and react to spaces differently. Age and gender play a role as well. For example, the cultural geographer Gill Valentine argues that who occupies and controls spaces and when has a greater impact on how women feel about space than the physical design of spaces. “Women feel threatened in spaces and at times when they perceive the behaviour of men with whom they may share the space to be unregulated by agents of formal or informal control; or, when they perceive the space to be actively controlled by a threatening male group.”30 The manipulation of space as the chief concern of design was questioned within landscape architecture as well. Peter Walker posited, “When landscape is treated as simply space – as simply a suitable setting for a building or a piece of sculpture – people tend to ignore the landscape.”31 Walker challenged landscape architects to consider other aspects of design, such as bold patterns and forms that would make the landscape more visible to people, and thus secure it to the world of art in its own right. Likewise, Martha Schwartz has dedicated her career to designing landscapes that employ humour, metaphor, and connections to pop culture. Shifting concerns with space to a concern with meaning, Schwartz thought the manipulation of spatial volumes was not enough, and there were far more interesting ideas to communicate through her design work. The landscape architect Dean Cardasis has also made the case that the space we move through and pause is directly linked to a landscape’s meaning. He notes, “keener recognition that the design of the volume itself – the space through which we move and in which we come to rest – is inextricable from the meaningfulness and utility of the work.”32 At the same time, the spaces of a designed landscape need not depend on facts, but rather appearances, and this is the subject of the next section. Primary reading for spatial constructs Charles Downing Lay, “Space Composition.” Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou, editors, Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893. Christopher Tunnard, Gardens in the Modern Landscape.
Spatial practices 77 THEORETICAL GROUNDINGS OF ILLUSIONARY SPACE Look at the image of Rabbit or Duck? This figure is one of the most analysed ambiguous images used in philosophy and psychology.33 Rabbit or Duck? was created by the psychologist Joseph Jastrow (1863–1944) and it first appeared in a German humour magazine published in 1892. Jastrow used the image to show that vision is not simply the reception of visual stimuli, but it also involves mental activity. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) drew his own version of this ambiguous figure to explain his theory of “seeing-as,” which involves you simultaneously seeing and interpreting. You may see the drawing as a duck or you may see it as a rabbit depending on what you want to see it as. In his publication, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, the art historian E. H. Gombrich (1909–2001) used Rabbit or Duck? to challenge the notion that perceptual phenomena (the marks or lines made by the drawer) correspond to one interpretation. The ears of the rabbit, for example, may also be the duck’s bill. According to Gombrich you can easily switch back and forth seeing the duck or the rabbit, but you are unable to see both the duck and the rabbit at the same time. “Illusion, we find, is hard to describe or analyse, for though we may be intellectually aware of the fact that any given experience must be an illusion, we cannot strictly speaking, watch ourselves having an illusion.”34 2.14 Rabbit or Duck? (1899) by Joseph Jastrow, public domain What do you see pictured in this image? A Rabbit? A Duck? Can you see both the rabbit and the duck at the same time?
Spatial practices 78 While Gombrich’s theories on illusion and the use of the Rabbit or Duck? picture have been debated and critiqued,35 his work radically changed thinking on visual perception, art, and techniques employed to represent something. Gombrich never succinctly described illusion, but in essence illusion happens when “the visual information ‘creates’ the illusion by making one ‘leap’ to a conclusion, to taking the visual information as something other than it is.”36 Why illusionary space matters Illusions matter because people typically enjoy illusions, and they prompt you to question the reality you see, or at least appear to see. Illusions have a long history in the design and reception of landscapes. Reflective materials, in particular, can be employed to give illusions. Historically, mirrors, water features, and other reflective surfaces provided virtual worlds of illusion. A classic example of illusion as integral to the design of landscapes can be found in the Moon Bridges of China. These pedestrian bridges were steeply curved in section and placed over water. From a particular vantage point, the view of the physical bridge combined with the reflection of the bridge in the water below formed a circle. This mirrored image of a circle represented the moon, a reoccurring symbol found in ancient Chinese myths to the contemporary consumption of mooncakes during lunar festivals. Another example is the Claude Mirror, which was used by both artists and by tourists experiencing landscapes. It was typically convex in shape and the mirror was coloured. The convex shape of the mirror reduced and unified the visual field by concentrating it into one gaze held in the hand.37 The mirror’s backing, which was often black or smoky-sepia instead of silver, coloured the reflected image. Like an Instagram filter, it helped unify the tonality of the image. The artist and writer William Gilpin (1724–1804), who foregrounded a theory of the picturesque, argued that this avoided the spotting of light and provided for a graduation of tones, “so as not to appear affected.”38 The Claude Mirror created an image, but landscape architects also have used physical design to create spatial illusions. These illusions are typically illusion of distortion, which involve manipulating the size, length, or height of objects in the landscape to make your perception of the landscape dissimilar from its physical reality. Illusionary space in action Illusion of depth The illusion of depth uses the science of perspective to make a landscape space seem either shallower or deeper than measured. This technique manipulates the mechanism of visual perception. The illusion of depth is a very old spatial practice that can be traced back to trompe l’oeil39 and anamorphosis techniques employed in the design of historic gardens in Italy and France.40 Look at the image of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park. Designed in 1974 by Louis Kahn in collaboration with landscape architect Harriet Pattison, and
Spatial practices 79 constructed in 2012, the park was designed to give an illusion of depth with an accelerated perspective. They designed a tapered sloped lawn bordered by allées of 120 littleleaf linden trees. The trees and lawn are approximately 45 meters at the top of the sloped lawn and converge approximately 15 meters at the terminus of the slope. Thus, “The perception of distance expands and contracts.”41 Optical illusions Optical illusions in landscape architecture involve a design that creates a perception of it that is remarkably different from distinct viewpoints. Like the “illusion of depth” there is a planned mismatch between what is perceived at a certain point in space and what the landscape is physically. However, the “illusion of depth” usually exaggerates the one-point perspective laws of foreshortening with the goal of creating an illusion of reality. In contrast, optical illusions distort perception to communicate something. 2.15 Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park (2012) by Louis Kahn with landscape architect Harriet Pattison, Roosevelt Island, New York City, USA Why do you think Kahn and Pattison employed this technique for a memorial dedicated to Roosevelt?
Spatial practices 80 A well-known type of optical illusion is anamorphosis, which “gives a distorted image of the object represented but which, if viewed from a certain vantage point or reflected in a curved mirror, shows the object in true proportion.”42 Since the correct anamorphic image can only be seen at a certain vantage point, it is usually done to trick people. However, it is also a way designers or artists can communicate something deeper. Numerous interpretations of one of the most famous examples of anamorphosis, the distorted skull in Hans Holbein the Younger’s painting, The Ambassadors (1533), have been proffered. Look at the skull in the painting, The Ambassadors. Some scholars have argued that it represents death, while others claim that the original placement of the painting in a stairwell would have heightened your awareness of the skull. Look at the two views of Who to Believe? by the artist François Abélanet at the Ephemeral Garden Square in Paris. His 1,500-square-meter landscape uses anamorphosis, and gives the impression of a three-dimensional globe from the main steps in front of the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall). Abélanet remarks, “we live in a world where one hears the debates of ecologists, scientists, manufacturers . . . I simply wanted to note the problem of the tree and invite people to 2.16 The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger (1533), public domain
Spatial practices 81 2.17 Who to Believe? (2011) by François Abélanet The Anamorphist, image courtesy of François Abélanet, Paris, France 2.18 Who to Believe? (2011) by François Abélanet The Anamorphist, image courtesy of François Abélanet, Paris, France
Spatial practices 82 question the place that it, nature, and the environment have in their lives.”43 The journalist Henry Adams observes, Abélanet’s garden reminds us that the view from City Hall can be quite different from everywhere else – that, in fact, the seeming logic of its view of things can be nonsensical. To fully grasp reality we need to see how it looks from more than one place (politicians, take note). Like much of the world’s best art, Abélanet’s creation is at once silly and profound.44 Illusionary contours Illusionary contours (also known as subjective contours) are the perceived outlines of shapes (the contour) that are created by other shapes, lines, or textures. The Kanizsa Triangle illusion developed in 1955 by the psychologist Gaetano Kanizsa is a famous example of illusionary contours. It was used by Gestalt psychologists to explain the “law of enclosure.” They proposed theories of how you perceptually organize something in its totality, versus in its parts. The “law of enclosure,” for example, was thought to prove that when you see an object, you are capable of imagining features of the object that are missing, particularly regarding its shape.45 Look at the Kanizsa Triangle illusion. Abélanet uses anamorphosis to prompt people to question why people should privilege one way of looking at an issue; can you think of other ways anamorphosis might be used? 2.19 Kanizsa Triangle illusion Do you see a whole triangle? Even though the triangle has not been drawn, do you see how the triangle is perceived by the objects drawn around it?
Spatial practices 83 Look at the image of Platz der Republik in Berlin. Hedges on the side are parted to create a meandering river-like space. Colour contrasts Your perception of colour is a consequence of wavelengths reflected back to your eyes. Ambient and reflected light conditions and the colour’s context in relationship to other colours and shapes influence your perception of colour; thus, colour has many illusionary qualities. Colour has been a rich and varied subject for both scientists and artists. As mentioned previously, Claude Cormier considers colour a key element to his work. Cormier often borrows from artists, such as Claude Monet, who used painting techniques to invoke optical principles, such as the dotted brush strokes of complementary colours that would be unified into a vibrant scene in the eye’s mind.46 Look at the image of TOM II. Cormier used 5,060 temporary overlay markers or TOMS that are typically used for short-term temporary lane markings in construction zones. 2.20 Platz der Republik (1997) by Lützow 7, image courtesy of Mike Peel, Creative Commons, www. mikepeel.net, Berlin, Germany What shape do you see? How would the effect be different if the designer created the meandering path delineated by a row of hedges in the shape of a meandering river?
Spatial practices 84 2.21 TOM II (2013) by Claude Cormier + Associés, image courtesy of Guillaume Paradis, Montréal, Canada Looking at the complementary colours of green and red, can you see how they create a field-like composition of poppies? Why do you think he used temporary overlay markers?
Spatial practices 85 Illusionary space debated Illusions experiment with errors in sense perception. Bernard Lassus argues against illusion, contending, “I try to achieve clarity. 21 centimeters is 21 centimeters for me and not 22 centimeters.”47 His critique raises an interesting question – should defining space in design be a mathematical endeavour (based on measure or proportion) or should designers exploit the illusionary qualities of space and your perceptions of it? Obviously the designed landscape abounds with measurements that landscape architects must conform to, such as the depth of a pond to avoid algae growth and the widths of paths for accessibility. The language of reality versus appearance is commonly used in perceptual testing, such as the “illusionary contour.” The “Müller–Lyer illusion,” an optical illusion shown here is another popular test. The common explanation for this illusion notes that the two lines appear to be different lengths, but in reality they are the same length. For the philosopher Katherine J. Morris, this relies on the preconception that the measurable is assumed to be more real than the nonmeasurable . . . Once we recognize that “real” simply means “measurable” in this context, we might be in a position to raise the question why the measurable is supposed to be more valuable than the non-measurable. We can grant for certain purposes, e.g., building a bridge that will not fall down, it is; for others, e.g., judging the aesthetic qualities of a bridge, it is not.48 But are those measured landscape features more real than how we perceive them – despite how unmeasured that perception may be? 2.22 The Müller-Lyer illusion So, is what is visible more real than what is measured? Are there types of landscape design projects where misperceptions are welcomed?
Spatial practices 86 This is the link that Lassus tries to reveal, by making measurements apparent you may not apprehend, he is describing the invisible. Making the invisible, visible is a practice of phenomenology, particularly Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenology. Primary reading for illusionary space E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Arnault Maillet, The Claude Glass: Use and Meaning of the Black Mirror in Western Art. THEORETICAL GROUNDINGS OF PHENOMENOLOGY Natural objects, for example, must be experienced before any theorizing about them can occur. Experiencing is consciousness that intuits something and values it to be actual; experiencing is intrinsically characterized as consciousness of the natural object in question and of it as the original . . . objects would be nothing at all for the cognizing subject if they did not “appear” to him, if he had of them no phenomenon. Here, therefore, “phenomenon” signifies a certain content that intrinsically inhabits the intuitive consciousness in question and is the substrate for its actuality valuation.49 (Edmund Husserl, Pure Phenomenology, 1917) Phenomenology is a philosophical method that privileges experience as the source of subjectivity. In this quote the philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859– 1938), the founder of phenomenology, is describing this philosophical method in which he attempts to describe experience as he encounters it. Husserl was dissatisfied with assumptions made in the sciences, which held that the world was rationally structured, and so comprehending knowledge about this world required rational thought. For Husserl this was misguided, particularly when studying human consciousness, and he sought a method as an alternative to standard scientific approaches, such as the scientific method of induction. Husserl is alluding to intentionality, or your directed awareness of things in the world.50 These phenomena need not be physical objects appearing in perception, but can also come from your imagination or memory as well. Husserl’s descriptive phenomenology requires that you bracket off preconceived ideas and suspend value judgments about the experience of the phenomena. He believed that this would make possible a more focused and systematic study of the structures of consciousness and phenomena that appear to you. Read this philosopher’s descriptive account of his experience with a tree: Consider my visual experience wherein I see a tree across the square. In phenomenological reflection, we need not concern ourselves with whether the tree What do you think he means by “experiencing is intrinsically characterized as consciousness of the natural object in question and of it as the original”?
Spatial practices 87 exists: my experience is of a tree whether or not such a tree exists. However, we do need to concern ourselves with how the object is meant or intended. I see a Eucalyptus tree, not a Yucca tree; I see that object as a Eucalyptus, with a certain shape, with bark stripping off, etc. Thus, bracketing the tree itself, we turn our attention to my experience of the tree, and specifically to the content or meaning in my experience.51 Numerous other philosophers have expanded Husserl’s methods (and of course debated them). The philosopher Martin Heidegger’s (1889–1976) hermeneutics emphasized interpretation over Husserl’s descriptive methods. Heidegger discarded Husserl’s method of bracketing as he argued that you should interpret things in the world in more practical ways, such as planting trees with friends, for example. The philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) argued that the living body played a key role in perception, rather than only consciousness.52 Here, you will be introduced to the phenomenological methods of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) and his three types of the imagining consciousness – negation, consciousness and time, and being for others.53 These types of consciousness stem from his major phenomenological studies regarding the imagination. Since this is dense material I have folded the theoretical grounding of each of Sartre’s descriptions of the imagining consciousness within the “in action” section. Why phenomenology matters Sartre’s phenomenology is important to landscape architecture because of the way imagination figures in his theory. Also, landscapes can provide tangible evidence of the absent. A cemetery, a vacant lot, or a denuded forest, for example, makes absence evident. Although these instances are often discussed under the rubric of memory making, they also trigger imagination. Sartre distinguishes imagination from remembering, perceiving, and other more passive types of consciousness. His emphasis on the imagining consciousness in experience is especially relevant for design students who are charged with the task of creating new landscapes. Sartre himself was concerned with imagination. He not only wrote dense academic texts, but also short stories, novels, and plays, so he was a creative person himself. Through the bodily engagement with the world Sartre provides an interpretation of imagination that is in relationship to the world, invited by the physical objects and spaces you encounter. Thus, consciousness is an imaginative act that not only reveals present meaning, but also enables you to see the world other than it is.54 Returning to the vacant lot, the empty property may prompt you to think of what was once there, why it is no longer there, and what could possibly be there in the future. Can you explain bracketing in this account?
Spatial practices 88 Although Sartre was influenced by Heidegger, his phenomenology does not shy away from dualism, the idea that your consciousness is separate from something you are experiencing. For Sartre, you can no more be the tree you are encountering, as the tree can be you. According to philosopher Robert Bernasconi, “neither consciousness, nor ‘the thing,’ has priority.”55 Sartre’s binary distinction between consciousness and the external world is where encounters start, where you begin to describe the familiar. Moreover, describing the landscape can be a valuable place to start the design process. This phenomenological aspect of the design process can be seen in the work of Vogt Landscape Architects. Their approach to projects always involves walking the larger territory of the project, often with a scientist. Vogt notes, “The walker’s perspective is of fundamental importance to our planning process, a view of open space we consciously adopt in the course of our design work. It is not only the designed space that is significant; the sequence of spaces transited before and after also become important.”56 The walking experience translates into their design response as well. For example, the footpath designed at the Novartis Campus compresses the hidden landscape of terraces, dendritic drainage systems, and abandoned river channels that they walked through in the Basel region. The scale of this encounter, however, has been transformed to a dimension that can be experienced walking for an hour, the time given to Novartis employees for their lunch break. Phenomenology in action The space of negation Sartre posits that absence is the unconditional principle of all imagination.57 The experience of absence is what Sartre calls “negation,” and it is a powerful tool of the imagining consciousness that arises from encountering the world as it colours experience and gives it depth. Sartre explains negation by describing an experience in Pierre’s room. Pierre’s non-existence in the room is dependent on Pierre at one point being there and his absence is experienced as present. Sartre’s “being and nothingness” oscillates through negation, “every psychic process of negation implies a cleavage between the past and the present – this cleavage is nothingness.”58 Here is Sartre describing Pierre’s absence from his room: The room of someone absent, the books of which he turned the pages, the objects which he touched are in themselves only books, objects, i.e., full actualities. The very traces which he has left can be deciphered as traces of him only within a situation where he has been already appointed as absent. Pierre’s absence, in order to be established or realized, requires a negative moment. If in terms of my perceptions of the room, I conceive of the former inhabitant who is no longer in the room, I am of necessity to produce an act of thought which no prior state can determine nor motivate, in short to effect in myself a break in being.59
Spatial practices 89 Sartre would describe this phenomenon as a psychic break or break in being. Look at the image of Sinking Garden, by Nikola Bojic´ and Alan Waxman, for the XiXi National Wetland Park, West Lake International Invitational Sculpture Exhibition. Historical research conducted by the designers revealed that the creation of the park and subsequent development had displaced local families, obliterating their connections to the former landscape. Bojic´ and Waxman collected old boats used by these families and resituated them in a wetland. Each turf-laden boat pays tribute to a family that for generations lived in the region. On the opening day of the exhibition the name of a family was inscribed on each boat. The boats are analogons, which Sartre argues represent something true about the real. The power of an analogon is in direct proportion to the degree to which absence is relevant. Have you ever been in a space inhabited by someone who was not there and his or her absence shaped your imagining consciousness about the space? 2.23 Sinking Garden (2012) by Nikola Bojic´ and Alan Waxman, image courtesy of Nikola Bojic´, Hangzhou, China Why do you think the designers put the boats in the water?
Spatial practices 90 Time and consciousness Sartre proposes that the structure of consciousness rests upon the basic premise that “to be aware of an object is not to be the object.”60 Thus, being has two forms – in-itself (en-soi) and for-itself (pour-soi). In-itself is something that exists and is not conscious of itself, a walkway for example, and it can be anything that one is conscious of. For-itself exists but it is conscious of itself, you, for example. In-itself and for-itself are always distanced (physically, my feet don’t become part of the walkway) but related by time since consciousness is temporal. Thus, at each moment in time our consciousness “nihilates” its own past to become aware of a new situation with the present operating as a mixture of both present and past. This is experienced time or “the qualitative lived time of our concerns and practices, the time that rushes by or hangs heavy on our hands, rather than the quantitative ‘clock’ time that we share with physical nature.”61 Look at the image of Maya Lin’s 11 Minute Line. Created in a cow pasture near the Wanås Foundation in Sweden, this serpentine line was inspired by the Serpent Mound in Ohio. Lin first drew the line and then modelled it three-dimensionally. It takes approximately 11 minutes to walk atop this 500 meter-long, two-meter high mound. John Beardsley suggests that this work and other projects by Lin evoke the Japanese aesthetic of ma. He explains, “Neither space nor time in this conception is fixed; neither exists without the other. Space is experienced through time; time is measured by movement through space”62 2.24 11 Minute Line (2004) by Maya Lin, image courtesy of The Wanås Foundation, image by Anders Norrsell, Wanås, Sweden
Spatial practices 91 Group praxis Sartre’s third form of being, relates to group praxis or being for-others (pourautrui). Group praxis constitutes itself in given moments, with an emphasis on empowering the individual while simultaneously acknowledging the individual as a group member.63 For Sartre, these are experiences that give meaning to existence and oblige us to a set of customs and behaviours. He also stressed the role of worked-matter in this praxis. You encounter worked-matter every day and these experiences link us to the collective. Worked-matter includes “all the human stamped physical and cultural environments (bus routes, institutions, customs, and so on) in which we live.”64 Interestingly, this matter is more than what it is physically. As Sartre describes, “A ticket is a ticket rather than a pasteboard rectangle only insofar as it is supported by consciousness, but you cannot get into the theatre without it. By means of worked-matter we individually and collectively carve out our being in a world by our concrete actions or praxis.”65 How do you think Lin exploits lived time and space versus measured clock-time? How do you think this relates to the rural context of open fields and cows at Wanås? 2.25 Little Spirits Garden (2013) by Bill Pechet, Bill Pechet Studio and Joseph Daly Landscape Architecture, image courtesy of Joseph Daly, Royal Oak Burial Park, Victoria, Canada