A Brief History of Landscape Archiecture

A Brief History of Landscape Architecture

 

What makes the history of landscape architecture relevant? Precedent is a tremendous source of ideas. Most of design is an incremental process, where existing ideas are tinkered with and adjusted to create an altogether new experience. Especially valuable to the arid high plains are some of the classic gardens of Middle East, where centuries ago designers pondered how to create oases, celebrating water and plants in the desert.

High walls enclosed many Islamic gardens to mitigate the impact of drying winds. Designers celebrated water, using the least possible to make the maximum impact. Water features included long, narrow “rills” and slender fountains. Plantings incorporated flowers, herbs and fruit trees; tender species thrived in these sheltered environments. During the Golden Age of Islam, as early as 800 AD, middle eastern garden designers understood most, if not all, of the principles or xeriscape that we apply today.

What about the kidney shape lawns that dominate suburbia? In the short term, we can say that come from Tommy Church, whose beautiful book “Gardens are for People” and stunning built works merged modern and pastoral landscape aesthetics. Tommy Church created the post-war “Mad Men” garden ideal, with sleek lawns, manicured shrubs and perfect blondes by the pool.

Before Tommy Church, the pastoral landscape defined stylish English  and American industrialist estates from the 1700’s on, a romantic backlash against an urbanizing world. 

A bucolic approach to the built landscape also characterized the uniquely American trend toward the public park, most famously Central Park in New York City, but emulated by aspiring cities throughout the United States. Parks served as both pleasure grounds for the urban wealthy, and ostensibly wholesome outdoor spaces for the often suspect immigrant labors that made the industrial revolution possible in the United States.

But the original impetus for pastoral landscapes came from the age of imperialism. Prior to explorers visiting Asia, Italians dominated landscape during the Renaissance, creating stunning, architectural gardens in the Tuscan hills that celebrated the discovery of perspective in art. Although vastly more sophisticated in elevation, scale and form than their precedents, Renaissance design approach remained symmetrically based, as did medieval gardens and the Islamic gardens whose had become familiar to the west from the Crusades. The Italian designers added fanciful waterworks to their hillside retreats, creating bubbles, fountains and even cool, secretive grottoes underneath the walls.

Louis the 14^th one- upped the Italian with the formal gardens of Versailles. Vast and highly manicured, Louis made up for what northern France lacked in topography by sheer, overwhelming grandeur. Believing he was the Sun King, a directed by God to rule the French people, Andre Le Notre designed Versailles to promote man’s ultimate domination over nature.

But as ideas from Asia filtered back to Europe, everything changed. Although Chinese and Japanese garden styles varied greatly, the prevailing theme in Asian gardens was reflection and quiet mediation. Even the grandest of gardens sought to recreate, on a smaller scale, ideal natural landscapes. 


 

The “borrowed landscape”, mountain vistas and trees outside the garden walls, informed the designers as they created the landscape within. Screen style doors and subtle manipulations of terrain and plantings opened interiors to the landscape and brought the outside in. Meandering, uneven paths slowed progression through the gardens and allowed for contemplative meandering.

 
Simultaneously, the plant world exploded. As early as the 16^th century Dutch tulipmainia, (prized tulips could be worth more than gold) Europeans had been fascinated with exotic plants. This obsession reached a feverish pitch under the reign of Queen Victoria. “Bedding out” of exotic annual flowers in exuberant (gaudy?) patterns and glass greenhouses to overwinter tender trees and shrubs were all the rage, Today, many plants we view as common place were exciting and exotic new introductions. Globalism may be the word of today, but the exchange of ideas and materials across the world started a long time ago.

Patterns of change in the garden continue today as they will always, in all design. Understanding the past helps inform the decisions we make today, considering new information and reconsidering knowledge from the past.  In the 1960’s Rachel Carson’s seminal book “Silent Spring” woke the collective consciousness to the grave environmental dangers of creating chemically induced agricultural monocultures. Consequently informed landscape designers and clients began, and continue to work towards, creating built outdoor living environments that are more regionally responsive.

What’s next in the built landscape? Multi-culturalism? Probably, and we encountered it before and built parks. Environmental changes? Definitely, and we need to look at how cultures in similar situations adapted to the environment in the past. Yes, the future can be so bright we gotta wear shades. But looking back is critical to moving forward.