园林英语-园林12级上课.doc

Lesson1THE PRACTICE AND THORY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTUREThe Practice of Landscape Architecture Over the years and especially since World War , the realm of landscape architecture has diversified and classified its activities in response to the needs of a changing world. There now appear to be four clearly definable and related types of practice. First, there is landscape evaluation and planning. It is concerned with the systematic study of large areas of land and a strong ecological and natural science base in addition to a concern for visual quality. In addition to the landscape architect, the process usually involves a team of specialists such as soil scientists, geologists, and economists. The result is a land use plan or policy recommending the distribution and type of development, for example, housing, industry, agriculture, highway alignment, and recreation within a framework of resource and amenity conservation. In other cases, the planning function may be less comprehensive and focus on the impact on the environment of single major proposals. The identification of land suitable for one major use, such as recreation, is another function of landscape evaluation and planning. The second activity of landscape architects is site planning. This represents the more conventional kind of landscape architecture and within this realm lies landscape design. Site planning is the process in which the characteristics of the site and the requirements of the program for its use are brought together in creative synthesis. Elements and facilities are located on the land in functional and aesthetic relationships and in a manner fully responsive to program, site, and regional context. Third, there is detailed landscape design. This is the process through which specific quality is given to the diagrammatic spaces and areas of the site plan. It involves the selection of components, materials and plants and their combination in three dimensions as solutions to limited and well-defined problems such as entrance, terrace, amphitheater, parking area, and so on. The fourth form of landscape architecture is urban design. Urban design defies precise definition. Two things are sure, however, the setting is the city and several properties are involved. An agency of government may be responsible for assembling the parcels and organizing the program. The location, not the design, of buildings and the organization of the space between them for circulation and public use are major concerns. Typically, but not always, hard surfaces predominate. Streets and malls river front developments, government and commercial centers, rehabilitation of neighborhoods, and recycling of groups of industrial buildings may be classed as urban design projects. Complicated as they are, with multiple ownership, political, legal, and economic considerations, such projects are rarely in the hands of one planner or designer. They are team efforts sponsored by a major developer or government agency. Planners are involved with the projects viability and infrastructure, architects with buildings. But it is the organization and design of the space between buildings (site planning and landscape design) that is central to its overall success. It is essential to have an understanding of microclimate, sun and shadow patterns, proportion and scale, human needs and behavior, and the potential of space division and differences in level to facilitate and enhance them. In addition, urban horticulture is a specialization that recognizes the extreme and often difficult, growing conditions created by glare, drafts, and limited root area for trees. Together, open space design and urban horticulture, although not the most costly elements of a comprehensive urban design project, are critical to its unity. The Theory of Landscape Architecture The five major components of the landscape architecture theory have been mentioned. They are natural process, human factors, methodology, technology, and values, whatever the scale or emphasis of operation, there five components are consistently relevant. Social and natural factors clearly permeate every facet of a profession that is concerned with people and land. Problem solving, planning, and design methods apply at all scales. Good judgment is consistently required. Consider how natural factors data are relevant to both planning and design. At the regional scale, in a responsible society, the impact of development or change in use on a landscape must be known and evaluated before a policy to allow such action is set. An inventory of the natural factors, including geology, soils, hydrology, topography, climate, vegetation and understanding of the ecosystem to which change is contemplated. Equally important is an analysis of visual quality which is the sum of the components. Land use policy can thus be made on the basis of the known vulnerability of resistance of the landscape. In other circumstances the natural processes which add up to a given landscape at a give moment in its evolution may, as at Grand Canyon and other unique places, be considered a resource to be preserved, protected, and managed as a public trust, on a smaller scale, soil and geological conditions may be critical in the determination of the cost and the form of building foundations: where it is most suitable to build and where it is not. Sun, wind, and rain are important factors of design where the development of comfort zones for human activity or the growth of plants is a primary objective. Thus, natural factors influence land use, site planning, and detailed design. Similarly, human factors apply equally at all scales. In site planning and landscape design, cultural variation in the use and appreciation of open space and parks and the physical and social needs of the young and old are some of the many variables to be considered in a design process that aims to be responsive to social values and human needs. In decisions related to appropriation of landscape for recreation and aesthetic value peoples perception of the environment and the behavioral patterns and tendencies of people in the out-of-doors are clearly relevant. It is also important that designers understand the impact of environment on behavior and also appreciate the basic human need to manipulate and control the environment. The value of community participation in urban planning and design is now widely recognized. Technology is the means by which a design is implemented or on which a policy depends. Some of it changes year by year as new materials, machinery, and techniques are developed. Specific areas of technology include plants, planting and ecological succession, soil science, hydrology and sewage treatment, microclimate control, surface drainage, erosion control, hard surfaces, and maintenance, Other techniques of importance in landscape architecture relate to communications, community participation, development economics, and political process. Design and planning methodology involve systems whereby landscape problems are defined, all relevant factors and variables are assembled, given values and incorporated in the solution. Computer graphics, analytical techniques, and notation systems aid in this process, Halprin suggests scoring techniques. There open up the design process, allowing more people to participate in decision madding and facilitate the generation of more humanistic ways to plan and design large scale complex environments. Finally, landscape architecture must be based on a set of values. Experience and good sense tell us that we need to develop a set of priorities and subscribe to a land ethic related to our belief in the “alternative for survival”, in which short term profit at the expense of long term regeneration and conservation of resources would be unthinkable. Environmental impact must be seen in a regional context. Quantity must be equated with quality. We must learn to make judgments in terms of what is considered best for the common good and the future of mankind. The professional must present such considered judgments to the investment banker, government agency chiefs, and others in whose hands lie the ultimate decisions-even though his recommendations may be at variance with their programs. Lesson 2Chinese Garden 1. Garden is an artifact, made by someone. At the same time its elements are independent of man (they have a life of their own, which may take a different course beyond the designers intention, if not attended). The garden is created and received within a framework of conventions, but it can exist, although in deteriorated way, even if there is no gardener to keep it. Many Chinese gardens were in a state of deterioration when Siren visited them (between 1922-1935). The garden is designed to be perceived aesthetically, for the “production of aesthetic pleasure.” This pleasure is the joint result of all the values of the object, of the connoisseurs contemplation and communion with the mysterious forces present in the garden and its design. 2. Even very big (imperial) gardens were actually limited, but even small gardens were designed so that one cannot really tell their actual size. Actual size was in this sense less real than the experience, which really counted. One of the favorite design strategies was “borrowing scenery”, actually delimiting the fixed, limited space and the onlooker inside the wall. The shape of the opening served as a frame for the borrowed scenery which was now a ready-made painting. By framing it, the designer borrowed the exterior scenery of the outside environment for the interior. Whatever was suitable outside the frame of the garden, could become a part of the aesthetic experience relevant for the space inside the frame. 3. Chinese gardens (and their designers) had names, like any other work of art. In big gardens, which had separate parts, each part had a separate name. In one of the classic Chinese novels, the Dream of the Red Chamber (the Story of the Stone) a process of naming is described in details. After finishing the designing, the owner gathered guests, relatives, and friends, and each name was proposed and chosen, in a friendly contest, after careful consideration. In considering various names, they had in mind the original intentions of the designer, and the literary, philosophical, and art tradition. 4. Certain gardens included miniature replicas/simulacrums of famous sites (famous environments), whose purpose was similar to landscape paintings to depict a favorable environment in three-dimensional setup, or installation. These designs were not considered as inferior to designs that presented something yet unseen, something new. In this case was important to catch and recreate the spirit of the particular environment. Also, sometimes the designer would attempt to recreate a landscape (or part of it), already presented in some landscape painting (in many cases the designers were landscape painters). In Chinese art (between 12-13th century) landscape, or its elements (rocks, bamboo, waters, birds, etc.) become more important than human figures (face, in particular), even when the main subject was an emotion, or sentiment. 5. To define valuable art, Chinese art criticism differentiated two pairs of concepts: substance, and ornament; skill, and spontaneity. In the Chinese tradition the obsession was to be close to nature; the ideals were spontaneity, and sincerity, or authenticity. One of the most important elements of natural spontaneity in landscape design were garden rocks. From the middle of the Tang dynasty (8th cent.) important element in landscape design became rocks eroded by water, whose creation was absolutely spontaneous, and therefore they embodied naturalness. These rocks were, perhaps, the first ready-mades in the history of world art. There were two types of rocks: recumbent, and standing. The first were piled up to make hills/mountains. Vertical stones, larger and with more interesting shapes, were treated as monuments, sometimes set up on pedestals, and solitary. Their decorative function in the Chinese gardens is often the same as that of the statues, obelisks, and urns found in European gardens, only with the difference that they merge so much more naturally in the picturesque play of light and shade of their surroundings. The function of standing stones was not mimetic, on purpose, although they were usually named according to associations they provoked. They were like abstract sculptures in modern art, at the time when European gardens and parks (in the Renaissance and Baroque) were full of naturalistic sculptures. However, associative and mimetic function of rocks was also utilized, and many visitors would associate upon their resemblance, “seeing” in them goblins, lions or dragons. Designers of Chinese landscapes introduced amorphous rocks that could not be explained away, and could provoke the experience of pure existence: inexplicable, unnamable, astounding, mysterious, like ultimate tao, or Buddhist ultimate suchness (chen-ju). The Chinese saw the “abstract” nature force displaying in the “concreteness” of gnarled branches or roots, or water eroded rocks, “faith in natures self-disclosure was expressed aesthetically by an intense, empathic interest in natural forms, old trees, and odd-shaped rocks, pitted an cut through by natural forces” Rocks pitted and cut by water brought to mind lines of Tao Te Ching: “Nothing under heaven is softer or more yielding than water. But when it attacks things hard and resistant there is not one of them that can prevail”. The process of choosing and putting rock(s) in the right setting, was usually very meticulous and slow, as can be also depicted from recorded episodes in designing the Japanese gardens.6. Chinese landscape designers also had to solve the antagonism of naturalness and style. To follow nature and discard artificiality can mean identification of style with spontaneity, or seen the way round absence of style, negation, or abandon of style. In Chinese painting this was achieved by utilizing chance (splashing, spattering, or dripping ink, or color), by lack of ostentation, or deliberate clumsiness, changing the learned right, for the unlearned left hand, getting drunk, etc.7. In certain Chinese gardens (or in certain parts of the garden) the point of observation was determined, the observer was guided by the design (pathways, corridor, bridge, tunnel, pavilion, or tower) to move to certain points of observation. In others he was free to choose the point of observation. The Chinese garden can never be completely surveyed from a certain point. It consists of more or less isolated sections which must be discovered gradually and enjoyed as the beholder continues his stroll: he must follow the paths, wander through tunnels, ponder the water, reach a pavilion from which a fascinating view unfolds. He is led on into a composition that is never completely revealed. We see that, although Chinese gardens belong to plastic arts broadly defined, they also have marks of temporal arts. They are observed and contemplated gradually, in time, through a succession of scenes, designed to unfold one after another. Siren compares this to unfolding of a Chinese landscape painting in a form of scroll. Mirror as a metaphor of art played a considerable role in European tradition, but in this context we could say that the garden was a place where nature as a mirror was held up to mind (to paraphrase: “art is a mirror held up to nature”).8. Aesthetic judgment of environmental works of art is challenging, because environments offer a broader perspective for philosophy of art, and aesthetics, than standard works of art. Certain types of environment are particularly valuable because of the view they offer, but some because of fragrance, tactile qualities, etc. Some are poor in view, but rich in “whispers” of nature (sounds of water, wind, birds, frogs, or other, animals). Describing the range of perception in Chinese gardens, Johnston says: “Chinese gardens are making a direct appeal to the emotions and devoted exclusively to serving all the senses: visually unfolding a succession of pleasing surprises; introducing textures which seek to be touched; mingling the perfumes of blossoms and bark; capturing whispers of moving leaves and water; exploiting the ever changing character of the trees whose varying beauties enhance each season.” Aesthetic contemplation of the environment can be either general, or related to particular (visual, audible, tactile, or olfactory) aspects of the environment. Listening to various sounds (of water, rain, wind, birds), or watching particular objects, or sight, sometimes develops as a separate affinity in relation to the overall contemplation of the environment. For example, bird-watching developed as a particular pastime and chapter in environmental aesthetics in England, at the beginning of this century. Some Chinese paintings from the 12th century like the masterpiece “Birds among plum trees and bamboo” seem to prove that the pastime was probably known in China at the time, as well as listening to the “whispers” of nature, recorded in the painting by Ma Lin, “Listening to the wind in pines” (dated 1246).Most damaging for perception is “speeding-up” of perception, forced by contemporary film and TV (especially by commercials, and spots), high-powered speakers, and other gadgets invented to “hit you into guts,” to force an information into you. People are conditioned to be targets of machine-gun fire of chaotic short-duration percepts. This damages the sense of time, and replaces meaning and depth with speed, force, and distortion. Sensitivity to sounds in nature seems now almost lost for man in the West and East. Sounds of the natural environment are drowned in aggressive sounds of the urban environment