An Informal Thatched Shelter

It is particularly necessary in developing the outdoor environ ment for hospitals and asylums that a quiet, restful atmosphere be created. The doctors and experts in the care and treatment of defectives fully appreciate the necessity for affording scope to the designer in his efforts to create such an atmosphere, and f or tunately, public opinion favours a liberal policy in providing the necessary funds. Improved transit facilities have distinctly favoured the removal of institutions of the above character from congested districts to the open country, where the opportunity is so much greater for a pleasant and beautiful environment.

Park Design.

Public parks as they exist in the United States have been created for the recreation and pleasure of the public. In Europe the parks were originally created for a favoured few and were later turned over to the use of the public with compara tively slight change in their design so far as the aesthetic elements were concerned. The demand for play area, however, and the effort to meet that demand have been almost as evident in Europe as in the United States.

The pleasure parks in the United States, such as Central Park in New York city, are an integral part of the city, designed to afford quiet pastoral beauty in the midst of an urban environ ment. Drives for horse-drawn vehicles and walks for pedestrians made the various landscape pictures available. The present tendency is toward a practice which recognizes the demand for play by providing areas designed primarily for exercise and ath letics, with the element of beauty incidental to that purpose. The

"pleasure park" is being superseded by parkways or motorways no longer limited to the geographic limitation of the municipality, extending for many miles through territory selected for its possi bilities of development aesthetically, but less desirable for home building or commercial development.

With all the improvement in the application of landscape archi tecture for the past decade, it has not yet received the general recognition and use which are its due. It should be of general benefit to all the people, and its significance as a cultural influence recognized. No one of the applied arts can progress beyond a certain point without the corresponding progress of the others, so that it is very necessary that a collaborative and sympathetic interest should prevail among the designers. There is distinct evidence to-day of this mutual interest, and with the introduction of artistic training in the common schools and the availability of vast wealth for the patronage of the arts, the United States is undoubtedly on the verge of a great artistic renaissance in which the art of landscape architecture will take a prominent part. (See BON-KEI; BONSAI; ; HAKO-NIWA ; BON-SEKI ; BOTANIC GARDEN; HORTICULTURE; ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION ; SOCIAL ARCHITEC