Landscape Architecture

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. "Landscape Architec ture is primarily a fine art, and as such its most important func tion is to create and preserve beauty in the surroundings of human habitations and in the broader natural scenery of the country; but it is also concerned with promoting the comfort, convenience and health of urban populations." This famous definition by the late President Eliot of Harvard expresses the modern scope of the art and profession—the beautiful and efficient adaptation of land to human use—as distinguished from the earlier field of landscape gardening, which concerned itself largely with ornamental design ing and planting of private estates and gardens, deriving its title from the "landscape school" of the i8th century. In England, where the term landscape architecture is at present little used, the term landscape gardening persists, partly because much institutional and public work included in the practice of American landscape architects is done there by architects.

In France the historic term is Part des jardins, and the pro fessional designer is called architecte paysagiste. In Germany Landschaftsgiirtnerei corresponds in origin and use to the English landscape gardening, but the accepted term is Gartenkunst, although recently Gartenarchitektur has been applied to the formal work of German designers.

Theory.

A theory of landscape design, as of the other fine arts must be based on a subjective definition of beauty, which ultimately attributes to the individual the formation of ideals, taste and style in landscape materials, and which recognizes no standards of landscape beauty except as the collective expression of individual ideals under given conditions of environment and culture.

The review of historic styles will show a series of humanized treatments of landscape, most of which have in common the quality of man's dominance over nature. The landscape style of the Romantic period in Europe and of 59th century America suggests the other mode of design, in which man tries to empha size certain natural characters, either by enhancement of existing landscape or by new creation, producing a result in which art appears only in the perfect unity of the natural scene. Taste in landscape compositions varies widely, but is tending away from the historic violent condemnation of the formal style by partisans of the natural and vice versa, to the more rational viewpoint which recognizes that each has its appropriate use and each its claim to appreciation.

In both the humanized and naturalistic modes of design, the great artist in landscape materials attempts to create a pervading landscape effect or sequence of effects, be it gaiety, repose, mystery or grandeur. In the i8th century, discussion of land scape appreciation distinguished especially "the beautiful" (or calm and smooth) and "the picturesque" (or striking and sharply contrasted).

In striving to kindle emotion, landscape architecture resembles the sister arts, architecture and sculpture, with which there exists a close relation in actual practice of design. But whereas the architect deals in rigid materials of brick and stone which can be constructed into a finished building, the landscape architect deals in living and growing materials, some of which may scarcely reach full maturity and beauty during his lifetime. Buildings, architectural details and statuary all play an important part in landscape design, but the special field of landscape architecture in which no other artist is trained to work remains the adaptation of ground forms to human purposes and the composition with these of trees and shrubs and herbaceous plants of multifarious shapes, textures and colours.

Although three-dimensional composition in landscape materials differs from two-dimensional landscape painting, because a garden or park design contains a series of pictorial compositions,—in which series there is often a super-compositional relation,—never theless in each of these pictures we find the familiar basic prin ciples of unity, of repetition, sequence and balance, of harmony and contrast. While some part of a landscape design may be intended mainly to form a picture seen from a given point within the visual angle, there must be more often a unity of larger land scape composition which it is impossible to see at one time and which must be appreciated by sequential experiences. To give examples, in the first case we may be looking through an arched loggia (as at the Generalife in Granada) along a strongly marked axis to a vista point beyond, and this whole enframed picture with its symmetrical balance and its simple, formal disposition of elements, we can visually apprehend. In the other case, perhaps a large country estate in the English park style or an Italian Renaissance garden, the three-dimensional unity must be recon structed in the mind from memories of a number of different views, related by consistency of scale, of style, of landscape character and of emotional effect. This larger unity may be expressed in formal or, often less obviously, in naturalistic terms, but its presence is essential to any successful landscape design.

In making his outdoor compositions the landscape architect, unlike the landscape painter, has to modify the position and char acteristics of masses to produce pleasing compositional relations both in the various views which the observer gets as he moves about and in the resulting idea of the constructed whole. Also the shape, colour and texture of the objects used in composition are constantly modified by effects of light and shade, of atmosphere and aerial perspective; and these transitory effects often play a