Would you rather live in the top row houses or the lower row houses? The top row gives you central heating, indoor toilets and no rising damp, no earwigs and few spiders. The lower row gives you peace, beauty, calm and sustainability.
The obvious thought is ‘Why can’t I have both?’ Well, perhaps you can, and modernising the lower row would probably be easier than de-modernising the top row. I think something went terribly wrong with the system which lays out new housing estates in the UK. The architecture is mundane but liveable. The external landscape is ghastly: too much roadspace, too much wasted land, too much impermeability, too many planning regulations, too much ugliness, too much engineering, too little sustainability, too little landscape architecture, mouldy little strips of ‘garden’. We need a housing revolution. The vested interests which control the system should be treated better than middle eastern dictators, but overthrown. Though not innocent, I do not see the motor car as the villain of the piece.
Images of British housing estates courtesy of : lydiashiningbrightly dkohara jimmy_macdonald

Jonathan Mueller, as President of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2011, writes that ‘As a profession, we are entring a time of unparalleled opportunity. One of great promise. One where the fruits of our collective efforts have begun to be realized. In July 2009, Engineering News-Record ran a cover article titled “Landscape Architecture Rising,” citing the ascent of landscape architects to the forefront of major engineering projects. Speaking at the Congress for the New Urbanism meeting last year, architect Andres Duany declared, “Its not cool to be an architect. Its cool to be a landscape architect. That’s the next cool thing.” The Architect’s Newspaper featured a cover story in March about the surge in major commissions goint to landscape architects, stating, “Traditionally, the architect was the master builder with landscape designers as mere ancilleries. Today that relationship is fast being reversed.”‘
They used to say that ‘When America sneezes, Britain catches a cold’ and I would like the UK to join the US on this path. It should be a great time to embark on a career in landscape architecture. I remember reading, in a British journal in the 1970s, that ’50% of job advertisements for landscape architects fail to attract any applicants’. Given the immensity of the opportunities facing the landscape architecture profession in almost every country, the employment prospects for landscape architects may well return to this level – worldwide. However: the landscape architecture profession needs to do a great deal more to explain itself and to promote itself. The Summer 2011 issue of the LI Journal, Landscape, suggests that one of Britain’s best-known architects is helping with his remark that the day of the architect is over and ‘the day of the landscape architect is today’. Stansfield Smith would have been nearer the mark if had said that the green cities imperative makes it necessary for architects and landscape architects to work ‘hand in glove’.

The big picture of the London Riots is very disturbing. The burnt out shell of the 140 year old Reeves furniture store is symbolic of the losses London has suffered. “It is now likely that the damage which was ‘worse than the blitz’ would force the ravaged building to be demolished and rebuilt.” How to explain the mindless and pointless destruction and the reckless endangering of life supposedly by a twentyone year old?

So is it social division, or a bizarre new form of recreation to relieve ennui, the result of political correctness, a new phenomenon of virtual gangs or some other cause?

More importantly, how should London rebuilt to heal hurts past and with a renewed confidence as the Olympic city? And what lessons does the experiences in London hold for the sustainable urban design and planning of other complex global cities?

In 2005 I made my predictions and stated an intent to monitor the progress of the 2012 London Olympic Park. I took 500+ photographs of the site and hoped to follow the changes. This did not work, because they had to close off public access to the site, but I was kindly invited to view progress on 22.7.2011. The first point to strike me, on the jaw, was the total inability of the architects to work together. There is no relationship of any kind between the sports buildings. What, one might ask, can one expect of Zaha Hadid (Aquatics Centre), Michael Hopkins (Velopark), Populous (Olympic Stadium) or MAKE (Handball Arena)? This is an easy question to answer: I expected them to TALK to each other and to create a whole which is more than the sum of its parts, more than a bag of Liquorice Allsorts. I also expected the client to ensure that this conversation took place and had a fruitful outcome. But they didn’t. The landscape architects could have done the design co-ordination, had they been asked. Instead, they have designed a swathe of greenspace which can be expected to help in unifying the outdoor landscape. The underlying principles are ‘Bauhaus’: the outdoor form of the buildings reflects their internal function. The buildings have an outdoor setting which is more nature than garden (like the Meisterhäuser in Dessau). Someone, as yet unidentified, had the excellent idea of having acres and acres of wildflower meadow flowing around the buildings and along the river. It will be colourspace instead of greenspace and it will help distinguish the 2012 Olympic park from a 1980s British Garden Festival.
A very disappointing aspect of the Olympic 2012 Park is that the general public will have NO ACCESS in 2012. We Londoners have paid for many of the facilities. We will have our city greatly disrupted during the games. But there are no plans to let us see our park. Only the ticket holders will have this privilege – and a great many more people applied for tickets than have received tickets. A friend bid for £3000 of tickets and got none. After the Olympic Games end the plan is to keep the park closed and set about the task of transforming it for public access some time in 2013. I urge a re-consideration. They should open the park to FREE PUBLIC ACCESS FOR AT LEAST TEN DAYS AFTER THE END OF THE GAMES.
My 2005 comment on the prospects for the 2012 Olympic Park gave reasons for optimism and reasons for pessimism. In July 2011 the site looked like a road widening scheme near an airport, so I can’t say. My guesses are (1) the wildflowers will be wonderful (2) the buildings, as individual objects, will be handsome (3) there is a risk of the end product resembling a collision between an airport and garden festival. Let’s hope I’m wrong.
The below photograph, also taken from outsidethe park, shows what might have been achieved inside the park if more of the vernacular Lea Valley could have been retained. My belief is that it could have been done and that it has not been done.

The stained glass windows of Josef Albers (1920-33) demonstrate the remarkable advances that were made in glass art in the period between 1885 (with the Tiffany glass Company) and 1933 (with students from the Bauhaus), and the increasing links between emerging art movements and gardens (hinted at by Filoli ).

Art Nouveau began a remarkable period in the history of art, when designers inspired by nature and natural forms, began a creative transformation which would lead to the pure abstraction of Modernism, perhaps most typified in the work of Gustav Klimt.

Louis Comfort Tiffany, was the third generation of successful American entrepreneurs. His father founded the jewelry company, Tiffany & Co, while his grandfather had been a leading cloth manufacturer.

Mirroring the emerging emancipation of women which typifies the age, the daffodil lamp, designed by one the ‘Tiffany Girls’ Clara Discoll, is considered among the most famous of the studio’s designs.

Contemplation has been defined as thoughtful or long consideration or observation. In the East, Christian contemplation has been associated with spiritual transformation. “The process of changing from the old man of sin into the new born child of God and into our true nature as good and divine is called theosis.” The process has often been described by the metaphor of a ladder, with the acquisition of the state of hesychia or peace of the soul being the summit where the person is said to reach ‘Heaven on Earth’.

Perhaps the purpose of a public contemplative space might be to give visitor glimpses of ‘Heaven on Earth’? What might such a space look and sound like?

Natural spaces are most often associated with a sense of restfulness and peace. Water can create a sense of calm, while beauty can promote a sense of wonder.

I pass Forum Magnum Square quite often and took this photo to show it at a busy period: 5.30 pm on the afternoon of Sunday 26th June 2011. Forum Magnum Square is 100m from one of Europe’s largest tourist attractions. My180° photo was taken from the white cross in the centre of this map. London’s parks and open spaces were jammed with people. It was, for London, a hot day (27°) and people were seeking shade everywhere. I guess anyone can say why the space is empty. But what should be done? A biodiversity meadow? A beer garden? A tourist market? A food court? Another building? A fishing pond? A fernery? A monument to victims of torture? I think they should hold 2-stage competitions for the re-design of places like this: Stage 1 – to find an imaginative use; Stage 2 – design the space to accommodate the new use. In New York City they use incentive zoning to create POPS = Privately Owned Public Space. Great idea. Forum Magnum is Latin for Great Forum. A forum was a public square or marketplace in an ancient Roman city, also used for assemblies, public business and siting temples. Forum Magnum enjoys none of these functions. It is a great stupidity but is not great in any other way. Can anyone suggest an urban space in such great location which surpasses Forum Magnum square in stupidity?

This year Germany offers both the County Garden Show in Norderstedt and the National Garden Show in Koblenz. Norderstedt is using the show to unite an old mineral excavation site with an adjacent woodland and grassland to create a new park and Koblenz has renovated an antique military site to parkland and upgraded existing urban open space on three sites on both sides of the Rhine. The competition for the Norderstedt master plan was won by Kiefer Landschaftsarchitekten (Berlin), that for Koblenz by RMP Landschaftsarchitekten (Bonn). Both competitions were run in 2006.

Despite the large difference between the budgets for County and National shows, there is not much to choose between Norderstedt and Koblenz, and I believe that Norderstedt will leave a more substantial legacy behind it after the show. I am told that the renovation of the military site swallowed large amounts of money in Koblenz, and perhaps this is the reason why I judge this National Show to be the dullest I have seen in the 30 years that I have been visiting them. Whereas previous shows offered political comment, experimental design and a cornucopia of exhibits, Koblenz offers as its central attraction a threadbare expanse of grass surrounded by the dullest temporary exhibits, most of a commercial nature. The highlight of the visit is the cable car ride between sites, strung high over the Rhine at the point where the Mosel joins it – but this is also a temporary installation which will be dismantled when the show closes in autumn. Norderstedt leads the way when it comes to the technicalities of ground modelling, offering crisp and sculptural soft detailing and beautiful flowering meadows.

Both shows continue the trend of an emphasis on horticultural excellence. German plant designers are at the top of the range when it comes to herbaceous perennials, carpet bedding and the contemporary combinations of the two and they are certainly putting the Garden back into Garden Shows. Unfortunately, this does seem to be happening at the expense of the inspirational designs that were such a characteristic of past shows, particularly those that took place in the 1980s, the golden financial years before reunification.

‘The Golden Age of American Gardens’ begins “In the 1880s America’s millionaires were looking for new ways to display their new wealth, and the acquisition of a grand house with an equally grand garden became their passion.”

It is said that the style of architecture and gardens, evidenced in Lila Vanderbilt Webb’s 1886 model agricultural farm Shelburne Farm (among others) “was a mix of eclecticism and the latest advances in artistic and cultural developments as promoted in popular English style books and periodicals of the time.” The tubbed bay trees on the terraces overlooking Lake Champlain, as a consequence, were said to have been climatically challenged!

The Golden Age ended with the Jazz Age in which a distinctly American sensibility in gardens and lifestyle emerged. European influences still dominated design ideas, but new approaches were gradually emerging as is shown in the Chartes Cathedral Window Garden (photograph by Saxon Holt shown above), one of three walled gardens on the estate.

Filoli, the home of shipping heiress Lurline Roth, whose daughter debuted to jazz strains in 1939 at the property, maintains a strong jazz tradition.

Perhaps she danced to the classic‘I wish I could shimmy like my sister Kate’, said to be a charleston/belly dance fusion, and which inspired The Beatles to release a song of the same name in 1962?

More geography graduates should think about postgraduate courses in landscape architecture and careers in landscape architecture, especially if they are from Scotland’s Central Belt. About 500m years ago, in the Silurian period, England and Scotland belonged to different tectonic plates. They were mostly underwater and separated by the Iapetus Ocean. In the Devonian period the plates collided on the line of the Forth Estuary, shown on the photograph. There was much volcanic activity in the region during the Carboniferous period and a volcano formed the Bass Rock, also shown in the above photograph. When the Romans brought an urban civilization to Britain it did not extend north of the Forth and the culture of Highland Scotland remained tribal until the eighteenth century – at which time Edinburgh, some 30km west of the Bass Rock, was one of the most important intellectual centres in Europe. The geography of the landscape Central Scotland is very interesting – and I wonder if this contributed to the region having given birth to many of the the most important landscape analysts, landscape architects and landscape planners of modern times.
James Hutton lived 15 km south of the Bass Rock and used the geology of the region to support his Theory of the Earth, which argued that the Earth had evolved slowly, rather than being created in a week (as described in the Bible).
Gilbert Laing Meason invented the term ‘landscape architecture’, in 1828. Meason lived near Forfar (60 km north of the Bass Rock) which might be visible on the above photograph if it had been taken on a clearer day
John Claudius Loudon was the most prolific writer on gardens and architecture of his age. He designed some of the first public parks, proposed a system of Breathing Zones for London and transmitted the term ‘landscape architecture’ to Downing and Olmsted . Loudon spent his childhood at Gogar 40 km west of the Bass Rock
John Muir is regarded as the Father of America’s National Parks. John Muir was born in Dunbar (15 km from the Bass Rock) and the estuary in the foreground of the above photograph is now the John Muir Country Park.
Patrick Geddes, the first European to use ‘landscape architect’ as a professional title was the most innovative town and country planner of the twentieth century. Patrick Geddes was born near Perth (25 km north of the Bass Rock) and lived in Dundee and Edinburgh
Ian McHarg wrote the most influential landscape architecture book of the twentieth century (Design with nature) and contributed to the development of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) McHarg was born in Clydebank, 80 km west of the Bass Rock and near the boundary between the tectonic plates which were joined to make Britain

George Eliot wrote, in Adam Bede, that ‘a gardener is Scotch, as a French teacher is Parisian‘. She lived 1819–1880 and would have been on even stronger ground if writing about landscape architecture and planning!

See map history of How Britain was Formed. When the sun is setting (above) one gets a glimpse of how the region looked when the boundary between the Gondwana and Euramerica plates was full of volcanic activity, as Iceland is today, but the Devonian climate was hotter and drier.