Category Archives: context-sensitive design

Christianity, music, sacred trees, garden design and the architecture of a new landscape

Dorothy Frances Gurney wrote that “One is nearer God’s heart in a garden/Than anywhere else on earth.” Her father and husband were Anglican priests – so some might read this as her criticism of male egotism! Or one might think that the Miserere sung in Europe’s most perfect building (I would give this award to King’s College Chapel) takes you closer to ‘God’s heart’. The Vatican kept the music private for centuries. Mozart went there, memorized the score, went home and wrote it down.

Christianiaty has a chequered relationship with art and gardens. Gardens are celebrated in the Song of Solomon and the Garden of Eden story (see blog post) but the Christians felled sacred trees throughout Europe and have never given gardens the support they have had in Buddhism and Islam. Last time I saw the garden of Lambeth Palace (London home of the head of the Church of England) it was an utter disgrace – and most Church of England cloister garths are badly or inappropriately managed. Anglican Christianity is losing support for a host of reasons but Christian music is entirely holding its own – always making the case for a simple, idealistic and joyful approach to the world. The drive for perfect simplicity + imaginative creativity, as seen in Kings College Chapel, may be connected to Bill Gates’ obsevation that he liked Cambridge because it had won more Nobel prizes than the rest of Europe put together.

My own view, as a ninth generation skeptic, is that while there is something utterly wonderful about Christianity, it is in urgent need of renewal ( perhaps a ‘New New’ Testment). So I wonder what garden designers can contribute to the architecture of a new landscape.

We have had apologies for the Crusades and the Inquisition. Please can we now have a full and frank apology for the felling of Sacred Trees – and then a quest to produce a contextual design as perfect as the singing of the Miserere in King’s College Chapel. This is my Christmas and New Year wish for 2010, made on the day after the pagan New Year (21 December) and therefore a day of hope for the return of warmth, sunshine and flowers. London is having a cold, wet and slushy end to a year of economic turmoil.

PS A different musical response to the nature of the world, kindly drawn to my attention by a Chinese landscape architect, can he heard in the beautiful Yuzhou Changwan (‘Singing at night on fishing boat’):

PPS If the two pieces of music are run similtaneously the result is curious East-West mashup.

Is the Millennium London Eye a Good Thing or a Bad Thing?

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Following in the footsteps of Britain’s most quoted historians (W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman) we should ask: is the London Eye is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing?

30m people have ridden in the Eye (@ £17.5 each =£525m) and the owners pay the South Bank Centre £2.5m/year to rent a tiny strip of land. It thus enriches London and Londoners. This is a Good Thing.
The London Eye makes Central London resemble a Theme Park: County Hall and the Palace of Westminster have lost their dignity and now resemble toys in a model village. This is a Bad Thing.
The London Eye was originally given planning permission for 5 years but was then made permanent, thus enriching the owners at the expense of the public good. This was a Bad Thing.

On balance the London Eye is therefore a Bad Thing and Lord Rogers was wrong. He declared “The Eye has done for London what the Eiffel Tower did for Paris”. Lord Rogers is a decent architect but has little understanding or urban design and no understandisng of landscape architecture or geography. The Eiffel Tower does not dominate the historic core of Paris.
The London Eye should be moved downstream of Tower Bridge, to a site which would not be dwarfed by its scale (eg Chamber’s Wharf). It should also be hoisted by 30m (from 135 metres to 165 metres so that it is higher than the Star of Nanchang (160 m). This would be a Very Good Thing.

Seen from St James Park, the London Eye makes Whitehall resemble a themed hotel in Disneyland

Zen: garden as house

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http://www.archtracker.com/the-garden-house-takeshi-hosaka-architects/2009/04/

Apart from what looks what looks unfortuneately like artifical turf on the roof – the Garden House by Takeshi Hosaka Architects with its tight triangular plan is a surprise and delight! Definitely a garden for my soul! The living spaces are designed around the edges of an enclosed garden courtyard, cleverly stacked and arranged to take advantage of every square mm of space, create privacy and capture views. In the photographs the garden is very young…it would be fantastic to revisit the house as the tree grows and the potted garden matures.

If you can’t resist viewing more maybe a trip to Japan is in order…

Upland Britain with a blanket cover of wind turbines

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Palm Springs may show how Upland Britain will look in the age of renewable energy

David MacKay states that onshore wind farms are likely to generate 2W/m2 and offshore wind farms to generate 3W/m2. To supply the UK energy demand of 50kWh/day would therefore require an area twice the size of Wales to meet the demand with from offshore farms and three times the size of Wales to meet the demand from onshore wind farms. Wales (8,022 sq mi ) has approx 8% of the area of the UK. At present 13.5% of the UK is urbanized. David MacKay asks ‘would the public accept and pay for such extreme arrangements?’ Please study the above photo of Palm Springs in California before giving an answer. Some people might find a blanket of turbines ugly.

Scotland has 32% of the UK’s land area and only 8.4% of the population, so it would be relatively easy to win a democratic vote to blanket Scotland with wind turbines and solve the UK’s energy problem, though the cost would be high. We could omit the Forth-Clyde Valley and include parts of Northumberland and Central Wales in the interests of ‘equity’. Too many southerners have holiday homes in the Lake District for this area to be included – so it could be a good place for property investment.

Above image courtesy slworking

Would the Scots mind having wind turbines embellishing Arthur's Seat and Edinburgh's historic skyline?

First entries for Tiananmen Square Landscape Architecture Competition

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Witney Hedges entry for the Tiananmen Square competition would be invisible by day and spectacular after dark

Witney Hedges entry for the Tiananmen Square competition would be invisible by day and spectacular as dusk turns to dark

The landscape architecture compeition for Tiananmen Square was announced in March 2009 and, seven months later, we are pleased to see the first entries coming in. There are still eight months to go (till June 2010) and we hope for many more. All the competition entries can be seen on Flickr, because it is a Web 2.0 design competition. A Chinese commentator has said, in effect, ‘leave Tiananmen Square as it is: it is a ‘holy place’ belonging to the PRC and foreigners should leave it alone’. I can understand this attitude! – but the conclusion that ‘nothing should ever change’ does not follow and two of the early entries. from Witney Hedges and Henrychung, go for a ‘sensitive intervention’ approach which leaves the use and spatial character of the Square very much as they are today. Other entries, perhaps inspired by the famous Chinese architect Ma Yansong, go for a radical greening of the space. My own view is that all options should be considered and that they should be discussed both within China and outside China. Civilization, to which China has made an inestimable contribution, belongs to the whole world, not to a group of people who occupy a small geographical zone for a short period in time: they have the right and the power to decide but they can and should welcome debate.

CSD Context Sensitive Design and urban design

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The Eifel Tower became an adored feature of Paris, but after the Montparnasse Tower (right) was built, Parisians decided there must be no more high buildings within the Boulevard Péripherique. What does this tell us about context-sensitive, and context-insensitive, design?

Context theory is “the theory of how environmental design and planning of new development should relate to its context”. Unless we want the world to become less-and-less diverse, it is a subject which should concern all urban planners, designers, architects and landscape architects. Surely, we all want designs which respond sensitively to the cultural, climatic, ecological, geological, hydrological etc context in which they are built. Cars and moble phones can be everywhere the same but design for the built environment should be sensitive to its context. This requires a theory of how additions to the built environment should relate to their context.

In America, the FHWAFederal Highway Administration” fully supports the concepts and principles that make-up Flexibility in Highway Design, now commonly referred to as “Context Sensitive Design” (CSD)”. Even signage design can be context-sensitive and it is an important aspect of urban street design.

Garden Design and Landscape Architecture

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