Category Archives: Sustainable design

What would Plato and Confucius think about modern landscape and architecture? 孔子和柏拉图会对现代建筑和园林的思考会是怎样的?

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Plato: Confucius! How old are you now? Where have you been?
Confucius: I died 2489 years ago and have been touring the Andromeda Galaxy without a body. How about you?
Plato: I died 2357 years ago and I’ve been doing much the same thing.
Confucius: Well, I am so glad we’ve met again, and with a great view of the city they have made down there.
Plato: It is called New York and the plan for Central Park was done by a landscape architect called Frederick Law Olmsted. Everyone thought it was brilliant so they created a profession called Landscape Architecture. I like it.
Confucius: Yes, and New York reminds me of the way gridiron buildings and a flowing landscape are combined in Beijing, China.
Plato. I’ve seen Beijing. The center is wonderful – but have you seen the suburbs? Ugh.
Confucius: Yes. I wouldn’t want to live in them any more than I would like to live in most American cities – or any of the other big twentieth century cities. What do you think went wrong?
Plato. I’m afraid I spent too much time thinking about society and not enough time thinking about the landscape.
Confucius: I think I made the same mistake. But it did not seem necessary. Daoists knew of a wonderful relationship between Man and Nature so I did not need to worry too much about it. The important thing was to think about an ethical code which would make for happy families and well-run countries without too much fighting.
Plato: My concern was also with human society. We had political problems in Greece and the great thing was to distinguish good from bad, right from wrong, truth from falsehood. Relationships with the Gods were fine and we did not need to worry too much about relationships between Man and Nature or cities and landscapes. But I wish I had written more about it.
Confucius: I wish I had too. But can you tell me why the modern world does not have more landscape architects and why they don’t integrate architecture and landscape when making all those new cities?
Plato: They will, my friend, they will. Or the human race will not survive the growing environmental crisis.
Confucius: I hope you are right, my friend. They have a ‘conservation movement’ but their understanding of its nature and its history is far too shallow.
Plato: Do you remember when our ancestors roamed together in Central Asia?
Confucius: I have heard of it, and of how they loved the wild landscapes, but perhaps you remember more of those times. What do you think matters most?
Plato: Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. Death is not the worst that can happen to men. Ignorance is the root and the stem of every evil. Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.
Confucius: Yes. Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses. What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others. Study the past if you would define the future. He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.
Tom: Yes indeed. But what about the fauna, the flora, the mountains, the rivers, the winds, the forests and the seas?
Confucius and Plato: We have learned many things in Andromeda – but the truth which can be spoken is not the real truth and the world that can be seen is not the real world.

柏拉图：孔子！你现在多大岁数了？这些年你去了哪里呢？
孔子：我在两千两百三十年前去世，在失去肉体的情况下游历于仙女座星系。你呢？
柏拉图：我在二千三百五十七年前去世，我和你做了同样的事情。
孔子：嗯，我很高兴我们又见面了，并一起看下面这座人类创造的有着开放视线的城市。
柏拉图：是的，这是纽约，它的中心公园的设计是由一位名叫弗雷德里克·劳·奥姆斯特德的风景园林师完成的。 每一个人都认为这是个杰出的作品，所以人类就创造了一个专业：风景园林。 我喜欢它。
孔子： 对，纽约使我回忆起中国北京的方格建筑物和流动的园林的结合。
柏拉图：我也看过北京。 北京的中心地带很不错，但是你看了北京的郊区没有？哎！
孔子： 是啊。 我再也不愿意住在那里了，相比而言，更愿意住在大多数的美国城市，或者其他二十一世纪的城市。你觉得错在哪里呢？
柏拉图：我恐怕是花了过多的时间来思考社会而没有足够的时间思考园林了。
孔子：我觉得我也犯了同样的错误，但是似乎我们并没有必要去思考园林。道家通晓人与自然之间美好的关系，所以我没有必要过于担心。重要的是要考虑道德守则，为了幸福的家庭和良好的运行，使国家而没有太多的战争。
柏拉图：我关心的也是人类社会。我们存在有关希腊的政治问题，伟大的事情是要分清善恶，是非以及真伪。与神的关系很好，我们没有必要过多担心人与自然，城市以及风景之间关系。不过，我希望我写了更多相关的内容。
孔子：我希望我也写了更多。但你能告诉我为什么现代世界上还没有更多的风景园林师，为什么当他们建设那些新城市的时候，不整合建筑与园林？
柏拉图：他们会的，我的朋友，他们会的。或者，人类将面临日益严重而导致无法生存的环境危机。
孔子：我希望你是对的，我的朋友。他们进行了一项“保护运动”，但他们对事情本质和历史的了解过于肤浅。
柏拉图：你还记得我们的祖先在中亚一起漫步么？
孔子：我听说过，也知道他们非常喜欢那样的自然环境，但你比我年纪大，比我更了解那个时代的事情。你认为什么最重要？
柏拉图：有爱心，你面对的每一个人其实都是一场硬仗。死亡不是发生在人类最严重的事。无知是每一件邪恶事情的根与茎。法律一部分是为好人而制定的，以指导他们如何彼此友好相处，另一部分是为那些拒绝接受教育，精神不能被征服，不能被软化，也不能被阻碍接近邪恶的人们制定的。
孔子：没错。忘记伤害，永远不要忘记善良。己所不欲，勿施于人。如果你想定义未来，那么就学习过去。 谁执政，就意味着他的美德可以与北极星媲美，在位置上不动，所有的星星都簇拥他的身边。
汤姆：确实。但对于动物，植物，山脉，河流，风，森林和海洋呢？
孔子和柏拉图：我们在仙女座星系学到了很多东西. 但能够被说出来的“真理”就不是真正的真理，而且能够被看到的”世界”就不是真的世界了。

(Thank you to Tian Yuan for the translation)

Gardens as models for landscape urbanism, urban design and city planning.

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As the above and below photographs show, it is a good idea to test ideas at the small scale and the human scale before building them at full scale. This also applies to city building: ideas should be tested at the garden scale before being built at the city scale. There are three advantages to this procedure. First, city building is immensely complicated and therefore requires even more testing than engineering design. Second, working with garden-scale models creates an opportunity for piecemeal planning, working from details to generalities and from small to large (see post on gardens and landscape urbanism). I argued for this in an essay on The Tradedy of Feminine Design and, though not happy with the method being described as ‘feminine’, I remain convinced that the small-to-large design process is a necessary counterweight to the far-too-popular Master Planning approach. It is also very well suited to the garden-and-landscape way of thinking. Detail decisions can be conceived as planting ‘seeds’ which will grow into cities. This is, let us not forget, both the way most of the worlds cities began and also the way they have grown. The third advantage of using gardens as laboratories for city design is that gardeners always and instinctively deal with ecological, hydrological, recycling and climatic issues.

Above photo of wind tunnel testing of a model of a plane courtesy QinetiQ Group.

Parterre with plate-bande in compartment garden, shown in Stoke Edith Wall Hanging – and landscape urbanism

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This tapestry (dated 1710-20)  was rescued from a fire at Stoke Edith Park  in 1927 (see aerial photo of Stoke Edith today). It shows a garden which may have belonged to Stoke Edith House and which may have been designed by George London. It is the principal section of a compartment garden, designed for walking and for displaying the owners valuable statues and valuable flowers. The planted ribbons (plate-bandes) and the nature of their planting are clearly shown, as are the citrus fruits in tubs, placed outside for the summer to scent the air and provide fresh fruits which were otherwise unobtainable. The building at the far end of the parterre is an orangery.The design style is that of the Late Renaissance.
The use and the layout remind one of the squares of eighteenth century London and Paris (eg the Place des Vosges) – which were, in effect communal parterres. I see the urban examples as landscape urbanism in the sense of city plans inspired by garden and landscape plans.
When the Stoke Edith parterre was made the surrounding settlements (eg Hereford) were, presumably, densely packed and grubby almost-medieval towns. Their ‘shared space’ would have been roads for riding: unpaved and strewn with animal dung. For fine ladies in fine clothes they were not suitable places to take the air – so they needed gardens with gravel walks, statues and flowers to admire. The social use of the garden space is evident.

A Stoke Edith gate lodge (built in 1792) survives on a bend in the road between Ledbury and Hereford.

Images courtesy Wikipedia. See photograph of Stoke Edith garden and parterre before 1927

Specialised public open space enriches urban landscape design

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The ‘urban squatters’ skateboard park on the South bank in London is one of my favourite examples of a highly specialised, and unofficial, public open space. Benighted planners have as unimaginative an approach to POS as they do to education. It is ONE SIZE FITS ALL – a national curriculum and a national provision of ‘public open space’. The historic standard was ‘7 acres of open space/1000 people’, to go with a national diet of one glass of milk, four slices of bread, meat and two veg, with a fish on a Friday. Cooks have liberated us from wartime diets but wartime POS provision continues. ‘You can have any POS you want, so long as it is green’. But, as the video shows, London’s young, dynamic, agile and multi-ethnic youngsters have other ideas, other tastes, other skills and a harlequin love of coloured space. My conclusion is that the age of Generalised POS is over. The age of Specialised POS has begun. The above example cost the authorities nothing to make and costs them nothing to maintain. It is therefore more SUSTAINABLE than a stupid patch of neglected grass.
Notes (1) other examples of specialised POS welcome (2) I’m not sure but I think the urban space in the video is a consequence of the architecture professions onetime love of pilotis.

Holistic urban water management in Chinese urbanisation: Atelier Herbert Dreiseitl in Zhangjiawo New Town

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River Park in Zhangjiawo New Town

River Park in Zhangjiawo New Town

中国城市化进程中的整体城市水管理：张家窝新城设计—Dreiseitl工作室   Thinking about the urban development which has taken place in mainland China since Deng Xiaoping repudiated the Cultural Revolution in 1977, the words which come to mind are: fantastic, astonishing, unbelievable and unprecedented. If, however, a laowai 老外 may be allowed a word or two of criticism (1) the work has been a little rushed (2) too few landscape architects were involved in the urban design (3) it is a pity that so much was learned from America in comparison with what was learned from Europe (4) nature in general and water in particular have suffered from the urbanisation (5) the work could have been done in a more Daoist way than it has been, with the reverence for nature which was traditional in Daoist and Buddhist culture.
With these thoughts in mind I was very pleased to read that Atelier Dreiseitl have completed a project in Zhangjiawo New Town. As noted in a review of Dreiseitl’s book on Recent Waterscapes, his work has the virtue which Lewis Mumford attributed to Ian McHarg of combining ‘scientific insight’ with ‘constructive environmental design’.
‘The Chinese seem to have been the first to perceive the relationships joining the flow of water with the shape of land and with the social and philosophical milieu.According to Joseph Needham, China produced two opposing schools of thought in hydrological engineering as in virtually ever other area of human endeavor: the Confucian and the Taoist. The Confucians were disciplinarians who believed in strict rules and strong measures of control. They advocated ‘high and mighty dykes, set nearer together’… The Taoists, or expansionists, were more inclined to let water take its own course as far as possible, giving it plenty of room to spread. The result was a very complex network of flow. An early Taoist engineer, one Chia Jang, wrote over 3000 years ago that ‘those who are good at controlling water give it the best opportunities to flow away; those who are good at controlling the people give them plent of chance to talk’ (John Tillman Lyle, Design for human ecosystems: landscape, land use, and natural resources (1999, p.236)
The American approach to water management was Confucian, in the sense of regulatory. But McHarg introduced a more Daoist approach in the famous project for Woodlands, Texas. It proved to be more beautiful, more effective and more ecological. And it came in at 25% of the cost of the US engineers ‘Confucian’ system. As McHarg observed ‘there is no better union than virtue and profit’. I therefore hope Dreiseitl is re-pioneering a Daoist approach to holistic urban water management in the formerly Daoist Middle Kingdom. Continental European cities, because so many of them were founded in the Middle Ages, have a long tradition of incorporating open water channels within the fabric of the city. American cities, because so many of them date from the nineteenth century, have tended to put as much urban water as possible into underground pipes. China seems to have done things the American way, so far.

Images courtesy Tian Yuan

The turf maze as a game of love

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A labyrinth has a single path to its centre and was a Christian pilgrimage symbol during the middle ages.
A maze, with many blind alleys, puzzling events and difficult choices, became the setting for a garden game for six unmarried youths and six unmarried maidens. In pairs, a boy and a girl make their way in opposite directions, one centripetal and one centrifugal. Cupid, who directs the game, encourages them to kiss if they meet. They all dance when the game is over. Ringhieri, an Italian author who explained the rules in 1551, appends some questions to the rules: ‘Why is the maze blind? Why is love a maze? Is human life a maze? Why is womens’ hair like a maze? Is philosophy a maze? Is human life an inextricable maze?
The game and the questions form part of the ‘labyrinth of love’ (see, for example: Boccacio’s Corbaccio o Laberinto d’amore).
A game of love on a turf maze would be fun during a university fresher’s week – when there is everything to play for.
The maze in the photograph is on the village green at Alkborough in Lincolnshire – and I do not know if it was used for the game of love. Arthur Mee says it was cut by monks in the 12th century and White (Lincolnshire Directory (1872) that it was made by the Romans. Others think it is medieval. The excellent Labyrinthos website states that the first record of the Alkborough Turf Maze dates from the 1690s. Eight English ‘turf mazes’ survive. They are actually unicursal labyrinths and may be old – but the earliest records are from the seventeenth century. Their locations are interesting in themselves. One is in a garden; three are in the hills; four are on village greens or similar places:
Alkborough, Lincolnshire – near the village church and overlooking the Rivers Trent and Humber
Dalby, North Yorkshire – on the hills between the villages of Brandsby and Dalby
Wing, Rutland – on the edge of the village green
Hilton, Cambridgeshire – on the village green
Somerton, Oxfordshire – in a private garden
Saffron Walden, Essex – on the Town Common
Winchester, Hampshire – on a hill on the south of the village
Breamore, Hampshire – on a remote hilltop

Image courtesy Lincolnian (Brian)