A lecture delivered by Robert Holden to the Royal Society of Arts on 29th November 1995
I was asked to give this lecture particularly in respect of sustainability and shall extend the theme to cover the idea of the sense of landscape, the idea of landscape as a construct or a thing seen and the subjectivity implicit in that idea of a changing view.
Stephen Switzer, regarding the view of the garden and the view of the position of the garden in the world beyond, said:
‘Since all agree that the pleasures of a country life cannot possibly be contained within the narrow limits of the greatest garden, woods, fieldS and distant enclosures should have the care of the industrious and laborious planter. Neither would I advise immuring or, as it were, the imprisoning by walls but wherever liberty will allow, would throw my garden open to all view, to the unbounded felicities of distant prospect and the expansive volumes of nature herself.’
The idea of distant prospect and of expansive volumes of nature are therefore the matter of debate within the landscape profession.
The inner view is a garden and the outer view a landscape which in some ways represents nature.
That idea of what is ideal about nature and landscape has constantly changed. In the seventeenth century John Evelyn, describing the crossing of the Alps, sees something which is unpleasant and horrendous. That is no longer the case regarding the Alps. But the Alps, by their very attraction, can be destroyed by man and this idea of man’s impact on nature man appreciating something and then what he does with that appreciation - is critical to our presence and future on the planet.
The reverse process can occur. For example, a slate quarry near Machynileth, that went out of production just after the Second World War, is now a Centre for Alternative Technology. Here that process of destruction becomes one of construction in natural terms, in ecological terms - a place made ecologically healthy.
This is partially a matter of man’s intervention but also of man’s non-intervention, of natural processes. One of my themes this evening is that one should take care and question always what one is trying to do, when appreciating the landscape and interfering with it.
I would ask a question here about Gateshead Riverside Park. Typically one goes through the usual business as a landscape architect of proffering ‘before’s and ‘after’s. Implicitly, the before (on the River Tyne, a former chemical works just at the beginning of the reclamation process) is seen as something bad and the process after reclamation as good. I would suggest one of the characteristics of landscape architecture, those questions ‘Is it right? Is it good?’ are not asked too often but should be.
The Liverpool International Garden Festival, which four million people visited in 1984, was undoubtedly a success in terms of visitor attraction but was it sufficiently a success or an achievement in terms of landscape appreciation? What has been lost is some thing of the history and context of the site: the docks have become a car park. 1 am not saving that is good or bad but it is something which should be questioned.
By contrast, the Ebbw Vale Garden Festival was perhaps more of an achievement because more of a sense of place was built upon and kept. Its lake is a new creation designed by Eakers Hutchison and as part of that design, the slag heap, now a covered mound, was retained as an element of continuity, of history and of work. Similarly, the lake and nature reserve area on the top of the hillside, partially existing and partially built upon and added to.
One of my particular concerns is development in London Docklands and, indeed, in the Thames Gateway. Having propounded that our view of landscape should involve an appreciation of what is actually there and the history of what is there, what I see in Docklands and in the Thames Estuary arc extensive views and prospects, which I would argue, are indeed sublime. Sometimes these are appreciated: they were appreciated, for example, by the designers at Surrey Docks but too often, the implicit sense of place in Docklands and along the River Thames is not appreciated. The classic is the London City Airport - showing the tendency to want to hide what is there, rather than to reveal and appreciate it.
One of the concerns about the Thames Estuary is the explicit view that it is not attractive. To quote from the Department of the Environment’s Thames Strategy (1995), ‘With the exception of the estuarine marshes in North Kent there are few areas of landscape value along the River Thames east of Greenwich.’
and, to quote from the Thames Gateway Planning Framework, again by the Department of the Environment (June 1995),
‘This riverside strip has hosted many of London’s service industries: power generation, gasworks and docks. Most have now gone, leaving dereliction in their wake. There is a variety of commercial and storage activity, much of it haphazard and visually intrusive’.
Industry is thought to be wrong, to be haphazard and visually intrusive. To continue to quote from the Thames Gateway Planning Framework,
‘There is a legacy of environmental degradation. The place where London generated its power and dumped its rubbish, producing derelict sites and a web of overhead power lines’.
The place is not appreciated. That history of power is a glorious history. The history of commerce, docks, gasworks. electricity lines and transport is implicit in that. One of our problems is that because we have the Cotswolds and the Lake District there is insufficient appreciation of post-industrial estuarine landscape. One would immediately compare that with Holland, which is largely a delta landscape, with no Cotswolds or Lake District but an appreciation of what an estuarine landscape can be.
Duisberg Nordpark in Germany has been a park since 1980 and is one of the main strategies, in terms of public park provision, of the International Building Exhibition, now halfway through its ten year cycle - a programme of regeneration based not on economics first but on environment first. The park was the AG Tyssen steelworks in Duisberg, which closed in 1985. It has 200 acres.
The landscape architects, Anna Lise and Peter Latz, said ‘Keep it as a structure, a place where there is natural regeneration, a place you can go into’. It was a place where only a proportion of the population went, the labour force: now local people can go for the first time as a family, as a whole and you can go 50 or 60 metres up to the top of the blast furnaces. Essentially, what has happened is semantic: a steelworks has been changed into a park, called a park - a great imaginative leap. Just as at one time the Alps were seen as something awful, to be passed through, so there has been a change, an appreciation of the industrial heritage of this part of Germany.
There is the whole business of small interventions, small gardens being created, the huge concrete bunkers being cut through - just small changes and adaptations but, essentially, using what is there. It is costing the Germans over £1 billion to create this park and its associated programmes over the ten years. I view it as money appropriately spent.
They are seeing areas like this as nature parks. One could similarly see parts of Kings Cross, London Dock- lands and the extensive East Thames corridor as nature parks. Proposals made in 1943 by Abercrombie for major similar parks in London (Mile End and Burgess Park) are tin finished over haIf a century not to create a park.
Part of our problem is that we are a little afraid of design in this country. Industrial developers have said to me, ‘No. You can’t use the word “beauty” when referring to an industrial and retail park the planners will think you are silly’.
I suggest one can use the word ‘beauty’ in all its meanings in respect of landscape. One can actively design in a strong, exciting fashion.
I have been connected with a site in Arnhem (along with James Liversedge) for a school for car mechanics which illustrates the approach of the Dutch to design and provision of infrastructure. Based at my campus in Dartford, it takes me, if I ever do it, 35 minutes to walk to the nearest railway station. From the Arnhem site the nearest railway station is five minutes walk and we were asked to provide parking space for 400 cars and 1,400 bicycles, the latter to be sited in the middle of the development in a bicycle parking canyon.
I last used a cycle in central London in 1975 and, carrying a tube around as I was wont to do as an architect, I thumped the tops of cars when they came too close to me. It is dangerous to be a cyclist in central London. It is not very dangerous in Arnhem. It has nothing to do with the area being flat or hilly (Arnhem is not Holland’s delta area). It has something to do with the approach to infrastructure the presence of railway lines and the ability to use cycles safely - also of their approach to landscape related to that.
Landscape is subjective. It is something which is viewed and that view can change. We saw something of that with Duisberg Nord and one of the huge problems with landscape is that we have a magnificent inheritance in this country, which can be a constraint. It is the idea and issue of sustainability which should lead us forward into the next century.
