Architecture / Book Reviews
By Tia Blassingame
Illuminated Interiors Radical Landscapes: Reinventing Outdoor Space
by Jane Amidon
ISBN: 0-500-28427-X, Thames & Hudson, 2004, $29.95
Divided into seven chapters, Radical Landscapes considers examples of provocative or reinvented landscapes. The "Light, Color, Texture" chapter focuses on landscapes that utilize sensory perception to enthrall. With the manipulation of light one can either create architectural form or illuminate theatrically or functionally. Light is changeable, controllable. As in Glowing Topiary Garden (Ken South, 1997) in New York, light can be a very visible and bold feature. It can be used to explore reflectivity as well as create shadows, transform spatial experiences and patterns.
In "Plane Movement," the landscape of the built environment is described as "a contrived set of impressions and solutions" or "a veneer." So is it empty, meaningless? A theatrical stage set to fool us? By no means. Janis Halls, for example, forms an undulating, sculpted landscape at Waterland in northwestern Connecticut.
"Order and Objects" depicts responses which follow nature’s tried and true schemes. They are tidy and ordered. From West 8 Landscape Architects’ Garden for VSB (1995) in Utrecht, the Netherlands with its Spartan rows and slithering pedestrian bridge to Yoji Sasaki’s checkerboard format at Tokyo’s NTT Musashino R+D Center with its alternating squares of water and turf with cherry trees along the perimeter and in a central square.
"Revealing Interaction" explores how landscape designers reveal natural forces and changes. With his Dew Gardens (1998-), Chris Parsons considers the transitory beauty of nature. He sketches his patterns into the dewy grass before the dew evaporates. Though these creations are temporary lasting only a few hours, his photographs capture the gardens.
"New Contexts" introduces how and in what exciting new locations landscape design has begun appearing such as amidst satellite dishes (Hughes Communications Headquarters, Long Beach, California, 1997), as a forest in the center of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and Eco-Media City in Malaysia, and as the Treetop Walk that in an effort to conserve the forest floor, moved people into the trees (Walpole-Nornalup National Park, Australia, 1996). Significant landscaped infill has replaced ornamental plants with birches in the Schiphol Airport Garden (1995). Each season, 25,000 additional trees are planted in an effort to eventually connect the airport with the surrounding area in addition to visually and ecologically greening the airport. This scheme by West 8 Landscape Architects might set a precedent for other airports to follow.
The projects featured in "Urban Ingredients", such as the Northern Water Feature 2000 located at the Sydney Olympics Campus in Homebush Bay (Hargreaves Associates, 2000) in Australia, deal with the connection between man, nature and urbanity. Lastly, the Page (Zvi Hecker, 1996) at the Berlin Lundenstrasse Memorial is an example in which "Sites Tell Stories." These stories range from cultural, human, or place-oriented histories.
Radical Landscapes catalogues the great breath and depth of landscape architecture, and shows that one can create place and meaning.
From a Bird’s-Eye View
Sprawl
by Dolores Hayden with aerial photographs by Jim Wark
ISBN: 0-393-73125-1, W.W. Norton, 2004, $24.95
One summer, I was offered a position in the architecture department of a certain supermarket chain, but the idea of spending my summer creating faceless boxes with only minor variations did not appeal to me in the slightest. Now, everywhere I look I see the same box with only the logo changing, give or take a palm tree, or a planter of birds of paradise. When I perused Dolores Hayden’s Sprawl and its stunning aerial photographs by Jim Wark, I thought those boxy, increasingly ubiquitous buildings looked interesting, even strangely alluring from a bird’s eye view. The ugliest, most monotonous elements are viewed as a pattern: pretty in its undulating regularity, impressive in its sheer size, and less tedious than when experienced on the ground.
Sprawl takes us from A to Z in sprawl terminology. A is for asphalt nation, which denotes our overly paved country. Some of my favorites are also among the most disturbing in image and in actuality. There is LULU, otherwise known as the "locally unwanted land use". It is usually undesirable because of its attendant adverse effects related to sound, smell, and aesthetics. Oddly, one of the three related protests against the LULU is NIMBY, aka "Not In My Backyard," a term that is quite well known. The other two protests are equally as candid as the first: BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near) and NOPE (Not On Planet Earth). With 40,000 shopping centers nationwide, mall glut seems an appropriate term for the 19 square feet of retail space per person that we have in this country. Not surprisingly, this amount is double that of any other country. Think the excessive Mall of America, with its 1.4 million square feet of shopping and attractions. "Putting parsley round the pig" denotes landscaping an unattractive plot of land, feature or building. "The Snout house", which I first became acquainted with in Las Vegas, appears with its prominent and protruding garage. Z is for "zoomburg", differentiated from a boom burg, which is an expanding suburban locale of urban scale by the speed with which it is expanding.
With Hayden’s informative text and Wark’s beautiful photographs, Sprawl is infinitely easier to digest than the actual examples of sprawl presently surrounding us. Seeing the entry for big box spells out what my summer would have wrought. Wark’s aerial image of a snow-covered Wal-Mart and its enormous parking lot only serve to eliminate any regret.
The Golden State
Structures of Utility by David Stark Wilson
ISBN: 1-890771-62-7, Heyday Books, 2003
There are many Californias outside the dramatic coastlines and sprawling cities. Californian landscapes that appear when the redwoods and palm trees give way to open, often rugged spaces dotted with functional structures. Wilson shows us visions of the state’s terrain and these odd, disconcerting, and quirky buildings. With a surreal beauty, these structures draw your gaze. Their function may be mundane, but somehow the structures are noble. Whether they recall the state’s Gold Rush as the Oriental Mine stamp mill near Alleghany or stand solemnly in a stark, seemingly infinite countryside like a Dunnigan Hills Barn, they are captivating. Even portraits of enormous structures against a vacate skyline, the grain elevators along the Sacramento River, near Richvale, and in Glenn County translate Wilson’s affection for California’s functional and increasingly abandoned buildings.
