Now that we have selected the location, what is our next concern? At the same time that the program requirements are being studied and
Our primary work as planners is to help fit human activities to the “want to be” of the land.
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Existing off-site features may guide or even dictate how the site is developed.
Barry W. Starke, EDA
refined we must gain a thorough understanding of the site and its sur-roundings: not only the specific area contained within the property boundaries, but the total site, which includes the environs to the hori-zon and beyond.
Graphic survey information and supporting reference data are essential, but they must be supplemented by at least one, and preferably repeated, visits to the site. Only by actual site observation can we get the feel of the property, sense its relationship to the surrounding areas, and become fully aware of the lay of the land. Only in the field can we gain an under-standing of the site’s bounding road, the lines of pedestrian approach, the arc of the sun, the prevailing breeze, the good views, the ugly views, the sculptural landforms, the springs, the trees, the usable areas, those features to be preserved if possible, and those to be eliminated. In short, only on the ground can we come to know the site and its character. We must climb from hollow to hill, kick at the sod, dig into the soil. We must look and listen and fully sense those qualities that are peculiar to this specific landscape area.
Site Planning 103
The extensional aspects of a site.
The site and its extensional environs.
Whatever we can see along the lines of approach is an extensional aspect of the site. Whatever we can see from the site (or will see in the probable future) is part of the site. Anything that can be heard, smelled, or felt from the property is part of the property. Any topographical feature, natural or built, that has any effect on the property or its use must be considered a planning factor.
In our present power-happy and schedule-conscious era, this vitally important aspect of developing a simpatico feeling for the land and the total project site is too often overlooked. And too often our completed work gives tragic evidence of our haste and neglect.
In Japan, historically, this keen awareness of the site has been of great significance in landscape planning. Each structure has seemed a natural outgrowth of its site, preserving and accentuating its best features.
Studying in Japan, the coauthor was struck by this consistent quality and once asked an architect how he achieved it in his work. “Quite sim-ply,” said the architect. “If designing, say, a residence, I go each day to the piece of land on which it is to be constructed. Sometimes for long hours with a mat and tea. Sometimes in the quiet of evening when the shadows are long. Sometimes in the busy part of the day when the streets are abustle and the sun is clear and bright. Sometimes in the snow and even in the rain, for much can be learned of a piece of ground by watch-ing the rainfall play across it and the runoff take its course in rivulets along the natural drainageways.
“I go to the land, and stay, until I have come to know it. I learn to know its bad features—the jangling friction of the passing street, the awkward angles of a windblown pine, an unpleasant sector of the mountain view, the lack of moisture in the soil, the nearness of a neighbor’s house to an angle of the property.
“I learn to know its good features—a glorious clump of maple trees, a broad ledge perching high in space above a gushing waterfall that spills into the deep ravine below. I come to know the cool and pleasant sum-mer airs that rise from the falls and move across an open draw of the land. I sense perhaps the deliciously pungent fragrance of the deeply lay-ered cedar fronds as the warm sun plays across them. This patch I know must be left undisturbed.
“I know where the sun will appear in the early morning, when its warmth will be most welcome. I have learned which areas will be struck
Therefore, let us build houses that restore to man the life-giving, life-enhancing elements of nature. This means an architecture that begins with the nature of the site. Which means taking the first great step toward assuring a worthy architecture, for in the rightness of a house on the land we sense fitness we call beauty.
Frank Lloyd Wright
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Site features can be the reason for the project.
Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture
by its harshly blinding light as it burns hot and penetrating in the late afternoon, and from which spots the sunset seems to glow the richest in the dusky peace of evening. I have marveled at the changing dappled light and soft, fresh colors of the bamboo thicket and watched for hours the lemon-crested warblers that have built their nests and feed there.
“I come to sense with great pleasure the subtle relationship of a jutting granite boulder to the jutting granite profile of the mountainside across the way. Little things, one may think, but they tell one, ‘Here is the essence of this fragment of land; here is its very spirit. Preserve this spirit, and it will pervade your gardens, your home, and your every day.’
“And so I come to understand this bit of land, its moods, its limitations, its possibilities. Only now can I take my ink and brush in hand and start to draw my plans. But in my mind the structure by now is fully visual-ized. It has taken its form and character from the site and the passing street and the fragment of rock and the wafting breeze and the arching sun and the sound of the falls and the distant view.
“Knowing the owner and his family and the things they like, I have found for them here a living environment that brings them into the best relationship with the landscape that surrounds them. This structure, this house that I have conceived, is no more than an arrangement of spaces, open and closed, accommodating and expressing in stone, timber, tile, and rice paper a delightful, fulfilling way of life. How else can one come to design the best home for this site?”
There can be no other way! This, in Japan as elsewhere, is in simplest terms the planning process—for the home, the community, the city, the highway, or the national park.
Thus we seek two values in every landscape:
one, the expression of the native quality of the landscape, the other, the development of maximum human livability. . . . Site planning must be thought of as the organization of the total land area and air space of the site for best use by the people who will occupy it. This means an integrated concept in which buildings, engineering construction, open space and natural materials are planned together at one time. . . .
Garrett Eckbo
Site Planning 105
A thorough understanding of the site is necessary for a successful design response.
Peter Walker & Partners
In America, we planners approach our problems in a less contem-plative frame of mind. We are “less sensitive” (of which fact we are proud) and “more practical” (a pathetic misnomer). We are rushed by the pressures of time, economics, and public temperament. The plan-ning process is accelerated, sometimes to the point of frenzy. But the principle remains the same: to realize a project on a site effectively, we must fully understand the program, and we must be fully aware of the physical properties of the site and of the total environs. Our plan-ning then becomes the science and art of arranging the most fitting relationships.