We have discussed the importance of developing responsive site-project relationships. Let us now consider other means by which we may achieve site-structure unity.
We may design the structural elements to utilize and accentuate land-forms. A lighthouse, for example, is an extension of the jutting promon-tory. The ancient fort or castle extended, architecturally, the craggy top of a hill or mountain. Our modern municipal water tanks and transmission or relay towers rise from and extend the height of a topographical emi-nence. These applications are obvious. Not so obvious is the location of a community swimming pool to utilize and accentuate the natural bowl configuration of a landscape basin or valley. More subtle yet may be the conscious planning of a yacht club to utilize and emphasize the structural protective shoulders of a point or the soft receptive forms of a quiet bay.
Terraced ski lodges stepping down the snowy slope of a mountain, float-ing structures on water, light, airy structures fixed against the sky, mas-sive structures rooted in rock—each draws from its site a native power and returns to the site this power magnified. Whole cities have been imbued with this dynamic quality—Saigon overhanging its dark river and slow-flowing tributaries, Lhasa braced proudly against its mountain
Where site and structure meet we may well
“structure” the site and at the same time
“wash” the landscape over and into the structure.
Hideo Sasaki
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Site-structure unity: yacht club, terrace, and restaurant have been planned to the natural ground forms, which overhang and command the bay. Boat slips are fitted to the protec-tive ridge. The beach area extends the soft recepprotec-tive wash of the harbor. Cabanas fol-low the natural bowl. The breakwater and light extend the existing rocky shoulders of the point. The parking areas are “hidden” in the shade of the existing grove. Such a sim-patico feeling for the existing topography ensures a plan development of fitness and pleasant harmonies of aesthetics and function.
wall, Darjeeling extending its timbered mountain peaks and towers into the clouds.
A structure and its site may be strongly related by architectural treat-ment of site areas or eletreat-ments. Clipped allées and hedges, water panels, precise embankments and terraces, all extend the limits of design con-trol. Many of the French and Italian villas of the Renaissance were so architectural in their treatment that the entire property from wall to wall became one grand composition of palatial indoor and outdoor rooms.
These grandiose garden halls were demarcated by great planes or arches of sheared beech, of masonry and mosaic, rows of plinths, and elaborate balustraded walls. They embraced monumental sculptured fountains and parterre gardens of rich pattern or mazes of sharply trimmed box hedges. The integration of architecture and site thus became complete.
Unfortunately, the results were often vacuous: a meaningless exercise in applied geometry—the control of nature for no more reason than for the sake of exerting control. Many such villas, on the other hand, were and still remain notable for their great symphonic beauty. In these, without exception, the highest inherent qualities of the natural elements of the site—plants, topography, water—were fully appreciated by the planner and given design expression. Seldom, for instance, has water as a land-scape element been treated with more imaginative control than at Villa d’Este in Tivoli, where a mountain torrent was diverted to spill down the steep villa slopes through the gardens, rushing, pouring, gushing, foam-ing, spurtfoam-ing, spewfoam-ing, surgfoam-ing, gurglfoam-ing, drippfoam-ing, rifflfoam-ing, and finally shining deep and still in the stone reflecting basins. Here at Villa d’Este,
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Ingenious water displays—Villa D’Este.
Barry W. Starke, EDA
water, slopes, and plant materials were handled architecturally to enhance both the structure and the site and superbly unite the two.
Alternatively, the landscape features of the site may be embraced by the dispersion of structural or other planned elements into the landscape.
The satellite plan, the buckshot plan, the finger plan, the checkerboard plan, the ribbon plan, and the exploded plan are typical examples.
Just as the early French and English explorers in North America controlled vast tracts of land by the strategic placement of a few forts, so can the well-placed elements of a scheme control a given landscape. Such is true of our national parks with their trails, lodges, and campgrounds sited to unfold to the user the most interesting features of the park. Such is true, in linear plan expression, of any well-planned scenic drive or highway extended into the countryside. Our military installations are often, in plan, scattered over extensive land areas, each function—be it rifle range, officers’ quar-ters, tank proving ground, tent sites, or artillery range—relating to those topographical features that seem most suitable. For this same purpose, many of our newer schools are exploded in plan. Unlike the old three-story monumental school set on the land, the newer schools of which we speak are planned to the landscape, embracing and revealing its more pleasant qualities with such success that school and landscape are one.
The site and the structure may be further related by the interlocking of common areas—patios, terraces, and courts, for example. A landscape feature displayed from or in such a court takes on a new aspect. It seems singled out. It becomes a specimen held up to close and frequent obser-vation under varying conditions of position, weather, and light. A sim-ple fragment of rock so featured acquires a modeling and a beauty of form and detail that would not be realized if it were seen in its natural state. As we watch it from day to day—streaming with rain, sparkling with hoarfrost or soft snow, glistening in the sharp sun and incised with shadow, or glowing in subdued evening light—we come to a fuller understanding of this landscape object and thus of the nature of the landscape from which it came.
The landscape may be even more strongly related to structure by the ori-entation of a room or an area to some feature of the landscape, as by a vista or a view. A view or a garden may be treated as a mural, a mural of constant change and variety of interest, extending the room area visually to the lim-its of the garden (or to infinity for a distant view). It can be seen that, to be pleasant, the scale, mood, and character of the landscape feature viewed must be suited to the function of the area from which it is observed.
To the foreign visitor in a traditional Japanese home, one of the most appealing features of many is the use of smoothly sliding screens of wood and paper by which the entire side of a room may be opened at will to bring into the space a cloudlike flowering plum tree, a vigorous composi-tion of sand, stone, and sunlit pine, a view through tiered maple branches 138 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
Dispersion of plan elements.
to the tiered roof of a distant pagoda, or a quiet pool edged with moss and rippled by lazily fanning goldfish. Each feature viewed is treated with impeccable artistry as part of the room, to extend and unite it with the gar-den or landscape. The Japanese would tell us that they have a deeper pur-pose, that what they are really trying to do is to relate people and nature completely and make nature appreciation a part of their daily lives.
To this end they introduce into their dwellings the best of those objects of nature that they can find or afford. The posts and lintels of their rooms, for instance, are not squared and finished lumber but rather a trunk or limb of a favorite wood shaped, tooled, and finished to bring out its inherent form and pattern of grain and knotting. Each founda-tion stone, each secfounda-tion of bamboo, each tatami (woven grass mat) is so fashioned by the artisan as to discover, and reveal in the finished object, the highest natural quality of the material that is being used. In the Japanese home one finds plants and arrangements of twigs, leaves, and grasses that are startling in their beauty. Even in their art forms the Japanese consciously, almost reverently, bring nature into their homes.
In such ways we, too, may relate our projects and structures to their nat-ural setting. We may use large areas of fenestration. We may devise our approaches and paths of circulation to achieve the most desirable rela-tionships. We may recall and adapt from the landscape colors, shapes, and materials. We may make further ties by projecting into the land-scape certain areas of interior paving and by extending structural walls or overhead planes. We may break down or vignette our structures from high refinement to a more rustic quality as we move from the interior outward. This is a reverse application of the quality wabi mentioned before. This controlled transition from the refined to the natural is a matter of great design significance.
If a building or plan area of any predetermined character is to be imposed on a landscape of another character, transition from the one to the other will play an important role. If, for example, a civic plaza and art museum are to be built at the edge of a city park, all plan elements will become more
“civic” and sophisticated as one leaves the park to approach the plaza.
Lines will become more precise. Forms will become refined and architec-tural. Materials, colors, textures, and details will become richer. The natu-ral park character will give way gradually, subtly, to an intensified urbane character consonant with the planned expression of the museum. Con-versely, if a park or wooded public garden is planned in a highly developed urban district, plan forms will relax and be freer and more natural as one approaches the open space. Such controlled intensification, relaxation, or conversion of plan expression is the mark of skilled physical planning.