Introduction

The paradox of the enclosed garden

Enclosed gardens are perennially compelling. Since I was a student, they have captivated me with their intensity, their myriad forms of containment and the ambiguity of their presence. I have visited these captured landscapes, old and new, in different parts of the world, taught generations of students to design horticultural enclosures as part of their architectural design, studied the design history of the shaping of enclosed gardens and experimented with my own. This experience has taught me that staking out, wrapping round and capturing the landscape with a built environment, can express many different sensibilities in memorable architectural settings. These spaces appeal to all the senses. As we walk around a stone flagged cloister, for instance, the acoustic of the space makes the sound of our footsteps ring out as it bounces off the walls, and at the same time we are aware of the visual rhythm of the openings in the inner cloister wall as we pass them. We can smell the plants, feel the wind and still be sheltered from the weather, safe from the outside world. This outside space is both bound and unbound; it might be the urban environment in whose sprawl most of us live, or it might be a more open countryside whose intermittent boundaries may be trees, ridges, rivers or roads. The enclosed garden medi ates between dwelling and nature, building and landscape, and this is one of the keys to the longevity of this architectural expression. The hortus conclususis often called an ‘outdoor room’ through its similarity and comple mentary properties to the internal building space we loosely call a room. Its fundamental typology provides many different possibilities for a specific response to its location.

Why is the enclosed garden such an enduring phenomenon? What relevance does it have to contemporary design? I shall show how architecture that incorporates landscape within its design is an expression of its cultural moment and a demonstration of our respect for the land and its natural organic resources. Industrialisation and urbanisation can force our relationship with landscape to the periphery of our lives and make us lose touch with the natural world. Living and working indoors for most of our waking hours, with only windowed contact with the outside, distances us from understanding of the context of place. Enclosing a space and transforming it into a garden allows us intimate contact with it and provides the opportunity for observation and reflection. In Captured Landscape I examine sites where, through architectural means, there has been a deliberate effort to negotiate the boundaries between the interior and exterior environment by creating a garden, always an ambiguous space. My focus throughout will be architectural design that negotiates with garden and landscape design. The discussion starts in ‘Defining the territory’ by questioning our understanding of an enclosed garden. What are its constituent parts? Why might it be significant and what is it doing for us? To put this in context, in ‘From patio to park’ I investigate buildings and gardens, mainly contemporary, that range in size, scale and function, all using the basic idea or typology of the enclosed garden. Through these examples I demonstrate the garden’s versatility of spatial arrangements for accommodating the needs of the users. In ‘Taming nature’ I put the designs into an historical context through looking into the origins of the enclosed garden, outlining its long genealogy, and discussing how it has flourished in specific periods of history in different global locations. ‘Ritual and emptiness’ follows, where I emphasise how the enclosed garden absorbs layers of symbolism. I also discuss its spatial form, how it becomes a focal point to orient our movements and provide access to other spaces. In ‘Sensual seclusion’ I consider the inhabited garden that we experience not just visually, but through all our embodied senses. In ‘Detachment’ I venture out to look at gardens that are not directly connected to a building yet, never the less, contain architectural ambitions connected to their functions. The final chapter, ‘Green city’, concentrates on the contemporary urban environ ment where land is at a premium and enclosed gardens have been embedded into a city’s material fabric. Pressure on available space for gardens has produced many surprising and innovative results. Captured Landscape is intended as both a source book and a reference guide to good design. What ideas lie behind the design of these memorable places? I explore this question in each case study first by writing an experiential analysis, accompanied with a historical background. Alongside this, I have a written description and where possible, I have used

three ways of visually understanding each garden – plans/sections and analytical diagrams as well as photographs. For example when I analyse the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice (discussed in depth in Chapter 4) I show that the visual connection between the visitor and the garden is pivotal as a point of reference for negotiating their journey through the galleries inside. The full simplicity and density of the design of garden is revealed only as the visitor accepts the garden’s invitation to walk in and around it. Although the garden is totally of its period, the twentieth century, its success lies in the architect’s detailed understanding of history and its location that have been distilled into the design, illustrated in the drawings, diagrams and photographs. My approach is deliberately cross-disciplinary in an attempt to bring out the interdependence of both architecture and landscape. I look at three main climatic zones: the hot dry desert conditions of the southern Mediterranean and the Middle East, the western and northern Mediter ranean; and the more northerly climates of Europe and America. I will demonstrate how the same underlying type of enclosure can be adapted to suit a wide range of conditions and extremes of climate. Although I offer many examples taken from the past this is not intended as a scholarly history. My perspective is that of the contemporary designer, and where I use historical examples, only periods that have relevance to current design issues are discussed. I have put much emphasis on an experiential or phenomenological approach to counterbalance studies where purely theoret ical analysis or history dominate the theme and risk obscuring design principles. I wish to test abstraction against experience, and draw attention to an understanding of design through a sensuous embodied perception of a particular aspect of place. Throughout the discussion I offer experiential descriptions as essential ways of conveying the atmosphere that gives each garden its character and sense of place, because such descriptions help give depth to more conventional design analyses. The risk of relying solely on conventional architectural analysis of the enclosed garden is that it will depend too heavily on visual observation. To grasp why this may not be adequate, I want to reflect briefly on a particular type of traditional Persian rug and carpet design, and the iconography of flowers and gardens within it. The carpet in Figure 0.1shows a classical Persian enclosed garden with an intricate pattern representing channels of water flowing from a central pool and dividing the garden into four, its flowering beauty a reminder during the winter of the gardens enjoyed in the summer months. In such traditional Islamic designs the garden layout starts with a clear geometry. As we walk around this enclosed area we sense its planar geometry and are therefore able to appreciate the whole as if we were to see it from above. The carpet illustration shows pattern and geometry of the garden from a bird’s eye

Figure 0.1

Persian carpet 1670–1750 depicting an enclosed garden, bordered, with an interpretation of the four rivers dividing the garden into four distinct areas representing both the plan, (horizontal) and also the foliage in elevation, (vertical).

view, as a horizontal plan, the abstract of our idea of the room as enclosed by walls, floors and ceiling, and as part of a larger architectural building plan. But if we look more closely at the carpet we notice that some of the plants are depicted vertically in elevation. This might seem no more than the limitations of an art that has not developed perspective; more likely is that the artist wanted to evoke the way we might experience the garden plants as we walk among them. This layered experience of movement through the garden and our presence in it is crucial to understanding the enclosed garden. Although Captured Landscape is mainly aimed at students of archi tectural and landscape design, I hope that it will speak to people interested

in this particular phenomenon of capturing the landscape, and converting it, through the architecture and architectural elements, into a place that is both garden and room. Many examples are chosen for their inhabit ability as much as for their architectural merits. In some of the cases there has been no self-conscious designing of the space at all, but it has acquired a sense of place over time and human investment that demon strates a precedent for good practice. All of them have been chosen for their contribution to uniting architecture with the natural world on which we so depend. In this second edition more case studies have been added to Chapters 1–6. Chapter 7 discusses the urban condition and the consequences for enclosed gardens. I could have chosen examples from all over the world, but have decided to use places that I have experienced and studied first hand. Gleaning information from photographs and text is not the same as visiting a garden on a blustery day, arriving after a long walk through busy streets, crossing the threshold from the city, walking along a herbaceous border, absorbing the colour and scent and sitting on a bench in the evening as the sunlight fades. A few exceptions have sneaked in where I have felt that a particular type of garden is relevant. My locations are London, Paris and New York; northern hemisphere cities, each very distinct with many cross cultural exchanges. They have all had periods of expansion, particularly in the nineteenth century. The gardens I have chosen emerged out of the pressure that growth and expansion bring. Many of them reflect current aspirations for designs that go beyond a purely visual aesthetic of decorative beauty in order to put into practice principles of sustainability. The gardens are all communal, some more public and some more private, examples of where people have made the most out of what space is left available. If there are no garden opportunities on the ground then a rooftop might be used or even the wall. It is encouraging to see how creative we have become in insisting on a garden presence within the architecture of the city. Re-capturing landscape gives us the opportunity to inwardly gaze and reflect on the broader landscapes of our lives.