NARRATIVE LANDSCAPE Display Landscapes as a Living System
2014 THESIS_RISD
Landscape Architecture 2014 Xin Qi
THESIS ADVISOR: Primary Advisor: Nicola C DePace, Senior Critic Secondary Thesis Advisor: Elizabeth Dean Hermann , Professor, Landscape Architecture Adam E Anderson, Critic, Landscape Architecture I would like to acknowledge the support of Scheri Fultineer, Peter Carney, Chang Liu and my parents
Š Xin Qi 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All images courtesy of the authors unless otherwise noted. All reasonable attempts have been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in future editions.
A thesis Presented in Partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Landscape Architecture Degree in the Department of Landscape Architecture of the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island.
by Xin Qi 2014
Approved by Master’s Examination Committee:
Scheri Fultineer, Department Head, Landscape Architecture
Nicola C. De Pace, Senior Critic, Primary Thesis Advisor
Elizabeth Dean Hermann, Professor, Secondary Thesis Advisor
Adam E. Anderson, Critic, Secondary Thesis Advisor
CONTENTS
Section 1 Reserach Preparation 05 Thesis schedule and Lexicon 09 Abstract and Introduction 11 Annotated Precedents Section 2 Investigation 1 15 Research Topic 17 Site Analysis: Lower Manhattan 20 Conclusion Section 3 Investigation 2 21 Project 1 : Ideal Design Model 39 Conclusion Section 4 Investigation 3 40 Project 2 : Sidewalk Gallery 48 Conclusion Section 5 Conclusion
THESIS SCHEDULE
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Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment. Hearing, smell, sound, vi-
sion, touch, memory which beyond the physical quality are tools to guide designing space and environment.
This Thesis is interested in exploring new strategies to increase the complexity and depth of understanding of a place, understanding the way humans navigate through life and experience it. The focus of this thesis is to manipulate aspects of landscape design so as to
change the perception or enhance the experience of certain phenomenon that we feel are important for a being as well as for his or her cognition of the environment we live in. - Group Statement, Theory 2
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LEXICON
1. Perception
9. Urban condition
A way of regarding understanding or interpreting something, a mental impression the awareness of
· Environment where the nonliving
the external factors
surroundings dominate the living
2. Dynamic, Changing
10. Physical
· A process or a system characterized by constant change, activity or progress
· Tangible, existing in a form that can be touched or seen·
3. Responsive (system)
11. Individual memory
· Reaction to the external forces/factors that come in contact with a system
· Reflection from the past
4. Ecology
12. Self identity
· A natural system is defined or articulated by human beings through research and cognitive.
· The quality that makes a person different from others
5. Habitat
13. Identity
· A typical place for species to live and grow
· The special feature of certain things, which contains the principle of how those things happen
6. Environment
14. Meaning
· Everything surrounding an entity except itself
· Beyond the basic information for survival, still get the other message that is intended or expressed or
7. Surroundings
signified
· Physical environment around an entity
15. Perceive
8. Built environment
. To become aware of, through the senses
· Nonliving,
16. Landscape as “Gallery Space”
human made surrounding
. The way of communication the nature of places through landscape itself
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Drawing credit to Underground, David MacAulay
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THESIS ABSTRACT
When people move through the contemporary city, their experience of “landscape” is generally limited to what is visible
above ground. Yet the natural systems within which urban life occurs, and the non-human and human processes that have
shaped and continue to shape the landscape we see are deeper and broader than that limited visual encounter. The “roots” of anything above ground are critical to an understanding of the physical and visual world in which we live. In this thesis,
the main idea I want to communicate is to have the pedestrian in the city be aware of the site history and past, current and future negotiations between humans and dynamic environmental conditions.
However, many people go through life limited in their personal routines. Often we miss certain aspects of our surroundings
which are not clearly visible to us, or unconsciously ignore elements that are not directly related to our immediate needs or wants. So, there is a disconnection between people and their surrounding environments. Therefore, the challenge is to en-
gage individuals with human aspiration, sub-structural reality and nature processes in the streetscape at eye-level. Instead
of setting up a classic unchangeable landscape, the “gallery” is itself a creator to initiate the interaction between human and nature, and continually modify its appearance over time. Just as Robert E. Cook said in his paper “Do landscapes learn?”
‘Perhaps the language and literature of landscape architecture could begin to acknowledge that the learning of landscapes is as important as their creation.” That is to say, a landscape is not something you finish; a landscape is something you start.
In order to achieve this goal within the landscape discipline, I think the role of landscape designer needs to be expanded
as a storyteller instead of pure spatial designer. My intent is to translate the story line I would like pedestrians to experience when they walk along the street as the spatial experience. So they can stop, experience and think about the site and thus improve their awareness about the environment.
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INTRODUCTION
The research on story-telling landscape can be divided into four sections. Firstly, several cases led me to the design practices in the real world. Three annotated precedents in the book are: Microclimate Garden, Scape Studio, Sonoma, CA; City as a Living Laboratory Broadway: 1000 Steps and Park Hyatt Hotel, Zurich Weather Garden. Afterwards, I summarized the primary problems need to be explored and discussed in this thesis. They are how to attract people be aware of their surrounding environment, how to deepen people’s understanding of changes in landscape, what narrative would be conveyed in the design, how to add a layer of time into 3 dimension design and how to use materials in terms of interpreting the natural forces over time. Based on the conceptual analysis, my thesis project is divided into three stages. In the first stage, the question is raised: how can narrative be used to create a spatial and perceptual experience of the pedestrian cityscape in order to reflect the ever-changing environment. To address this problem, a ideal model is constructed and analyzed without being obsessed with the specific site. In the second stage, the research site is fixed in New York. In the historical perspective, the interaction between human beings and nature is a narrative which defines the path and process a city has developed. To better understand this narrative, I studied the history of land expansion and principle of infrastructure management in New York City. In the last stage, the ideal model in stage one is optimized and customized to be applied in a site in New York. A story-telling sidewalk gallery is designed to support my initial thesis idea.
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CITY AS LIVING LABORATORY Mary Miss Studio, New York City USA
THESIS QUESTION AND CASE STUDY My thesis question is about creating a spatial and perceptual experience of the pedestrian cityscape in order to uncover the history and anticipate the future of the existing streetscape? In order to answer this question, I think rising awareness, responding to natural environment and engaging with people are the three main concerns.
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For rising awareness, a project, by Mary Miss, called City as Living Laboratory gives a good example. “This project is to establish Broadway as the “green corridor” of New York City. Installations that are small in scale but which aggregate to reveal the vast network of systems vital to a sustainable city, are designed to make sustainability tangible to citizens at street level and catalyze future projects by artists and environmental designers.” The ways to highlight infrastructure with attractive appearances successfully call people’s attention to the existing characterless infrastructure and gain a deeper understanding of them. However, this project hasn’t talk about how infrastructure response to natural environment.
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Weather Garden, Park Hyatt Hotel Meili, Peter Architekten, Z端rich
Another project, called Zurich Weather Garden, is a good example to utilize paver as a responsive surface to reflect the weather. Using this strategy, the changing impressions are formed by the humidity that dries at various speeds on the polished concave and convex tiles of natural stone. The rainwater serves as a film screen to reflect the clouds, thus remind us of nature in the midst of town. This project makes people perceive the natural rainfall and cloud in a subtle and poetic way. The material use and the smart form of the paver inspired my experimental ideal model at first phase.
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MICRO-CLIMATE GARDEN Scape Studio., Sonoma, CA
The last project I would like to refer is Micro-climate Garden, which is done by Scape Studio. They design topography and choose material wisely to generate vibrant and dynamic planting conditions that support a range of species. Wet and dry, high and low, shaded and open spaces are connected by 4 massive sculptural, salvaged ship timbers, and a circuit of stepping stones and make it become a gathering place for fish, birds, and people over time.
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THESIS STATEMENT My thesis is about creating a “gallery space” along sidewalks to engage the public in dialogue about the ever-changing environment. This “gallery” would reveal the relationship between the site’s history and the dynamic environmental conditions which continue to occur and shape the ground. These environmental conditions, which are difficult to detect, affect the site’s present and future.
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Section 2 Site Selection and Analysis In this phase, I mainly concentrate in the subtle changes of the city, which is crucial to our perception of the cityscape but easy to be omitted. For instance, I focus on how the system functions and how it influence modern city development.
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LOWER MANHATTAN For the site selection, I think it is important to test my thesis in the metropolises which are dominated by non-living structures. Since urban construction demands stability, the built environment in metropolises make us live in a world more and more rigid, and thus we care less about our environment. For example, skyscrapers make it difficult for us to detect wind and sun, asphalt roads block our contact with soil, and underground drainage reduces our perception of the rain. Thus, wind strength, precipitation, sunshine, soil type and plant habitats are known only through nomenclature and ecological research. We learn about site past present and future ecology mostly from books, but our own perception is missing. So, my design could act as an interactive platform for people in metropolises to gain knowledge of the site’s history and future. Lower Manhattan is where I began my exploration. I researched on how it expanded, how its infrastructure works and how the sea level rise will impact the city.
The Photo from the article called LIGHTING LOWER MANHATTAN, Written by Kelsey Keith, December 16, 2011
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Research 1 Land
LANDFILL HISTORY It is important for us to know that the existing boundary of Manhattan, New York has greatly changed overtime. When the Dutch arrived in Manhattan in 1624, they began to expand the shoreline. The first land reclamation was undertaken by Peter Stuyvesant upon taking over as the colony’s governor in 1646. In order to facilitate waste disposal and transportation, he began to excavate a canal along what is now Broad St. At that time, Manhattan was called New Amsterdam. The population was low and it was still recognized as a walking city. With no great port or deep-water docks, no large ships could stop. By the American Revolution, the city’s population had grown to 30,000, and there was a shortage of land in the city center. That’s when the city began to sell the waterfont area, where entrepreneurs sought to use landfill to create additional lands for use.
1650
1750
1800
2010
Beginning in the 18th century, the Manhattan area gradually changed to a trading center. More ports and docks were needed to accommodate larger ships. Therefore many ports were built in this time, like fingers stretching into the sea. The most recent landfilled area led to the creation of Battery Park system along the shoreline. The material used for landfill was the earth excavated from the World Trade Center foundation.
This images shows how landfill has expanded Manhattan’s shoreline from 1650-2010.
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Research 2 Water
directly to a local waterway. Then all the water will go to the overflow pipe and run into the sea. Some storms, especially hurricanes will exceed the system’s designed capacity, causing street flooding, system overtaxing, and sometimes sewerbackups.
IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE n order to develop cities, humans expand the land far away into the sea, and storm surge like another hand wants to reclaim the lost area. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 called people’s attention again to the hot topic of sea level rise and storm surge in New York. Here is the Risk Assessment chart for the impact of climate change: SCALE OF IMPACT
1
STORM SURGE
MAJOR
2 SEA LEVEL RISE
MODERATE
1 Flooding and building damage in the South Street Seaportarea Credit: NYC Department of Small Business Services 2 Flooding in the Lower East Side during Sandy
MINOR
INCREASED PRECIPITATION
3
3
Credit: Michael Appleton/The New York Times 3 Flooding of below-grade shops in Lower Manhattan
TODAY
2020’
2050’
The information to make this chart is credit to CHAPTER 18 | SOUTHERN MANHATTAN, Michael Brunet
From the chart, we can see that increased precipitation will bring only minimal impact. Future sea level rise would likely surge over some bulkheads on a regular basis, resulting in localized flooding. Storm surge will bring significant risk of flooding in addition to limited wave action.
Credit: Damon Winter/The New York Times
WATER INFRASTRUCTURE Approximately 60% of New York City’s sewer system is combined, meaning that it handles sanitary waste from homes and businesses as well as stormwater from streets and rooftops. In a separate system, sanitary sewers carry wastewater straight to the treatment plant, while storm sewers carry stormwater runoff in a separate pipe
Reference: 1) Changes in the Geography, Layout and Settlement of Lower Manhattan, by Jessica Thompson, 2005 Fordham University 2) Racontours - the streets are yours, New York The expanding Manhattan Crystalline, unknown author and data website: http://www.racontrs.com/stories/ nyc-land-reclamation/ 3) the report State of the Sewers 2012, by Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor and Carter H. Strickland, Jr., Commissioner, NYC environment Protection. The expansion diagram show on lift side are inspired by an interactive map called racontours, unknown author and data, website: http://www.racontrs.com/stories/ nyc-land-reclamation/ Reference map: The Manhattan historical map 1650, 1730, 1836, 1915 and the google map 2010, 2013
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Through my research, I identified the south part of Broadway as the main pedestrian thoroughfare. As the center of lower Manhattan, as well as the original city center, it covers the historical boundaries of lower Manhattan and offers a highly visible, symbolic corridor. It also includes the shoreline which will be heavily impacted by climate change in the future. With these things in mind, I have identified this location as a site which could be used to reveal the relationship between natural processes and human processes.
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SITE ANALYSIS In order to apply my design on site without
1
block the necessary access for people, I studied the adjacent condition of my site, it in-
cludes the land use, building type and pedestrian behaviors.
2
3
4
5
PARK AND OPEN SPACE The drawing inspired by:
1
Trinity Church
2
Bowling Green
1) Bergdoll, Barry, ed. Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront.
3
National Museum of the American Indian
The Museum of Modern Art, 2011.
4
Battery Park
5
Castle Clinton National Monument
2) Safari 7, Urban Landscape Lab at Columbia University and MTWTF
BUILDING TYPE
OFFICE BUILDING HISTRICAL BUILDING RESIDENTIAL BUILDING
PARK AND OPEN SPACE
3) Comparison of 1983 FIRMs and Preliminary Work Maps Source: FEMA 4) Google Map
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PEDESTRIAN ANALYSIS I divided the pedestrians who walk on Broadway into three groups: workers, visitors and wanderers. They come there for three different purposes: go to work, visit the city and walk for leisure. So their concerns are different and they may stop in different points. On the left side, is the mapping diagram to show their different usage pattern when they occupy the street space. According to this diagram, the map below shows the potential stopping points for people walking along the street.
Workers
office
for food park and open space
Tourists seat along sidewalk
Wanderers
PEDESTRIAN For park and open space
For sight spot
fast arrival
sightseeing
DDESTINATION
learn history enjoy landscape
have a rest
meet people
CONCERN
For crossroad
For Bus
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SITE PHOTO
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BOWLING GREEN
In Normal Day
Bowling Green is a small public park in Lower Manhattan at the foot of Broadway next to the site of the original Dutch fort of New Amsterdam. Built in 1733, originally including a bowling green, it is the oldest public park in New York City and is surrounded by its original 18th century fence. At its northern end is the Charging Bull sculpture. Now, New Amsterdam has been changed to the National Museum of the American Indian. In addtion to the history, this area is also included in the Category 2 Impact Zone. The image rendering shown on the right page talks about how the underground infrastructure will be impacted by the storm.
The Storm Day Reference: Bowling Green (New York City), Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Green_ (New_York_City)
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BATTERY PARK
The Battery is one of New York City’s oldest public parks. It is located at the edge of southern Manhattan, and adjacent to New York Harbor. It hosted Dutch settlers when they established New Amsterdam. The Battery is truly the cradle of New York history, the front lawn of the Downtown district, and the hub of harbor access and cultural tourism. The area has been a popular promenade since at least the 17th century. At the time, it served as protection to the town. The relatively modern park was created by landfill during the 19th century, resulting in a open space in front of the busy downtown. Hurricane Sandy hit this park in 2012. The water rose above the bulkhead and also resulted in underground transportation of battery park becoming paralyzed . Half of the Battery Park is lower than the projected sea level rise height in 2100, so as time goes by, the water may inundate the shoreline and change the existing habitat. Also, the underground transportation could be damaged because it may be filled with water.
Reference: Battery Park(New York City), Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_Park
Existing Landscape
Imaged landscape in 2100
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CONCLUSION
After this investigation, I gained the understanding of the land expansion and water infrastructure of Lower Manhattan. I researched the site condition and how people navigate the city when they are walking now. Also, I focused on two areas, Bowling Green and Battery Park to illustrate the existing condition and try to project what will happen when storms come or sea levels rise. I think the next step is how to engage people who are walking on the street to understand the story I want to tell. However, this phase is just about navigation and imagination and I fail to develop a completed design languages. I think the next step is about applying the ideal model I develop in phase one on the real site. For the next investigation, I think the first step is to create a narrative for the tour and then transform that narrative into graphic and spatial language. Then I will study how people navigate the city when they are walking on the street and how they obtain information about the city’s environmental history. The challenge will be to design on site to combine the spatial experience with the reading experience.
Next Step: Experience Information Spatially When Walking
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Section 3 Develop ideal model to explore the thesis idea In this phase, I began with the thesis question that how can narrative be used to create a spatial and perceptual experience of the pedestrian cityscape therefore reflect the ever-changing environment.
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BACKGROUND AND PROBLEM
Above Ground
Under Ground
?
When people move through the contemporary city, their experience of “landscape” is limited to what is visible above ground. However, there are many natural systems within which urban life occurs; these non-human and human processes have shaped and continue to shape the landscape we see. The existence of a city is therefore much deeper and broader than our limited visual encounters. The “roots” of what exists above ground are critical to understanding the physical and visual world in which we live.
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Above Ground NATURAL FACT0RS
WEATHER WATER PLANT SOIL
Under Ground
?
Existing structures protect our city. A city’s underground does not interact with many natural factors.
UNDERGROUND CITY
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NARRATIVE Then, I develop the narrative I would like people to engage. I studied the city development history and draw a diagram aimed to tell a brief story about how the natural process and human aspiration works together and continue to shape characteristics of the ground under our feet. So, the narrative of my design is providing a platform to uncover the reality that interaction between human aspiration and nature processes affect each other over time.
human settled
agriculture civilization
industry civilization
sea level rise
The narrative aims to tell a brief story about how the development of New York City has changed the characteristics of the ground under our feet. 30
SIDEWALK ANALYSIS As I try to develop a gallery space for sidewalk, it is important to understand it first. Judging from the pedestrian perspective, the
Amenity Zone
sidewalk is conceptualized as a room with four planes: canopy, building, street and ground. My thesis is about engaging people with the undetectable world, so I will focus on the ground area which paved by physical and visual impermeable material. It Walking Zone
stops human and natural force to interact with the “root” of the
Spillout Zone
city and decreases the possibility of changing.
Ground
canopy
building
road side
ground
Reference: ACTIVE DESIGN, SHAPING THE SIDEWALK © 2013, City of New York
6’
8’
4’
Amenity Zone
Walking Zone
Spill-out Zone
18’
8’
typical right-of-way
minimun recommended side walk width 10’
minimun recommended setback
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INSPIRATION Living in a modern city, we can still find signs that nature interacts with surroundings. Some examples include weeds growing along fences or from cracks on the ground; wind and water leave marks on steel or concrete.
Photography by Future Green
By Arnaldo Pomodoro “Sphere Within Sphere� 32
DESIGN CONCEPT
To show this natural interaction distinctively, my design concept is to crack open the ground and construct corridors which will make people experience a section of the city. It also breaks the existing protection of underground, and allows natural and human forces to engage to create the ever-changing landscape.
Cracking Open
Expose
Above Ground
Allow weathering and natural processes to occur
Above Ground
NATURAL FACT0RS
UNDERGROUND STUCTURE Under Ground
Under Ground 33
EXPLORATION MODELS The five models are designed to represent the environmental features and the transitions in different historical time periods.
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TRANSITION AREA 1 The top right drawing shows the transition zone from forest to meadow. The bottom two sections show the spatial feature of forest zone and meadow zone.
Engaging space Gallery space
Engaging space
Gallery space
Walking space
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TRANSITION AREA 2 The top right drawing shows the transition zone from meadow to agriculture. The bottom two sections show the spatial feature of meadow zone and agriculture zone.
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TRANSITION AREA 3 The top right drawing shows the transition zone from agriculture to concrete pavement. The bottom two sections show the spatial feature of agriculture zone and concrete pavement zone.
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TRANSITION AREA 4 The top right drawing shows the transition zone from concrete pavement to predicted future water area. The bottom two sections show the spatial feature of concrete pavement zone and predicted future water zone.
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Section 4 Project: Sidewalk Gallery Last phase of my thesis is to develop a model which could be applied to the sidewalk to tell a story. By critiquing the existing sidewalk which contains no information, I would like to add layers of knowledge under the sidewalk. So the pedestrian can experience the hidden information of the sidewalk when walking along the street as the spatial experience thus improves their awareness about the environmental history. I think the problem of my design is the lack of variation in both vertical and horizontal ways. It will make my design hard to apply on the real site conditions. Also, some existing infrastructure might be met when digging into the ground, but I didn’t include them into my section drawings. In the this phase, I need to apply my ideal model into the real site and modify it according to the width of the street, the existing infrastructure and the different functions.
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Structure/Natural factors/Material In order to achieve that concept, I designed the following fragments. Material and structure accelerate the interaction with natural factors. As time goes by, these structures and materials will change in appearance. Expose
Cracking Open
Allow weathering and natural processes to occur
RAIN/SNOW
FENCE
WIND
WALL
CORTEN STEEL 1month
TIME LINE 6months
2years
PAVEMENT
INFRASTRUCTURE
CONCRETE 1-2year
TIME LINE 2-5year
WATER
5-10years
CROSSROAD
SOIL PAVEMENT
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Plan The plan show the tour route I choose form Bowling Green to the Battery Park Shoreline.
Bowling Green
Battery Park
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Model This model shows how the design intervention works with the existing underground part of the city. Three colors indicate the three different spatial and perceptual experience zones.
Zone 1
This zone exposes plants’ roots and the lower level of the National Museum of American Indians to create a gallery space that uncovers and explores natural history.
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Zone 2
Zone 2 cracks open and exposes the city underground infrastructure, allowing weathering and natural processes to occur.
Zone 3
The last zone dismantles the existing dam and lets natural factors, such as sea water, migratory birds, weeds and weather rebuild the salt marsh along the shore line over time.
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Zone 1 Entrance
Native weeds growing between the gap of the brick
+
Cracks along the fence allow climbing plants to grow.
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Zone 1 Walkway
water infrastructure
lower floor of the existing building
roots of weeds break the concrete wall
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Zone 2 Crosswalk
+ +
46
Waterfront Area
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CONCLUSION Based on the site analysis and ideal model from the last two phases, this phase of my thesis is about creating a sidewalk gallery in a real site and thus increasing the awareness of the ever-changing environment when people walk the path. Instead of setting up a classic unchangeable landscape, the “gallery” is itself a creator to initiate the interaction between human and nature, and continually modifies its appearance over time. However, some of my drawings just indicate a future vision of my design, they are fail to convey the ideas that they are changing over time. Also, there should be a deeper research on native plants that may grow in the “gallery” area and it is important to provide a potential plant list for the design. The study for material and how it weathers over time is not reflected the real situation, because it is hard to predict the future without the site-specific experiment. And the construction part of my design need to be considered therefore adds the depth of my study.
Left Image: The Final Thesis Board
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Section 5 Conclusion and Reflection
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Through the 3 experiments, the central topic of this thesis is about helping people to notice the dynamic and ever-changing aspects of the landscape instead of merely the stable 3-Dimensions world, which is associated with the 4th dimension - the time dimension. Therefore, the challenge of this thesis is to enable time perception in Landscape design. Nevertheless, the passing of time is hard to perceive. There has been a debate on “the Aporia of the being and the non-being of time”.1 On the one hand, time is non-being because “future is not yet, the past is no longer and the present does not remain”. In St. Augustine’s thinking, existing things should be measured, but we cannot find every part of the time that can be measured and thus time is non-being. On the other hand, we may get the strong perception of time according to the environment changing around us, as grass sprouting out of the earth and leaves falling down on the ground. These changes may recall the memory of the past and generate the prediction of the future. Accordingly, the period of time can be detected in our mind. In St. Augustine there is no pure phenomenology of time, but time effects the changing phenomenon of climate, ecology, geography, culture and other detectable factors. These factors serve as the reference for us to perceive time. Time perception can be understood as the experience of what you see or what you perceive and the experience will vary in terms of the personality of individuals. So in the landscape design, to perceive time relies on the methods to create different kind of experience, such as let people moving on, stay or meditate and thus make people get the perception of time. Then there comes a question of how we could control human experience in the landscape design? To answer this question, we need to think about the role of time in the landscape design. Landscape is a symbolic expression with time dimension under the influence of the historical progress. The dimension of time affects not only the landscape projects but also the changes in geographical materials, and it shapes the pattern and cultural connotation of landscape. So the control of the experience in landscape can begin with the basic concepts of time dimension and it based on the three levels: appearance, perception and culture. In landscape design, these three levels can relate to material change, spatial experience and progress, so I explore the significance and impact of time in landscape design from the three levels in this thesis.
1 Paul Ricoeur, “The Aporias of the Experience of time: book 11 of Augustine’s Confession,” in Time and narrative’, volume 1,trans. Katheleen Mclaughlin and David Pellaues(Chicago: university of Chicago press, 1983)
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Appearance (material change) Landscape is not still and can change because materials included in landscape are not always dead and immutable things. Light, water, plant and soil all change over time and make landscape as a living system. Though, some landscape is constructed primary of concrete and pavement, they are still “living”. Since the concrete and pavement has its life span or life cycle, they will decay according to the weather, temperature and other factors. Therefore, the appearance of landscape can record time and if we highlight the material, the changes can be read. One of the material I use in my design project is Cor-Ten steel. I think it is one of the good materials to record time. It exhibits a yellowish appearance in the initial stages of use, and the color gradually changes to brown. Also, it will work with water, wind and temperature to change its initial appearance. The Steel Yard, Providence, RI, designed by Klopfer Martin Design Group is a good example utilizing Cor-Ten steel. The design intent of the steel yard is to create a memorable and flexible place, while improving the site’s functionality. The primary goal was to retain the ecological and visual character of “urban wild” in keeping with the context and the site’s abandoned-state beginnings. Wandering in the park, we can see the mottled steel structure (as showed in the picture on the left side). We can feel time graves on the steel and leaves marks on it, while plants growing out of the steel, giving one a feeling of replacing, just as the new landscape will gradually replace the brownfield. The contrast between growing and decaying reminds us of the industrial revolution and preview the vision in the future. Admittedly, there is not enough discussion on the materials in my thesis. Here, the word “material” means both the construction materials and the plants materials. When it comes to construction materials such as concrete and steel, merely research in literature references and objective conjecture is apparently not enough to show every aspects of the reality. This is due to the vast amount of uncontrollable factors within the system, such as weather, environmental change, pedestrian volume, protection methods, etc. The only way to solve this problem is to acquire more experience by on-spot investigation as well as field experiments on the property of the materials.
2 Klopfer Martin Design Group ,The Steel Yard, Providence, RI
As for the plants materials, it’s even harder to predict how they could develop in real condition. Subtle changes on controlling factors, such as seasons, soil and water, could influence its growth in site. More information on how local plants grow and become adapted to the environment is
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required in order to propose a solid plan. Here is one possible solution to the problem. Firstly, I can collect pictures of the local plants and study their features and growth habit. Then a table of related information of proper plants could be proposed, and I may be able to predict the appearance of the landscape more precisely. Alternatively, cooperation or consultation with professional biologists and ecologists can make a big difference.
4 Liu Garden, Suzhou, China
3 Sverre Fehn, Hedmark Museum, Hamar, Norway
Perception (narrative for spatial experience) Experience of a landscape is mostly achieved by moving through them, so time can be related to spatial experience in landscape. Instead of expressing time directly, landscapes can metaphor time by making the experience meaningful. That is related to my second thesis question, exploring how can narrative be used to create a spatial and perceptual experience. This can be read in the Chinese traditional garden design in terms of organization of space, object and movement among them. In Chinese traditional garden design, time is used as an element for landscape making, just as the design element water, artificial rocks, plants and rare stone do. Chinese traditional garden take advantage of the specific point of time, the change of seasonal, daytime, weather and the age of the plants, to give the garden with different color, contrast, clarity, and dynamic and result in the atmosphere of meditation. For example, Liu Garden, one of the most famous Chinese traditional gardens, takes time as an important design factors to interpret spatial pattern. Liu Garden emphasized creating unique personal psychological experience, a perception of “place”. Stairs, ramps, slant hall, courtyard, height difference, curve path are well designed to strengthen the perception of space and thus make visitors get the experience of time. For example, slanted walkway of slant hall in the Liu Garden increase the walking time for 5 second, and at the same time, the viewpoint changes make space feel much larger. In this case, we can see time can sometimes change the spatial form, extending the size of the space. So when you go through the slant hall, the experience of space is quite different from just going along the regular path. Also, it is common in modern architecture to combine flow line with architecture design to reflect movement in the sense of time. For example, Hedmark Museum, Hamar, Norway, which is by Sverre Fehn, is an architecture which accomplishes a deep understanding of the building through the visitors’ experience. The tour route is like a time tunnel across the centuries, to inspire people to image exciting historical scenes. Some things along the tour are intact remains of material; some are a little processed ancient components and materials, which deepen people’s memory of history. Although the part of history it shows is still, people are able to feel the existence of life in the past with the help of the time-dimension tour route. The travel with flow line makes the understanding of history in the past richer.
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However, a question which is confused me is that the spaces create by narrative is always decided by designers themselves. It might be very objective. It is hard to confirm the audiences could really gain the meaning what the designers would like to convey. However, it could not be a bad thing. One of the most attractive part of design is leaving audiences a space for imagination. SoďźŒan inspiring and open-ended narrative generated more layers of understandings. Culture (progress) Being a progress in design means what exists now will change according to time. A big challenge for designers to deal with is although we design for this moment, we should consider the whole process about the possible change of the site and its surroundings. The rising sea level is a widespread concern in landscape design, because the water level in the flood season will be different from the usual, so the changing process of water over time needs to be considered in the landscape design. For example, in the design of the Shanghai World Expo Park, this problem has been considered in the design process. It analyses the Yangtze River flood plan for 20 years, 100years and 1000 years to determine the water level, and then determine the height of levees, then combine levees and landscape terrain, such as the cross-section shown in the picture, creating the beautiful landforms. In addition, the World Expo Park also considers the great change of the number of visitors before and after World Expo, so some flexible design that can change the capacity of the park has been added. Another example of time process affecting landscape is Disneyland in Hong Kong. The site was a mining area and had been seriously polluted; the design goal was to plant special kind of trees and shrubs which can purify soil and gradually improve the soil condition. But this soil purification can only be achieved in a period of time, so designers taking twenty years developments of the trees into account to make a phase implementation plan and in this way the design are considered including time. So design with time in process can achieve the predictability in landscape. Apart from design with time, another question occur to me is representation with time. In order to design landscape with time and change, we need to think about this question at the beginning of our design and represent them through the visual language such as mapping, modeling and so on.
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However, the changing in landscape is sometimes invisible and hard to record. How can we present them turn out to be a important question in my thesis process. In this thesis, I have tried a lot of techniques to represent the landscape projects like maps, models, tours and perspectival representation. However, all this techniques just present a series of “immutable frames” in our understanding of landscape and ignore the ‘ever-changing landscape’. Therefore, they are not so successful. So, I would like to explore new ways of presentation in the future. The new way may be the digital landscape video, which has emerged in recent times, as the ideal tool for complex observations. I got the inspiration from the project Qin Hai Planning that is done by James Corner in 2010, Shenzhen, China. He made a video of the planning, with video samples of some aspects of the city, sped up, and slow down, montage and other kind of techniques, to show the invisible truth in the urban environment like culture, circulation and ecology. This application of video in landscape reminds me of a movie, Koyaanisqatsi. It recorded the movement of each car on one road and then sped it up. So in the film we can see cars moving one by one, very fast, almost becoming a continued line in the road. This sense did give a strong feeling of time passing by. Another way could be a vedio-based photograph. I gain the inspiration by a photography works called “Photo Opportunities”, which is by Lydie Le Glehuir,”. The picture swings between the photo and the video. The monumental outline develops into sketches, and then becomes fragile and dimmer. The Presence of object gradually disappears in the mist. Finally, the concentration of all those photographs on one subject cannot speak of the object itself but of the time.
6 Lydie Le Glehuir “Photo Opportunities”
However, as a new representation method in landscape, video and video-based photograph and maps can serve not only as a tool of observation but also as a tool of design synthesis. It depicts a motion rather than a series of frames, and can thus liberate itself entirely from the burden of still.
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Conclusion As the domain of landscape design has been expend to ecology, art, culture, and science nowadays, time is more and more important to be considered, cause it can generate environment change, human perception and historical progress. So the exploration of time perception from analysis, representation, to construction and to the future prediction will benefit for the whole process of landscape design.
Bibliography 1Paul, Ricoeur, “The Aporias of the Experience of time: book 11 of Augustine’s Confession,” in Time and narrative’, volume 1,trans. Katheleen Mclaughlin and David Pellaues(Chicago: university of Chicago press, 1983) 2 Kamel, Louafi , ‘Landscape interventions’ 2011 3 Christophe, Girot, “ Vision in Motion: Representing Landscape in Time”, Landscape Urbanism Reader, 2006 4 Corner, James. “ The agency of Mapping: speculation, critique, and invention,” in Mappings,ed. Denis Cosgrove (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), p.213-252 5 Pollan, Michael. “Beyond the wildness and lawn,” in Harvard design Magazine 6 Sacks, Oliver. “Speed,” in The New York, vol. 80, no.23 (August23, 2004), pp.48-54 7 Michel, Conan, “introduction: garden and landscape design, from emotion to the construction of self” Landscape design and the experience of motion,2003 8 Underwood, RA Swain (1973). “Selectivity of attention and the perception of duration”. Perception 2 (1) 9 SW Brown, DA Stubbs (1992). “Attention and interference in prospective and retrospective timing”. Perception 21 (4): 545–57. Projects 1 James Corner, Qianhai Planning, Shenzhen, China 2 Klopfer Martin Design Group ,The Steel Yard, Providence, RI 3 Sverre Fehn, Hedmark Museum, Hamar, Norway 4 Liu Garden, Suzhou, China 5 Nita, Shanghai World Expo Park, Shanghai, China 6 Lydie Le Glehuir “Photo Opportunities”
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Annotated Bibliography Cook, Robert Edward. Do Landscapes Learn?: Ecology’s” new Paradigm” & Design in Landscape Architecture. Department of Land-
scape Architecture and Regional Planning, Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, 1999.
Sommer, Robert (1969) Personal Space: The Behavioral Basis of Design. Englewood Cliffs,Nj: Prentice-Hall.
Sommer makes the distinction between personal space and territory: “The concepts of ‘personal space’ can be distinguished from that of ‘territory’
Dr. Robert Edward Cook, a biologist with a special interest in plant popu-
in several ways. The most important difference is that personal space is
lation biology, has been appointed Director of the Arnold Arboretum. This
carried around while territory is relatively stationary. “ Sommer argues that
article think now we have two aspects of the ecology in landscape design,
buildings should be built first for function (their usefulness to the user), not
the first one is ecology can assist the landscape work and the second is
form (how they look). The book from the view of Environmental Psycholo-
narrative the ecology and inspire the aesthetic feeling. But we should think
gy, accessible to those designers or architects who may actually have the
it in the third ways, which is “see the conduct of ecological studies as an
ability to influence building design.
McHarg, Ian L., and Lewis Mumford. Design with nature. New York:
De Certeau, Michel (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkley:
Ian L. McHarg was a landscape architect and the founder of the theory
The book investigates how ‘users’ traditionally considered to be passive
that using natural systems to operate the regional planning. He talked about how to incorporate ecological knowledge in landscape design and planning and first time builds a bridge between science and design. In this book, he explained the different geographic systems and provided the method of how to utilize them in the landscape design.
ence. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press The book basically talk about the different traits of “Space” and “Place” denoting experiences. Place is security while space is freedom and humanly constructed space. This book draws attention to questions that humanists have posed with regard to space and place. It attempts to systematize humanistic insights, to display them in conceptual frames. It also focuses on general questions of human dispositions, capacities, and needs, and on how culture emphasizes or distorts them. At last, the book touch another aspect that time in
engagement with the land and its inhabitants”.
American Museum of Natural History, 1969.
Tuan, Yi-Fu (1977) Space and Place: The Perspective of Experi-
University of California Press
and guided by established rules, actually operate. It examines how people individualize mass culture, from utilitarian things to city infrastructure to rules and rituals. In his investigations into the realms of routine practices, the author explores his belief of the creative resistance of individuals to resist repressive aspects of modern society.
experiential space about how past, present, future enhance in physical space.
Bibliography (1) Macaulay, David (1983) Underground. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Bergdoll, Barry, ed. (2) Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront. The Museum of Modern Art, 2011.
Tuan, Yi-Fu (2007) Topofilia : A study of environmental perception, attitudes and values. Barcelona: Melusina.
De Certeau, Michel (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkley: University of California Press
The primary theme of this book that examines environmental perceptions
The book investigates how ‘users’ traditionally considered to be passive
and values at different levels: the species, the group, and the individual.
and guided by established rules, actually operate. It examines how people
Topophilia examines the search for environment in the city, suburb, coun-
individualize mass culture, from utilitarian things to city infrastructure to
tryside, and wilderness from a dialectical perspective, distinguishes dif-
rules and rituals. In his investigations into the realms of routine practices,
ferent types of environmental experience. What are the links between the
the author explores his belief of the creative resistance of individuals to
world and our view? As the perception, attitude and value are individual,
resist repressive aspects of modern society.
this book focus more on the common traits in the senses through percep-
(3) Weisman, Alan. The world without us. Macmillan, 2008. (4) Fuller, Matthew, and Usman Haque. Urban Versioning System 1.0. Vol. 2. Lulu. com, 2008. (5) Haque, Usman. “Hardspace, softspace and the possibilities of open source architecture.” (2002). (6) Beesley, Philip, Hayley Isaacs, and Pernilla Ohrstedt. Hylozoic Ground: liminal responsive architecture. Riverside Architectural Pr, 2010.
tion.
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Š Xin Qi 2014 xqi@risd.edu
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