Detailing for Landscape Architects

Aesthetics, Function, Constructibility

Thomas R. Ryan, Edward Allen, Patrick J. Rand

• Editore: Wiley
• Anno: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780470904626
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Architecture
• Categoria: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Based upon the best-selling book Architectural Detailing by Edward Allen and Patrick Rand, Landscape Architectural Detailing applies the same organization to the three major concerns of the landscape architecture detailer—function, constructability, and aesthetics. Richly illustrated, this book approaches landscape architecture detailing in a systematic manner and provides a framework for analyzing existing details and devising new ones. Landscape Architectural Detailing includes material on details related to aesthetics, water drainage and movement, structures, construction assemblies, sustainable resources, and more.

Part I

Detail Patterns

Section 1

Aesthetics

A landscape should please the eye. Its details play a large role in this important function. Every truly great landscape has great details: details that contribute to the aesthetic themes of the site, that complement one another, and that create beauty out of the ordinary materials and necessities of construction. A landscape with a splendid thematic idea can fail as landscape architecture if it has poor details: details that are badly matched to its primary aesthetic, that do not relate strongly to one another, or that fail to lift their materials above the ordinary.

The detail patterns that relate to aesthetics are few in number, but each is powerful, far-reaching, and requires greater effort and insight to implement than any of the patterns relating to function and constructibility. The foremost aesthetic requirement for detailing is that all of the details of a landscape should contribute to its formal and spatial theme. Aesthetics drive what one should detail as well as how that detail will be developed. That development is based in ideas. Without strong and clear design ideas, the detailer’s work is much more difficult. There is little basis for deciding how to configure a detail. Should the space feel enclosed, or expansive? What elements are the most important and which ones are subordinate? Should the joints between materials accentuate their differences or downplay them? Aesthetic features of individual details should be as appealing in future years as when they were built. These requirements are developed in the following detail patterns:

Contributive Details (p. 5)

Timeless Features (p. 7)

Details may be elaborated to feature certain inherent characteristics, or they may be decorative for purely visual effect:

Hierarchy of Refinement (p. 8)

Intensification and Ornamentation (p. 10)

Active Details and Recessive Details (p. 12)

Continuous and Discontinuous Details (p. 14)

Lastly, details may be developed whose role is solely to unify and give order to the visual composition of landscape elements that otherwise might seem disjointed or unrelated. This role is introduced in the following patterns:

Formal Transitions (p. 15)

Composing the Detail (p. 17)

These eight patterns serve to focus the detailer’s attention on some important aesthetic issues that arise in detailing. They constitute a small part of a much larger field of study, visual composition that will amply repay as much time as the detailer can devote to its study.

The body of built landscape from antiquity to the present provides evidence of the importance of the link between art and craft. Classical Greeks originated the notion of techne, derived from the Greek verb tikto, meaning to produce. This term means the simultaneous existence of both art and craft, deliberately avoiding distinction between the two.

Landscape architectural details can convey to the observer in literal terms the facts about the form and how it is made. They can also reveal what is latent within the form—features so subtle that they are not consciously noticed by the casual observer. In these patterns, the term “aesthetics” will be used to describe features that recognize the inextricable link between art and craft, between the ideal and the circumstantial, between the concept and its tangible embodiment. In landscape architectural detailing, ideas must be made real.

The detailer is challenged to find solutions that solve the specific technical requirements of a given detail, while also showing affinity with the landscape’s central aesthetic themes. Some details may seem to have no solutions, others may have many. The best solutions are functional, convey meaning, and reward the senses.

Although the emphasis in this section is on the visual qualities of a landscape and its details, the detailer should always look for opportunities to delight the other human senses. Tactile qualities of materials are important: the feel of decomposed granite underfoot; the shiny precision of a stainless steel and glass railing; deep, luxurious cushions on a bench; or the rough texture of a split stone wall. Auditory qualities are also vital: Should a particular space seem hushed and quiet? Should it be vast and echoey? Should one’s footsteps resound throughout a space, or would it be more appropriate for one to tread softly, as if floating noiselessly? Would it enhance the users experience if one heard the sounds of splashing water, of birdsongs, of wind in trees, or of children chattering, in lieu of traffic noise? And consider the opportunities for olfactory delight in a landscape: the fragrance of thyme underfoot, the perfume of flowers, the freshness of mown grass, the moist breezes off a pond. Once again, the designers of the greatest landscapes have considered these possibilities and have often used them to their advantage.

Chapter 1

Aesthetics

Contributive Details

All of the details of a landscape should contribute to its formal and spatial theme. They support and embellish the main design ideas in a landscape.

1. Many details are associated with a style. The style may be the incidental byproduct of practical actions, as might be found in good vernacular design, or the intentional expression of a particular body of work such as the California Modernists of the 1950s and 1960s. The flowing concrete patios and walls, redwood decks and fences all contributed to the “look” of the modern gardens of that time. They were a departure from the symmetry and ornament of the Beaux Arts that preceded it, and the detailing complimented the new aesthetic. Styles in landscape architecture are not always as well defined as in architecture, but the aesthetic sensibilities of a time are reflected in landscape architecture as well as the other arts.

2. In similar fashion we can analyze the details associated with any landscape architectural style: Baroque landscapes, which used highly finished materials with ornate profiles that were unified in balanced symmetrical compositions directly contrasted with Contemporary design, where elements may instead juxtapose machined and unprocessed materials in asymmetrical unresolved compositions with overlapping forms.

3. Every designer of landscapes works in his or her own manner or style. It may not have a name, but it has a consistent personality, sensibility, or a guiding ethic. This personality or ethic stems from an approach to space, form, light, color, and to details. The style of the details must be integral with the style of the landscape. As a designer’s manner evolves and changes with each project, so must the details. The details must contribute their proportional share to the character and content of the landscape. For some landscape architects, a particular material or detail is the seed from which the landscape’s design grows. Even if not the source of the central design concept, details are the voice of the concept, the means through which the concept is expressed. They are evident in the earliest conceptual drawings and must be developed as the design evolves.

4. A landscape’s details should be all of a family. It will not do to copy one detail from one source, another detail from another, and patch together a set of details that function well but bear no visible resemblance to one another. The designer should develop a matched set of the most important detai...