Future Garden

Author: Ian Cooper
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2002-12-01
Features: We are not art masters or critics. Our exploration of this topic is purely a personal interest, and therefore cannot be all-encompassing. We have tried to use easy-to-understand non-professional terminology, but we also had to adopt three concepts of garden design by the American visionary artist Robert Irwin, who divides gardens into three types: site-dominated, site-ordered, and site-generated. Since we will extensively use these concepts in the book, it is necessary to clarify their meanings first. Site-dominated gardens are rarely mentioned in contemporary design books. Irwin uses it to explain the profound influence of 16th-century Italian gardens, 17th-century French gardens, and 18th-century English gardens, which have become historical paradigms. We introduce them into this book because they are the source of inspiration for contemporary architects. Site-ordered gardens can draw creative inspiration from a wide range of resources. In our information age, the available materials are particularly diverse, ranging from ancient mazes to avant-garde installations shaped by electronic diode lamps. The second part of this book consists of 20 case studies, including both private and public landscapes, which showcase the diversity of landscape design works from the late 20th century. Thirteen of these works belong to the site-ordered type, such as the Jacques Wirtz garden in Paris's Tuileries, inspired by classical European gardens, similar to Daniel Urban Kiley's garden in the United States, and Fernando Caruncho's gardens in Spain and Florida. The Tonter Linden garden in the Netherlands, influenced by early 20th-century German garden styles, extensively uses perennial herbaceous plants in its design. Other cases reflect the influence of Chinese and Japanese gardens. Eighteenth-century English gardens belong to both site-dominated and site-ordered types. Contemporary Italian art, architecture, and landscape had a significant impact on them, shaping their site-ordered style. However, over the past 300 years, 18th-century English classical gardens have gradually merged with British landscapes, becoming paradigms in British cultural history and now regarded as site-dominated. Over the past two decades, landscape architects have had to fight hard to gain recognition and acceptance for their designs that are closely related to contemporary life. Even in the United States, a country considered highly progressive and innovative, attitudes and concepts about contemporary landscape design have undergone a long transformation process. This change is still ongoing, and it has even begun in the UK. In the UK, the style of countryside cottages or estate houses has been popular for many years, but now people are beginning to show interest in new trends in garden and landscape design. Over the past 15 years or so, design in Europe and the United States has begun to reflect the era in which we work and live. Private gardens and public landscapes emerging in the early 21st century have taken entirely new, incredible forms. The designs presented here are the contemporary "now," not the historical "past." Even gardens and landscapes designed in geometric forms or classical styles are merely contemporary developments of the basic linear structures of 20th-century modern architecture. This book provides an in-depth study of garden landscapes that reflect contemporary life, and it is also a preview of the 21st century.