Marc Worner recommends studying the work of leading horticulturalists and designers.
Most landscapers react to a client’s ideas of their landscape vision by constructing it. This is how we earn a living.
However, if we keep abreast of what our landscape-design colleagues are creating, we’ll keep abreast of the latest design trends so the construction of our client’s vision exceeds their expectations.
Reflecting on the work of a world renowned landscape designer is a good start.
Words of wisdom
Martha Schwartz is an American landscape architect, the founding principal of Martha Schwartz Partners, an architecture firm based in London, New York City, and Shanghai.
To create award-winning landscapes, she, her husband, and a team of 40 explore the relationship between landscape, art, and culture, and always challenge traditional concepts of landscape design.
Schwartz’s projects span the globe; from her Dublin Docklands project in Ireland to the Children’s Discovery Centre in Damascus.
To quote Ms Schwartz: “It is our goal to create a memorable and significant site for people to enjoy and from which they come away with a special sense of place.
“Utilitarian, functional, hard spaces and corridors have simply dropped off the page. They (British public spaces) are under advocated, underfunded, and underappreciated, and their impoverishment has become what we expect to see in a city.
“Today, cities are growing at a rate never seen before. We will not be able to garden ourselves around serious environmental and social issues.
“We should be striving to develop architecturally innovative buildings — and the potentially striking, refreshing and beautiful spaces around and between them. We need to be much more critical of the less-important spaces and how open space is really used in an urban environment. Huge expanses of open green lawn that produce a field of ambiguity have proven to be toxic spaces,” said Ms Schwartz to an audience she addressed at Kew Gardens in London.
Her imaginative use of a previously wasted public space is the forecourt of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building at 26 Federal Plaza in the Civic Centre, downtown Manhattan in New York City.
Seats of learning
If we take an in-depth look at the different design elements, it’s a real eye opener.
It is a building more than 40 stories high which houses many federal government agencies and is surrounded by other federal buildings.
This innovative landscape design includes traditional New York park elements with a humorous twist: curving wooden benches, exaggerated lights, and grass mounds with fog plumes.
“The intent of the plaza redesign was to create a useable, lively open space in the heart of the city.” said Ms Schwartz on her website.
Ms Schwartz goes on to say: “The double strands of back-to-back benches loop back and forth and allow for a variety of seating – intimate circles for groups and outside curves for those who wish to lunch alone.”
Though not explicit in her reasoning, it is assumed the inside curves allow people to sit in closer proximity, while the outside curves force people apart and beyond one’s peripheral vision.
The grassy knoll
During my visit to the plaza, groups of three or more people did use the inside curves, though they did not limit themselves to these locations. In some cases groups located themselves on separate benches facing each other across a pathway.
Likewise, individuals tended to use inside curves as much as outside ones, counter to Ms Schwartz’s intentions, attributable in some cases to the increased privacy the mounds provide when one is seated.
As an aside: the original intent in the design was to have the mounds higher but the security company argued that they would not be able to…wait for it…shoot at criminals. They won the day, which is even more incredible. Only in New York!
Light and shade
So landscapers who construct public spaces may do well to revisit their projects after a time to just see how we humans interact with it. It may or may not lead to some tweaking of that project.
Her statement that: “…people who wish to sit can do so in either sun or shade,” worries me. Since the primary function of the Plaza is for the lunchtime activities of the federal employees, I find it bizarre that no shade of any type is provided for users.
On sunny days at lunchtime, the Plaza is bathed in sunlight and it’s not until the sun moves past the Javits Building (after lunchtime) the Plaza receives shade. Perhaps her staff only visited the site for a couple of hours in the middle of the day.
TIP: it may be prudent to spend at least six hours at a site to see for oneself the movement of the sun across a site, as well as study standard shadow diagrams.
Amenity
Ms Schwartz ascribes the lack of trees in her design to the fact that the Plaza sits above an underground parking garage, the roof of which cannot support the topsoil required for the root balls of trees. However, I say, where there’s a will there’s a way.
For someone in a wheelchair or with a pram and toddlers, the only access to the plaza from the footpath is via the plaza’s northern edge, and not via a ramp to one or both sides of those grand series of steps and railings on the eastern side.
Before the redesign, the plaza had drinking fountains. Sadly, none exist today. Even the rubbish bins Ms Schwartz designed are not in use. Only the standard ones seen all over New York city exist.
TIP: think about public amenity when designing spaces.
Overcome the difficulties
The constant presence of security guards, cameras and a security booth as a deterrent to aberrant behaviour is unnerving after a while, especially from an Australian’s point of view. We Australians certainly do live in the luckiest of countries.
Despite some of these basic oversights and overrides for whatever reasons by designer and client; it still works far better than the previous lost and forgotten concrete ‘passageway’.
For more information about her work visit this site.
In Australia we have two major landscape-design institutes where landscapers, tradies, professionals, governments and others involved in creating the built environment can engage with experts to get the very best advice and sound out their ideas to cross pollinate for the best outcomes.
See ldi.org.au/ and aila.org.au/.
Showtime
A must-do experience for all landscapers is to visit the public shows in different countries to see for yourself and get inspiration from some of the best landscape designers in the world.
Our Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show is world-renowned and in our backyard! Set against the stunning backdrop of the heritage-listed Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens, this five-day spectacle is a must-see in late March each year.
To see the landscape-design exhibits at arguably the best show in the world, England’s Royal Horticultural Society’s the Chelsea Flower Show in London beggars belief. It first gained popularity way back in the1830s.
The biennial Singapore Garden Festival brings together top award-winning landscape and garden designers, florists and horticulturalists from around the world to team up with Singapore’s own talented horticulturalists.
You’ll see plants in different climate zones being used to their best. Each designer’s masterpiece will certainly inspire many, and I’m sure soothe the soul and calm the mind.
