Structures in the landscape

The forecourt or area immediately in front of a structure or group of structure, is best planned at the
same time and as an integral part of the structure, at lest in diagram. It is designed to attract and
accommodate the types of approaching traffic. It receives guets and directs services. It focuses attention
on the entrances, it prepares one for entry, and establishes the appropriate atmosphere.

To be successful visually, a forecourt mush absolutely have a receptive cove or harbor quality. Those
who have sailed will remember that the long uninterrupted shoreline has tittle of visual
magnetism, while the point or jutting promontory has an outward trusht, and tends to direct
interest and motion away from the land. But what sailor can resist the pull of the harbor? No
matter what, he must change his course to enter the inviting cove. The forecourt, or some
element of the forecourt, must be a planned cove in abstract form and, along is periphery, the
richest, hottes, most interesting point should be the project or building entrance.

The approach court should read from the lines of passing or converging traffic. From far up and down
the canyon that is new yorks fifth avenue on can see and sense the open, sunlit, tree-lined space that is
the forecourt of the public library. And on the avenue, blocks away, on feels that one is moving not
down the street or up the streetbut rather,toward the library. From this telling masterpiece of
planning we may learn that, somewhere along the traffic lines, the forecourt or its planned extensions
must place the visual sign, symbol, thing, or space that alerts and then explains the structure or feature
toward which it provides direction.

Our forecourt will be conceived as ause-area or series of use-areas. It may extend the function of the
street or highway by providing a turning eircle, parking space, or merely a widened unloding strip. It may
extend the fuction of a building by providing outdoor spaces or levels into which and onto which the
interior uses and users may flow. The forecourt may even concentrate or focalize the functions of a
building, the way, for example, the small cafes along many a building street in rome serve as tittle more
than kitchens and wine cellars for the crowded tables on thepiazzissima our front.

The pul of the harbor

Lack of interest monotony
Outward thrust-repulsion
Inward pull-attraction
A superb handling of exterior solids and voids

A forecourt may be selective, attracting some visitors or uss and repelling others. The kindergarten
forecourt, for instance, with its tiny candy-pink gate and its low painted tables and kiddie toys, might
be irresistible to one youngster while his bother, two years older, woukdnt be caught dead in the
place. Some approach courts are planned to permit deliveries some, very abviously, are not. Others
may, within their limits, classify and accommodate traffic of several varying types.

A forecourt is a volume or series of volumes encompassing the required plan functions and focusing
attention fom the approaches to a building feature or enterance. Our approach volumes and forms
should develop a logical sequence of progression. We should experience pleasant transition from
exterior to interior space. As we near or move through the forecourt we should sense a feeling of
homing in.
A forecourt is a foreground it complements or enhances by contrast the feature or the structure. It
develops and accentuates the character or the mood. A well-conceived forecourt will marry a project or
structure or its near and distant approaches, and will serve to integrate it with adjacent structure and
with the total landscape.

THE DEFINED OPEN SPACE

Open space assume an architectural character when they are enclosed in full or in party by a structure
or structural elements. Often such a space is an extension of a building. Sometimes it is confined within
the limits of a single building., or enclosed by a group of buildings. Sometimes such a space surrounds a
structure or serves as its foreground, or as a foil, or as a focal point. Each such defined open space is an
entity. It is complete within itself. But more, it is an inseparable part of each adjacent space or structure.
It can be seen that such related space and structures are best conceived and developed together as a
meaningful complex of solids and voids.

A defined outdoor volume is a well of space. Its very hollowness is its essential quality. Without the
corresponding void a solid has no meaning. Is it notbthen quite evident that the size, shape, and quality
of the negative space will have a powerfull retroactive effect upon the adjacent positive masses? Earch
structure requires for its fullest effective expression a satisfying balance of mass and void. The same void
may not only satisfy two or more solids and relate them to each other, it may also relate them as a
group to some further structure or space beyond.

Whatever its fuction, where the hollowness of such a volume is a quality to be desired, this concavity is
meticulously preserved and em phasizwd by letting the shell read clearly by revealing enclosing
members and planes by incurving, or belling out the sides by the use of recessive colors and forms by
letting the bottom fall away by terracing or sloping down into and up out of this base by digging the pit
by depressing a water basin or reflective pool and thus extending apparent depth to infinity. A cleanly
shapes space is not to be choked or clogged with trees or other standing elements. This is not to infer
that the volume should be kept empty, but rather that its hollowness should be in all aways maintained.
A well-placed arrangement of elements or even agrove of high-crowned trees might well increase this
sense of shell-like hollowness.

The defined open space, unlike the roofed space, is open to the sky, with the obvious advantages of
flooding sunlight, shadow patterns. Airiness, rain, sky, color, and the beauty of moving clouds. It has
disadvantages, too, but we need only plan to minimize them and capitalize on every beneficial aspect of
the openness to the sky. Let us not waste one precious yard of azure blue, one glorious burst of
sunshine, or one puff of welcome summer breeze that can be caught and made to animate, illuminate,
or aerate this hollow vessel that we plan.

If the volume defined by a structure is open to the side, it becomes the focal orb or prism of transition
between the structure and the landscape. If open to the view, it is usually developed as the best
possible viewing station, and the best possible enframement for the view seen from the various viewing
points within the structure.

The defined open space is normally developed for some us. It may extend the function of a structure, s
the motor court extends the entrance hall, or as the dining court extends the dining room or kitchen. It
may serve as a separate function in itself, as a recreation court at the center of a dormitory, or a military
parade ground flanked by barracks. But whether or not it is directly related to its structure in the use, in
character and quality it must be. Such spaces-pations, courts, quads, plazas, public squares-become so
dominant and focal in most building groups that the very essence of the structure is distilled and
captured there.

THE COMPOSITION OF STRUCTURES

We physical planners like to think of ourselves as masters of space organization, yet, in truth, we are
often baffled by the simplest problems of space arrangement and structural composition. What, for
instance, is the ideal relationship of a building to its suounding sea of space or a buildingbto its fronting
approaches or two building facing each other across an intervening mall or a group of structures to each
other and the spaces they enclose? Our predecessors had their theories on these matters and
developed their sound principles. Many superb examples of their art are still to be seen-the Parthenon,
romes Capitoline piazza by Michelangelo, letnotres garden of Versailles, villa lante, the Alhambra. Yet
we contemporaries proceed in blithe ignorance or disregard of the truths and lessons of history. If we,
pround spirits that we are, must learn our truth first-hand, there need be no problem for we are
surrounded by examples of the good and the bad, and need only develop a discerning eye to distinguish
art from error, and evolve our own guilding axioms.