LARC 522 Week 02

Rethinking Ancient Landscapes

The River + The Arch
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
2015
St. Louis MI
¯ Redesign of a large urban civic waterfront space,
recognizing the fluctuation of water
Clam Garden Restoration
¯ Russell Island, BC Clam gardens have been part of commu-
nities from Southern Alaska to Washington state for at least
4000 years
¯ Two projects have taken place in BC to restore clam gardens
on Russel Island and Quadra Island The use of rock terracing
to increase the inter-tidal zone to support clam populations
¯ Discovered in 2013 but were described in Indigenous oral
histories
¯ Socio- ecological resilience of community
¯ In each site communities would remove seaweed, and dig
clams strategically, harvesting larger clams to make space for
smaller ones
¯ Fluffing the beach: Tilling the beach with the intention to re-
duce compaction and increase oxygenation for baby clams
to root
Klamath Nation in southern Oregon used fire to create
meadows and water holes
Reports of Explorations and Surveys done in 1857
¯ Fire used to clear underbrush, concentrate deer populations,
fertilize plants, clear underbrush from around oak and hazel
trees to increase nut production, stimulate berry and root
production, to gather insect, fertilize cultivated tobacco plots
¯ The fire is an excellent example of how Indigenous peoples
throughout North America actively managed their environ-
ments, playing a key role in determining the structure and
composition of forest and grassland ecosystems
¯ Aja Conrad of the Karuk Tribe Environmental Workforce
Development and Internships Division
¯ Coordinator uses a drip torch to light a prescribed burn in
Orleans, California
¯ The exclusion of fire has led to radical ecological changes
throughout the landscape effecting the composition and
population of both plant and animal species
¯ Some radical ecological changes to the landscape due to
the suppression of fire include high fuel loads, decreased
habitat for large game such as elk and deer, reduction in
the quantity and quality of acorns, and alteration of growth
patterns of basketry materials (hazel and willow)
¯ Karuk Climate Change Management
¯ Cooler fires and seasonal burns by species
¯ Karuk creation stories: Turtle gave fire to Frog, and Frog took
fire underwater before spitting it into willow roots along the
river.
¯ Prescribed nighttime burns to protect plant and animal spe-
cies as the ground stays slightly cooler
¯ More information can be found in the Climate Change
Adaptation Plan
Tenochtitlan and Aztec culture in central Mexico
1500s
¯ The capital, Tenochtitlan, was built on a swampy island in
1345 by the Aztec empire (Central Mexico)
¯ Was one of the largest capitals in the world during this time,
around 2000 people at its peak
¯ Founding myth of Tenochtitlan is represented in the Mexican
flag today, an eagle on a cactus plant eating its prey
¯ Connected to the mainland through causeways
¯ Known as a Great Botanical City, flower and botanical
motifs were depicted throughout the city
*Unfortunately, much of the information we have about the details of
these gardens of the Aztec empire are from Spanish conquistadors
and not Aztec records. Aztec civilization was destroyed by the Spanish
armies under Cortéz.  The central plaza of Tenochtitlán became the
Spanish main plaza. The Cathedral built by the Spanish at the Zocalo
just beside the former location of the primary pyramid and the location
of the palace of the Aztec chief Montezuma was transformed palace
of the governor.
Chinampas system / land and water
with Ahuejote Salix bonplandiana
¯ Chinampas: referred to as floating gardens, chinampas are
artificial islands that were used in Mesoamerican agriculture
which rely on small, rectangular areas of fertile arable land to
grow crops on the shallow lake beds in the Valley of Mexico
¯ Chinampas can still be seen today in Xochimilco Ecological
Park (redesigned by landscape architect- Mario Schjetnan in
1993). Some common crops grown at Xochimilco included
maize, beans, squash, chiles, potatoes and flowers. Xochi-
milco, meaning “the place where flowers are grown,” in the
Indigenous language of Nahuatl is also home to the largest
flower market in Mexico, suggesting one way that the rede-
sign of ancient landscapes can be do so through culturally
appropriate care.
Readings
Barnett, Rod. “Designing Indian Country,” Places Journal, October 2016.
Accessed 28 Aug 2022. https://placesjournal.org/article/designing-
indiancountry/
Oland, Maxine & Hart, M. & Frink, Liam. (2012) Decolonizing Indigenous
Histories: Exploring Prehistoric/Colonial Transitions in Archaeology (Tucson: University
of Arizona Press,) Introduction pp. 1-8.
Avilés, Paul. “Seven Ways of Looking at a Mountain: Tetzcotzingo and the
Aztec Garden Tradition.” Landscape Journal 25, no. 2 (2006): 143-57.
Carlson, Dane, and Mariel Collard-Arias. “Trajectories of Practice across Time:
Moving Beyond the Histories of Landscape Architecture.” Landscape Research
47, no. 1 (2021): 25-34.
 LARC 522 Week 02
Greek & Roman Public Space
Classical Greece comes out of the Minoan and Mycenaean
cultures
Ancient Greece
3000-100BCE (the classical period is 480-323BCE
¯ A civilization that thrived around the Mediterranean Sea from
the 3rd millennium to the 1st century BCE
¯ Known for their advances in philosophy, architecture, drama,
government and science
¯ The Classical Period: During this period, ancient Greeks
reached their highest prosperity and produced their greatest
cultural accomplishments
City of Mycenae
A powerful fortified city on a hilltop called an acropolis
Acro = high; polis = city
¯ During the Bronze age, Mycenae was a fortified hill
surrounded by hamlets and estates, not the dense cities of the
coast. The thought is that the rules placed their capital, which
this city was, in more remote regions for its defensive value.
It was a hilly area with the fortified city located to be able to
view the distant landscape, another form of defense.
¯ Because they were built with stone, a great deal of Mycenae
is still visible today
¯ Mycenaean were a trade-based culture, rich enough to
create their own lavish places- monumental architecture,  384-322 BCE
¯ Because of the existence of springs in the limestone ridges
and the presence of karstic formation, they were able to site
their cities on divide to scale high points with long views. 
¯ Fragmentation led to more competition and then in turn
common interest. The populace as a political unit, especially
in democracy
¯ A Demos: the populace as a political unity, especially in
democracy
¯ Polis: initially a communal center for refuge and religious
practice, then a city state, especially as considered in its ideal
form for philosophical purposes
Humanism: is the term European renaissance intellectuals applied
to the rediscovery of Plato Aristotle in the literary heritage of ancient
Greece as well as the stylistic inspirations the derived both from
ancient Latin authors and from Roman ruins in the works of ancient art
architecture the rationality in order they found in classical architecture in
planning expressed human values  practical and defensible
Genius Loci: the spirit of character of a site- inherent to a
place
¯ Classical values embodied in Greek and Roman art,
architecture and culture
¯ The forms were simple, the proportions were harmonious and
ornamented
¯ Symmetry over eccentricity
¯ Human / cultural and the natural / nature unit in a bond
¯ The protective spirit of a place, religious iconography as
a figure holding a cornucopia, snake or other protective
symbol were depicted through built structures
Sacred Grove of Zeus, Olympia
5th century BCE
¯ Sacred gardens, groves and meadows common during this
time
¯ Groves are from time immemorial
¯ Gardens bounded
¯ Groves and meadows could seem endless (not bounded)
During this time the idea of the individual was important. Philosophy of
pure reason, search for truth, scientific collection of facts from which
one might intellectually deduce general rules
Pythagoras- of Samos
6th century BCE
¯ Relation between spatial and musical proportions, intellectual
and spiritual mathematics led to truth
Plato
347BCE
¯ Worked towards perfection, eternal principles of
mathematics, the temple is the pure manifestation of these
truths
¯ Human mind could learn of truths
Aristotle
¯ Logician and biologist
¯ Understanding the world and the human mind as it existed
Agora
¯ Beginning in the period of the radical democracy, the boule
or city council, the Prytanes or presidents of the council and
the Archons, or magistrates all met in the agora
¯ Law courts were also located here
¯ Any citizen who happened to be in the agora when a case
was being heard, could be forced to serve as a juror
¯ All male land- owners
Agora
Athens c. 5th century BCE
¯ About 10 acres
¯ Begins with a fountain house (public space)
¯ Polis: rational city state, a concept of community that was
¯ Tholos: a temple, tomb or the building for keeping the weights
and measures
¯ Stoa: Greek, roofed colonnade, and storehouse
¯ Trees were planted along walkways and outdoor areas
(space for discourse)
Acropolis
Athens, Greece
5-4th BCE
¯ Unlike other Green cities, where people made ritual
processions to worship at temples in the outlying part of the
polis, in Athens the festival of the goddess Athena began with
a procession from the koromikos, the outlying ceramic and
cemetery district
¯ No Greek building attempted to dominate the landscape
¯ Wandering, as a journey – never straight to one’s destination
 (Greeks believed in choice and different perspectives)
¯ Each building is uniquely sited to note its beauty, importance
and spatial definition
¯ Common thought: God idealized humans thus thinking is a
godly activity
Parthenon
Greece
¯ Built using Doric columns which is unique for Greece
¯ Iktinos, Kalikrates, and Mnesikles were the architects who
designed the monuments under the supervision of the sculptor
Pheidias
¯ Rectangular floor plan with a series of low steps on every
side and a colonnade of Doric columns extending around
the periphery of the entire structure
¯ Mathematic and proportions determines the size and shape
of the columns
Roman Urbanism
100 BCE – 100 CE
Grids, order and city / country distinctions
¯ Hippodamian grid
¯ Imperial order and grandeur
¯ Distinctions between city and countryside
¯ Monumentality
¯ Axiality is of the most importance – even over the grid
¯ Streets that visually link forms and spaces
¯ fountains, spaces for water runoff incorporated into streets
Roman gardening and water
¯ Influence of the aqueduct to bring water to Campania
¯ Overcoming the challenges posed by nature (different from
accommodating)
Hippodamian grid
¯ Imperial order and grandeur
¯ Distinctions between city and countryside
¯ Led to roman centuriation (use of grid over land)
Roman Villa Culture
¯ A villa was originally a Roman country house built for the
upper class
¯ There are two kinds of villas (1) The Villa Urbana, which
was a country seat that could easily be reached from Rome
(or another city) for a night or two (2) The Villa Rustica, the
farmhouse estate permanently occupied by the servants who
had charge generally of the estate
Epicurus
341-270 BCE
¯ Key figure in the development of science and the scientific
method
¯ Nothing should be believed except that which was tested
through direct observation and logical deduction
¯ The Epicurean View: the highest pleasure was obtained by
knowledge, friendship and living a virtuous and temperate
life. Abstaining from the enjoyment of simple pleasures,
abstaining from bodily desires, such as sex and eating
Roman Villa Gardens (villa urbana)
¯ Combined the best aspects of garden style from Greece and
Egypt to create tranquil refuges from stress, strife and crowds
(escape or refuge from the city)
¯ Some were built to honor various deities
¯ Some were large pleasure gardens which combined
orchards with ornate terraces
Ancient Roman Architecture
¯ Cryptoporticus (cryptoportico): covered corridor or
passageway
¯ Triclinium: is a formal dining room in a Roman building
¯ Peristyle garden: located in an open courtyard of a domus
and was generally surrounded by colonnades. Various
ornamental plants and statues could be found in the garden
Villa of Livia at Prima Porta
Late 1st century BCE
¯ Roman fresco painted depicted extended garden and space
as an illusion
Villa Boscoreale
¯ Ancient Roman villa, located in the town of Boscoreale (just
outside Pompeii in Campania)
¯ Was a hunting reserve
¯ Also used agriculturally, with a specialization in wine and
olive oil
¯ The villa was burned in the eruption of Mount Vesuvus in AD
79
Villa Rustica vs Villa Urbana
¯ Villa Rustica: Was the part where the slaves and the servants
lived and where the agricultural and cattle buildings and
rooms were. Obeyed to the principles of functionality
according to the requirements of the agricultural and cattle
practice
¯ Villa Urbana: Where the owner and his family lived. Was
built in the style of the aristocratic domus in Rome and built
with all kinds of luxuries. Often seasonally occupied
Villa Urbana and Rustica
Pliny the Younger
613-113 CE
¯ Pliny the Younger was a wealthy senator and writer of first
century CE – owner of two palatial villas. He was interested
in good life, open air, opportunity for exercise
¯ Axial plan, setting is carved out of the forest, situated within
a urban context, distinctions between constructed form and
nature – These are the forms that continue to shape our ideas
of landscape today!
Readings
W. J. T. Mitchell, “Imperial landscape,” in Landscape and power, ed. W. J. T.
Mitchell. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994: 5–34
Hoelscher, Steven, “The white-pillared past: Landscapes of memory and
race in the American South.” Landscape and Race in the United States, edited by
Richard Schein, London: Taylor and Francis, 2006: 39-72.
 LARC 522 Week 03
Ideas of water, infrastructure,
& paradise in early Islamic Gardens
Pasargadae, Iran (capital of the Acgaemenid Empire
Cyrus the Great’s Palace
6th century BCE
¯ Earliest example of the chabar bagh
¯ Water channels define the space
¯ Beginnings of relationships between humans and nature
¯ Rectilinear spaces, geometry is the focus, NO perspective
¯ First a hunting park and then an orchard
¯ Straight geometric watercourse and a raised platform for
garden viewing
Qanats system
¯ Qanats: Constructed by Achaemenid engineers are
underground tunnels, dug by hand from the point of delivery
to the base of a snow-capped mountain in a gentle ever-
ascending grade
¯ Water system that flowed throughout Iran, many still exist
today
The Islamic World
700-1500
¯ The Muslims of Muhammad’s generation were a small cluster
of Arab traders and urban merchants in Mecca and Medina
with little to no farming experience. By the mid seventh
century, Muslim armies led by Umayaads (661-750) –
conquered what we know as Syria, dordan, Israel, Palestine,
Lebanon, Iraq, and most of Iran. By 8th century- across
norther Africa to Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula and
through Iran to central Asia.  zone or Alcazaba, the city or Medina, and the villa of
¯ The Byzantine Empire was created out of the Eastern half of
the Roman Empire.  The Byzantine Empire itself comprised
at this time most of the Balkans, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine,
and Egypt, and westward towards the north African
coast.  The most important city of Rome’s Eastern Empire
was Constantinople…, (founded by Constantine in 330
AD) located on the Bosphorus Straits, built on the site of an
ancient Greek city of the 7th C BCE—Byzantium.  Today it is
called Istanbul, Turkey.
¯ Islam first in Baghdad, then by 711 CE- invaded Spain- by
750 they ruled Adalusia, and under Timur, east through India
in the 14th century.
Chahar Bagh (Chahar = four square and Bagh = garden)
¯ Enclosed garden
¯ Four rivers of milk and honey
¯ Fruit and shade trees
¯ Quadripartite
¯ Water channels, pools, fountains and cascades cooled the
air. Flowers provided scent and colour. Fruit trees provided
shade.
Paradeisoi
¯ Pairi (around) & deaza (wall)
¯ An enclosed (walled) garden
¯ Calm retreat from the noisy and dusty outside world
Great Mosque of Cordoba
ca. 785-965
¯ In the Middle Ages it became the capital of an Islamic
caliphate, an area containing an Islamic steward known
as a caliph- a person considered a religious successor
to the Islamic prophet Muhammad- leader of the Muslim
community
¯ The city is located on the banks of the Guadalquilvir river,
and its easy access to the mining resources of the Sierra
Morena (coal, lead, zinc) satisfies the population’s needs.
Patio de los Naranjos, Great Mosque of Cordoba
976
¯ Irrigated by runnels along planting axis
¯ Claims to be the oldest extant garden in Europe
¯ Rectangular pattern of orange trees, the trunks acting as
forecourt to the forest of columns inside the Great Mosque
The Alhambra
Granada Spain
899-1526
¯ A palace, fortress and citadel
¯ The residence of the Nasrid Sultans and top government
officials, court servants and royal guard
¯ The Alhambra’s Islamic palaces were built for the last
Muslim Emirs in Spain and its court, of the Nasrid dynasty
After the Reconquista (reconquest) by the Reyes Católicos
(“Catholic Monarchs”) in 1492, some portions were used by
the Christian rulers.
¯ It is currently an artistic-historical monumental group with
four clearly distinguishable zones: the Palaces, the military
the Generalife, all of them surrounded by woods, trees,
gardens, parks and vegetable gardens.
¯ Alhambra Gardens
¯ Axis, water, symmetry, flowers
¯ Reflected Islamic ideas of Paradise, looked inward and
outward
¯ Lookout tower was both for defense but also for the view
outward
The Court of the Lions
Alhambra
¯ Oblong court
¯ The square is paved with coloured tiles and the colonnade
with white marble, while the walls are covered 5 ft (1.5 m)
up from the ground with blue and yellow tiles, with a border
above and below of enameled blue and gold
The Mughals
¯ Were an Islamic dynasty that ruled between 1526 and
1858 in territories now divided among Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Kashmir, and northern India. Babur was the founder and in
1505 began his conquest of India. 
¯ One of Babur’s, both a gardener and an emperor, first acts
were construction gardens to make the space feel more like
home (territorial extensions)
¯ Gardens become an expression of culture and without
territorial extents. 
¯ Enclosed garden- defined space, a total reflection of the
cosmos and paradise
¯ Bringing order to nature- re-presenting geography,
 topography
¯ celebration of agriculture- human and nature in partnership
¯ a place for ceremony
¯ a place of power- conquering by cultural domination
Humayun’s garden tomb
1508-1556
¯ The tomb was built in 1570 and was the first garden-tomb on
the Indian subcontinent. It inspired several major architectural
innovations, culminating in the construction of the Taj Mahal.
¯ Could be referred to as a tomb palace
Readings
Ibn Luyan (14th-century poet from Granada). “Instructions for Creating
Gardens.” In Oleg Grabar. The Alhambra (Cambridge MA: Harvard
University Press, 1978), p.95-96.
Jodidio, Philip “Inspired by the Garden of Paradise: The Aga Khan Park in
Toronto” in Jodidio, P. (2015). Heritage of the Mughal World : The Aga Khan
Historic Cities Programme (Trade ed.). Munich ; New York: Prestel. Program,
pp. 272-283.
Mathur, Anuradha. “Neither Wilderness nor Home: The Indian Maidan,” in
Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, ed. James

Taj Mahal, Agra Corner (Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), pp. 204-219.
India 1648
Built by Shah Jehan
¯ Shah Jehan: Expanded the Mughal Empire to Kandhar in the
North and conquered most of Southern India
¯ Used marble as the chief medium for all his architectural
undertakings
¯ The Agra built in memory of his beloved wife
¯ Wife was at the center of the garden (women at the center
of culture)
¯ Four rivers
¯ Symmetrical four-part garden (Chahar bagh)
¯ Furniture inlaid with semi-precious stones (agate and quartz
to create images)
¯ The Moonlight Garden (Mahtab Bagh)

Shalimar, Kashmir
1620 and 1738
Designed by Jahingar
¯ Experience of moving up, rhythm of progression lies in water,
and its movement
¯ A place of contemplation

The Persian City of Isfahan

1598
¯ Isfahan: City as Garden
¯ Three different grid in the city (1) the main Imperial square
that mediated between the old city and the new (2) the
mosques which were turned to face Mecca (3) the garden
themselves which were laid roughly north- south
¯ The redesign in the 1600s was laid out as a paradise garden
(chahar bagh)
¯ Central canal planted with flowers and trees
¯ Bridge of Thirty-Three Arches: built in 1602 provided stopping
points and pavilions for refreshment and views of the river.
Also connected the new city to the hunting park and the new
suburbs of the city on the opposite slopes of the river
¯ The Maydan of the Shah: vast open square in front of the
mosque complex, served for all ceremonial and spectacular
functions, was intended to symbolize Isfahan’s position at the
center of the world
¯ The bazaar: 2 km marketplace that represented the role of
trade in the new imperial capital cities
 LARC 522 Week 03
African Cultural Landscapes:
Beyond & outside colonization
Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove
Osogbo, Nigeria
¯ Sacred groves: sometimes located in a forest, more of an
imaginative than literal space while still being legible in the
landscape
¯ Dense forest, that is one of the last remnants of primary high
forests in Southern Nigeria (most groves have now been
abandoned or have been shrunk to small areas)
¯ Abode of the goddess of fertility Osun, one of the Yoruba
gods
¯ Sanctuaries and shrines, sculptures and other art works (in
honour of Osun and other deities)
¯ Largest preserved sacred grove in Africa
¯ The grove is also a natural herbal pharmacy containing over
400 species of plants, some endemic, of which more than
200 species are known for their medicinal uses
¯ New art has been established in the grove
¯ An annual processional festival takes place as well as daily,
monthly and yearly worship
Djenné Mosque
Djenne, Mali
First built 800-1250
¯ Great center of commerce, learning and Islam (practiced
from the beginning of the 13th century)
¯ The Great Mosque is one of the most important buildings in
the town, primarily because it became a political symbol for
residents and for colonial powers (the French) who took over
control of Mali in 1892
¯ Largest earthen building in the world- Site of the
annual festival called Crepissage de la Grande
Mosquée (Plastering of the Great Mosque)
¯ The current is the third iteration
¯ New scholarship supports the idea that the mason’s guild
of Djenné built the current mosque with the help of forced
laborers from villages of adjacent regions, brought in by
French colonial authorities. To accompany and motivate
workers, musicians were provided who played drums and
flutes. Workers included masons who mixed tons of mud,
sand, rice-husks, and water and formed the bricks that shape
the current structure.
¯ The roof has several holes covered by terra-cotta lids which
provided the interior spaces with fresh air
¯ This example speaks about materiality and landscape
practice as well as temporality
Dahomey Palace Gardens
Heart of the Abomey town in Benin (formerly the capital of the West
African Kingdom of Dahomey)
1600s
¯ Highly ordered and tightly maintained public spaces and
gardens that Black African, specifically, maintained for
themselves
In contrast with…
African Gardens, Ground Force
British Museum, London
2005
¯ This garden more closely resembled the jungle or bush, home
to plants but also snakes and other dangerous animals, and
in many cases dangerous spirits. Thus, in this case, the garden
reinforces that idea that African people would live in this type
of environmental as well. 
Great Zimbabwe
1250-1650
¯ One of the most dramatic architectural landscapes in sub-
Saharan Africa
¯ One of the largest stones complex in Africa built before the
modern era
¯ Center for trade (trading links with China and the Arab
world)- developed over a period of 300 years
¯ The highlands between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers
were a source of gold and were controlled by the Shona
people who erected small religious and political centers
throughout the area
¯ Ivory and gold were abundant in the plateau
¯ Parts of the settlement: The Hill Complex, the Great Enclosure
and the Valley Ruins (mortar-less stone construction + ruined
daga: earthen and mud brick)
¯ Throughout history: plundering of graves without permission,
but records have been adapted to fit other narratives
Christoph Becker, Honey Moon Hotel
Kano, Nigeria
20 April 1976
¯ New architecture created through the exchange of
knowledge (first by traders moving throughout the region,
then with Europeans on ships and then during the colonial
period by workers who moved along specific rail lines)
¯ Displays an urban style common in the late 1950s at the cusp
of Nigerian Independence
¯ Walls of the ground floor were constructed of rubble,
assembled in an emphatic netted pattern whose thick mortar
joints dominated the façade
¯ Here in Kano, at this historical juncture between colonialism
and independence, such architecture would have signaled a
particular ethos to guests and passersby
Niamey2000
Niammey Niger
Atelier Masomi
¯ Responds to the housing and socio-economic conditions
found in the city of Niamey
¯ Built in a contemporary fashion with local knowledge
Sangha Practical Training College
Sangha Maili
LEVS Architects
¯ Contemporary architecture and engineering that is based on
local materials and development of traditional knowledge
White supremacist cultural norms
¯ Used to discredit African landscapes as designed spaces,
created with intention, specific knowledge of place and
with purpose toward its use whether for sustaining life or for
spiritual purpose
 ¯ Cultural landscapes are collectively produced, and this often
leads to them as reading as less significant within a European
gaze, as opposed to a landscape designed by a single,
named individual
¯ Through oral histories we know about these landscapes, but
we know little about the individuals that created them
¯ Common or cultural landscapes are likely to be as designed
as elite landscapes we are just less likely to know who
created / designed them

Readings
Okoye, Ikem Stanley. “Was there not modernism?” on Canadian Centre for
Architecture. https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/articles/77238/where-was-no
modernism

Beardsley, John, “Introduction” in Cultural Landscape Heritage in Sub-Saharan

Africa, Dumbarton Oaks, 2016: 1-15.

Pikirayi, Innocent, “Great Zimbabwe as Power-Scape,” in Cultural Landscape

Heritage in Sub-Saharan Africa, Dumbarton Oaks, 2016: 89-118.

Gundaker, Grey, “Design on the World: Blackness and the Exclusion of Sub-
Saharan Africa from the ‘Global History of Garden and Landscape
Design,’” in Cultural Landscape Heritage in Sub-Saharan Africa, Dumbarton
Oaks, 2016: 15-61.
 LARC 522 Week 04
Exported & Translated Ideas
of the Chinese Garden
Specific idea of the definition of Chinese garden has been stuck in
time and often has to do with the European ideas of what constitutes a
Chinese style, which is tied up with race and the idea of physiognomy
Yuan ming yuan (round bright garden, aka the Garden of
Perfect Brightness)
Constructed 1709-1774 (destroyed 1860)
¯ In order to create a private retreat near the Forbidden City
but away from its formality, the emperor created a villa with
gardens to the northwest of Beijing
¯ Buildings were arranged in a natural setting that was
carefully designed with lakes and streams, hills, bridges and
pathways and pagodas
¯ Since all the Chinese buildings were made of wood, almost
nothing remained of this vast paradise after the British and
French troops set torch to the Yuanmingyuan in 1860.
The Silk Road
¯ In the 2nd century became a pathway for the flow of
Buddhism from India to China
¯ In the 8th century it was the route in which Islam was
introduced to Central Asia
¯ The Silk Routes were important paths for cultural, commercial
and technological exchange between traders, merchants,
travelers, soldiers, tribes and those from India and the Han
culture of China, Ancient Tibet, Persia and Mediterranean
countries for almost 3,000 years.
The Shanglin Park: Imperial Hunt
221 BCE garden first designed and constructed
Revived 1494-1552 by Qiu Ying, Ming dynasty
¯ Large wildernesses preserve for imperial hunts and excursions
¯ Remains an important retreat for the elite and for scholars
Early hunting gardens and smaller gardens
¯ Inspired by the Daoist concept of qi and Buddhist concept of
quite meditation, contemplation garden, scholars garden and
fulfillment in nature
¯ The idea of gardens as miniatures of the larger, mythical
landscape built a garden in white rock simulating four island
peaks of the immortals rising from the water
The Classical Gardens of Suzhou
¯ Group of gardens in Suzhou region near Shanghai
¯ Spanned a period of approx. 1000 years (Northern Song to
the late Qing dynasties)
¯ Lead to the classical Chinese garden design with constructed
landscapes mimicking natural scenery of rocks, hills and rivers
with strategically located pavilions and pagodas
Lion’s Grove Garden
Suzhou
¯ Suzhou gardens are intended to be a microcosm of the
natural world, incorporating basic elements such as water,
stones, plants, and various types of buildings of literary and
poetic significance
Wang Shi Yuan (Garden of the Master of the Fishing Nets)
1140 CE
Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279)
Restored in 1770 (Qing Dynasty)
¯ Shi Zhengzhi was inspired by the simple and solitary life of a
Chinese fisherman depicted in philosophical writings
¯ Divided into three sections: a residential section, the central
main garden and an inner garden.
¯ Each landscape is arranged around water- South of the
pond we find such views as the Small Hill and Osmanthus
Fragrance Pavilion, the Washing my Ribbon Pavilion over the
water, the cloudy Ridge
¯ Borrowed scene: using the background landscape
Evolution of Chinese capital cities
¯ The traditional Chinese city was a walled city
Ch’ang-an (Perpetual Peace)
¯ Ancient capital of more than ten dynasties in Chinese history
¯ Known today as Xi’an
¯ Often considered a model of city planning
¯ Located on the yellow river
¯ Gridded city with the administrative center and the imperial
palace at the northern edge, opening to the south
Dadu (later Beijing)
¯ First established as capital of Yuan Dynasty by Kublai Kahn in
1279 CE
¯ The layout of the city was extremely orderly, with clearly
demarcated streets and districts laid out in a grid pattern
¯ Forbidden city in the centre, world’s largest palace complex
¯ The layout and spatial arrangement inherit and
embodies the traditional characteristic of urban planning
and palace construction in ancient China (central axis,
symmetrical design and the layout of outer court at the
front and inner court at the rear and the inclusion of
additional landscaped courtyards deriving from the
Yuan city layout
¯ Hall of Supreme Harmony, smallest of the three main
halls in the outer court
¯ Hall of Heavenly Purity
¯ Surrounded on three sides by imperial gardens,
including Jingshan Park (Coal Hill), Zhongnanhai and
Beihai Park
Readings
Godel, Addison, “From “Terrestrial Paradise” to “Dreary Waste” Race and the Chinese
Garden in European Eyes,” in Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History
from the Enlightenment to the Present, edited by Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis
and Mabel O. Wilson, University of Pittsburg Press, 2020: 79-96.
Wencheng, Yan. “Writing a history of Chinese Architecture” on
PLATFORM. May 23, 2022
https://www.platformspace.net/home/writing-a-history-of-chinese-architecture
Sicheng, Liang (translated by Yan Wencheng), “Reading and Repudiating Errors in A
History of Chinese Architecture by Yue Jiazao” on
PLATFORM. May 23, 2022
https://www.platformspace.net/home/reading-and-repudiating-errors-in-a-history-of-
chinese-architecture-by-yue-jiazao
Jiazao, Yue (translated by Yan Wencheng), “A Reply to Liang Sicheng’s
Review of My Book,” on PLATFORM. June 6, 2022
https://www.platformspace.net/home/a-reply-to-liang-sichengs-review-of-my-book
 LARC 522 Week 04
A Few Japanese Gardens
Japan’s Landscape
¯ 4 islands Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu
¯ Over 3000 Islands making it an archipelago (an island chain
or cluster)
The Tale of Genji
¯ Chinese influence
¯ Was written over one thousand years ago during the ancient
Heian Period of Japan
¯ Written by a lady- in- waiting named Murasaki Shikibu (writ-
ten by a woman and primarily for a women)
¯ Depict court life and aristocracy in detail
¯ Gardens are featured throughout, with elaborate descrip-
tions of the flowers, smells, and animals of the gardens, their
changing seasons, and other descriptions, such as large
viewing platforms facing the lakes, as seen here.  Kyoto
Shinto
¯ Indigenous religion
¯ The name comes from the Chinese words “Shin tao” (The
Way of the Gods) in the 8th Century CE. worship the spirits
(or “kami”) that live in nature. Every mountain, river, tree or
other part of nature is thought to be animated (brought to
live) by a divinity (God or goddess or spirit). These gods or
spirits are called “kami”. They dwell in nature but can protect
people.  Kyoto Japan
¯ The basis of Shinto faith is the consciousness that nature and
human beings are united firmly through the kami
Shinto Shrines
¯ When entering, one passes through a Tori gate (a special
gateway for the Gods)
Ise Shrine (Naiku and Geku Shrines)
Honshu, Japan
690 CE
¯ kami of Ise Jingu is Amaterasu Omikmai, the supreme deity,
who is not only the ancestor of the Imperial Family, but also
the kami that gave rice to the people, as described in Japa-
nese mythology
¯ The Inner shrine/ Naiku is dedicated to the Sun Goddess
Amaterasu Omikami (Heaven-Illuminating Great Deity)
¯ The Outer Shrine/ Geku to the Goddess of Rice Toyouke
Omikami (Abundant Food Great Deity) rice outside and sun
inside protected, sun internal, rice about the public)
¯ The entire shrine group is ritually rebuilt every twenty years on
an alternate site, this proactive of site alternation which recalls
rural pattens of crop rotation the guarantee the freshness and
purity of the shrines
¯ Principal sacred plant of Shinto, is sakaki (is a shrub related to
the tea bush), shin-no-mihashira /heart post is taken to repre-
sent a branch of the sakaki stuck upright in the ground
Saiho-ji (Moss Garden)
Created by Muso Soseki
1339 (Constructed during the Kamakura Period 1185-1332)
¯ Heian pleasure garden now a deeply spiritual environment
derived from Jodo (pure land) Buddhism
¯ The garden began as a reconstruction of an existing garden
after it had been mostly destroyed during civil war
¯ Comprised of an upper and lower garden (4.5 acres)
¯ First example of Kare sansui
¯ Horizontal rocks, arranged to mimic a waterfall but without
the water
Ryoan-ji Temple
1488-1499
¯ Japanese Zen Gardens
¯ Viewing of garden from pavilion
¯ Beginning in the 16th century, Japanese gardens began to
be designed more in a style of reductive expression
¯ 15 moss covered stones placed in a bed of white quartz
gravel evenly scored with the long continuous marks of a rake
Katsura Villa
Started by Prince Toshihito (1579-1629)
Constructed during the Edo period (1603-1867)
¯ Based on the Tales of Genji
¯ Considered a strolling garden, steppingstone paths directed
the visitor’s footsteps from one to another tea house
Maruyama Park
Kyoto Public Park
1886
¯ Kyoto’s first public park
¯ Combines portions of a Shrine and Buddhist temples from
the Edo period, as well as clusters of tea houses that lined the
main avenue just outside the religious precinct
Readings
Takei, Jiro and Mark Keane. “Sakuteiki” Visions of the Japanese Garden: A
Modern Translation of Japan’s Gardening Classic. Tuttle Publishing, 2001: pages 4-9
and 150-201.
Tseng, Alice V., “Urban Parks and Imperial Memory: The Formation of
Kyoto Imperial Garden and Okazaki Park as Sites of Cultural Revival,” in
Kyoto Visual Culture in the Early Edo and Meiji Periods: The Arts of Reinvention,
Morgan Pitelka and Alice Y. Tseng eds, London and New York, Routledge,
2016, pp. 91-116.
 LARC 522 Week 05
Italian Renaissance Gardens
1400-1600
During this time gardens transformed
The inwardly focused, self-contained garden gave way to an
expansive, more outwardly directed, more worldly garden
Humanist Ideals
¯ Transformed the design of gardens and the value of land-
scape in the 15th and 16th century
¯ Centers around humans and their values, capacities and
worth
¯ Thought that men were nourished by nature
¯ One must find a balance between the urbane and the spiritu-
al, cultural, and natural
¯ Thought that knowledge might lead to better emissaries of
god’s word
¯ Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), was one of the earliest
Renaissance humanists
¯ Gardens became a place of learning and contemplation
Renaissance Period
¯ Ptolemaic system (used to compute the future or past position
of the planets)
¯ The Cartesian coordinate system (geometric shapes to be
expressed in algebraic equations)
¯ Invention of perspective drawings in 1415 by architect Filippo
Brunelleschi, changed the way we saw and depicted the
world
¯ Paintings by Giotto and others begin to explore how we
represent space
Villegiatura (reviving villa culture)
Roman Villa Culture: Otium (in nature) & Negotium (Away from
business)
¯ Farms represent a particular physical symbol of our relation-
ship to food and the earth
¯ The need to produce and to retreat, the villa provides a place
that can be productive (food), a necessary element of daily
life for all people, and provides a place for the elite to study,
contemplate, and separate themselves in otium from the
negotium of the city
Three Natures (re- reading of Roman and classicism)
¯ First Nature (primeval nature, wilderness, sacred or mythical
topos), second Nature (Agrarian fields and orchards), and
third Nature (art and nature in balance, gardens)
Platonic Academy at the Medici Villa Careggi
Established by Marsilio Ficino
¯ Translation of pure form and ideal beauty into physical reality
¯ Mathematical concepts of proportion and harmony
Villa Medici at Fiesole
Florence, Italy
1462
¯ The first Villa Careggi
¯ Purchased in 1417
¯ Remodelled by Cosimo il Vecchio with the focus on its loggia
(enclosed central courtyard)
¯ His grandson Lorenzo il Vecchio extended the terraced gar-
dens and the shaded boschi
¯ Marsilio Ficino died at the villa in 1499
¯ In 1615 Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici undertook extensive proj-
ects to remodel the interior and bring the garden up to date
¯ Important to note that it was not a working farm but rather a
setting for intellectual life
¯ Location, orientation, and design: set into the landscape, rose
from a terrace (Alberti), faced south, secret gardens or en-
closed garden room (Giardino seggretto), panoramic view,
agricultural and urban scenery
¯ The lower terrace cut so that it is not visible from the house
(terraces help increase the view from the house - clear spatial
distinctions
Villa Giulia also known as The Casino della Vigna (little house
in the vineyard)
Vigna Vecchia, Rome (on the edge of the city walls)
Built for Pope Julius III by Michelangelo
1550-1555
¯ Location: lying on the slopes of Monte Pariolia (Villa Subur-
bana and a place of repose)
¯ Emphasis on merging of architecture and landscape architec-
ture
¯ Use of perspective for spatial experience
¯ Radical earthworks are happening on a large scale
¯ Urban entrance and a formal but rural garden entrance
(threshold between two worlds, the city, and the country)
¯ Papal parties embarked on boats at the gates of the Vatican
and were transported up the Timber to the villa’s long-gone
private landing stage
Villa d’Este
Pirro Ligorio for Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este
Trivoli
1550-1572
¯ Site of summer retreat for popes and cardinals in the 15th
and 16th century
¯ Celebrated for its festive waterworks and terraced gardens
¯ To clear space for the gardens a whole area of the town had
to be demolished causing many inhabitants being forced to
sell or face expropriation
¯ Enormous earth-moving works were undertaken to create
alternating terraces and slopes
¯ The garden was laid out on a central axis with subsidiary
cross-axes
¯ The owner and close friends entered through the villa, but the
public entered from below
¯ There were about 500 jets in fountains, pools, and water
troughs some with hydraulic organs
¯ The water is supplied from the Aniene River (partly diverted
through the town (1km) and by the Rivellese spring
¯ The Fontana dell’Ovato (Oval Fountain)
¯ Fountain of Tivoli, three rivers cascade down a cliff
¯ Le Cento Fontane (The Hundred Fountains), connects fountain
of Tivoli or Oval Fountain to Rometta
¯ Walled garden for just the owner (hortus conclusus)
Villa Lante
Giacoma da Vignola for Cardinal Gambara of Viterbo
Bagnaia, Italy
1568-1579
¯ Axial planning using hillside, strong axis, circles and squares
¯ Humanist leaning incorporated
¯ Inside are paintings of the illas (Wild nature has been thor-
oughly tamed by art – patron
¯ Complex fountain at its centre, which is formed of four basins
separated by parapeted walks, the parapets (low walls) are
decorated with stone pineapples and urns that intersect the
water
¯ Fountain of Pegasus (artistic creativity)
¯ The bosco (story of the earth flooding, dolphins found in the
forest)
¯ Catena d’acqua
¯ Hydraylic specialist from Siena (Thomaso Chiruchi) super-
vised the design of water flow

Bomarzo
Near Viterbo Italy
Count Pier Fransesco Orsini
1540s
¯ Appears like an unorganized landscape in comparison to
other examples
¯ Inspired by Virgils poetry and Dante’s Inferno
¯ Manipulates space and perspective to create a garden of
unusual scenes studded with bizarre sculpture and architec-
tural monuments, each meant as a riddle to be decoded by
his guests - Domain of allusions

Villa Capra (La Rotunda)

Vicenza
Andrea Palladio
1566-1571
¯ Neoclassicalism becomes inspiration for Thomas Jefferson,
same style used in the US (model for Monticello) – designs
reference’s the idea that true knowledge is found in the an-
cients Greeks and Romans
¯ Specific qualities of Italian Gardens: the landscape can be
shaped and contained, the landscape can represent (min-
iatures), the designed landscape can bring in larger forms
from the natural world (features appear natural), gardens can
extend the landscape (extension of powers over nature)

Readings
Butters, Suzanne. “Pressed Labor and Pratolino: Social Imagery and Social
Reality at a Medici Garden,” in Villas and Gardens in Early Modern Italy and
France, ed. by Dianne Harris and Mirka Benes. (Cambridge 2001), pp. 61-87.
 LARC 522 Week 06
French Gardens, Power
& Territoriality
1550-1750
Intro: During this time lavish French gardens were funded through new
forms of taxation that expanded wealth considerably, made possible
through new colonial expansion, enslavement, and trade
Cartesian thinking
¯ Named after the French mathematician and philosopher
Rene Descartes
¯ Coordinate system to show how algebra could be used to
solve geometric problems
¯ Cartesians view the mind as being wholly separate from the
corporeal body
France as a Nation
¯ Territory equaled the modern state (vast and complex territo-
ry)
¯ Surveying became important (to know what different people
owned)
Rise of absolute monarchs
¯ Catherine de Medici (Italian) married Henry II (French), who
became King of France in 1547
¯ Gardens introducing the Italian garden style to France laid
the groundwork for the French formal garden style
Fontainebleau
Redesign by Philibert de L’Orme (1510-1570)
1560s
¯ Philibert de L’Orme went to Rome to study antiquities, learned
about humanism, visited Hadrian’s villa, then returned to
France under Henry II and became the superintendent of all
royal buildings
¯ Following his return revised Fontainebleau
¯ Wide gallery, a large garden divided into 24 squares con-
taining aromatic plants and flowers flanked by two beautiful
while marble fountains
Paris under Henry IV
¯ Became a grand city
¯ Major work went into architecture and civic spaces with the
idea that these spaces would glorify the institution of monar-
chy and the growing supremacy of France as a social and
political power in Europe
¯ Integration of all roads, canals, bridges and public spaces ->
France became a major nation state
¯ Henry IV with Maximillien de Bethune and duc de Sully
worked to regularize state finance, promote agriculture, drain
swamps to create productive crop lands, undertake many
public works and encourage education
¯ Duc de Sully built a new system of tree lined highways and
constructed new bridges and canals
Place Royale / Place des Vosge for Henry IV
Paris
1605-1612
Designed by Baptiste de Cerceau
¯ Red brick with strips of stone quoins over vaulted arcades that
stand on square pillars
¯ Steeply pitched blue slate roofs and small paned dormers
above the pedimented dormers
Louis XIV (king) and Le Notre (landscape architect)
¯ Colbert appointed as finance minister – thus brought tax
money to the king for glory of monarch and nation
¯ Scientific vision of nature, diversity of plants, geometry of
space, Descartes (one could observe the mathematical prin-
ciples underlying god’s work, space was indefinitely divisible,
all movement in a straight line
¯ Abandoned idea of topos, idea that place is contained and
defined space, instead Cartesian space is boundless and
universal grid can be used to conceive it
¯ Andre Le Notre gardener of Kind Louis XIV of France was the
son of Jean Le Notre who was the gardener of Louise XIII of
France
Les Tuileries
Redesigned by Le Notre for Louis XIV
c. 1664
¯ Design was laid out by landscape architect Andre Le Notre
in 1664
¯ Spacious formal garden plan drew out the perspective from
the reflecting pools one to the other in an unbroken vista
along a central axis from the west façade, which has been
extended as the Axe historique
¯ Three avenues almost a mile in length, lined with trees (social-
ization of urban space)
¯ One of the first parks to open to the public and have served
as a prototype for public gardens across Europe
¯ Gardens boasted cafes and kiosks, places where people of
all social classes could meet and relax
¯ Prominade
Vaux le Vicomte, Seine-et-Marne
1658-1661
Designed by Andre Le Notre (landscape architect), Louis Le Vau
(architect), Charles Le Brun (painter-decorator) for Nicolas Fouquet
¯ Laws of geometry, perspective, and optics
¯ Needed to create topography (appears flat but it slightly
sloped)
¯ Plan is designed to create an experience of expectation and
surprise, rationality, and mystery
¯ Used Cartesian theory with notions of geometric infinity
¯ Extravagant fountains
¯ Designed and built in three years!
¯ Nicolas Fouquet (the finance minister), throws a huge party
to open the gardens including swans, fireworks, dances and
theater written for this occasion
Chateau de Versailles
Louis Le Vau (architect), Andre Le Notre (landscape architect) and
Charles Le Brun (painter-decorator) for Louis XIV
1662-1700
¯ Gardens were conceived architecturally as an extension of a
complements to the chateau proper
¯ The gardens provided a setting for theatre, ballet, balls, and
other occasions of public ceremonial that enabled the kind
to be seen by many thousands more than would have been
possible within the confines of the palace alone
¯ Iconography of the sun King throughout gardens and building
¯ Central axis + several transverse axes provide a strong
 framework
¯ Gardens are over 800 hectares in size
¯ Monumentality through spatial forms and experience rather
than architectural
¯ The Orangarie – designed by Louis Le Vau, orange trees
were in containers so they could be moved during winter
months
¯ Second building campaign (1664-1668)
¯ Bassin de Latone (1668-1670) - designed by Andre Le No-
tre, to depict an episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses
¯ Bassin d’Apollon (1668-1671) depicts the sun god driving his
chariot to light the sky, form the focal point in the garden and
serves as a transitional element between the gardens and the
Grand Canal
¯ The Grand Canal (1668-1671) – length of 1500m and a
width of 62m, physically and visually prolongs the east-west
axis to the walls of the Grand Park. Served as a venue for
boating parties
¯ Bosquet – formal plantation of trees, at least five of identical
species planted as a quincunx and paved with gravel. Con-
sidered an analogue of the orderly orchard
¯ Machine de Marly – delivered 3200m^3 of water per day
to Versailles
¯ The fountains at Versailles consumed approximately
12800m^3 at half pressure (a l’ordinaire), when the foun-
tain’s played to their maximum (Granges Eaux) more than
10000m^3 of water was needed for one afternoon’s display

Coming Home: to Indigenous Place Names in Canada

Created by Margaret Wilkens Pearce, Studio 1:1 (cartographer and
the author of several award-winning maps)
commissioned by Dr. Stephen J. Hornsby
¯ “The map depicts Indigenous place names across Canada,
shared by permission of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit com-
munities and people
¯ “The map does not depict all of the Indigenous place names
of Canada, nor are all Indigenous Nations and Commu-
nities represented… [does represent] an ever growing and
expanding atlas of intimate, geographical knowledge and
experience” (The University of Maine, 2017)

Readings
Mukerji, Chandra. “Chapter 1: The culture and land of the territorial state,”
in Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997: 1-38.

Harley, J. B. “Maps, Knowledge, and Power,” Chapter 2 in The New Nature

of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2001: 50-81.

Hermann, Michael, and Margaret Pearce. “‘They Would Not Take Me

There’ People, Places, and Stories from Champlain’s Travels in Canada
1603-1616.” Cartographic Perspectives, no. 66 (Fall 2010): 41–46.
 LARC 522 Week 07
British Landscapes & Gardens:
Picturesque, enclosure, urbanization
& emerging colonial style
1650-1850
British landscape gardens are the style that has the most influence on
the origins of the 19th century landscape practice in North America
The English Landscape School- landscapes themselves became the
major focus of the painting, putting emphasis on setting rather than
narrative
(Myth of) the Tragedy of the Tragedy of the Commons
Written in 1833 by the British economist William Forster Lloyd
¯ Hypothetical example of the effects of unregulated grazing
on common land
Encloser of previously common lands
1400-1600
¯ Created the foundations for the emergence of a capitalist
economy in Britain and the accumulation of wealth by a few
elites who now controlled access to land and a key means of
production
¯ Walls, hedges, ha-ha (a boundary that one cannot see until
they are near it), and other delineated property boundaries
of previously shared land and entire villages were removed
¯ There was resistance from groups like the Diggers who sought
to create egalitarian, socialist communities to maintain a
communal relationship to land
¯ The combination of enclosure and industrialization contribut-
ed to dispossession and displacement as many lower-class
people moved from rural areas to rapidly growing urban
centers to work in factories
¯ Division of labor and rapidly growing inequality during this
time
The Industrial Revolution
1750-1850
¯ Changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation,
and technology
¯ Resource extraction and urban growth contributed to pollu-
tion, environmental degradation, health issues and concern
about the effects of urban conditions on the individual body
and public as a whole
The Picturesque
¯ Artistic concept and style which follows movements in art and
literature and an emerging romantic sensibility in the 1700s,
focussed on the sensory experience of landscape
¯ Response to the neo-classical ideas of beauty that finds a
new appreciation for the variety, irregularity, asymmetry,
and interesting textures that embody a balance between the
sublime and beautiful
¯ Rolling hills, water features, presence of ruin/literary refer-
ence in follies and features (bridges, pavilions, temples),
incorporation of follies in the landscape gardens (cultural
appropriation used in these follies imitation Asian architecture
in particular)
¯ Genius of the Place: landscape forms as a means of stimulat-
ing mental associations with nature’s mysteries, landscape as
a physical/ sensual experience
Ferme orneé: Ornamental farm, integrated the pleasure garden,
farmlands, and the kitchen gardens
Writing and Landscape- Analysis of Beauty (1753)
¯ The Line of Beauty (this theory originated with William Hog-
arth): is a term and a theory in art or aesthetics used to de-
scribe an S shaped curved line appearing within an object,
as the boundary line of an object or as a virtual boundary
line formed by the composition of several objects. Signifies
liveliness and activity, and excite the attention of the viewer as
contrasted with straight lines, parallel lines or right-angled in-
tersecting lines which signify stasis, death or inanimate objects
William Kent (c. 1686-1748)
¯ Yorkshire-born artist and architect who turned to gardens
later in his career
¯ Trained as a coach painter, who became an artist and de-
signer working in many areas, including garden design
¯ “He leaped the fence, and saw that all nature was a garden”
¯ Worked on estates such as Chiswick and Stowe
Stowe Gardens
William Kent
1686-1748
¯ Built using naturalistic free-flowing lines
¯ Cross Walk: route into the imaginary Elysium temple of
Ancient Virtue, which was modeled after Temple of Vesta
at Tivoli that included Temple of Vesta at Tivoli inside were
statues of Homer, Socrates
¯ Water comes out of a grotto
¯ The Temple of Ancient Virtue (1737): In the form of a Tholos, a
circular domed building surrounded by columns with four life
size sculptures including Epaminondas, Lycurgus, Homer, and
Socrates
Lancelot “Capability” Brown (1716-1783)
¯ Was appointed Head Gardener at Stowe in 1741
¯ Master Gardener at Hampton Court in 1764
¯ Preferred gently undulating lawns, with views between
various-sized clumps of trees which you could see a body of
water in the distance
¯ Correcting nature: Edited out blemishes of nature, smoothing
contours, screening ugliness
¯ No ornamental or formal plantings or gardens
¯ View from front of house should be framed to horizon
Blenheim Palace
Oxfordshire
John Vanbrugh and then Capability Brown after 1764
¯ Originally designed in a French style, Brown removed van-
Brugh’s parterres, he also dammed the Glyme to increase the
size and give it the serpentine (s) shape
¯ Country seat and national monument
¯ Bastion-shaped gardens
Humphry Repton (1752-1818)
¯ Author and landscape designer
¯ Published a book of Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gar-
dening in 1794, which drew upon the ‘Red Books’ he had
produced for his clients
¯ He believed in making a transition from a terrace near the
house, through a serpentine park to a distant view, and al-
 lowed for more formality including straight/ clear entrances,
kitchen gardens and a transition zone between architecture
and landscape
¯ Coined the term landscape gardener on his business card
Readings
Bermingham, Ann. “The Politics of the Picturesque” in Landscape and
Ideology, Berkeley, University of California, 1989, pp. 73-83.
Biss, Eula. “The Theft of the Commons.” The New Yorker, 8 June, 2022.

The first London Squares
¯ Steam engine in 1775 – rapidly impacts the development of
London
¯ First experiments in town planning and real estate planning
Williams, Ron. Landscape Architecture in Canada. McGill-Queens University
Press, 2014. Pages 178-180.
Knight, Sam. “Britain’s Idyllic Country Houses Reveal a Darker History,” The New
Yorker, September 16, 2021.

Regent’s Park
“Art Is… Decolonizing Landscape Painting”:
Designed by John Nash https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlYbStrFOuc
London
1809-1832
¯ Part of Nash’s West End design project to unite Carlton
House with Regent’s Park
¯ Set president for park development for pleasure ground that
benefited economics and real estate – real estate investment
for the king

Hyde Park
London
1833-1862
¯ King Henry VIII seized the manor from the monks, selling
some of the lands and turning the rest into a vast hunting park
¯ A fence was placed around the new park and the West-
bourne Stream was dammed to make drinking ponds for the
deer
¯ Charles I created a circular track where members of the royal
court could drive their carriages
¯ The park was opened to the public in 1637

John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843)

¯ Scottish botanist, garden designer and cemetery designer
¯ Author and garden magazine editor
¯ He was the first to use the term arboretum
¯ Landscape as nature, art and science

Birkenhead Park
Birkenhead, UK
Joseph Paxton
1843-1847
¯ Birkenhead’s improvement commission lobbied for a bill to
purchase 70 acres for the recreation of the inhabitants
¯ Purchased more than 200 acres of which 124 were designat-
ed parkland, remainder for building
¯ Was the first public park which opened in 1847

Richard Mayhew
¯ Undoing, landscape as a way of undoing using the lan-
guage of the past
 LARC 522 Week 08
Land(scapes) of Settler-colonialism
“Land is life – or, at least, land is necessary for life. Thus, contests for
land can be- indeed often are-contests for life”
-Patrick Wolfe
Exploitive Colonials
¯ Extraction of resources using local labour for colonial benefits
Settler Colonial
¯ land rather than resources is the key aspect (Displacement of
local populations)
Geological survey of Canada – 1843
¯ Early geological survey of Canada, thought of as an empty
space and instead thought of in regard to resources
¯ Vacant Land (not occupied by Christians)
¯ 6. Enforced enfranchisement of any first nation in university
Bulls of Discovery (Doctrine of Discovery)
Romanus Pontifex (1455) issued by Pope Nicholas V
“…-to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens
and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever
placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions,
possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever
held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual
slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the
kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions,
and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit
¯ We have also granted to them and to any of them, and to the
heirs and deputies of them and of any one of them, and have
given licence to set up our aforesaid banners and ensigns
in any town, city, castle, island or mainland whatsoever,
newly found by them. And that the before-mentioned John
and his sons or their heirs and deputies may conquer,
occupy, and possess whatsoever such towns, castles, cities
and islands by them thus discovered that they may be
able to conquer, occupy and possess, as our vassals and
governors’ lieutenants and deputies therein, acquiring for us
the dominion, title and jurisdiction of the same towns, castles,
cities, islands and mainlands so discovered.”
¯ Framework Spain, Portugal and England used for the
colonization of many lands, including North America
¯ Shows the intent to assume ownership of discovered lands
¯ International law that gave license for explorers to claim
vacant land
Dominion Lands Act (Canada), 1872
¯ Used the public lands survey for demarcation of lands
¯ Set aside lands for First Nations reserves
¯ Set aside lands for national parks
Banff, 1870
¯ Landscape architects are used to design and transform
spaces of national identity
Indian Act (established in 1872)
¯ Governed and governs all aspects of life of Indigenous
people
¯ Accelerated the assimilation of Indigenous people by forcing
them to give up all aspects of cultural practice
¯ More information about the Progression of the Indian Act
over time
Some things you may not know about the Indian Act…
1. Denied women status
2. Introduced residential schools
3. Created reserves
4. Renamed individuals with European names
5. Restricted first nations from leaving reserves
7. Could expropriate portion of reserves
8. Could lease uncultivated land
9. Could not form political organizations
10. Prohibited first nations from soliciting funds for legal claims
11. Prohibited sale of guns and ammo
12. Prohibited sale of guns and ammo
13. Prohibited access to pool halls
14. Imposed the band council system
15. Could not use native language
16. Could not practice traditional religion
17. Wearing cultural clothing prohibited
18. Made cultural ceremonies illegal
19. Denied voting rights
20. Created a permit system
21. Created under British rule for the purpose of subjugating
aboriginal people
Readings
Turner, Nancy, J. and Katherine L. Turner. “Where our women used to get the
food”: cumulative effects and loss of ethnobotanical knowledge and practice;
case study from coastal British Columbia. Botany. 86(2): 2008, 103-115.
Binnema, Theodore and Melanie Niemi, “‘Let the Line Be Drawn Now’:
Wilderness, Conservation, and the Exclusion of Aboriginal People from Banff
National Park in Canada,” Environmental History 11, no. 4 (2006): 724-750.
Luby, Brittany. Dammed: The Politics of Loss and Survival in Anishinaabe Territory.
University of Manitoba Press, 2020. Introduction and Chapter 1: 1-39.
Listen to “The Indian Act,” the Secret Life of Canada (Season 2, podcast):
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/secretlifeofcanada/what-do-you-really-
knowabout-the-indian-act-1.5188255
 LARC 522 Week 08
Landscapes of Enslavement
History of Slavery in Canada
¯ End of the 17th century - Black slaves arrived in Canada
¯ Despite colonial officials desired to have African slaves
imported to the colony, no clave ships ever reached the St.
Lawrence valley
¯ 1793 – law passed in Upper Canada intended to gradually
end the practice of slavery
¯ March 25, 1807 - the slave trade was abolished throughout
the British Empire (of which British North America was a part
of) making it illegal to buy or sell human beings ending much
of the transatlantic trade
¯ 1834 - Slavery itself was abolished everywhere in the British
Empire
Expanding plantation systems of agriculture
1780s to 1850s
¯ Cotton, rice, and sugar
¯ 80 years between the American Revolution and the Civil
War: While the North became an industrial and manufactur-
ing powerhouse deeply affected by social reform movements
like abolitionism and women’s rights, the South became a
cotton kingdom, founded on slavery, whose inhabitants gen-
erally abstained from or opposed such reformist tendencies.
¯ Although Congress banned the importation of slaves in 1808,
the smuggling of slaves continued until the 1850s, and the
southern slave population doubled between 1810 and 1830.
Three-quarters of these slaves worked on cotton plantations.
By the time of the civil war in 1861, there were 5 million
enslaved people in the southern US.  ¯ There were still some instances when the enslaved were
The Plantation (as a landscape typology)
¯ Relations of power embedded within them
¯ Physical manifestations of the division of labour were evident
and material inequalities perpetuated hierarchies and op-
pressive relationships
¯ Book – New Principles of Gardening (1728) inspiring land-
scape designs
Middleton Place, South Carolina
1741 by Henry Middleton, President of the First Continental Congress
design, probably designed by English Gardener, George Newman
¯ Served as a base of operations for a great Low Country
planter family and was home to a dynamic African – Ameri-
can slave community
¯ 60-acre landscape garden was both an intellectual and
emotional focus for successive generations of Middleton’s
¯ Contained walkways (allées), ornamental canals, sundials,
minor vistas, and statues places at strategic viewpoints
¯ Grassy ramps were preferred to steps
¯ Enslaved and formerly enslaved people were / are import-
ant sources of knowledge and co-creators of landscape, we
can trace the history of various landscape practices, plants,
philosophies to their roots in African communities.
Thomas Jefferson, Monticello II
1793-1809
¯ Oblique view emphasized, but no one ultimate view, one
must keep moving to see new visuals
¯ Pleasure and scientific gardens
¯ The Monticello plantation was a complex community depen-
dent on the labour of many people – especially its enslaved
field hands, artisans, and domestic workers. Enslaved people
worked from sunrise to sunset six days a week with only
Sundays off
¯ At any one time, about 130 enslaved men, women, and
children lived and worked at Monticello. Jefferson initially
acquired most of his slaves through inheritance from his father
and father-in-law. The Monticello plantation comprised
5,000 acres divided into four farms: the Monticello home
farm, Shadwell, Tufton, and Lego. Farm laborers lived near
the fields where they worked. House servants and artisans
lived in log dwellings on the mountaintop along Mulberry
Row or in rooms under the south terrace of the main house.
The Whitney Plantation
¯ The only plantation in the US that is presented with an exclu-
sive focus on slavery
Palace Royale, Montreal
John Ostell, La Douane de Montréal, Vue de port (1839)
¯ In 1785, two public slave auctions were held at Place Royale
in Montreal
¯ Yet, this information, along with the history of slavery
in Canada, is too often omitted from history books,
museums, or even simple commemorative plaques in
public spaces. Although public slave markets were not
as common in Canada as they were elsewhere
bought and sold as commodities in public spaces
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and The Underground Railroad
¯ The Act required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, bee
returned to the slaver and that officials and citizens of free
states had to cooperate. The act contributed to the growing
polarization of the country over the issue of slavery and was
one of the factors that led to the civil war
¯ Canada became the destination for the underground railroad
¯ The underground railroad and Niagara’s Freedom trail was
a network of people who hid and guided enslaved black
people who hid and guided enslaved black people who
were leaving the US and heading to British North America to
seek freedom
¯ The City of St. Catharines was the final terminus on the Under-
ground Railroad for hundreds of people fleeing slavery in the
1820s
¯ William Hamilton Merritt helped the new citizens purchase
land to build the British Methodist Episcopal Church, Salem
Chapel and later the Zion Baptist Church
Book - The Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a Slave, Now an
Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (1849)
¯ Link to PDF of book
¯ Henson a formerly enslaved back man, had lived and
worked on a 3700-acre plantation in North Bethesda,
Maryland
¯ He escaped slavery in 1830 by fleeing to the Province of
Upper Canada, where he helped other fugitive slaves settle
and become self-sufficient
Maroons and formerly enslaved peoples adapted to and altered
landscapes, often creating hybrid spaces, where agriculture, housing
and community structure drew from both European/American settler
society and African society. Plant knowledge and seeds were passed
through generations of enslaved people (e.g. braiding rice seeds into
hair) simultaneously as seeds and plants were being dispersed by
colonists/settlers across the world (e.g. ‘new world’ crops integration
into European (Agri)culture/diets)

Domino Park, Brooklyn, NY

Field Operations, 2019
¯ Link to project
¯ Transformation of the former Domino Sugar Factory site along
Brooklyn’s East River into an ambitious mixed use develop-
ment project

Readings
Boone, Kofi, “Notes Toward a History of Black Landscape Architecture,” Places
Journal, October 2020.

DeGraft-Hanson, Kwesi. 2010. “Unearthing the Weeping Time: Savannah’s

Ten Broeck Race Course and 1859 Slave Sale.” Southern Spaces. https://
southernspaces.org/2010/unearthing-weeping-time-savannahs-ten-broeck-
race-course-and-1859-slave-sale/

Dubois, W.E. B. (1901) “The Home of the Slave” in Architecture and Landscapes
of North American Slavery, edited by Clifton Ellis and Rebecca Ginsburg, (Yale U
Press: New Haven. 2010), pp.17-25.

Listen: “The Great Dismal Swamp,” on 99% Invisible (podcast, 2017)

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/great-dismal-swamp/
 LARC 522 Week 09
Big Cities, Big Parks &
Progressive Reforms
Transcendentalism
¯ American literary, political, and philosophical movement of
the early 19th century
¯ Stimulated by the English and German Romanticism, the
Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher and the
skepticism of the Hume
¯ Critics of contemporary society
¯ Urged that each person find, in Emerson’s words “an original
relation to the universe”
¯ Many writers sought this relation in solitude amidst nature
Mt. Auburn Cemetery - Cambridge, MA
Designed by Jacob Bigelow (1789-1879), c. 1831
¯ Rising urban population and peri-urban or suburban
populations
¯ One of the first designed rural cemetery, to address problems
of overcrowding and sanitation in the city’s cemeteries
¯ Located four miles outside of Boston
¯ Precursor to the American park movement
¯ Embellished landscape of rolling terrain with ornamental
plantings, ponds, sylvan glades, monuments, fences,
fountains, and chapels
¯ Bigelow proposed the creation of a Picturesque rural
cemetery where families could commemorate the lives of the
dead through sculpture and architecture, and landscaped
scenery would soften the edge of loss.
Laurel Hill Cemetery - Philadelphia, PA
John Notman (1810-1865), c. 1844
¯ Situated in a picturesque location well outside the city
¯ No religious affiliation
¯ Provided a permanent burial space for the dead in a restful
and tranquil setting
¯ John Notman conceived of the Cemetery as an estate
garden, based in part on English ideas of planned
landscapes as transitions between art and nature. 
¯ Key features of Notman’s design for Laurel Hill were a
three-tiered circulation system with the main carriage
loop, secondary roads, and paths all converging near the
center. The main landscape feature was the Shrubbery, a
geometrically divided planting bed, with a secondary focus
on the Sims mansion, which Notman also incorporated into
his design, along with the existing greenhouse, carriage
house and stables, added a Doric Roman Gatehouse,
a superintendent’s house, and a chapel. designed the
Cemetery to take advantage of the river, and his plan was
ultimately chosen over those of his counterparts because it
carved out the landscape into an amphitheater-like formation
that offered great river views.
Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum - Cincinnati
Howard Daniels, 1845
¯ Formed by Cincinnati Horticultural Society
¯ Picturesque Park like institution, a rural cemetery, contiguous
to the city yet remote enough not to be disturbed by
expansion
¯ Hoped the natural setting would be a contemplative
atmosphere conducive to consolation, commemoration, and
education
The Gardenesque, John Claudius Loudon
1783-1843
¯ A style of planting design in accordance with his Principle of
Recognition
¯ Worried that picturesque planting could be mistaken for
natural growth and argued that for a planting design to be
recognizable as a work of art, only exotic plants should be
used
¯ Removing surrounding plants so that a perfect form of
the plant was grown + intensive maintenance + planting
geometrical beds
Birkenhead Park – Birkenhead, UK
¯ Joseph Paxton, c. 1843-1847
¯ Citizen action leading to the creation of a public park
¯ On the outskirts of Birkenhead but was close enough for
much of the population to easily walk there
¯ Considered the first public park
Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903)
Never fully attended college, he did become a very learned man.
Olmsted performed a variety of jobs: he was a clerk, a sailor in the
China trade, and a farmer, as well as many other professions. Moved
to New York to begin a career as a scientific farmer, toured Europe
with his brother, served as a merchant seaman, and traveled throughout
the southern United States as a newspaper correspondent, publishing
several books as an outgrowth of that career. Helped found the
Nation. Influenced by the professional gardener Humphry Repton
whose Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening and The Theory
and Practice of Landscape Gardening were published in 1795 and
1803.
1848 to 1856: He moved to New York in and without having ever
had any college education was appointed as the Superintendent of
Central Park, New York City, in 1857
1858-1876: Joined Calvert Vaux in 1858 to enter a design competition
for the design of Central Park. Their design, called Greensward, was
chosen as the park’s design
1863: was offered the position manager at the Mariposa Estate in
California, a gold mining venture north of San Francisco, and he left the
organization. Returned to New York when the project failed
1865 to 1873: Joined Calvert Vaux in designing Prospect Park
1868 to 1876: Worked on Chicago’s Riverside subdivision, Buffalo’s
park system
1883: Relocated to Brookline, Massachusetts with his practice. park
system for the City of Boston, eventually he focused much of his time on
the Emerald Necklace
1887: In addition to designing for urban life, Olmsted was anxious
to preserve areas of natural beauty for future public enjoyment. He
served as the first head of the commission in charge of preserving
Yosemite Valley and was a leader in establishing the Niagara
Reservation, which he planned with Calvert Vaux
1893: World’s Fair in Chicago 
1872 to 1895: when he retired, Olmsted’s firm carried out 550
projects. These projects included college campuses, the grounds to the
US Capitol, and residential communities. In late 1895 he suffered a
mental breakdown and spent his remaining years resting in an Asylum
in Waverly Massachusetts until August 1903 when he died.
1903 to 1980: The landscape architecture firm he founded was
continued by his sons and their successors until 1980.  F.L. Olmsted
Public Parks were constructed as important for promoting values of
democracy be providing access to people of all socio-economic
status in cities
The Pastoral Style
The style of the beautiful
¯ Sense of peacefulness of nature and o sooth and restore the
spirit
¯ The boundary was indistinct due to the obscurity of detail
further away
¯ Despite the democratic and social intentions of parks they
were and remail spaces of exclusion, their design and extent
vary by neighbourhood wealth and people of certain so-
cio-economic wealth and people of certain socio-economic
status, race and gender have been excluded from these
spaces through overt and convert means
Mariposa Estate
1863
¯ Writes about his preference to hire Chinese labourers rather
than white labours (white minors were compensated 3.25 /
day and Chinese minors 1.50 / day) … This was one of the
actions that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
Prospect Park – Brooklyn, New York City
F.L. Olmsted and C. Vaux
c. 1866-73
¯ made up primarily of the long meadow, the ravine, and a
great lake
¯ Carved the lake out of a hilly section of the terrain and used
a pump to fill the area with water
Back Bay Fens
Olmsted and Eliot
1897
¯ Was a noxious tidal swamp and creek left over from the times
when the whole Back Bay was a shallow body of salt water
¯ The sewage and swamp water that infiltrated the area creat-
ed a serious health problem as well as a foul stench
¯ Another problem was the matter of flood control
¯ The Stony Brook and Muddy River drained several thousands
of surrounding acres and that tended to flood badly
¯ Built tidal gates where the Fens flowed into the Charles,
installed a huge sewage interceptor on the Boston side of the
Fens basin
Mount Royal Park – Montreal
F.L. Olmsted
¯ Desired to emphasize the mountainous topography using
vegetation
¯ Shade trees at the bottom of the carriage path would resem-
ble a valley
¯ As the visitor went higher, the vegetation would get sparser to
give the illusion of exaggerated height
¯ Montreal suffered a depression in the mid 1870s and many
of Olmsted’s plans were abandoned
Biltmore Estate (built for George Vanderbilt) – Asheville, NC
1887-1894
¯ The last great project that Olmsted was involved with was
the laying out of George Vanderbilt’s 120 000-acre Biltmore
Estate near Asheville North Carolina
¯ Unlike many of the public entities that Olmsted has done
work for, Vanderbilt had the resources to carry out all of
Olmsted’s plans
¯ Olmsted was not willing to plan this out. He stated that the
land would be better suited to have a grand garden area
close to the house, and have the majestic views beyond it
with 80,000 acres of the land being turned into a grand
Forest, which became the basis for the Pisgah National Forest
¯ Olmsted ensured the long-term success of the estate’s forestry
program by persuading Vanderbilt to hire a trained forester
named Gifford Pinchot in 1892. Pinchot implemented a
unique management plan that included identifying tree spe-
cies, growth conditions, and volumes of timber per acre and
improving tree growth with selective thinning. The plan, which
was designed to improve the forest while returning a profit to
the landowner, was the first of its kind in America and served
as a national model. 
Professionalization
American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA)
Founded in 1899, Canadian Society of Landscape Architecture
Founded in 1934
¯ 11 founding ASLA members (Nathan Barrett, Beatrix Jones,
Daniel W. Langton, Charles N. Lowrie, Warren H. Manning,
Fredrick Law Olmsted Jr, John Charles Olmsted, Samuel
Parsons Jr, George R. Pentecost Jr, Ossian Cole Simonds,
Downing Vaux)
Public health mapping
John Snow
1854
¯ Snow used dot mapping to illustrate the cluster of cholera
cases around the pump
¯ He also used statistics to illustrate the connection between the
quality of the water source and cholera cases
¯ Snow’s study was a major event in the history of public health
and geography
¯ During this time the attitude that connection to landscape and
nature would create better citizens and improve moral char-
acter was a generally held belief at the time and influenced
the creation of school gardens (ex. Charlesbank)
City Beautiful Movement built on ideas of social reform and
proposed a new planning strategy and aesthetic for cities, focused
on beautification and monumental grandeur as a means of improving
social order and quality of life
Garden City Movement started by Ebenezer Howard, sought to
amplify the benefits of city and country in a new city planning style that
focussed on organization of housing, services, greenbelts, and industry
around a circular array of roads
Readings
Dümpelmann, Sonja, “Let All Be Educated Alike Up to a Certain Point,” Places
Journal, June 2022. https://placesjournal.org/article/olmsted-booker-t-
washington-landscape-architecture-education/

Frederick Gage Todd (March 11, 1876 – February 15, 1948)
¯ Was the first resident landscape architect in Canada
¯ Was one of a small group committed to the art and practice
of structuring urban growth in the first half of the century
¯ British Columbia: Shaughnessy Heights, Point Grey, and Port
Mann
¯ Supervised major urban parks in Quebec City
¯ Bowring Park in St. John’s Newfoundland
¯ Developed the model city plan for the town of Mount Royal,
Montreal
¯ Edmonton Park System (1905-1912)
¯ The North Saskatchewan River Valley parks system
Beatrix Jones Farrand (1872-1959)
¯ Designed many public landscapes including gardens for the
New York Botanical and the Bronx Botanical gardens
¯ She had an office of almost a dozen women as draftsmen
running offices in New York, Maine, and California.
¯ A major work by Farrand was with Lockwood de Forest for
the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden, whose patron had
been the mother of Farrand’s good friend Mildred Bliss. The
Garden Club of Montecito helped fund the projects at this
important public landscape where California native plants
are grouped in beautiful settings
Gandy, Matthew, “Symbolic Order and the Urban Pastoral,” in Concrete and
Clay. MIT Press, 2003: 77-113.
Jacobs, Sara. “Visualizing Nature, Race, and Urban Landscapes through
Warren Manning’s ‘A National Plan.’” Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians. 81:3 (September 2022).
William, Ron. “11. Taming the Industrial City: The Great Public Parks.” Landscape
Architecture in Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, pages 216-
222.
Hutton, Jane. “Substance and Structure I: The Material Culture of Landscape
Architecture,” Harvard. Design Magazine, 36, pp. 116-123.
Taylor, Dorceta E. “Conceptualizing and Framing Urban Parks,” Chapter 7
in The Environment and the People in American Cities, 1600s-1900s: Disorder,
Inequality, and Social Change. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009: 224-
250.
Kheraj, Sean. “Chapter 1: Before Stanley Park,” Inventing Stanley Park: An
Environmental History. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013: 13-55.
Barmen, Jean. “Race, Greed and Something More: the Erasure of Urban
Indigenous Space in Early Twentieth-Century British Columbia” in Mar, T.B.,
Edmonds, P. (eds) Making Settler Colonial Space. Palgrave Macmillan, London,
2010: 155-173.

Ellen Biddle Shipman (1869-1950)

¯ Began her career as a garden in Cornish, New Hampshire
¯ Designed strong axial garden layouts and tight visual con-
nectivity between house and garden
¯ Preferred simple clean geometries of colonial gardens
¯ By 1920, she had opened an office in New York City, where
she hired graduates of the Lowthorpe School of Landscape
Architecture. Her most noted gardens are Longue Vue Gar-
dens in New Orleans, the Cummer Estate (now the Cummer
Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida), and
Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, Ohio, the latter where she was
recommended by Warren H. Manning. Among her rare
commercial projects are Lake Shore Boulevard, Grosse Point,
Michigan and Aetna Life, Hartford, Connecticut.

Marian Cruger Coffin (1876-1954)

¯ Recognized for her broad knowledge of plants and their
horticultural requirments- Her book on Trees and Shrubs for
Landscape Effects presented the horticultural and botan-
ical characteristics of the plants as well as their use in the
designed landscape. She knew this material in large part
because she had studied with Sargent at Arnold Arboretum
in addition to her own explorations, often with her good
friend, Henry Francis Dupont who was also deeply interested
in horticulture, gardening, and landscape design. 
 LARC 522 Week 11
From Garden Cities to Modern Landscapes
Modernism marks a departure from and rejection of history and
historical landscape design, focusing on key themes such as functional
(pragmatic and efficient), abstract (democratic), asymmetrical /
irregular (dynamic instead of static), honest (in the use of materials)
¯ Beaux arts tradition
¯ English landscape gardens
¯ Classical landscape design
¯ Bauhaus school, sought to combine design and industrial-
ization within a new aesthetic focussed on the betterment of
society
¯ Concrete, glass, and steal / aspirations for mass-produced
designs
¯ Modernism is accompanied by a massive increase in infra-
structure and urban development across North America and
master/urban planning of these spaces and networks and
was influenced by the social and economic context of the
great depression/interwar period
¯ People of color and women shape the city/home/land-
scapes outside of the white/male dominated professional
practice of landscape architecture and design
Garden Suburb Movement
¯ This improvement of cities strove to provide better housing but
for this to be provided in aesthetically pleasing styles in leafy,
sylvan surroundings
¯ Improved building methods and the availability of cheap-
er building materials coming from transport improvements
assisted those who fought for better housing conditions for the
urban poor
Ebenezer Howard 1850-1928
¯ Book: To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform 1898
¯ Proposal calling for the creation of new towns of limited size,
planning, and surrounded by a permanent belt of agricultural
land
¯ Industry would be kept separate from residential areas
¯ Trees and open spaces would prevail everywhere
¯ Howard’s emphasis on the importance of a permanent girdle
of open and agricultural land around the town soon became
part of British planning doctrine
¯ Provided rapid transportation
First garden city was built in 1903
¯ A competition was held to find a town design which could
translate Howard’s ideas into reality, and September 1903
the company “First Garden City Ltd.” was formed, Barry
Parker and Raymond Unwin were appointed architects, and
16 km² of land outside Hitchin were purchased for building.
Welwyn Garden City
Founded by Sir Ebenezer Howard in 1920
¯ In 1919, Howard arranged for the purchase of land in Hert-
fordshire. On 29 April 1920 a company, Welwyn Garden
City Limited, was formed to plan and build the garden city.
The first house was occupied just before Christmas 1920.
¯ The town is laid out along tree-lined boulevards with a
neo-Georgian town centre. It has its own environmental pro-
tection legislation, the Scheme of Management for Welwyn
Garden City. Every road has a wide grass verge. The spine
of the town is Parkway, a central mall or scenic parkway,
almost a mile long. 
Leberecht Migge 1881-1935
¯ German landscape architect, regional planner and writer
¯ Best known for the incorporation of social gardening princi-
ples in the Siedlungswesen (settlement) movement during the
Weimar Republic
¯ His “Green Manifesto,” published in 1919, represents one
of the most overtly political tracts ever written by a land-
scape architect. He proposed that all social and economic
problems of the German nation could be solved by creating
as many gardens as possible, which included parks, but
most importantly, small, intensive vegetable gardens where
everyone could grow their own food. If everyone could be
self-sufficient then they supposedly would enjoy relative free-
dom from the domination of the capitalist system
¯ Migge described gardens as industrial products that were
essentially tools for better living. He viewed the garden not
as a bourgeois escape from industrialized society but rather
as a mechanized object, a compatible means of improving
life in a mechanized society. Although he saw the virtue in
resettlement outside the city as a means of connecting back
to the land, his ideas for organizing space applied to the
urban inhabitant, the overriding concepts being a part of a
comprehensive urban regional planning.
¯ Working with leading architects of the Weimar Republic,
Ernst May in Frankfurt, Martin Wagner and Bruno Taut in Ber-
lin, Otto Haessler in Celle), Migge’s designs for the Siedlun-
gen (settlements) characteristically comprised low-lying small
flats or row houses, with adjacent or nearby garden plots.
¯ Migge also invented a “growing house” to provide housing
in the form of a wall to which small units could be added
when needed or when affordable. Stressing the importance
of the occupant in the planning, use and shaping of the
dwelling space, Migge considered the dwelling unit as
malleable based on need. 
The Frankfurt Kitchen (1926)
¯ Designed by Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky
for the social housing project Römerstadt in Frankfurt Germa-
ny
¯ Was a milestone in domestic architecture, built after a unified
concept, designed to enable efficient work and to be built at
low cost
Jens Jensen (1860-1951)
¯ Landscape architect in Denmark, Chicago, and Door County
in Wisconsin
¯ As a young immigrant, Jensen studied the midwestern land-
scape
¯ Saw the quickly disappearing native landscape as a
resource to be revered, idealized, and preserved. Jensen is
now considered a leader of the Prairie style of landscape ar-
chitecture, leader of the Midwestern conservation movement,
and is remembered as a significant Chicago social reformer
¯ Jensen extensively redesigned three other large west-side
parks (Humboldt, Garfield, and Douglas) as well as 15 small
ones. He designed parks in smaller cities such as Racine
and Madison, Wisconsin; Dubuque, Iowa; and Springfield,
 Illinois.  Modern Landforms: As Landscapes and Architecture
¯ He designed dozens of estates belonging to wealthy Mid-
westerners along the North Shore and elsewhere (Henry and Garden for Modern Living
Edsel Ford).  Robert Mallet-Steevens with sculptors Jan and Joel Martel
1925
Columbus Park on the western edge of Chicago ¯ Built for the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and
Jens Jensen Decrative Arts, a World’s fair held in Paris, France
1916-1921 ¯ First time landscape joined other arts at the forefront of aes-
¯ Endeavoring to create a landscape where the people of the thetic development
densely populated city could refresh their spirits and refine ¯ Concrete trees
their sensibilities after laboring so hard ¯ Two raised planters based upon a parti of positive and
¯ A beautiful landscape of wildflowers, waterfalls, stepping- negatice planes of lawn and flower beds
stone paths and a river ¯ Planer abstraction, articulated masses suggested foliage
¯ Approximately a 150-acre site (ABSTRACTION!)
¯ He designed a children’s playground but instead of filling it
with playground equipment, Jensen tried to encourage free Guévrékian, Gabriel
play in the open space 1900-1970
¯ An exponent of functionalism, favouring concrete, geometric
Radburn, New Jersey volumes and smooth walls
(Town for the motor age and safe for children)
Marjorie Sewell Cautley, Clarence Stein and Henry Wright Readings
1928-1932 Boifava, Barbara. “Roberto Burle Marx’s Cidade Parque.” Journal of Landscape
¯ The work of Cautley for the Stein-Wright design team is Architecture (Wageningen, Netherlands) 15, no. 3 (2020): 74-89.
particularly interesting as it simultaneously reveals the ideals
of the garden city movement as well as a feminist inscription Groening, Gert and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn. “Some Notes on the Mania
on the land which in turn can serve as a model for green for Native Plants in Germany.” Landscape Journal 11, no. 2 (1992): 116-126.
urbanism
Rose, James C. “Freedom in the Garden.” Pencil Points (1920) 19, no. 10
¯ Cautley’s designs and writing on landscape architecture
(1938): 639-643.
and public landscapes encompass three significant social
objectives  Jacobs, Sara and Taryn Wiens. “Breaking Ground: Sifting Soil Stories at Bos
1. To integrate natural landscapes into the lives of the lower and Park.” Journal of Architectural Education. 76:2 (2022).
middle classes
2. To design landscapes that would best serve the needs of
women and children 
3. To involve the community in the design process
¯ Her designs reveal the high value she placed on community
participation, conservation of land and nature, and collabo-
ration with architects and artists
¯ The Radburn plan developed four important themes which
became known collectively as the Radburn idea:
¯
1. the superblock was designed as the core framework for the
development.
2. the houses were reversed with a primary entrance facing the
interior park, rather than the street.
3. the streets were minimalized creating a system of dedicated
streets and lanes; pedestrian and vehicular traffic were kept
separate. 
4. and a continuous park ran through the community. 
 LARC 522 Week 11
Post-war (after 1945) Modern Landscapes
Christopher Tunnard
¯ Born in Victoria, BC
¯ In 1936, he initiated his own practice of landscape architec-
ture in London and Surrey.  His radical Modernist departure
from the Arts and Crafts approach manifested in 1937 as a
series of articles in the Architectural Review, which he then
gathered in his 1938 book, Gardens in the Modern Land-
scape.
¯ Tunnard viewed this as “romantic trivialization” of garden
design and in reaction spearheaded a modernist approach
to landscape design, which he expressed in the polemical
Gardens in the Modern Landscape. His approach avoided
decoration, sentimentality, and classical allusion in favor of
functional minimalist designs. For instance, his acclaimed
landscape for Chermayeff’s Bentley Wood house, itself
Modernist, simply thinned the surrounding woodland and
replanted areas with drifts of daffodils
¯ In his book Tunnard presented three approaches to a new
technique for twentieth-century gardens
¯ The functional, an overarching approach based on the con-
cept that used determined form
¯ The empathic, based on Japanese-inspired attitudes towards
nature expressed symbolically attention to the use of materi-
als in asymmetrical composition
¯ The artistic, based on principles of modern art
Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994)
¯ Brazilian landscape designer, accredited with having
introduced modernist landscape architecture to Brazil. Much
of his work has a sense of timelessness and perfection. His
creations were each unique expressions of thought. His aes-
thetics were often nature based (never mixing flower colours,
utilization of big groups of the same specimen, using native
plants and making a rocky field into relaxing garden)
¯ He was one of the first people to call for the conservation of
Brazil’s rainforests
¯ More than 50 plants bear his name
1932: His first landscape project was a private garden for a house
designed by the Architects Lucio Costa and Gregory Warchavchik
1938: Designed Ministry of Health and Education roof garden (in Rio
de Janeiro), one of his earliest designs that is now overshadowed by
much taller buildings than would have been present when the garden
was originally built.
1947-1948: Designed Monteiro Garden (in Petropolis, Brazil)
1955: Founded a landscape company, called Burle Marx & Cia,
where he started to develop landscape design, along with the
implementation, maintenance, and restoration of residential and public
gardens
1968: Haruyoshi On, a landscape architect because his partner
1970: Copacabana Promenade (in Rio de Janeiro), was an abstract
design (black, white and red mosaic)
Luis Barragan (1902-1988)
¯ Revolutionized modern architecture in the country with his use
of bright colours reminiscent of the traditional architecture of
Mexico
¯ His work focused on colour, planes, geometry, simple clear
use of materials, expression of materials, structures, inherent
characters
¯ 1958-1961: Las Arboledas (in Mexico City), was designed
with the horseman in mind, the space provided special paths
for horses and gathering places for riders where water, recti-
linear planes, and brilliant colours came together with nature
to form a surreal, yet serene environment
1966-1968: San Cristobal, Mexico City
1980: Eared the Pritzkeer Prize
1985: Earnede the Jelisco Award
1987: Won Mexico’s National Architecture Award
George Tanaka (1912-
Born in Vancouver to Japanese parents
1920: Graduated from Vancouver Technical School
1920: Began working with Nisei gardener Mr. Moritsugu and studied
landscape architecture
1943: Tanaka and others founded the Japanese Canadian Committee
for Democracy to advocate for the rights of Japanese Canadians
being persecuted by their own government and members of society
who perceived them as enemies
1947: One of the JCCD’s most notable achievements was its survey
which calculated the financial losses of Japanese Canadians because
of the mass relocation, laying the groundwork for the apology and
reparations made by the Mulroney government in 1988
1963: Gardens at Parkwood Estate. The materials of Nature - the
rocks, the stones, the trees, the plants, the water and the earth itself - are
used as the ‘Design-Tools’ by which the landscape-forms take shape.
The use of Tension in design as between diverse elements: the hard
element against the soft; the rugged rock against the flowing curve of a
pathway. Whatever the qualification of the design problem, the results
are to find a happy Balance and Harmony in all the elements. Nothing
is left to casual chance or to irresponsible placement.
Emergence of the Middle Class
The emergence of the middle class in the US and Canada creates a
new clientele for landscape designers, this coincided with urbanization
as people move from rural and small towns to cities and suburbs.
Gender, capitalist relations of labour, the suburbs as spaces of
reproductive labour are all important topics of this time.
The Don Mills suburb near Toronto
1950-1953
¯ Toronto probably went furthest in its rush to modernize be-
 cause of the extent of its metropolitan growth
Following WWII
¯ Companies transitioned from war making to the domestic
space
¯ Despite the virtuous social agenda of the modernist project,
many of the projects aimed at ameliorating social, economic,
and environmental conditions for communities caused more
harm than benefit, lacking context and consultation required
for meaningful engagement, design, and development
¯ Grass and chemical fertilizers were heavily marketed and
sold
Quote from Jean Baudrillard
in the Shadow of the Silent Majority, 1983
“Are we a society so blinded by the powers of science that we will
continue to support a destructive industry rather than seeking alternative
solutions? Many of the photographs in Nuclear Enchantment are of
actual sites presided over by a cast of ancient mythic figures. I hope
that they are captivating and enigmatic. I want them to remind us of the
spiritual poverty of the technical age. In some of the work, I use figures
from the great nineteenth-century Japanese woodblock artist Hiroshige
whose art commented on Japan’s transition from ancient Shintoism to
Westernization – a path that ultimately led to Hiroshima.
In my work, I intentionally show a levelled world. Polluted skies,
contaminated earth, nuclear explosions, fantastic happenings are all
seen in the same light (regardless of the effect they have on people
that are actually experiencing such events, for whom the events are
not images, but occupy their moment); natural, social, mythic, physical,
and psychological experiences are all leveled at images. Even I (the
artist) becomes an image, a desensitized subject in several of my
own installations. The levelling is by choice, as in Baudrillard’s “active
indifference”.
Axioms for modern landscape
(as seen in the work of Garrett Eckbo, Daniel Kiley, James Rose):
1. Denial of historical styles- derives from a rational approach to
modern conditions
2. Concern for space rather than pattern
3. Landscapes are for people
4. Destruction of the axis
5. Plants are used for their individual qualities- botanical entities
and sculpture
6. Integration of house and garden, not house and then a
garden
Thomas Dolliver Church 1902-1978
¯ He was a landscape architect for more than fifty years in SF,
designing over 2000 design
1922 (graduated): Educated at the University of California, Berkeley,
and Harvard. Church applied the new ideas of multiple perspective
and fluid composition to his practice.
1948: Martin House and Gardens (in Aptos California), features were
wood planks, sand, and ice plant as ground cover (borrowed scenery
of the beach / sea). His proposal was restricted in its elements,
geometry, and plant species, given the periodic nature of habitation
and the strong salt content of the air. For the children’s play, there
would be a sand area rather than the more restrictive sand box; the
sand within the garden zone visually connected with the ocean shore
beyond, bringing the far near and vice versa. Replacement of a central
lawn of grass with a ‘lawn’ of sand, completely changed the reading
of the garden.
1948: Donnell Gardens (in Sonoma, California), garden was built
before the house, on a site favoured by the Donnell’s for picnics and
other family gatherings. The program first called for a pool, suitable
paved surfaces, and a lanai (a Hawaiian word meaning porch or
breezeway). The design drew inspirations from the riverine meanders of
the valleys and hills and the rivers and streams feeding the bay. While
pool appears to be free form, it is planned using compass shapes set
at a forty-five-degree angle. But in its positioning, the form reads far
more complexly than its actual shape, a complication heightened by
the varied sets of paths of movement across the site. As an island in the
water, a monumental sculpture by Adaline Kent provides a focal point
and destination for swimmers: beneath the surface a large void in the
sculpture’s base tempts younger swimmers to pass through.
Garett Eckbo
1939: Small Gardens in the City, “Our theory of landscape design
for the balance of the twentieth century must be concerned with
the realities of the now engrossing problems of the overall outdoor
environment of the American people, rather than with abstractions
about systems of axes, or poetic subjectivities about nature.” Here he
divided a typical city block (in this case based on San Francisco) into
a series of lots for which he designed eighteen garden variants. Some
were more formal; others more natural; some more heavily planted.
Some used diagonals and rigorously straight lines; others relied almost
exclusively on the radius or free curve. Eckbo clearly demonstrated
in these projects that lot restrictions were no excuse for any lack of
ingenuity: in fact, these constraints forced the designer to be clever,
and to invent methods of maximizing minimal means. In many ways, the
Small Gardens project outlined the full sweep of the Eckbo vocabulary
used in his years of practice; it was almost all here in microcosm.
James C. Rose
1937: He never graduated from high school (because he refused to
take music and mechanical drafting) but nevertheless managed to
enroll in architecture courses at Cornell University. A few years later
he transferred, as a special student, to Harvard University to study
landscape architecture. He was soon expelled from Harvard in 1937
for refusing to design landscapes in the Beaux Arts manner.
1949: Creative Gardens / Modular Gardens
1950: Creative Gardens / Tea Gardens
¯ A modular garden consists of a trellis, precast concrete
squares and prefabricated pools pans. The later gardens be-
came more spontaneous and improvisational, often recycling
raw materials found on site and incorporating natural fea-
tures like rock outcroppings and trees as part of a designed,
flexible, irregular, asymmetrical spatial geometry.
Dan Kiley
1950s: The Aluminum Company of Canada or Alcan (town of Kitimat),
to be a place that would inspire workers of the nearby aluminum
smelter to stay at their jobs long-term. They wanted neither a shack
town nor a company town but an independent, thriving community
that would attract families to the region. They hired a team of town
planners, psychologists, scientists, and architects to attempt to create
the perfect town. Was inspired by the garden city movement, Radburn,
Greenbelt and Maryland.
*Despite the virtuous social agenda of the modernist project,
many of the projects aimed at ameliorating social, economic, and
environmental conditions for communities caused more harm than
benefit, lacking context and consultation required for meaninful
engagement, design, and development.
Readings
Colomina, Beatriz, “The Lawn at War: 1941-1961” in The American Lawn,
Ed. By Georges Teyssot, Princeton Architectural Press: 1999, 134-153.
Fawcett-Atkinson, Marc. “Why a Japanese Delicacy Grows Near Old British
Columbia Internment Camps” Atlas Obscura. June 18, 2021.
Oikawa, Mona, “Cartographies of Violence: Women, Memory, and the
Subject(s) of the ‘Internment,’ in Race, Space, and the Law Ed. by Sherene
Razack, Between the Lines, 2001: 71-98.
Listen: “The Indian Pavilion at Expo ‘67” Part 1 and Par 2 from The Secret
Life of Canada (podcast, Season 3, 2021)
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/secretlifeofcanada/why-the-indians-of-
canadapavilion-at-expo-67-still-matters-1.5933759
Listen: “The missing middle,” 99% invisible (Podcast 2022)
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-missing-middle/
Harris, Richard and Doris Forrester. 2003. “The Suburban Origins
of Redlining: A Canadian Case Study, 1935-54.” Urban Studies (Edinburgh,
Scotland) 40 (13): 2661-2686.
 LARC 522 Week 12
Landscape Architecture &
the Environmental Turn
1950s-1970s
Canada - Highways
1949: Trans Canada Highway Act
1950: Start of construction of the Trans Canada Highway
1962: Official opening of the Trans Canada Highway
United States - Highways
1956: Federal Highway Act (It provided for a 65000km national
system of interstate and defense highways to be built over 13 years)
Hogan’s Alley
1858: The first Black immigrants (of African Descent) arrived in BC from
California, they settled in Victoria and Salt Spring Island
Early 1900s: Migrating from Victoria and Salt Spring Island to
Vancouver, making homes in Strathcona, an east side, working class
neighbourhood (that was also home to Vancouver’s Italian community,
as well as the southern edge of Chinatown)
1940s: the Black population in Strathcona numbered approximately
800
¯ Over the years, the Black population endured efforts by the
city to rezone the Strathcona area making it difficult to obtain
mortgages or make home improvements, and by newspaper
articles portraying Hogan’s Alley as a centre of squalor,
immorality, and crime
¯ 1967: The City of Vancouver began leveling the western half
of Hogan’s Alley to construct an interurban freeway through
Hogan’s Alley and Chinatown
¯ 1971: The freeway was ultimately stopped, but construc-
tion of the first phase, the Georgia viaduct was built. In the
process, the western end of Hogan’s Alley was expropriated,
and several blocks of houses were demolished
¯ Since the demise of Hogan’s Alley, no identifiably Black
neighbourhood has emerged in Vancouver,
City of Vancouver Urban Renewal Program
1959: The City of Vancouver proposed an urban renewal
program that planned on leveling Strathcona for new develop-
ments and building an “east-west freeway to link the viaduct with
the Trans-Canada Highway” (Gutstein, 158). Residents in the
Strathcona “initially cooperated… thinking that the neighbour-
hood would receive long-needed civic improvements” (Atkin,
74). The city deemed the neighbourhood irreparable and plans
for redevelopment commenced even though only “17 percent of
homeowners wanted to move or desired new accommodations”
(Atkin, 75). The city “rejected building permits… froze property
values and began actively discouraging home improvements”
(Atkin, 75). The first two phases of urban renewal displaced over
3000 people, half of which were Chinese.
Cornelia Oberlander (1921-2021)
1944: Earned a diploma from Smith College and continued her studies
at the Harvard Graduate School of Design
1950s: Moved to Philadelphia to serve as a community planner for the
Citizens’ Council on City Planning
1952: Worked with Dan Kiley, serving as senior landscape architect,
on his Schuylkill Falls public housing project
1952: Also collaborated with Louis Kahn on Philadelphia’s Millcreek
housing project
1953: Moved to Vancouver, with her husband H. Peter Oberlander,
an architect and city planner. Following their move, she established
her own design firm and became known for her collaborative socially
responsible and environmentally thoughtful work
1963: Vancouver beach logs. Cornelia Oberlander placed logs
along Vancouver beaches (mix of hemlock, cedar, and fir) as a
reaction to seeing city workers burning logs that had washed ashore
from a boom. She achieved this by lobbying the parks commissioner for
a bold experiment in landscape architecture, to convert the flotsam into
public seating.
1967: Her most influential playground, the Children’s Creative Center
at Montreal’s Expo ’67, led her to assist in drafting national guidelines
for children’s playgrounds.
1974-1982: Robson Square, the plaza, considered Vancouver’s civic
core and primary public space, was designed by Cornelia Hahn
Oberlander and Arthur Erickson as a continuous roof garden with a
mix of enclosed and open spaces. Conceptualized as an urban oasis,
the roof garden extends three blocks from the Erickson-designed Law
Courts Building to the Vancouver Art Gallery, blending structure with
landscape as it traverses various levels through a complex of at-grade
and underground civic buildings. An early example of the integration
of green-roof technology, the entirety of the multi-level plaza is sited
on the adjoining rooftops of different buildings. Minor alterations were
made to the original design to accommodate public events associated
with the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.
1976 (built), 2010 (landscaping completed): The University of British
Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology (one of her many collaborations
with architect Arthur Erickson)
2013: Awarded the ASLA Medal, the society’s highest honor
2016: Received the CSLA’s highest honor as the inaugural recipient of
the Governor General’s Medal in Landscape Architecture.
*Oberlander has been named a Fellow of both the Canadian
Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA) and the American Society of
Landscape Architects (ASLA).
Redlining Maps
People applying for loans in the red areas on the map were
considered too ‘high risk’ for lending and were denied mortgages.
Hence the term redlining: The literal practice of lenders zoning off
certain subdivisions in red to divide those who could get mortgages
from those who could not. The discriminatory practices captured by the
HOLC maps continued until 1968, when the Fair Housing Act banned
racial discrimination in housing.
Lawrence Halprin (1916-2010)
1949: Beginning his career in the San Francisco Bay Area, California,
Halprin often collaborated with a local circle of modernist architects
on relatively modest projects (William Wurster, Joseph Esherick, Vernon
DeMars, Mario J. Ciampi, and others associated with UC Berkeley).
Halprin worked in the San Francisco office of Thomas Church before
opening his own firm in 1949

1963: The Sea Ranch, a 5,000-acre planned community on the coast
of Sonoma County, California. Created in the 1960s by Halprin,
architects Charles Willard Moore, Joseph Esherick, and others,
The Sea Ranch has come to define a rugged brand of California
modernism. The concept merged the possibilities of a second home
community that harmonized with and not injurious to the environment,
unpainted wooden houses in large open meadow areas were
imagined. Improvements would involve a minimum of grading. Utilities
would be located underground, and population density kept low.
Residential design would allow homes to blend into and become
part of the natural landscape. Studies of native plants, animals, soils,
and climate were conducted. Thousands of trees, native grasses and
wildflowers were planted to reverse the effects of erosion and logging,
with the intention to create a wildlife refuge. Lawrence Halprin, the
landscape architect of the project, drew on the Pomo Indian’s earlier
philosophy to “live lightly on the land”. The goal of the developer
was to create a community where one could come to escape the
rigors of city life, walk the more than 10-mile-long bluff trail in solitude,
beachcomb on the sandy beaches, hike through the quiet redwoods,
or simply sit on a headland such as Bihler’s or Black Point to observe
the whale migration in season.
1966: Experiments in the Environment (Lawrence and Anna Halprin,
a modern dance choreographer), the couple hosted four-week
workshops at their Mountain Home Studio in Marin, CA, testing ideas
about how space and movement influence one another through a
month of experiential experiments in communication, participation,
and collaboration. Later they did workshops conducted with Gestalt
therapist Paul Baum. The experiments took place outdoors on the
coast at Sea Ranch (a community that Lawrence was commissioned to
design in 1963), in the Marin woodlands near their home, and in the
urban environs of San Francisco. These activities, directed by faculty
recruited from the Halprins’ artistic community and included architects,
cinematographers, lighting specialists, and others, aimed to trigger
environmental and self-awareness among participants (who were
primarily dancers and architects). The activities ranged from exercises
in kinesthetic movement and “light happenings” to blind-folded walks
during which participants would lead each other first by arm, then using
only back-to-back contact, then by leg, then by cheek
1965: Ira Keller Fountain in Portland, Oregon, in Lovejoy Fountain
Park is part of a multi-block sequence of public fountains and outdoor
rooms
1971-1975: Freeway Park in Seattle, was designed with Angela
Dnadajieva as an innovated reclaiming of interstate right-of-way for
park space.
Ian L. McHarg (1920-2001)
Scottish landscape architect and writer on regional planning using
natural systems. In 1969 published Design with Nature, which was
essentially a book of step-by-step instructions on how to break down
a region into its appropriate uses. He promoted an ecological view,
in which the designer becomes very familiar with the area through
analysis of soil, climate, hydrology, etc.
“Form must follow more than just function; it must also respect he natural
environment in which it is placed” – Ian L. McHarg
Work done in the name of care: Exploration into the conditions
that create the need for care, including racialized and gen-
dered labour often made invisible within structures of capitalism,
extractive material movements, ableist ideologies of social and
ecological improvement, and fractured colonial relationships
with land.
Gunnar Asplund
Completed over 40 projects, most of which were public buildings.
As well as Skogskyrkogården’s Woodland Chapel and the
Woodland Crematorium, with its three chapels, his designs included
Stockholm Public Library (1920-1928), the extension of Gothenburg
City Hall (1913-1937), the schools Karl Johansskolan, (1915-1920)
and Karlshamns Läroverk (1912-1918) and the Skandia Cinema in
Stockholm (1923). During a prolonged field trip to Italy in 1913-1914,
he experienced the strong link between landscape and buildings.
This proved to have a major impact on his future work, and plays a
prominent role in the design of Skogskyrkogården.
Sigurd Lewerentz
His most personal works include the cemetery Östra Kyrkogården in
Malmö, which he worked on from 1916 to 1969. He was also one
of the leading lights of the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930, for which he
designed a couple of pavilions and helped create the graphic design.
1933 saw Lewerentz win the competition to design Malmö City
Theatre, which was completed in 1944.
Skogskyrkogården
Woodland Cemetery in Stockholm, Sweden
Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz, 1914-1940
Skogskyrkogården’s history begins at the beginning of the 1900s, when
it became apparent that Stockholm’s cemeteries were insufficient and
needed complementing. Stockholm City Council decided to build a
new cemetery south of the existing Southern Cemetery, in modern-day
Enskede. At the time, cemeteries were generally considered “Gardens
of the Dead”, with grandiose parks, tree-lined avenues and impressive
headstones raising a kind of memento to the dead. The city’s cemetery
committee had a desire to move away from this ideal and to instead
create a cemetery centred on the underlying landscape.
An international competition was held in 1914 to design this cemetery
in the Enskede area of Stockholm; Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz
won this competition with a design called Tallum Skogskyrkogården.
Their entry, Tallum, was the only proposition centred on the Nordic
woodland experience. Though even their creation needed a great
deal of tweaking before work on Skogskyrkogården could begin in
1917. Over the next two decades, the cemetery took shape. From the
pine-covered boulder ridge, created a landscape with several chapels
nestled seamlessly into the natural surroundings. The actual graves
were arranged in blocks in the pine forest. The landscape architect
was Lewerentz, who also created the Almhöjden meditation grove, the
Skogskyrkogården memorial garden and the Chapel of Resurrection.
Asplund designed all other chapels and buildings.
Since Skogskyrkogården is a multi-ethnic cemetery serving faiths other
than Protestant Christianity, the cross is not intended to represent a
symbol of faith, but rather a symbol of the circle of life and death
Carl Theodor Sørensen (1893-1879)
Born in Germany, ended up living and working as a garden artist
in Denmark during the evolution of modernism in the 20th century.
Sørensen worked alongside leading architects of Danish functionalism.
He worked on more than 2000 projects drawing on his understanding
of spatial and social arts, and garden history, with the intention of
reimagining the motifs of garden art. The scale of these projects
spanned from small gardens to large institutions as well as new
residential developments.
1920: Opened his own office
1931-1974: Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark, Euclidean spatial
geometry contrasted with existing landforms to creating seating
(designed to the proportions of the human body)
1948: Allotment Gardens in Naerum, Copenhagen, 40 oval allotment
gardens, each measuring 25m × 15m, were laid out on a rolling
lawn, a common green, in a fluid progression. The gardens are mostly
placed so that the oval lies across the curves of the slope. This use of
the rolling terrain, combined with the sweeps and curves of the hedges,
accentuates the dynamic impression. The individual garden plots are
enclosed compartments surrounded by hedges with varying cottage
orientations. The hedges were originally intended to be both clipped
and unclipped, using such species as hornbeam, hawthorn, privet,
and roses, but today there are mostly privet and hawthorn, clipped in
different heights and forms. The design of the individual garden plots
was left up to each owner, but a guide from Sørensen shows various
models.
1953: The Mollea Canal in Åbenrå, Denmark was a canal that
protects the town against flooding. The project includes the forest edge,
windbreaks, drainage canals, banks, hedgerows, etc. Abstraction of
the vernacular farm- soil, water, plants,
Conservation of Mer Bleue, Ontario
Europeans began farming in the area surrounding the bog in the
1830s. Active exploitation of the bog itself occurred from the 1870
to the early 20th century and included activities such as logging,
hunting, blueberry picking, farming, peat extraction, development for
transportation/utility corridors, recreation, and scientific investigations.
In the mid-1950s, the federal government of Canada expropriated
the farmland, making it part of Ottawa’s Greenbelt. Today, the bog is
reserved mainly for recreational and scientific purposes.
Bioedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island, WA
Richard Haag Associates (1960s-1980s)
In 1951, Virginia and Prentice Bloedel purchased the property that
would become Bloedel Reserve. It was their private residence for
more than 30 years, many devoted to exploring the relationship
between people and nature. Mr. Bloedel began a teaching career
but soon became the reluctant heir to his father’s timber business. An
environmentalist at heart, he innovated several of today’s conservation
concepts such as “reuse.” He advocated reusing hog fuel, a log
byproduct, to help generate sawmill power and worked with pulp
mills to reduce waste. His most enduring “green” idea was to plant
seedlings to reforest clear-cut land. Sculpting the landscape became
the focus of Mr. Bloedel’s retirement. Almost daily, he could be found
walking the grounds, thinking of how to shape his masterpiece. With
the help of noted landscape architects and designers, including
Thomas Church, Richard Haag, Fujitaro Kubota, and Iain Robertson, he
“wove” several unique landscape experiences throughout the native
Pacific Northwest forest. Later in life, the Bloedels gave the Reserve to
the community and established a nonprofit to support its operations.
In 1988, the Reserve opened to the public as a 150-acre public
garden and forest preserve. Mr. Bloedel was deeply interested in the
relationship between people and the natural world, and the power
of landscape to evoke emotions — from tranquility to exhilaration. He
was ahead of his time in understanding the therapeutic power of nature
and funded early research into the psychological effect of time spent
outdoors.
Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly Building
Yellowknife, Northwest Territories (1991-1994)
Cornelia Oberlander
Located on the periphery of downtown Yellowknife some 250 miles
south of the Arctic Circle, the building was designed and constructed
in the early 1990s as the first permanent home for the territory’s
government. Working with architecture firms Pin/Mathews and
Matsuzaki Wright Architects, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander sought to
honor the territory’s relatively undisturbed tundra and taiga landscape
and minimize disturbance to sensitive bog and boreal forest
ecosystems within the eleven-acre lakeside site. Perched among rocky
outcroppings at the edge of a white spruce forest, the low-rise, domed
building is set back from a forested entrance path to overlook Frame
Lake and an adjacent peat bog.
Responding to multiple challenges posed by the site’s subarctic climate,
remoteness, fragile plant communities, and rough terrain, Oberlander
developed several design strategies to preserve ecosystems and
enhance the relationship between structure and landscape. Using
cuttings and seeds taken from the site, she created a plant palette
consisting exclusively of existing native vegetation. Because there were
no nurseries in Yellowknife, plants, including bearberry (kinnikinnick),
red osier dogwood, mountain cranberry, and paper birch, were
propagated in Vancouver before being returned and integrated with
existing plantings. As part of a so-called “invisible mending” strategy,
planting occurred only on disturbed and bare sections of land. In some
cases, peat mats removed whole during construction were transferred
elsewhere, alongside new swaths of cloudberry and sedges.
Comprising plantings of tissue-cultured saxifrage and volunteer birches
and pines, a green roof is nourished by a growth medium formulated
from recycled clay excavated during construction. Appearing to float
above the bog and taiga vegetation, concrete boardwalks connect
the site with a 4.5-mile-long trail that encircles the lake.
High Modernism: is a form of modernity, characterized by an unfal-
tering confidence in science and technology as means to reorder the
social and natural world. The high modernist movement was particu-
larly prevalent during the Cold War, especially in the late 1950s and
1960s
Bennett Dam
Peace River (1968)
A large hydroelectric dam on the Peace River in northern British
Columbia, Canada. At 186 metres high, it is one of the world’s
highest earth filled dams. Construction of the dam began in 1961 and
culminated in 1968. At the dam, the Finlay, the Parsnip and the Peace
Rivers feed into Williston Lake. It is the third largest artificial lake in
North America (runs 250 kilometres north–south and 150 kilometres
east–west). The construction of the dam cost $750 million, making it the
largest project of its kind in the province of BC. W.A.C Bennett (Premier
of British Columbia from 1952-1972) was committed to the large-
scale, state-directed development of British Columbia and promoted
the continued development of natural resources. Large hydroelectric
projects, were part of the resource development for which Bennett
was advocating. In his opinion, harnessing nature would make
British Columbia wealthy and support the emergence of an industrial
economy as well as a society that was, “connected, institutionally
anchored, urban, wealthy, and domestic.” Bennett’s convictions, and
therefore the policies of his government, concerning hydroelectric
development have been regarded as a manifestation of the ideology
high modernity, also known as high modernism. Along with the
benefits that high modernist development could bring, there were also
consequences. High modernism, along with the administrative ordering
of nature and society, authoritarian state, and a “prostrate civil society
which would be unable to resist high modernist plans”, can be a recipe
for disaster. It is debatable whether or not all of these elements were
present in British Columbia at the time, but regardless, the development
of the Peace River led to environmental changes that caused a minority
of people to live in isolation, dependence, alienation, and illness. On
the other hand, the hydroelectric projects realized by Bennett’s Two
Rivers policy created a large supply of less expensive energy in British
Columbia, which provided industrial growth and therefore employment.
Orval Morrisseau, Earth Mother with Her Children, 1967
The pavilion featured three prominent murals on its exterior walls. These
were Earth Mother with Her Children, by Anishinaabe artist Norval
Morrisseau; West Coast, by Tseshaht artist George Clutesi; and The
Land, by Anishinaabe artist Francis Kagige. Morrisseau’s mural design
depicted a figure with long, white hair and exposed breasts, together
with a bear cub and human child, in his signature Woodland style. His
original concept for the Expo mural had the cub and child nursing at
the Earth Mother’s breast. However, the work was censored by Indian
Affairs because they considered the image too explicit for the intended
audience. The design was changed to create more distance between
the Earth Mother’s breasts and her animal and human children.
Morrisseau subsequently left his assistant, Carl Ray, to complete the
mural. While he did not abandon the project completely, the artist’s
absence from the site has been interpreted as a protest against the
government’s meddling in his artistic expression.
But it also used the language of human rights, claiming that relocation
would improve the standard of living for residents. In January 1964,
Halifax City Council voted to authorize the relocation of Africville
residents. Before this decision was made, there was no meaningful
consultation with residents of Africville to gather their views. In fact, it
was later reported over 80 per cent of residents had never had contact
with the Halifax Human Rights Advisory Committee, which was the
group charged with consulting the community.
Unfortunately, discrimination and poverty presented many challenges
for the community of people in Africville. The City of Halifax refused
to provide many amenities other Haligonians took for granted, such
as sewage, access to clean water and garbage disposal. Africville
residents, who paid taxes and took pride in their homes, asked the
City to provide these basic services on numerous occasions, but no
action was taken. The City compounded the problem by building
many undesirable developments in and around Africville, including an
infectious disease hospital, a prison and a dump.
The Africville Apology was a formal pronouncement delivered on
February 24, 2010 by the City of Halifax, Nova Scotia for the eviction
and eventual destruction of Africville.
Readings
Herrington, Susan. “The Nature of Ian McHarg’s Science.” Landscape
Research 21, no. 1 (2010): 1-10.
Loo, Tina, “Disturbing the Peace: Change and the Scales of Justice on a
Northern River” Environmental History, 12 (2007): 895-919.
McCutcheon, Priscilla. 2019. “Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farms and Black
Agrarian Geographies.” Antipode 51 (1): 207-224.
William, Ron. “21. Birth of an Environmental Consciousness.” Landscape
Architecture in Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, pages
453-465.
Explore the “Stories” section of “The Land and The Refinery” project: https://
www.landandrefinery.org/explore-stories/

Africville
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Africville was a primarily Black community located on the south shore
of the Bedford Basin, on the outskirts of Halifax. The first records of a
Black presence in Africville date back to 1848, and it continued to
exist for 150 years after that. Over that time, hundreds of individuals
and families lived there and built a thriving, close‐knit community. There
were stores, a school, a post office and the Seaview United Baptist
Church, which was Africville’s spiritual and social centre.

Instead of providing proper municipal services to the community, the

City of Halifax eventually decided to relocate the residents of Africville.
The City said it wanted to build industry and infrastructure in the area.
 LARC 522 Week 12
Landscape responses to
capitalist excess
1970s-1990s
Art and landscape interventions to pollution, industrial excess, capital
excess, etc. tend towards the postmodern. The environmental
movement lead to new approaches to contaminated, toxic, or
post-industrial sites. Categories of natural vs human begin to blur
and are actively challenged by landscape designers. Fragments of
non-traditional landscape materials become the setting, features,
structures, etc. for new parks, gardens, and landscapes. History of
landscapes becomes integrated into landscape interventions, sites are
not always wiped clean, remnants, restorations, re-purposing, and
commemoration become key themes in landscape design. Through
grappling with histories of oppression and power gardens become
sites of refuge and commemoration.
Environmental justice is the idea that all cultures, races, ethnicities,
and socioeconomic backgrounds deserve fair protection from
environmental and health hazards, as well as equal access to the
decision-making processes behind environmental policies and
development. (1) EJ often has a spatial dimension (2) emphasizes
the overlapping dimensions of racism, classicism, patriarchy,
heteronormality, ableism and speciesism (3) includes multiscale
frameworks (4) incorporates the role of state power (5) focuses on
racial and socioeconomic indispensability
Imperial Oil Refinery
Anishinabek territory, Ontario
1897
¯ On May 7, 1897, Imperial Oil began operating the Sarnia
refinery under the Imperial name. The following year, Stan-
dard Oil of New Jersey, today, Exxon Mobil, purchased a
controlling interest in Imperial Oil.
¯ By the 1930s, Imperial was not only Sarnia’s largest employ-
er, it was influencing Canada’s sports culture. Promotion of
its Three Star brand of gasoline on Hockey Night in Canada
led to the post-game “three stars” player selection.
The Land and Refinery Project: The Land and Refinery Project shares
ongoing research with Aamjiwnaang community members and the
public about the history and operations of the Imperial Oil Refinery in
Sarnia. This refinery sits on traditional Anishinabek territory and is one
of the oldest refineries in the world. The wild strawberry plant poster is
used to show how community members feel that NPRI data currently
works, and how pollution data could work if reimagined through
Anishinaabe values. Elder Mike Plain talked about the reduction of wild
strawberry plants and other changes to the Land and water, honoring
the ways the health of the land is also the future of the people. This
visual is guided by the wild strawberry. We envision the plant’s roots
as values, where everything starts. The plant itself then becomes the
practices that grow out of those values, and the fruits and flowers of the
plant the futures and outcomes that those practices help to create. On
the left side the plant is gray and not thriving. Here the visual explains
our collective understanding as researchers and community members
of how the NPRI does not serve Aamjiwnaang and people who
live near Chemical Valley. On the right side the plant is colorful and
beautiful. Here the visual explains how the NPRI and pollution data
generally could be reimagined starting with Anishinaabe values.
West Philadelphia Project
Anne Whiston Spirn and others
1987- today
The principal goal of the West Philadelphia Landscape Project (WPLP)
is to restore nature, rebuild communities, and empower youth in ways
that are equitable, inclusive, and sustainable, that foster resilience in
people and place. Since 1987, the West Philadelphia Landscape Plan
and projects that flowed from it, have demonstrated how to combine
concerns for environmental quality, poverty, race, social equity, and
educational reform, along with function and aesthetics.
Poverty, unemployment, and the deterioration of housing and public
infrastructure are pressing issues in West Philadelphia. Landscape
development alone cannot solve them. However, even small
incremental improvements to the urban landscape can have an
enormous, cumulative, effect on a neighborhood and how it looks
and functions. The West Philadelphia Landscape Project (WPLP)
encourages and supports such incremental improvements by
individuals and small groups and proposes large-scale projects
that can be accomplished only by bigger organizations and public
agencies. Successful landscape projects can serve as catalysts for
community development and as part of social programs in education,
job training, and employment. WPLP addresses these social issues as
well as environmental ones, such as land subsidence and flooding in
areas over buried streams and filled land.
Parc des Butte Chaumont
Paris
Jean-Charles Alphand
1867
Gas Works Park
Seattle, Washington
Richard Haag & Associates, 1969-1975
In 1969, Richard Haag Associates (RHA) were retained by the Seattle
Park Board to analyze the site and develop a master plan for a new
park. RHA opened an on-site office setting up in an abandoned office
building. Already having developed the basis of his argument, Haag
recommended preservation of portions of the plant for its “historic,
esthetic and utilitarian value”. (Master Plan, April 1971) After an intense
public appeal, his master plan for an industrial preservation park
was unanimously approved by the Park Board. He had in essence
helped them to see this disturbed site with new eyes, although it can be
suspected that few had a good sense of what it would mean, in terms
of aesthetics, public access, and the eventual narrative of Seattle’s
urban landscape.
Important to note that this was not a remediation project, instead the
contaminated soil, from gas works facility was capped, building up
mounds forming the topography of the site. He allowed the language
of water movement, soil remediation, and vegetation’s role in the
healing process to be read in this landscape and its landforms by
careful participants. The hydrological systems move water through the
site both emptying the storm waters above and helping to cleanse
the soil within the site. That water is never static as the ground moves
any water so that it is always at work, dynamically engaged. The
rolling hills are not a conceit but are carriers of water and soil. They
allow water to work with the vegetation to cleanse the soil. They are
a working system that is constantly cleansing and changing its own
condition. Thus, we can read the land (soil, water, vegetation) as the
primary agent of change in the site/ place. These are the histories
of Seattle- the settling of a city in the hilly landscape, the struggle to
flatten the city site, the aspirations of mid and late 20th century, and the
industries of gas and fish, not to mention logging and high technology.
Byxbee Park
Palo Alto, California
Hargreaves Associates with Mary Margaret Jones as lead, artists Peter
Richards and Michael Oppenheim 1988-1992
Its original intent was to create “a work of art which would enhance
the beauty of the site and express the dichotomy of the man-made and
the natural elements within and surrounding the park.” The hills consist
of up to 60 feet of garbage covered by a one-foot-thick impenetrable
layer of clay, covered by two feet of topsoil. The project site consists of
150 acres. The first phase was completed in September 1991 at a cost
of $1.4 million and covers 30 acres. The park has several earthworks
and land art pieces on it, designed by the park designers, George
Hargreaves, Peter Richards, and Michael Oppenheimer. A series of
mounds, a series of poles, and other berms and concrete zigzags. The
spectacular views from the high points of the site contrast with the more
sheltered areas created by the Hillocks inspired by the shell mounds
of the Ohlone people who inhabited the site two to four thousand
years ago. These areas provide habitat as well for small animals and
birds and plantings of grass and flowers. The Trail System is covered
in crushed oyster shells which will move with the landfill as it shifts due
to natural compaction and settlement and at the same time create the
desired soft ambience for the park. As the mounds and paths refer to
history the Chevrons relate to the present establishing a direct visual
connection to the adjacent Municipal Airport.
Gualalupe Rive Park
San Jose, Califonia
Hargreaves and Associates, 1988
The Guadalupe River Park is a paradigm of a modern flood-control
project integrated with a major recreation park and wildlife habitat
expressed as culturally “made.” It assures nature a place in the
center of San Jose — a legacy to last for generations. The river park
underlay consists of the topography for the flood-control channel itself;
it provides the underlying structural spine for the design of the River
Park. Undulating terraced banks and landforms create the obviously
manmade and river-influenced backbone for the native riverbank
landscape. The second level, or River Park overlay, consists of the plan
for open spaces, events, and habitat restoration along the channel;
these places make clear the relationship of humankind, technology,
and nature.
Wave berms: Undulating terraced banks and landforms create the
obviously manmade and river-influenced backbone for the native
riverbank landscape. The second level, or River Park overlay, consists
of the plan for open spaces, events, and habitat restoration along
the channel; these places make clear the relationship of humankind,
technology, and nature.
Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord
Duisburg, Germany
Peter and Annelise Latz + Partners, 1991
Duisburg Nord, Germany was transformed from a coal-fired steel
production plant into a giant industrial playground. Latz + Partner’s
design emphasized the value of memory: the goal was to create a
space former mill workers could explore with their grandchildren and
still be able to identify the form and function of the old machinery.
Concrete bunkers have been transformed into gardens, a former
blast furnace into an observation tower. A derelict gas tank is now
the biggest artificial diving center in Europe. Rock climbers hang
from concrete walls. Landshaftspark is playful and, at the same time,
encourages serious exploration of the industrial past. A lot of the
pollutant clean-up was achieved through phytoremediation. Open
and flexible adaptation, not open as in tabula rasa, but open as in full
of potential…. It is neither too empty nor too full, economic, social, and
environmental elements.
As iron production was abandoned, 5 acres of industrial wasteland
remained, waiting for new use. Huge steel structures were all that
was left to bear witness to human toil and labor and to outstanding
periods of industrial architecture. The commitment of citizens prevented
the demolition of the buildings and installations that was threatening.
Between 1990 and 1999, finally, the IBA Emscher-Park International
Building Exhibition created a new type of park which achieves a
symbiosis between man-made artifacts and natural flora. Divers filled
the gasholder with 20,000 cubic meters of water and developed
a fascinating underwater world and the German Mountaineering
Association transformed part of the former ore bunkers into a climbing
garden. Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord GmbH, the Park operator set
up by the City of Duisburg, now manages the unique Park project
Land Art: art made in or of the natural environment, which was one
among the eclectic array of new artistic practices that emerged in the
mid to late twentieth century
Mill Creek Canyon Park
Kent, Washington
Herbert Bayer, 1982
Herbert Bayer’s entire career was dedicated to integrating artistic
concerns into the everyday operations of society. With the Earthworks,
he created a much-loved public park, a stormwater detention dam,
and a modernist masterpiece. Installed in 1982, the Earthworks were
immediately lauded for their fusion of art and infrastructure, making the
installation a powerful precedent for engineers, landscape architects
and artists. A series of sculpted spaces that feel both ancient and
modern, the Earthworks’ pure forms—cones, circles, lines, and berms—
are built into the alluvial delta at the mouth of Mill Creek Canyon.
Grass and concrete, a wood bridge, and steps: these are the materials
at work, joined by the natural forces of Mill Creek itself.
A dam in the ordinary sense constitutes a radical interference with
the natural configuration of the land. My intent was, therefore, to
give the dams a natural appearance conforming to the landscape
(surroundings) and to become integral parts of the landscape being
created.
- Herbert Bayer, King County Arts Commission newsletter, August 1982
The Lightning Field
New Mexico
Walter De Maria, 1977
“The Lightning Field (1977), by the American sculptor Walter De Maria,
is a work of Land Art situated in a remote area of the high desert of
western New Mexico. It is comprised of 400 polished stainless-steel
poles installed in a grid array measuring one mile by one kilometer.
The poles—two inches in diameter and averaging 20 feet, 7½ inches
in height—are spaced 220 feet apart and have solid, pointed tips
that define a horizontal plane. A sculpture to be walked in as well
as viewed, The Lightning Field is intended to be experienced over an
extended period. A full experience of The Lightning Field does not
depend upon the occurrence of lightning, and visitors are encouraged
to spend as much time as possible in the field, especially during sunset
and sunrise. To provide this opportunity, he offers overnight visits during
the months of May through October” (Dia Art Foundation).
Commissioned and maintained by Dia Art Foundation, The Lightning
Field exemplifies Dia’s commitment to supporting art projects whose
nature and scale exceed the limits normally available within the
traditional museum or gallery.
Spiral Jetty
Great Salt Lake, Utah
Robert Smithson, 1970
Robert Smithson’s earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970) is located at Rozel
Point peninsula on the northeastern shore of Great Salt Lake. Using
over six thousand tons of black basalt rocks and earth from the site,
Smithson formed a coil 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide that winds
counterclockwise off the shore into the water. In 1999, through the
generosity of the artist Nancy Holt, Smithson’s wife, and the Estate of
Robert Smithson, the artwork was donated to Dia Art Foundation.
Sun Tunnels
Utah
Nancy Holt, 1973-1976
Like several of her land art companions, the artist saw the possibility
of an artistic renewal in nature, and more specifically in the great
American plains. Her interventions are characterised by a total
awareness of the site, an awareness which determines the choice of
materials and induces the form of the work.
Manifesto for Maintenance Art
Mierle Laderman Ukeles, 1969
“This is 1968, there was no valuing of ‘maintenance’ in Western
Culture. The trajectory was: make something new, always move
forward. Capitalism is like that. The people who were taking care and
keeping the wheels of society turning were mute, and I didn’t like it! I
felt when I was watching Richard Serra do these very simple things like
throwing the lead, or Judd building things — the language of Process
Art and Minimalism, which I felt very in tune with — I felt like “what are
they doing?” They are lifting industrial processes and forgetting about
the whole culture that they come out of. So Serra was this steel worker
without the work, without the workers. And Judd was this carpenter
without workers. They didn’t have workers, they didn’t have people, they
had objects — or they had results.
I did not want to have to take care of anything. But there were all sorts
of problems, and these things that were supposed to be symbols of
freedom, they cracked.”
Wheatfield – A confrontation
New York City, NY
Agnes Denes, 1982
After months of preparations, in May 1982, a 2-acre wheat field was
planted on a landfill in lower Manhattan, two blocks from Wall Street
and the World Trade Center, facing the Statue of Liberty. Two hundred
truckload of dirt were brought in, and 285 furrows were dug by hand
and cleared of rocks and garbage. The seeds were sown by hand and
the furrows covered with soil. the field was maintained for four months,
cleared of wheat smut, weeded, fertilized, and sprayed against mildew
fungus, and an irrigation system set up. the crop was harvested on
August 16 and yielded over 1000 pounds of healthy, golden wheat.
Planting and harvesting a field of wheat on land worth $4.5 billion
created a powerful paradox. Wheatfield was a symbol, a universal
concept; it represented food, energy, commerce, world trade, and
economics. It referred to mismanagement, waste, world hunger and
ecological concerns. It called attention to our misplaced priorities.
The harvested grain traveled to twenty-eight cities around the world in
an exhibition called “The International Art Show for the End of World
Hunger”, organized by the Minnesota Museum of Art (1987-90). The
seeds were carried away by people who planted them in many parts
of the globe.
The questionnaire was composed of existential questions concerning
human values, the quality of life, and the future of humanity. The
responses were primarily from university students in various countries
where I spoke or had exhibitions of my work. Within the context of
the time capsule the questionnaire functioned as an open system of
communication, allowing our descendants to evaluate us not so much
by the objects we created�as is customary in time capsules�but
by the questions we asked and how we responded to them.
Greenwood Pond: Double Site
Des Moines, Iowa
Mary Miss, 1989-1996
Collaborate with various local groups to make a place which would
operate on several levels: a site which could be layered onto another
site, and which would have multiple readings. The importance of the
park to the immediate neighborhood is made apparent by invoking
and building upon layers of associations and memories which have
collected over time. Walking around the pond, shifting between
overviews and cut-outs within the water surface, the individual visitor
can trace an intimate view of the place while putting together a new
understanding of how it operates visually and physically. Additionally,
the makeup and processes of a Midwestern wetlands become clearer
as one understands their role in the immediate environment.
Paths lead the viewer to multiple ways of seeing this place. A walkway
overhanging the edge of the pond makes it possible to move out over
the water. Proceeding around the water’s edge a ramp disappears
into the water after getting the visitor down to the level of the pond.
The line of this ramp extends in a long arc across the pond marked
first by wood pilings and then by a concrete-lined trough cut into the
water. Adjacent to this arc, on the land the walkway continues around
the edge of the pond past a series of structures, including a pavilion, a
mound, and a curving wood trellis to form the other side of the ellipse.
A large leaf shaped space is outlined by these structures affirming
and making palpable the connection between the land and water.
The covered pavilion with a seating area inside is built up against the
curving mound, which rises almost to the height of the pavilion and
seems to wrap it into the landscape.

Continuing around the edge of the pond a small bridge pavilion

allows the viewer to descend to the water once again in an area filled
with water lilies. Proceeding further there is an entrance down into a
concrete trough where one can sit at eye level with the surface of the
water; having been kept to the edge, at a distance, the visitor is able to
enter the pond. One feels the protection of the concrete walls holding
back the pressure of the surrounding water. Above the trough, on the
other side of the path, is a series of stone terraces, on a hillside filled
with prairie grass. Movement is key to the experience of the project; the
visitor constructs an understanding of the site through the experience the
multiple elements and the relationship created between them.

Readings

Park, K-Sue, “The Lightning Field, the Border, and Real Estate,” X-tra Journal 21,
no. 3 (Spring 2019): https://www.x-traonline.org/article/the-lightning-field-
the-border-and-real-estate

Way, Thaïsa. “Landscapes of Industrial Excess: A Thick Sections Approach to

Gas Works Park.” Journal of Landscape Architecture 8, no. 1 (2013): 28-39.
 LARC 522 Week 13
Gardeens of / as resistance
As art and landscape interventions tend towards the postmodern, there
is no universal identity and exploration. Environmental movements
lead to new approaches to contaminated, toxic or post-industrial sites
and categories of natural vs human begin to blur and are actively
challenged by landscape designers. Fragments of non-traditional
landscape materials become the setting, features, structure etc. for
new parks, gardens, and landscapes. History of landscapes becomes
integrated into landscape interventions, sites are not always wiped
clean, remnants, restorations, repurposing, and commemoration
become key themes in landscape design. Through grappling with
histories of oppression and power gardens become sites of refuge and
commemoration.
Indians of Canada Pavilion - Expo 67
Montreal, Canada - 1967
Russell Moses was working for the Department of Indian Affairs and
for the Pavilion, I think he was also engaging in his own resistance in
multiple ways. One of them was he planted a corn patch outside of
the pavilion, which seems like a small thing but there were all these
contracts in place for all of the gardening. And so, him planting that
did not sit well with people but it grew, and it grew and by the end
of Expo, he had harvested it and handed it out to some members of
Indian Affairs.
Agnes Denes, Wheatfield – A confrontation
New York City, NY - 1982
After months of preparations, in May 1982, a 2-acre wheat field was
planted on a landfill in lower Manhattan, two blocks from Wall Street
and the World Trade Center, facing the Statue of Liberty. Two hundred
truckload of dirt were brought in, and 285 furrows were dug by hand
and cleared of rocks and garbage. The seeds were sown by hand and
the furrows covered with soil. the field was maintained for four months,
cleared of wheat smut, weeded, fertilized, and sprayed against mildew
fungus, and an irrigation system set up. the crop was harvested on
August 16 and yielded over 1000 pounds of healthy, golden wheat.
Planting and harvesting a field of wheat on land worth $4.5 billion
created a powerful paradox.
Wheatfield was a symbol, a universal concept; it represented food,
energy, commerce, world trade, and economics. It referred to
mismanagement, waste, world hunger and ecological concerns.
It called attention to our misplaced priorities. The harvested grain
traveled to twenty-eight cities around the world in an exhibition called
“The International Art Show for the End of World Hunger”, organized
by the Minnesota Museum of Art (1987-90). The seeds were carried
away by people who planted them in many parts of the globe. The
questionnaire was composed of existential questions concerning
human values, the quality of life, and the future of humanity. The
responses were primarily from university students in various countries
where I spoke or had exhibitions of my work. Within the context of
the time capsule the questionnaire functioned as an open system of
communication, allowing our descendants to evaluate us not so much
by the objects we created�as is customary in time capsules�but
by the questions we asked and how we responded to them.
New York City Bulb Garden (Ignorance, Evil, Money, Bliss)
Martha Schwartz – 1986
Born in 1950 Milton and Stella Schwartz, in New York City-
influenced by Sasi Judd, Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, and Sol
Lewitt, and Isamu Noguchi. In 1973, Martha Schwartz received her
Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan and then studied
Landscape Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design
between 1976-1977, but due to a personal inconvenience she went
back to the University of Michigan to receive a Master of Landscape
Architecture in 1977. Looking for speedy, inexpensive installation
she could accomplish with her own hands, she tackled the 22-foot
square front garden of her own Georgian row house in Back Bay.
Incorporating two concentric square hedges of an existing formal
garden, Schwartz based her scheme on French renaissance gardens,
which were designed as stage sets for dances and celebrations.
Bagel Garden
Boston, USA - 1979
Martha Schwartz
Conceived as the stage set for her husband’s return from a week-long
business trip, the front yard also became an ode to the landscape
artist’s favorite food: “Bagels are humble, homey, and ethnic,” she
explains. “Besides, I could get many of them inexpensively.” Between
the outer and inner squares of the 16-inch-high boxwood hedges,
Schwartz arranged a 30-inch-wide strip of purple aquarium gravel
dominated by a grid of eight dozen bagels. Each bagel was dipped
in marine spar for weatherproofing. Inside the inner square of hedge,
she planted 30 purple Ageratum to match the gravel and complement
an existing Japanese maple. “Despite the many garden party guests
who were helping us celebrate the installation and my husband’s
return,” Schwartz recalls, “he was not particularly amused.” The family
left within days for a summer in Europe, and the bagels eventually
decomposed.
A petite parterre embroideries is set within the existing hedges. There
are two concentric Italianate squares of 16-inch-high boxwood hedge.
Between the inner and outer squares is a purple gravel strip, 30 inches
wide, upon which sites a point grid of weatherproofed bagels. Inside
the inner square of the hedge, 30 purple Ageratum are planted in rows
of six reversing the purple color pattern. Schwartz- project description.
Splice Garden, Whitehead Institute
Cambridge, MA – 1986
Martha Schwartz
These 25 feet by 35-foot rooftop garden in Cambridge, Massachusetts
is part of an art collection assembled by Director David Baltimore
for the Whitehead Institute, a microbiology research center. The site
was a lifeless rooftop courtyard atop a nine-story office building
designed by Boston architects Goody Clancy Associates. Its dreary,
tiled roof surface and high surrounding walls conspired to create a
dark, inhospitable space, overlooked by both a classroom and a
faculty lounge. The lounge offered access to the courtyard, making it a
potential place to eat lunch.
Along with its spatial woes, the floor of the courtyard was constructed
with a concrete decking system that could not hold additional weight.
There was also no source of water for the rooftop, no maintenance
staff, and a low budget, precluding the possibility of introducing
living plants. However, it was entirely possible to convey a sense of a
planted garden by providing enough signals for the site to read as a
garden.
Whitehead –– to create a garden through abstraction, symbolism, and
reference. Schwartz wanted the narrative of the garden to relate to the
work carried out by the Institute. The garden became a cautionary tale
about the dangers inherent in gene splicing: the possibility of creating
a monster.
One side is based on a French Renaissance Garden: the other on
a Japanese Zen Garden. The elements that compose these gardens
have been distorted. The rocks typically found in a Zen Garden are
composed of topiary pompoms from the French garden. Other plants,
such as palms and conifers, are in strange and unfamiliar associations.
Some plants project off the vertical surface of the wall; others teeter
precariously on the wall’s top edge.
All the plants in the garden are plastic. The clipped hedges, which
double as seating, are rolled steel covered in Astroturf. The green
colors, which are the strongest cues that this is a garden, are composed
of colored gravel and paint. The intent was to create for the scientists
who occupy this building a visual puzzle that could not be solved. The
garden is an ode to “better living through chemistry.”
Vernacular Black Gardens of US southern landscapes
Places for the Spirit
¯ Emphasis on the use of found gardens and garden design
and implementation
¯ Blue Bottle Trees – 1930s and 2000s, practice of putting
blue glass bottles in the trees to ward off bad spirits
¯ St. Elmo’s Village, LA, California, established 1969
Landscape Improvisations
Walter Hood, 1994
“Unfortunately, a standard of homogeneity is the norm within the
design professions. While we pay lip service to the concept of
“multiculturalism” in design, the term lacks the specificity needed to
articulate the differences within many racial and cultural groups.
The term multiculturalism merely satisfies our guilt toward the
exclusion of different ethnic cultures. We perpetuate homogeneity
by creating standard archetypal forms. The key to diversity within
these built environments lies in the reshaping of these archetypes to
reflect contemporary needs and values.” Walter Hood, Landscape
Improvisations
Lafayette Square Park
Oakland, CA - 1999
Walter Hood Studio
Lafayette Square Park in Oakland was long known as “Old Men’s
Park.” Over time, the homeless and drug dependent changed the
park of friendly old men to a fearful place. An effort to revitalize the
park was viewed by some as a thinly disguised effort to rid the park of
undesirables, but landscape architect Walter Hood was determined
not to exclude anyone. Hood was able to create settings that
accommodated all the existing users and a wide array of new users
by carefully forging a series of spaces serving different users around
the edges of the park, and along a major walkway through the park.
He also successfully created a hillock to allow modest separation
between users who might not want to interact. Young children, old men,
concertgoers and marginal characters, the haircut man engaged in
an informal economy, all report that they feel that the park is theirs. An
unusual complexity of users from middle class Koreans to lower class
African Americans shows us how design can overcome exclusivity,
exclusion, and unequal distribution of resources and amenities.
Vintondale Reclamation Park, PA
D.I.R.T Studio in collaboration with Stacy Levy, artist; T. Allan Comp,
historian, and director of non-profit AMD & ART; Robert Deason,
hydrogeologist; and AmeriCorp Interns.
1995-1998
Most important of all is the question of producing garbage in the first
place. Clearly the three “R”s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) are becoming
more and more operative --- even though the monopolies of waste
management companies perpetuate their profits with “tipping fees”
(the cost charged for dumping). With the inevitability of trash, emerging
technologies related to innovative sorting and treatment systems can
greatly reduce the amount of waste necessary to landfill.
1. Leachate (like the nasty stuff at the bottom of your garbage
cans) is usually collected and sent off to often over-burdened
and expensive wastewater treatment facilities. Alternatives in-
clude on-site systems such recirculating the leachate through
the garbage to increase bioactivity as well as constructed
wetlands to treat the leachate. (Hiriya Waste Mountain and
Stearns Quarry Park projects)
2. Methane gas emitted from the very slowly decomposing
garbage is commonly flared off (invisible by day but flaming
at night). When MSW landfills produce enough gas, meth-
ane can be captured and converted through a fuel cell to
produce energy. (Antioch Landfill Park project)
3. Subsidence of trash can be uneven and produce unan-
ticipated ankle-breaking topography. In spite of this fact,
closed landfills are commonly contorted to create super taut
planes of sports fields or the typical artifice of golf courses.
In the case of CDD landfills, vast quantities of inert debris are
hidden beneath generic landforms, not sculpted nor reused.
Could the dynamic settling and reusable material of a landfill
inform a new type of topography? (Hiriya Waste Mountain
and Stearns Quarry Park projects)
Highline proposal 2003
D.I.R.T Studio
Julia Bargman
“Our challenge was to reveal the complexity of the landscape that
was already there. I’m proud to have been a part of the team that took
on this attitude. Some people got it - and some didn’t. I still feel, very
simply, to this day, that our proposal wasn’t sexy enough for the New
York client. It was too subtle, but we feel that we rose to the challenge
to reveal the complexity and beauty already inherent in the site.”
Parc Downsview Park, “Tree City”
OMA and Bruce Mau
1999-2000
Throughout the summer and fall of 2000, numerous exhibits related to
the park competition were held in the Greater Toronto Area, including
at the Canadian National Exhibition, Canada Blooms, Construct
Canada Conference, York University, The Home and Garden Show,
regional shopping malls, Downsview Park events, Great Parks Great
Cities Conference, and a variety of trade shows.
In November 2000, all five design submissions were invited to New
York City to be exhibited at the Van Alen Institute. The Van Alen Institute
also hosted a forum entitled “Downsview Design Talk” and published a
brochure entitled “The Van Alen Report” dedicated to the competition
and its entries.
Concurrent with the opening of the exhibition at the Van Alen
Institute, a symposium entitled “Shifting Ground: The Downsview
Park Competition” was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New
York. The panel discussion focused on new issues and directions
in contemporary landscape and park design as seen through the
submissions received in the Downsview Park International Design
Competition.
Into a flexible patchwork ot planted clusters separated by 0 an
undesignated area. This will be staged as three long term hases: (1)
site. and soJi preparation, ,(2) path¬ way construction, nd (3) cluster
landscaping. The outcome is a matrix of circular tree clusters coveting
25% of the site which is supplemented by meadows playing fields and
gardens.
Located near railways, major expressways a Cl GO Transit lines. Tree
City can function as both a poi of destination and dispersai. Visitors will
be able to viJi the site by
Landscape clusters: Time and elements: ideas/ suggestions– inform-
ing the landscape- this does not mean you don’t have control. Unlike
their nineteenth century precedents such as Central Park in New York,
Downsview hs not been conceived as fixed and static design solutions
to be built as set pieces. Rather, they have each been orchestrated to
be implemented over time, transforming in response to future envi-
ronmental, social, political, and economic conditions. This idea has
been significant in recent landscape discourse as a move away from
the pictorial and scenographic images of the pastoral park in favour
of the strategic, operational, and dynamic conditions of the city itself.
This coincides with an increasing desire for these parks to become
economically self-sufficient, with public funds being used sparingly, if at
all, in support of public-private partnerships and market-based mecha-
nisms for future development. This echoes nineteenth century examples
of private funding for public landscapes understood as an aid to real
estate development such as the Chicago boulevard system.
Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront
MoMA - 2010
MoMA and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center joined forces to address
one of the most urgent challenges facing the nation’s largest city: sea-
level rise resulting from global climate change. Though the national
debate on infrastructure is currently focused on “shovel-ready”
projects that will stimulate the economy, we now have an important
opportunity to foster new research and fresh thinking about the use of
New York City’s harbor and coastline. As in past economic recessions,
construction has slowed dramatically in New York, and much of the
city’s remarkable pool of architectural talent is available to focus on
innovation.
An architects-in-residence program at P.S.1 (November 16, 2009–
January 8, 2010) brings together five interdisciplinary teams to
re-envision the coastlines of New York and New Jersey around New
York Harbor and to imagine new ways to occupy the harbor itself with
adaptive “soft” infrastructures that are sympathetic to the needs of a
sound ecology. These creative solutions are intended to dramatically
change our relationship to one of the city’s great open spaces.
This installation presents the proposals developed during the architects-
in-residence program, including a wide array of models, drawings,
and analytical materials.
The five teams produced innovative ways of returning New York to
a time before we paved over mudflats and salt marshes, poisoned
the waterways, and clogged up the coastline with landfill. In the last
decade, the city has recycled swaths of waterfront wasteland into
a ribbon of park and piers. The future could involve dismantling the
seawall, ringing the harbor with wetlands, and embracing the city’s
maritime identity. This seems at first like surrender—throw open the
floodgates, let in the tides—but it’s more like jujitsu engineering. A
mushy, absorbent coastline is nature’s defense against storm surges,
and it doesn’t need a tryout: We know it works.
The proposals seem quixotic and expensive, but consider the reality of
the Henry Hudson Parkway today, which after a moderate rainstorm
often floods, narrowing to a single amphibious lane. Now imagine
sitting in your car when the post-ice-melt storm surge comes muscling
over the embankment, turning your Suburban into a submarine.
Suddenly, you could find yourself wishing for an oyster reef.
Derek Jarman’s Garden
Dngeness, UK
1987 to 1994
The term queer ecology refers to a perspective which views nature,
biology, and sexuality through the lens of queer theory. It objects to
what it considers heterosexist notions of nature, drawing from science
studies, ecofeminism, environmental justice, and queer geography
This perspective breaks apart various dualisms that exist within human
understanding of nature and culture. Queer ecology states that
people often regard nature in terms of dualistic notions like natural and
unnatural, alive or not alive or human or not human, when in reality,
nature exists in a continuous state. The idea of natural arises from
human perspectives on nature, not nature itself.
“Queer attachments work both to celebrate the excess of life and to
politicize the sites at which this excess is eradicated”
- Sandilands and Erikson, 2010
Leslie Street Spit, Toronto
1950s - current
Leslie Street
The Spit is a man-made landfill that began in the 1950s when the
Toronto Harbour Commission began a project to create a breakwater
for Toronto’s Outer Harbour. It was part of a plan to expand the
capacity of the harbour in anticipation of an expected increase in
shipping traffic on the Great Lakes after the Saint Lawrence Seaway
opened in 1959. However, owing to the containerization revolution of
the 1960s, cargo traffic began to shift to East Coast ports, and shipping
volumes in Toronto fell by almost half between 1969 and 1973. Thus,
the need for an outer harbour never arose, and all cargo ships calling
at Toronto still use the Inner Harbour, while the Outer Harbour sees
only pleasure boat traffic. The spit is a man made successor of a
natural sand bar / peninsula that existed to the north before infilling of
Port Lands and connected to Toronto Islands before 1858.
A Constellation of Remediation
Vancouver
T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss, 2018-2021
A Constellation of Remediation was a two-year long public art project
that exhibited from November 2018 to 2021 that included the planting
of Indigenous remediation gardens on vacant and untended lots on the
unceded homelands of the xʷməθkʷəyə̓m (Musqueam), Sḵwxwú7mesh
(Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations.
The artists chose the constellation of sites based on the significant
decolonization work near these locations through the work of the
Native Education College (NEC), Urban Native Youth Association
(UNYA), and the Wild Salmon Caravan residency and Working
Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty.
The artists’ ongoing conversations with developers, City and Parks staff,
and the public were an integral part of the project, a process that built
connection while also shifting consciousness and awareness about
bioremediation, and land-stewardship.
UNYA Constellation Garden: Southwest corner of Hastings St &
Commercial Dr: The artists developed a remediation garden at a
former gas station lot and home of an Urban Native Youth Association
(UNYA) facility. Indigenous pollinator plants have been planted,
creating a field of flowers that will continue to self-pollinate. In
partnership with UNYA, the artists also held bioremediation workshops
where they invited Indigenous youth to seed the soil and release
butterflies on site.
the ecosystem—which is to say, everything. It would be impossible
to write fully about permaculture’s boundlessness, in part because
the English language isn’t engrained with understandings of holistic
interconnectivity like those contained within Indigenous knowledge
systems such as those of the Skwxwu7mesh, Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh
and Stó:lō. English provides a narrow framework for non-Western,
Indigenous relational understandings of togetherness and contact that
are distant from Western thought; writing about “x̱aw̓s shew̓áy̓ New
Growth” in English limits its potential.
However, the total garden design is not completely visible in the video,
or to visitors as they walk through it. One would have to see the space
from above in order to observe the Coast Salish-inspired shape. This
design is not made for the possessive indulgence of a removed gaze,
but rather for the land and for the community. The site’s wall text shows
a rendering of the Coast Salish wave-like shape that organizes the
garden, delineated by the main path visitors follow. However, there is
no further sense or signage of the way the body should be directed, or
hierarchical structures for movement.
Readings
Crowdy, Joe. “Queer growth: peace and refuge in the garden,” The
Architectural Review. January 26, 2021 https://www.architectural-review.
com/essays/queer-growth-peace-and-refuge-in-the-garden
Hooks, bBell. “Touching the earth,” in D. L. Barnhill, ed, At home on the earth:
Becoming native to our place, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999,
pp. 51-56.
Hooks, Bell. Homeplace: A site of resistance. In b. hooks, Yearning: Race,
gender, and cultural politics. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1990: 41-49.

Southwest corner of 5th Ave and Brunswick St: The artists removed
invasive species at an over-looked triangular parklet owned by
Aragon Properties Ltd a block away from Native Education College
where they held workshops with students who made Indigenous
wildflower seed bombs.

Strathcona Park fieldhouse, 857 Malkin Ave: Pollinator plants with

a relationship to salmon were planted in collaboration with Dawn
Morrison and the Wild Salmon Caravan residency and Working
Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty.

New Growth 半公開

Vancouver,
T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss, 2019

The site, made as part of Wyss’s 14-month fellowship with 221A, is a

public garden containing the local biodiversity of the unceded lands of
the Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
Among the multiple species found in the garden are several types of
berries, shrubs like oceanspray, Indian plum and kinnikinnick as well
as flowers such as yarrow, wood sorrel and wild rose. The work’s
composition is based on permaculture movements, an approach that
considers the varied and interconnected forms of life and things in
 LARC 522 Week 13
Gardens as Resurgance
decolonizing perspective - what is your responsibility?
Aboriginal title in Canada: Through the legal system you can show
that Canada and BC are indigenous land, oral history can become
evidence for this claim
Section 35 of the Canadian constitution
1. The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal
peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed
2. In this Act, aboriginal peoples of Canada includes the Indian,
Inuit and Metis people of Canada includes the Indian, Inuit
and Metis people of Canada
3. For greater certainty, in subsection (1) treaty rights includes
rights that now exist by way of land claims agreements or
may be so acquired
4. Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, the aboriginal
and treaty rights referred to in subsection (1) are guaranteed
equally to male and female persons
Tiny House Warriors
“The Tiny House Warriors: Our land is home is a part of a mission to
stop the Trans Mountain pipeline from crossing unceded Secwepemc
Territory. Ten tiny houses will be built and placed strategically along the
518km Trans Mountain pipeline route to assert Secwepemc Law and
jurisdiction and block access to this pipeline.
We have never provided and will never provide our collective free,
prior and informed consent – the minimal international standard – to
the Trans Mountain Pipeline Project.
The Tiny House Warrior movement is the start of re-establishing village
sites and asserting our authority over our unceded Territories.Each tiny
house will provide housing to Secwepemc families facing a housing
crisis due to deliberate colonial impoverishment. Each home will
eventually be installed with off-the-grid solar power.”
Nimkii Aazhibikong Camp
Elliot Lake, Ontario - 2017
Nimkii Aazhibikong (pronounced Nim-key Ah-zh-ih-bih-coo-ng) is a
place where youth and Elders come to connect to the land, each other
and to pass down the language and traditional knowledge to the next
generations.
Nimkii Aazhibikong means Village of Thunder Mountain. It’s the name
given by Elders to a year-round Ojibway Art, Culture and Language
Revitalization Camp being built by a community of youth, Elders and
organizers located north of Elliot Lake, Ontario within traditional
Anishinaabeg territory.
Nimkii Aazhibikong is an independent Indigenous led camp that is
focused on connecting young people with elders for arts and cultural
land-based teachings. The camp is an Ojibway language revitalization
camp for youth that is working towards producing the next generation
of fluent speakers on the land. Guided by elders, it is also a camp
for cultural resurgence of sustainable Indigenous practices and
restoration of traditional Indigenous land and resource protection and
management.
Right now, Indigenous languages including Anishinaabemowin along
the North Shore of Lake Huron is in crisis. Many of the speakers are
Elders and many communities have no children speaking the language.
We want to inspire the next generation and encourage fluency in the
language. The Elders have told us this can only be fully realized while
on the land.
Tsilhqot’in Mushroom Permits
2018- current
The Tŝilhqot’in Nation is comprised of six communities located in
British Columbia. In May 2018, following a devastating forest fire,
the Tŝilhqot’in introduced regulations that required all non-Tŝilhqot’in
people to acquire a permit in order to harvest mushrooms on their
land (the mushrooms grow in post-fire conditions).118 The permits cost
$20.00 for pickers and $500.00 for buyers and are valid for ninety
days in designated mushroom harvesting areas. Other areas are
reserved for community harvesters or for conservation. The regulations
also include a Leave No Trace policy, whereby individuals who
camping and harvesting on their lands are not allowed to damage
the land or waters. If they did, their permit would be revoked and
they would be fined. Indeed, proceeds from the permits go directly
to “ensuring designated campsites are kept clean with adequate
facilities.”119 The decision to introduce such environmental regulations
was community-based. Tŝilhqot’in use(d) their own governance
structures to create, enforce, and amend the permitting system and
eventually developed an online permitting process and accompanying
maps of harvest areas.
Pawnee Seed Preservation Project
Oklahoma / Nebraska
“Our seeds are more than just food for us. Yes, they are nutrition. But
they’re also… spirituality,” says Electa Hare-RedCorn, a member of the
Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and a Yankton descendant. “Each seed
has a story and each seed has a prayer.”
With a background in social work, Hare-RedCorn was brought on to
the Pawnee Seed Preservation Project in 2012 as a seed-keeper, to
carry the conversation forward with youth and families. The project, she
says, has since become a movement.
2003 to present
Hearing that the corn seeds hadn’t really taken root in Oklahoma,
O’Brien offered to take return some seeds “home” for planting in
Nebraska. O’Brien and Echo-Hawk persuaded the tribe’s elders to
allow O’Brien to plant some of the corn.
At the 2019 fall harvest on October 15, 2019, volunteers visit a spot
co-opted with soil master Del Ficke in an acreage where Pawnee blue
corn grows strong in Pleasant Dale, Nebraska.
The traditional homeland of the Pawnee people is in Nebraska, but
they were forcibly removed by the U.S. government in 1874 and
pushed to Oklahoma, where the present population resides. The
relentless pursuit of the West by settlers stripped the Pawnee people of
their land, the lives of countless people, and many of their traditional
ways of life, including the cultivation of corn.
Just a decade earlier, President Abraham Lincoln had established
a U.S. Department of Agriculture with a focus on food, agriculture,
economic development, science, and natural resource conservation.
Hare-RedCorn says that agronomists of the time studied the seeds
and techniques used by the Pawnee people and other tribes as
they worked to increase agriculture productivity for White settlers.
The resulting corn was bigger than Indigenous corns, but also more
homogenous.
xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden, UBC
2007 - current
The Indigenous Health Research and Education Garden (IHREG)
is located at UBC Farm. The garden’s traditional xʷməθkʷəy̓əm
Musqueam name is xʷc̓ic̓əsəm. The hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ word means
“The place where we grow”. The xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden has been at the
UBC Farm since 2007, first under the guidance of the UBC Institute
for Aboriginal Health and current under the Indigenous Research
Partnerships (IRP), Faculty of Land and Food Systems, under the
direction of Dr. Eduardo Jovel.
With an emphasis on teaching, learning, and research, xʷc̓ic̓əsəm
Garden aims to serve educational and research needs related
to Indigenous knowledge and its intersections with other ways of
knowing. We are particularly focused on Indigenous food sovereignty,
food security, and traditional plant knowledge while increasing
participants’ knowledge and access to both traditional and non-
traditional plant uses.
The garden is guided by the principle that ‘food is medicine’ and
follows the research ethic framework of the “4R’s: respect, relevance,
reciprocity, and responsibility” and a holistic understanding of health
and healing. In addition to its international, community-based research,
the garden engages with numerous regional Aboriginal schools,
communities, and organizations.
Medicine Wheel Garden at Trout Lake Park
Vancouver, BC, 2017
A medicine wheel is an indigenous teaching that shows the inter-
connectivity of different parts of life in relation with the nature and
the spiritual world. The design consists of four different parts that
represent directions, elements, seasons, or nations among many others.
Traditionally, the medicine wheel is used for ceremonious, religious,
and healing purposes, or to illustrate cultural concepts.
Yarrow: A​ stringent, anti-microbial, anti-inflammatory, pain reliever.
Poultice or powder of leaves stops bleeding and prevents infection.
Flowers can be taken internally for fevers and colds, as a digestive aid
and tonic, to ease menstrual cramps and heavy bleeding or to bring
on menstruation. Leaves are edible, young leaves are less bitter. Found
in dry meadows or shady and moist edges and is found in disturbed
areas. Does not tolerate shade well, but grows well on poor soils.
Drought tolerant.
Allium Cernuum / ​Nodding Onion: ​Perennial native to open
woodlands throughout hardiness zones 3-9. The flowers are very
attractive to bees and hummingbirds for their nectar and are often
planted in native habitat restorations. Nodding Onion has similar
culinary and medicinal uses to other species in the Allium genus such
as garlic, onions, and chives. The Straits Salish, Cowichan, Sechelt,
Squamish, Comox and Halq’emeylem of the Fraser Valley ate the
bulbs, either raw or steamed in pits.
Camassia Quamash CST PNW ​/ Common Camas: Coastal​​ An
important staple food for First Nations people of the Pacific Northwest,
especially the coast. The bulbs were pressed into small bricks and
steamed in pits, usually for 24 hours. The cooked bulbs were sweet
and could be eaten immediately or sun-dried and stored or used in
trade. The bulbs were not consumed raw. Grows on grassy slopes and
meadows at low to mid elevations; only in rainshadow climates. ​
olidago Canadensis ​/ Goldenrod ​Goldenrod: A remedy for
inflammation of the respiratory tract, especially when there is a build
up of mucus. It calms inflammation of the throat, trachea, bronchi, and
bronchioles, and helps the body to expel excess mucus contained in
these passages. Also used for treatment of bladder infections, due to its
diuretic, antiseptic, and anti-inflammatory properties. It makes a good
tonic herb for strengthening the bladder and kidneys. Leaves make a
yummy tea.
Lupinus Polyphyllus ​/ Bigleaf lupine: Attracts native bees, bumble
bees, and other beneficial insects with its nectar and pollen-rich
flowers that bloom from mid-spring into mid-summer. Although the
Thompson band of British Columbia considered it poisonous, they
used it medicinally for themselves and their horses. The Salishan used
it to make tonics and the Kwakiutl ate the roots, fresh or steamed. This
species prefers moist habitats and seasonally wet soils, but will tolerate
seasonal dryness.
Arctostaphylos Uva-ursi / ​Coastal Kinnikinnick:​Can be consumed
either raw or cooked. Although the berries are too dry to eat alone,
several northwest First Nations communities mixed them with fat or
boiled them in soups. In terms of medicinal use, the leaves were infused
and drink it as tonic. This infusion could also be used as mouthwash for
canker sores or weak gums. It was also made into a decoction and
drunk for colds, tuberculosis, and sore eyes. Amongst the Haida, the
leaves were used as a diuretic in kidney diseases and infections of the
urinary passages. This plant is rich in tannin and arbutin and should be
used with caution. Likes part shade or sun, tolerates a variety of soils
but prefers sandy loam, drought tolerant.
Asarum Caudatum ​/ Wild Ginger​: Fresh roots are edible; they can
also be dried, ground and used as a substitute for ginger. Roots have
anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties. The Nuxalk use the root to
make a tea that is then drunk to relieve stomach pains. They also apply
it in poultice form to soothe headaches, intestinal pains and knee
pains.The Sechelt use the leaves to help with arthritic pain; leaves are
crushed, boiled, added to bathwater or rubbed directly on the sore
limb. Tea from the leaves can act as an emetic (induces vomiting) or
it can settle the stomach. Grows in rich lowlands and moist, shaded
forests. Prefers neutral to acid loamy soil.
Cornus Canadensis ​/ Bunchberry ​Berries: Can be eaten raw or
added to puddings, preserves and sauces. The fruits are rich in pectin
which is a capillary tonic, anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic and
hypotensive. Pectin also inhibits carcinogenesis and protects against
radiation. Leaves and stems are medicinal, treating aches and pains,
kidney and lung ailments, coughs, and fevers. The roots have been
used as a cold remedy, and the bark has been used as a laxative.
Easily grown in average, medium moisture, well-drained soils in part
shade.
Fragaria Chiloensis ​/ Coastal Strawberry: ​Produce prolific runners
with closely spaced plants that have extensive root systems and are
important contributors to sand dune binding. Stl’atl’imx girls used to
wear headbands and belts of strawberry runners plaited together in
three or four strands (Turner, 1998). Berries were eaten, but not dried
(too juicy). The Saanich and Mainland Comox made tea from the
leaves. Quileute chewed leaves & applied as a poultice to burns.
Skokomish used the whole plant in a tea for diarrhea. Haida used as
ingredient for female tonic.
Gaulteria Shallon ​/ Salal:​The berries of Salal were used in many
places on the Northwest Coast. Salal was considered one of the most
important and plentiful for indigenous peoples. They were used fresh
or dried into cakes for winter and celebrations. Salal berries used to
be traded and sold to First Nations in the interior British Columbia.
The leafy branches of the shrub were used in pit cooking, and cooked
as a flavoring in fish soup. It prefers to be grown in partial shade
and planted in a rich, well draining, acidic soil. Water regularly and
thoroughly during the dry months.
Lonicera Involucrata / ​Black Twinberry:​Indigenous peoples used the
leaves, bark and twigs for a variety of medicinal purposes. An infusion
of bark was used as a soak for sore feet and legs, as an eyewash,
or in the treatment of coughs. Leaves were chewed and applied to
itchy skin and various sores. Reports on the fruit vary from poisonous,
to mildly toxic, to bitter and unpalatable, to edible and useful as food,
depending on the nation, region or publication. Are found growing
in low to subalpine elevation, throughout BC. Prefer Moist conditions,
clay, sand or loam soil, and partial shade.
Ribes Divaricatum ​/ Wild Gooseberry:​​The berries of Coastal
Black Gooseberry are traditionally eaten fresh and occasionally
cooked, juiced, sauced, or dried into cakes by virtually all Indigenous
people that inhabit the plants range. The inner bark was chewed and
swallowed to treat a sore throat and cold. The bark or roots were
boiled and used as an eyewash, or for sore throats. The Nisqually used
the spines for tattooing using charcoal for colouring. It is sweet and
juicy, though a bit on the acid side, with a “very acceptable flavor.”
Found in open woods, prairies and moist hillsides, zones 4-8. It can
grow in semi-shade (light woodland) or no shade. It prefers moist soil.
Physocarpus Capitatus ​/ Pacific Ninebark:​A member of the Rose
family, Pacific Ninebark grows mostly at low elevations — in open
forests, along creeks, and in damp shrubby places. The wood of Pacific
Ninebark has been used to make small items such as children’s bows
and knitting needles. Some say there are nine layers of bark, leading
to its name. A tea made from the bark has been used as a laxative or
to induce vomiting, but due to toxicity concerns, caution is advised for
any internal use. Prefers moist conditions and is found in coastal and
cedar/hemlock ecosystems’s. Tolerant of sun or shade, so-so soil, and
wet to dry sites.
Osmaronia Cerasiformis / ​Indian Plum:​Were eaten in small
quantities fresh, cooked, or dried by First Nations people. Flavour of
unripe fruit is bitter and astringent, but they become more palatable
when they are fully ripe. Leaves, seeds and even fruit may contain
small quantities of hydrogen cyanide, and should therefore only be
consumed in small quantities. A decoction of the bark of Indian Plum
was used to treat tuberculosis. The Saanich made a bark tea as a
purgative and tonic. Indian Plum has a analgesic quality to it and
the Kwakiutl created a poultice by chewing, and burning the plant
and oil and then applying to sore places. The bark was stripped to
make harpoon hooks and other utility items. Amenable to conditions
both moist and dry, once established it only occasionally needs
supplemental water, and is reputedly pest and disease free.
bizindaadiwag, talking bench
Ryan Gorrie and Suzy Melo
Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2022
Bizindaadiwag, which means “they listen to each other” in
Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), was conceived and created by
artist and architect Ryan Gorrie, a member of Bingwi Neyaashi
Anishinaabek, and landscape architect Suzy Melo.
“Given that Indigenous languages are in danger of disappearing,
it’s important to announce their importance and engage people in
learning and understanding the languages which come from the land
and the place they call home,” Gorrie says. “It’s also important to
provide a variety of places to sit or gather beyond a typical bench …
something that will form part of peoples’ daily lives.”
The work is made up of two benches — one at child-height, one at
adult-height — connected by a zigzag pattern on the ground.
“The zigzag is symbolic of the path of our lives, with each of the seven
points representing a different stage in our lives,” says Debbie Keeper,
interim director at Urban Shaman. “The vertical elements which hold the
audio components represent the spirit. We enter the world as spirit and
leave the world as spirit.”
The audio is in a mix of Anishinaabemowin and English; it quickly
became a key element of the installation, as it provides an opportunity
to engage with Indigenous language in a public space, Gorrie says.
Manidoo Ogitigan or Spirit Garden
Terence Radford, Alderville First Nation, and Community
Thunder Bar, Ontario, 2011
The artwork speaks to the treaty rights and historical occupation of
Alderville First Nation’s territory in Katarokwi/Kingston and has been
developed over three years through engagement with the Alderville
community.
The artwork incorporates the history of important Wampum Belts,
the symbolism of the medicine wheel, with reference to the Alderville
Methodist Church and includes over 430 select native plant species
chosen with guidance from the Alderville Black Oak Savanna. As a
living public artwork, “Manidoo Ogitigan” (“Spirit Garden/Jardin
spirituel”) creates an intimate gathering space for reflection, ceremony,
and teaching in Katarokwi/Kingston along the shore of Lake Ontario.
Tsilhqot’in Cultural Burning
part of a pilot project to develop a traditional fire management
program for Tsilhqot’in lands and the Dasiqox Tribal Park area. The
project — which is being led by the Yunesit’in and Xeni Gwet’in First
Nations, communities within the Tsilhqot’in Nation, with the support
of the Gathering Voices Society — was launched after the 2017
wildfires devastated much of the region and got dangerously close to
communities.
The Tsilhqot’in word for fire translates to “lightening the load off the
land,” an Elder tells the group.
erected in 2013) based on images and archeological evidence
of traditional salmon weirs. Installed on June 1st of each year and
operating until late July, the weir serves to guide fish, swimming
upstream to spawn, into a trap box.
Readings

When Joe Gilchrist, a traditional burning knowledge keeper from the Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. “Land as Pedagogy,” In As We Have Always
Skeetchestn Indian Band in central B.C., was a young boy, he often Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance. University of Minnesota
went hunting with his grandfather. As they hiked side by side up the hill Press, 2017. 145-173.
toward the lake, his grandfather would light fires, explaining to young
Joe that the grassy areas where deer are born should be burned so
they can have fresh food, be free of ticks and see predators before it’s
too late. But on their way down, they would see government firefighters
extinguishing the flames.

“He would say, ‘I wish they would just let it burn. It won’t go anywhere
but up the hill. It’s spring time and will just go out on its own,’ ” Gilchrist
recalls in an interview as part of a First Nations Emergency Services
Society project. “But at that time, it was illegal to burn.”

B.C. became the first province to ban cultural burns with the Bush Fire
Act of 1874 in B.C., with other provinces following suit in the early
1900s. Similar to the Potlatch ban, which the federal government
implemented in 1884, the burning ban aimed to remove ceremony and
assimilate Indigenous Peoples.

In B.C. in the early 1900s, a chief fire warden and fire rangers
suppressed forest fires and spread the messages of fire prevention
by posting notices at trading posts translated into “Indian” languages
— “Cree and Chipewyan” — according to the 1911 Report of the
Superintendent of Forestry. People caught burning were subject to a
$100 fine — the equivalent of about $2,200 today — or three months
in prison.

Cultural burns, on the other hand, are done to fortify the land. Reducing
the risk of wildfires is but one of the benefits of cultural burns, which
aim to promote the growth of medicinal and food plants, such as
mushrooms, berries and wild onions, and maintain the landscape for all
species.

“Activating landscape is also having that right fire so that the seeds
grow and the berries grow and the animals come back,” Steffensen
says in the video. “The whole idea of this is to activate landscapes to
bring it back to life, to connect people back to that and to show that
interrelationship and responsible role that people have inherited over
thousands of years.”

Salmon Fish Trap

Koeye River, Heiltsuk Nation, BC
2013

Fish are naturally guided into the trap box of the Koeye River fish weir,
where they are tagged and then released to continue their spawning
journey.

The weir – which is essentially a series of fence panels that span the
river and that are supported by sturdy tripods – was designed (and