Jungle Vomit

Gardening requires exuberance. They are full of design possibilities, always evolving and never finished. Understanding soil, exposure, plants and hydrology make them arenas for limitless experimentation following either trial-and-error methods or more scientific research. Garden design – like all design – must confront the question of style. Andrew Jackson Downing, America’s first landscape architect, clarified the British debate about landscape style stemming from Edmund Burke and others who defined the “beautiful” and “sublime.” For Downing, classical gardens were highly geometric and artificial, and therefore inappropriate for rural estates. He advocated for the modern approach of which he distinguished the “beautiful” and “picturesque.”

The Picturesque style was a buildable sublime. It was composed of angular, rough shapes, shadowy nooks, mysterious paths and spiry evergreen trees. It was meant to engage the imagination and arouse sentiments of wonder and awe with its irregular forms. The Beautiful was composed of simple and flowing shapes, smooth surfaces with colors of gradual variation, deciduous trees and elegant ornament. It was meant to satisfy feelings of harmony with its regular forms.

Today, we might say we have the Sustainable style. Landscape programs start by fixing the site’s existing unfortunate circumstances including remediating contaminated soils, restoring altered sub-surface hydrological streams and groundwater systems, and cleaning the air of pollutants. Grading and plant choice can do this, and more. Shade trees support buildings designed to be cooled and heated passively, surfaces of water basins reflect natural daylight deep into floor plates, green roofs slow the initial of impact of storms, and vegetated retention swales absorb and clean urban runoff.  After these repair and mitigating duties, garden design is asked to be uplifting, therapeutic, contemplative and recreational. They sometimes instruct and memorialize. The Sustainable style then, would be composed of water-retaining topography, plants that filter and clean soil and air, and tall trees where shade is needed and short ones where there are power lines. But what is the look of this style? We’ve all seen it and might say it looks like jungle vomit.

True, this evolved style is not seeking pleasing appearances, but sound ecological activity. Nonetheless inspiring stewardship must engage people's emotions so that they care about the environment. People need to not only understand that what they perceive is healthy – this is abstract – but also to appreciate it through their senses – this is physical. Beyond fragrant scents, rustling and murmurings sounds, and appealing materials for the path, bench and handrail where our bodies touch, what we see is important. Static pictures or unfolding scenes, designs appear and this can either be a visual mess or reflect the human need for some order in their relationship with nature. A jumbled collection of plants, no matter how hard working, need some organizing principle that is visible. This might be a unity of materials and forms as repetition is a device that displays design presence. Thus, the Sustainable style can fit the local situation and look like it belongs to the world, as we do.

Sublime Intent

The English language has its limitations. To call something ‘awesome’ is commonplace and usually means we’re impressed, but if we said instead that we were filled with awe, that sentimental expression would be met with perplexity. Designers who seek more than an appreciation for the practical may be motivated to impress others with the novelty of their work. It is one thing to say that their work defies the imagination, but does it prompt wonder in the spectator who wants more of it? What can possibly be wonderful – full of wonder – today when the ability of computer simulation is so advanced that the imitation of reality is nearly indistinguishable from reality itself?

Ancient philosophers starting with Longinus considered the sublime an aesthetic category distinct from the experience of the pleasant or beautiful. In literature, the sublime went beyond appearances and had the ability to elevate thought with noble sentiment. Strong emotion, eloquent diction and figures of speech as well as dignified word arrangement produced an effect that went beyond sensory perception and mental understanding, and entered the imagination. In life, the wonders of nature (in America this first included Niagara Falls, the Natural Bridge in Virginia and Yosemite Valley, and then the Grand Canyon) produced reactions at the very limit of human understanding that are hard to describe and impossible to recreate.

Landscape architectural theory from the 18^th century shifted the unbuildable sublime to the picturesque. That aesthetic category had a vocabulary: evergreen trees, rough angular surfaces, dark shadows, mysterious spaces and unfolding sequences that lead to experiences of surprise and delight that were only slightly and safely terrifying. This contrasted with the beautiful where orderly geometric designs of classical rationality were displayed. The risk, of course, was that the picturesque landscape caused confused and chaotic feelings, while the beautiful garden was subject to determinations of tastefulness, appreciated but predictable, and sometimes boring.

Beethoven spent four years near the end of his life composing a Mass in D major, Opus 123. Known as Missa solemnis, this is a massive musical undertaking. Performing the difficult score requires a full orchestra, large choral ensemble and multiple soloists, and for this reason it is seldom performed. To say that the complexity and volume of sound is astonishing is an understatement. Beethoven is said to have been motivated to outdo even himself in his attempt at the ultimate compositional form meant to awaken and inspire spiritual feelings. The feverish pitch is surmounted time and again, nevertheless the sublime moment occurs in a rare passage where the lead violinist and flutist exchanged a melody; perhaps one representing the Holy Spirit and the other the eternal struggle of mortals. Just as Missa solumnis ends with a plea, “Grant us peace,” the sublime achievement in design may be found less in attempts to overwhelm and impress, and more in the simple experience of a awesome exchange between a person and something that has nothing to do with human intentions sublime or otherwise, such as the peace granted when contemplating an old tree.

Finishing

People prefer starting to finishing. Baptism or funeral, is there a doubt as to which you would rather attend. Yet all of us work on projects that start, develop and must take a final form. Doing well is so difficult that there are people called “closers” who have the rare skill to seal a deal. In running, some distance runners have a “kick” developed by mental and physical training giving them a last burst of energy so they don’t fade before the finish line. For those in the productive arts, time runs out, patience ends, distractions accumulate, and maybe almost finishing is good enough.

Designers in particular struggle with finishing because their work is abstracted from the reality envisioned. Architects, landscape architects and urban designers make drawings, not parks, cities or buildings. Their work represents what will be built, and the competence and completeness of their drawings and models insure a smooth or turbulent construction phase. Designers are people too. They also get frustrated with the design process, with unclear directions from clients, with higher than anticipated costs and unreasonable schedule demands as well as the often conflicting pressures from numerous stakeholders that public projects engage. Then there are the permit reviewers, inspectors and contractors and their requirements – it’s a long list. Young designers require time to develop the patience and fortitude required to finish a complex set of drawings. Experience has this lesson: a sloppy ending has serious consequences. And this lesson also has a more positive side: there is joy in polishing. A well-planned design project allocates time for all phases with sufficient cushion to absorb the unexpected without compromising the final effort and result.

One technique to carry you through is to imagine that this project is your last. What if this work completes your career? What is the benefit of experience if that understanding doesn’t bring you to this point where it is possible for this to be the best work you’ve ever done? And even if it can’t be your best for some reason beyond your control, you can still act as if it is finding the resources to sidestep excuses and finish to your satisfaction. One never knows if the opportunity to do more will present itself. The resources to finish well may depend on accepting this possibility.

A great wine has a “finish.” A smooth, rich and interesting lingering aftertaste confirms the beauty of a satisfactory and enjoyable experience. The taste plays through an entire sequence. Certainly everything we make has a beginning and is completed to some degree, but only the best work finishes well. In design, the great advantage is anticipation. Designers know the general process and can guide the steps. Remembering Vitruvius and his architectural triad – strength, utility and grace – finishing employs these as motives and not just as a way to consider design. The designer too needs mental strength, respect for the usefulness of a well-performing design, and the grace to finish with style.

Thickening (a design)

Take a cup of hot soup stock and add a teaspoon of flour to make a paste, blending well until the flour is absorbed.  Add the paste back into the boiling soup while stirring constantly.  Simmer for a while before adding other ingredients.                                 

Joy of Cooking (1975, 168)

There is a point in the design process when it is time to thicken it. Continuing the cooking metaphor, if the stock represents the raw ideas of a schematic design from which you want to extract and trap every vestige of flavor, than the thickening agent can be thought of as whatever the productive imagination uses to advance and develop the design. Schematic explorations need to be distilled, and doing so concentrates and reinforces whatever is good and gets rid of what doesn’t work well.

There are ways to do this. The strategic selection of building materials for a consistent design vocabulary will unify the various elements. Selecting allows the implications and scales of specific materials to inform design elements. Further, allowing a sense of measure that all materials have means that vague suggestions of forms become precise declarations where materials with exact characteristics fit together. It is time to drop the guiding lines that establish programmatic alignments, orientations and spatial relationships. While these lines show the “why” of design decisions, they are distracting from final drawings meant for building permit review, bidding and construction, in other words, design execution.

For example, thinking through a material such as brick means that the hand-scaled nature of that material implies ways to build with it. All designed objects have planes, edges, corners and openings. Thinking through a particular material tells the designer in what way those aspects of a design may be considered. Building materials have such different characteristics that it is impossible to consider them interchangeably. And their selection can contribute to the design intent through association. Different impressions are perceived when seeing a brick house, or one made of stone, wood or metal. Expressions of permanence or portability, or of containment or release become clear more so than through decisions about size or detailing although these, of course, eventually contribute.

Whichever type of material is chosen to thicken the soup, it is important to remember that invention is not a matter of making something new. Rather, it is acts of separating distinct moments of intention and assigning them physical presence, and of combining these parts into a harmonious composition. This activity depends on capitalizing on many things: the inherent character of each material, the possibilities and limitations of structural systems, as well as geometric form and arrangement. Doing so well is the difference between chicken noodle soup and consommé. As the names reveal, one tells you everything and the other alludes to the alchemical methods of combining specific materials in certain proportions, and simmering to allow time for reactions and for ingredient flavors to intensify. Exploring choices of materials to find your preferred thickening agent leads to naming, and this helps distinguish what kind of soup – or design – you are making.

Music in the Park: Denver's 16th Street Mall

Denver closed a downtown street thirty years ago making a public place for pedestrians called the 16th Street Mall. A free shuttle bus runs in both directions along the seventeen block stretch. At either end, the bus path runs in the Mall’s center with wide sidewalks on either side, and then splits for the middle ten blocks flanking a center island. Like many urban revitalization projects, this street is successful because it attracts people with appreciated amenities. The cafes and stores, offices and hotels are busy. Predictably, the surrounding blocks are not, and that’s where you’ll find the support businesses. You may buy shoes on the Mall, but you get them repaired a few blocks away.

Like all public spaces, this one attracts the homeless, ski bums with dogs and panhandlers. They gather on the benches under the dappled shade of honey locust trees. Food trucks and small kiosks are scattered about and the air is rich with smells and sounds, both good and bad. Clearly a few more public toilets are needed because even a Starbucks on every corner cannot provide this facility adequately. Street musicians stake out their spots, but none seems to be good enough to create much of a disturbance.

Denver gets little rain because the mountains to the west protect them from coastal weather, although if the storm approaches from the south, the city gets dumped with many feet of snow. This kind of weather allowed the Downtown Denver Partnership who manage the Mall to add about a dozen old, upright pianos located on nearly every block as part of a program called Your Keys to the City. Started in 2009, the pianos are kept tuned and repaired, and are painted by local artists. Surprisingly, they do not attract vandalism. On the contrary, people cherish them. On an early morning walk, I saw a young man on his way to work playing with skill as well as a homeless man just fooling around a few blocks away. Both were clearly enjoying the opportunity, not to perform, but to make music. Later in the day, the live music was a welcome contrast to the blaring techno noise blasting from chain restaurants.

This human element in a public place is risky, and urban designers do not often think at this scale. Even highly programmed public places such as New York’s Bryant Park does not provide much opportunity for behavior they can’t control. The pianos of Denver provide an opportunity for self-expression, and it reveals the optimistic character of the place. While a city may be somewhere that anything can happen, trusting the public to behave well points to feelings of trust and positivity. Further, the Mall was made with integral granite curbs and street gutters cut from large pieces of granite. Only a city near mountains can build public projects with such large stones. Made and operated generously contributes to an expansive and engaging sense of place.

"Keep Off" or "Keep Out": Mixed Messages at Rocky Mountain National Park

The life in an alpine tundra is fragile. This land type occurs above the treelimit where trees cannot grow. Trees need the average temperature of the year’s warmest month to be above 50˚F. The word ‘tundra’ is Russian for ‘land without trees.’ Alpine tundra has a very short growing season, but it is long enough to support a complex ecology of wildlife. The trees grow slowly often starting behind sheltering boulders. Once exposed, they twist into what is called a Krummholz, a German word for ‘crooked wood.’ These trees may be several hundred years old, yet they barely stand a foot or two. This tundra goes through nearly a hundred freeze/thaw cycles annually. Because water expands by nine percent when it turns to ice, these dynamic forces split rocks and ice/rubble flows create patterns of debris where fragments eventually settle. Reading this landscape to understand its life and forms is difficult although the National Park Service has done a masterful job of marking paths and overlooks, providing parking and installing instructional plaques.

One such overlook is about one hundred feet away from the parking area. It’s worth the trip because it presents a 270 degree panoramic view of astonishing valleys, meadows, glacial pockets and mountains covered with pole pines (many dead from the Pine Beetle infestation) and aspens with leaves that glow as if illuminated. Signs clearly warn people to stay on the path so as to not injure the adjacent plants that can take decades to recover. In no less than ten minutes, I had to remind three people, of which only one was a child, to stay on the path. The signs said “Keep Off” and perhaps this is just vague enough for people to think its negotiable. After all, the ground looked dry and bleak, just rocks and a few straggly plants. Other parts of the park are under restoration and entire areas adjacent to the path demand that you “Keep Out,” and people do. What’s the difference?

Both are lands that are clearly inhospitable to human occupation, at least according to modern sensibilities. That makes everyone a visitor. Warnings that insist you “Keep Out” give the clear indication that you don’t belong there because park operators are doing something and a visit will have to wait. On the other hand, “Keep Off” seems to be about protecting surfaces that appear tough. What’s the harm if I want a photograph from a slightly different angle? You can’t possibly mean that I can never go someplace I can clearly see is easily accessed. The problem, of course, is that not all landscapes are for people. The National Park Service weighs carefully the paradox of exclusion thus protecting wilderness versus the potential to enhance a sense of stewardship people gain by a limited experience such places. For them to increase restrictions caters to people who only respond to yelling and jeopardizes opportunities for others to listen for whispering.   

Food as Art

The 20th century British philosopher Robin Collingwood made a useful distinction between craft and art. A
well-crafted object and a piece of art possess some of the same traits:  an idea, technical perfection uniting form and material, and a sense of purpose. The difference is in the artist’s approach to the making. Unlike the craftsman, the artist is willing to undertake a process with an uncertain outcome. Like a hunter, the artist can intuitively “tell” the direction and “know” when it is done. The difference is the openness of the target. This is the difference between a cook and a chef, with the ultimate chef being the one who makes pastry.

The aesthetics of pastry involves the complete perception. Pastries have a look, smell, taste, feel and even sound when eaten, thus engaging all the senses. Further, chefs know that something tastes good when it includes tastes that are a little salty, sweet, sour and bitter. The pastry chef’s skill comes from the experience of combining ingredients for flavor and texture, decorating the object for appeal and baking it properly. Experience also allows the chef to understand preparation efficiencies and sequences thereby refining commercial applicability. Unlike other forms of cooking, baking stubbornly resists any effort to adjust the result that falls short of expectations. Endless revisions halt once the chemical reactions are set in motion. While a malformed cake can be disguised under thick layers of frosting, chefs consider such compensating methods unprofessional. Pastry chefs need a particular confidence to commit to making something that has no room for final adjustment.

But is pastry making an art according to Collingwood’s definition? Perfecting a specific type of pastry requires a predictable consistency in technique and result. Experimenting with a new ingredient or procedure through a trial-and-error process is needed before a level of certainty is obtained. Once understood, the recipe wants to be repeatable. Do these factors preclude the result from being considered art?

Architecture has a similar question. Good architects master techniques to investigate the issues of each project from the particularities of a specific site, the client’s programmatic needs, and technical demands for safety and performance to the inventive combination of materials. Nevertheless they can never absolutely predict the experience. Working through drawing and modeling gives them some idea of what to expect, but the projected experience is not guaranteed. The complexity of the art defies complete predictability. The art of architecture depends on the architect's ability to evolve to where the fundamentals of shelter are secure and the intended delight is likely. So too, the complexity of pastry combines nourishment with sure technique and consistent results and the unexpected pleasure of unfolding flavors, subtle sensations and provocative aftertastes. No chef can make someone respond a certain way on demand. Like all artists find, and if anything this is truest for food as art, there is no accounting for taste. Unlike architecture, the final test of pastry is in its disappearance when eaten. Then food as art finds expression in satisfied appreciation, and like fading musical notes, it lasts only as a memory.