The Contemporary Beautiful

Ken Smith gave a presentation at Dumbarton Oaks on his design for the newly completed Santa Fe Railyard Park. His design transformed the formerly degrade site into play areas for children and quiet areas for relaxing. Drainage ditches were cleaned up to allow the stream to thread its way through shady places, historic rail lines were preserved, and utility poles for light fixtures were cleverly designed as glu-lam posts that concealed the electrical conduit. The surrounding areas are responding with new stores and cafes. I’ve been there, and it projects a sense of place unique to Santa Fe: sunny, rugged and industrious. I asked Smith a question that he and John Beardsley the moderator were unable to answer. Was this park beautiful? I suppose it was a trick question because after looking at a presentation of gorgeous landscape photography, the stage was set for thinking about the park as a picture, or an image of an object. My intent was not to challenge the representation, but to question what can be beautiful in design today, and I wondered if these two imaginative innovators had a thought.

The contemporary beautiful is ecological health. This park design had taken a derelict place and returned it to be a contributing member of a vibrant environment. New graded land forms shaped distinct places within the park, shady plants and trees grew in their naturally-occurring forms, flash-flooding was oriented toward channels that could accommodate the occasional inundation without damage, and people had places to walk, sit and play.

The park was hard to photograph. No single vista beckoned or artificial composition of “features” begged to be captured as a “photographic moment.” My memories are less visual and more recalled feelings of experiencing gradations of light and shade, movement and rest, activity and interesting details. Most think of the beautiful, as opposed to the sublime, following Edmund Burke’s 18^th century definitions. Beautiful objects were to be small, smooth with gentle variation of form, and delicate with soft colors. Smith’s aim was not to create the beautiful using these attributes. Nevertheless, the park was beautiful even according to Burke, because it fit.

Fitness as an aesthetic attribute has been part of design principles - firmitatis, utilitatis, venustatis (strength, utility, grace) - since at least the treatise of Vitruvius in the 1^st century, CE. The underlying foundation for all three principles is fitness. Strength comes from using the right material and method of construction that are appropriate to the site and intended purpose. Utility is often summarized as satisfying a list of operations of which the network of natural processes and human activities must fit together to be sustainable. Grace, the most difficult to interpret, can be reduced to the design’s pleasing and elegant appearance, but it can also be considered to be the design’s full perceptible vitality as a dynamic part integrated into networks of ecological operations. What could be healthier than experiencing a design that is well-made with local materials thoughtfully employed, performs well for all users human and otherwise, and is intellectually and emotionally engaging; what could be more beautiful?     

The Enemy

Designing is a consuming activity. While the scale of the project matters, there’s no correlation between the project size and complexity. Clients and government permit reviewers and inspectors, schedules and costs as well as unforeseen construction conditions all present challenges that make tenacity a desirable attribute of any designer. Proficiency in working with people, program or scopes of work, and project execution is important; the enemy, however, lies elsewhere.

Those who criticize completed projects usually afford themselves blissful indifference to these frequent constraints. Judging the success of a room design, architecture, park or public space, or a new neighborhood seldom takes into account the difficulties of bringing a design idea to physical reality. What is then – and forever – open to judgment is the design’s quality. Protecting your ability to design well maps the contours of a professional life devoted to creativity because design is more than a business. The enemy is whatever compromises your imagination.

Design schools attempt to teach many aspects of design. Programs accept potential students based on portfolio reviews and personal recommendations trying to detect inherent talent and a ‘coachable’ drive for excellence. Students have numerous computer programs to master, technical information to understand, fear of presenting to overcome, juried critiques to survive. They often pride themselves on how little sleep they require knowing that their skill with fancy computer renderings may mask a less than full understanding of their proposal, and hope that a little charm will distract from any lack of clarity when presenting their work. I review students who usually work extremely hard and are thirsty for all the intellectual traction good teachers provide. They want to learn techniques for efficient research, methods for developing designs through increasingly strategic decisions, and persuasive graphic skills that convey their ideas effectively to others. What is often missing in their education is how to lead a creative life.

How can enthusiasm be sustained when a person is chronically exhausted? So get enough sleep. How can a vigorous inquiry be undertaken when a person has no energy because they eat junk food and don’t move their bodies? So eat fruit and vegetables, and exercise. How can you advocate for an immature design proposal just because of a deadline? So manage your time insulating your productivity from anything that distracts. How can you envision the invisible when your spirit is hammered by relentless constraints? So take a walk in a forest, gaze at an ocean or play with a child. Many philosophers, Bertrand Russell’s essay “In Praise of Idleness” is an example, suggest that it is only when designers step out of their normal, busy activities that creative thinking occurs. This does not mean catching up on sleep, email, chores or neglected family. Activities within your control: sufficient rest, beneficial diet and daily exercise along with time spent experiencing invigorating art will produce systemic benefits. The resulting positive feelings extend from your body to your mind to your work. Protect that, and you protect your curiosity and give yourself the opportunity to grow as a designer. Don’t let the enemy be you.

Roman Baths Today

The therapeutic and emotionally uplifting benefit of water is undeniable. Our bodies are 70 percent water, no one can survive long without fresh drinking water, any room with a view of water is valued, and then there’s bathing. Being in water may bring forth deep feelings founded on our first sensation of floating in embryonic fluids. Babies are calmed when fussy or stimulated when lethargic by splashing around in warm baths, and most people in developed countries enjoy daily cleansing and purification rituals.

Preserved ruins of bath complexes in Pompeii and descriptions from Roman times by Pliny the Elder and Vitruvius give us a good idea of their design and cultural significance. Two thousand years ago, Rome had at least one million people living in dense circumstances. Nine major aqueducts extending over 250 miles brought fresh water to the city servicing public fountains and baths, as well as tax-paying private homes. Pools of tepid, hot and cold water, and steam rooms were constructed with great concrete vaults, decorated with mosaics and frescos, and supplied by a network of sophisticated piped systems. The density of Rome would have been impossible without the scale of this water infrastructure, and these baths were a critical part of Rome’s social and business activities.

How do they compare to health clubs today? American ones have lap pools for exercise, sauna and steam rooms, and single or dual gender hot tubs. But the architecture? Mahogany locker doors and brass knobs are supposed to signal luxury, never mind the acoustic tile ceilings, wall-to-wall carpeting and plainly tiled walls. Recessed can lights are a poor substitute for daylight that bounces off water surfaces making dynamic reflections. Always too many mirrors. Most people would make better models for a Rubens painting than a Victoria Secret’s catalogue.

But the friendships come easily there, because, here’s the point: people feel good. Moving in water allows bodies to stretch and tone in a medium that relieves us of gravity. The verbs are flow and float, not force and impact. Bathing is more about feelings of well-being than physical appearances. Romans appreciated the relaxation and enjoyment, and were surely better able to live in close quarters because they felt better. Water has this ability. Nevertheless, it is important to know that there’s a lot to be worried about regarding water. Because it is both so ubiquitous and necessary, we often undervalue its worth and are wasteful. Buildings are just beginning to have dual piped water supplies that separate potable water for drinking, cooking and bathing from recycled water or stored rainwater that are suitable for other activities primarily flushing toilets and irrigating gardens. Regulations must penalize industries that pollute natural waterways, and coastal towns and cities that are periodically threatened or destroyed by storm surges are considering new land use practices. Big consumers – golf courses and outdoor swimming pools – are reducing their needs with better design and operating procedures. Of all the natural resources that man has commodified, water is the most critical. Supporting sustainable practices will insure that we not only have clean drinking water and food, but also that we aren't thirsty for a sense of well-being only provided by immersing our bodies in water.

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.