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contemporary landscape
The history of contemporary architecture
The first 'modern' landscape designers The American Frederick Law Olmsted is considered to be the father of modern landscape design, completing a series of parks which continue to have a huge influence on landscape designers and architects today. Among these were Central Park in New York City, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York and Boston’s Emerald Necklace park system.
Henry Vincent Hubbard received the earliest degree in Landscape architecture as well as city and regional planning. Hubbard wrote many publications, among which An Introduction to the Study of Landscape Design in 1917 co- written with Theodora Kimball became the primary reference for landscape designers and architects during the early part of the twentieth century through to the 1940’s and became known as the Beaux Arts approach. Central to their theme was that: • Landscape design was to ‘create an effect of pleasure in the eye of the beholder’ • Landscape architecture is a fine art • Landscapes were constructed through the use of axes of provisional paths • Landscapes were either formal or informal and classified as such • Landscape experience was based primarily on a preoccupation with views • Creative adaptions of styles from the past Many landscape designers however, began to see the approach of Hubbard and Kimball as limiting and sometimes ignorant of spatial experience, context and societal conditions.
European landscape designer Pierre-Emile Legrain made a landmark contribution to modern landscape design with his 1924Tachard garden in France. His design posed a classical garden composition as an adaptation reflecting a modern attitude about spatial organization. Although the only garden that Tachard designed, his scheme was original in its deliberately inconclusive use of irregular geometric forms and changes of level, which were designed to create varying tones of green and to emphasise the textures of plants.
The design comprises a series of garden rooms, including an outdoor dining area, in which the impersonal formal style is juxtaposed against playfully off-beat, off-centre motifs. Legrain was unusual among his Modernist contemporaries in his sympathy for and understanding of plants.
The Tachard garden included a spectacular semicircle of red climbing roses that he described as ‘a sacrifice to charm’. Fletcher Steele, an American landscape designer produced an icon of twentieth century landscape design at Naumkeag, Massachusetts in the 1920’s when he designed the Blue Steps. Steele interpreted a classic Renaissance form in a strikingly modern way.
A series of blue painted concrete arches, flanked by double flights of stairs and sweeping Art Deco style railings, climb between the gleaming white trunks of silver birches. The birches contrast beautifully with the symmetry of the architecture. Water cascades through the arches similar to an Italian water staircase.
Form and Function in Contemporary Landscape DesignAs in Modern Landscape Design, it is still important that form follows function. In fact this is an important maxim for contemporary design especially in a home remodel or update. We are essentially bringing outdated space, materials and landscaping into the 21st century. Away from the straight or overly manicured hedges or old uneven brick patios built to only accommodate seating for four and a charcoal grill. Contemporary landscape design has the use of diverse concrete applications and finishes, full grills and bars for complete outdoor entertainment and landscape plantings that don’t require weekly hedging. A Contemporary landscape design can significantly “bring up” the functionality and value of an older home.
Today’s Technology in Your Contemporary Landscape With breakthroughs in concrete as well as the wide range of availability in stone, tile, and stone veneers from around the world, there are a whole range of creative possibilities for bringing a contemporary warm look to the Contemporary landscape garden. Contemporary landscapes still utilize natural materials but with new installation technologies to create beauty, warmth, simplicity and clean finishes.
Plant Materials and design for the Contemporary Landscape Again the theme runs true for updating and simplifying tried and true great design with the best of modern materials. “By designing in bands and blocks of contrasting materials and colors we create a symphony of color year round,” says Jeff Halper with Exterior Worlds. Accents and pops of color are accentuated by beautiful planter bowls or small ornamental trees. As everything grows in a beautiful garden of varying sizes, heights, colors and mysteries for the viewer to experience prevail.
Other uses of space in contemporary designs include: • Outdoor rooms for living. These living areas, in effect, extend the inside out. They also serve to create transition areas that connect indoor and outdoor spaces. In this regard, this style is similar to a Mediterranean landscape design in its use of the outdoor living area for entertainment and use just as the home’s interior.
• Outdoor kitchens. These can be the center of outdoor entertainment. Outdoor kitchens provide a natural gathering place and inspire our primitive yearnings. Their design should complement the homes architecture, selection of materials and weave naturally out into the landscape.
• Luxury swimming pools. When designed from a contemporary viewpoint, luxury swimming pools are anything but the rectangle, ameba or boring tile waterline finishes of the past. Contemporary swimming pools can also be combine with an outdoor water fountain that eliminates building a separate water feature while adding functional, usable art as part of the overall pools function.
One example about the contemporary landscape
His clients brief for him was to create a contemporary, timeless, stylish roof garden for them to enjoy and to entertain their friends. In New York, space is at a premium and it is a treat to have outdoor space to develop. The apartment is in a new-build block and built to the highest of specifications.The challenges he faced were, wind, cold, heat, noise pollution from air conditioning units and other plant, as well as irregular shaped, very small spaces. His clients wanted an outdoor kitchen, a dining area and a lounging area.
The geometry of the building, the space available to us, and the list of requirements led us to a design where each area was individual in design, yet had links to the next area leading on from it. The materials and design lines and lighting helped achieve these links.Philip Nash designed the hard elements of the garden out of corian. This meant that all elements of the kitchen, planters and water features could all merge seamlessly and appear as one. The properties of corian allowed curved bespoke planters to be molded for the lounge terrace. This is the first project to incorporate corian in an outdoor environment. Second only to Philip Nash’s Chelsea 2008 Show garden.
The main feature on the dining terrace is the spectacular glass DNA waterwall. This piece, designed by Philip Nash, incorporates the DNA images of the two clients (graphics created by DNA11) and displays the image between glass within a steel framework, with water running down the front face. This piece, spectacular when lit at night or with the sun rays shining through, is also one of a kind.
