Space in landscape design refers to theories about the meaning and

nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

space Space is a three-dimensional continuum containing positions and directions. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions. Modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless ...

as a

volume Volume is a measure of regions in three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch) ...

and as an element of

design A design is the concept or proposal for an object, process, or system. The word ''design'' refers to something that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent, and is sometimes used to refer to the inherent nature of something ...

. The concept of space as the fundamental medium of landscape design grew from debates tied to

modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

contemporary art Contemporary art is a term used to describe the art of today, generally referring to art produced from the 1970s onwards. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a ...

, Asian art and design as seen in the

Japanese garden are traditional gardens whose designs are accompanied by Japanese aesthetics and philosophical ideas, avoid artificial ornamentation, and highlight the natural landscape. Plants and worn, aged materials are generally used by Japanese garden desig ...

, and

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

Europe

Elizabeth K. Meyer cites Claude-Henri Watelet's ''Essay on Gardens'' (1774) as perhaps the first reference to space in garden/architectural theory. Andrew Jackson Downing in 1918 wrote "Space Composition in Architecture", which directly linked

painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

and gardens as arts involved in the creation of space. The origins of modern northern European thought is a German innovation of the 1890s. By the 1920s, Einstein's theories of relativity were replacing Newton's conception of universal space. Practitioners such as Fletcher Steele, James Rose, Garrett Eckbo, and Dan Kiley began to write and design through a vocabulary of lines, volumes, masses and planes in an attempt to replace the prevalent debate, centered around ideas of the formal and informal, with one that would more closely align their field with the

fine art In European academic traditions, fine art (or, fine arts) is made primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from popular art, decorative art or applied art, which also either serve some practical function (such as ...

s. According to Adrian Forty, the term "

" in relation to design was all but meaningless until the 1890s. At that time two schools began to develop. Viennese Gottfried Semper in 1880 developed an

architectural theory Architectural theory is the act of thinking, discussing, and writing about architecture. Architectural theory is taught in all architecture schools and is practiced by the world's leading architects. Some forms that architecture theory takes are t ...

based the idea that the first impulse of

was the enclosure of space. Camillo Sitte extended Semper's ideas to exterior spaces in his ''City Planning According to Artistic Principles'' (1889). Concurrently,

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philology, classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche bec ...

built on ideas from Kant which emphasized the experience of space as a force field generated by human movement and perception.

Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher known for contributions to Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. His work covers a range of topics including metaphysics, art ...

would later contradict both of these schools. In his 1927 ''Being and Time'' and 1951 "Building, Dwelling, Thinking" he claimed that space was neither a construct of the mind nor a given, but was "that for which a room has been made" and was created by the object within a room rather than the room itself. Henri Lefebvre would call all of this into question, linking designers' notions of themselves as space-makers to a subservience to a dominant capitalist mode of production. He felt that the abstract space they had created had destroyed social space through alienation, separation, and a privileging of the eye. James Rose and Garrett Eckbo, colleagues at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

in the 1930s, were the pioneers of a movement which adopted ideas about space from artists such as

Wassily Kandinsky Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky ( – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstract art, abstraction in western art. Born in Moscow, he spent his childhood in ...

, Kurt Schwitters, Naum Gabo and the Russian Constructivists, and from architectural ideas based om Mies van der Rohe's free plan. Seeing gardens as outdoor rooms or sculptures to be walked through, they prioritized movement. In analogy to

and

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

, Rose in particular saw elements of

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

as having architectural volume, not just mass: "In pure landscape, we drop the structural shell and the volume is defined by earth, paving, water and ground cover; foliage, walls, structures and other vertical elements on the sides, and sky, branching and roofing above." Eckbo adopted the grid of columns and thin walls of the free plan to make a statement about the social function of the

garden A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate bot ...

as a place where the individual and the

collective A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an e ...

coincide. By the 1940s, writings about space in landscape design had proliferated. Siegfried Giedion, in his ''Space, Time and Architecture'', reframed the history of architecture as that of the history of space. Ernő Goldfinger wrote several influential articles in ''Architectural Review'' addressing the subconscious effect of the sizes and shapes of spaces. He notes that

perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous syste ...

of space happens in a state of distraction: we are required to move through a landscape in order to fully experience it. Dan Kiley absorbed these writings and built upon the work of Rose and Eckbo, promoting asymmetry over

symmetry Symmetry () in everyday life refers to a sense of harmonious and beautiful proportion and balance. In mathematics, the term has a more precise definition and is usually used to refer to an object that is Invariant (mathematics), invariant und ...

, balance over

hierarchy A hierarchy (from Ancient Greek, Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy ...

, multiple centers, and figure-ground ambiguity.

Minimalism

Minimalist art would have a profound influence on designers of the 1960s such as Peter Walker, Martha Schwartz, and Hideo Sasaki. On the one hand, Sol LeWitt's space-frame sculptures and Carl Andre's floor sculptures of mass-produced objects allowed a re-thinking of the necessity for walls in the formation of

Geometry Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician w ...

, repetition, and changes in ground plane created a "field of making" in which walls and even plantings were questioned as essential elements of landscape. Equally at issue in applied practice was the

on the part of Sasaki that landscape had come to be seen as "open space", a white sheet of paper on which to display

International Style The International Style is a major architectural style and movement that began in western Europe in the 1920s and dominated modern architecture until the 1970s. It is defined by strict adherence to Functionalism (architecture), functional and Fo ...

buildings. This disconnection with the

was especially notable in corporate office parks, and Sasaki and Walker addressed this through an attempt to connect interior and exterior spaces. James Corner considers landscape spatiality to be one of the three things that distinguish the medium of landscape (the others are landscape temporality and landscape materiality). He refers to Gaston Bachelard in emphasizing the role of scale and psychic location, which distinguish the space of landscape from that of

and

: "the immediate immensity of the world from the inner immensity of the imagination, the inner space of the selfJames Corner, "Representation and landscape: drawing and making in the landscape medium" Word & Image 8(July-Sept. 1992) 246.". Augustin Berque analyses landscape space by comparing Newtonian universal space and Cartesian dualistic space, in which there is a distinct separation between subject and object, and Chinese mediumistic space, in which a unity of landscape and environment corresponds to a unity of mind and body. Thus postmodern thought brings together the concepts of space as product of

mind The mind is that which thinks, feels, perceives, imagines, remembers, and wills. It covers the totality of mental phenomena, including both conscious processes, through which an individual is aware of external and internal circumstances ...

, body and

culture Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...

. Rather than being the negative of the objects that occupy it, space can be seen as its own volume with undeniable importance as a design tool. In contemporary design, it is considered a palpable, lived

phenomenon A phenomenon ( phenomena), sometimes spelled phaenomenon, is an observable Event (philosophy), event. The term came into its modern Philosophy, philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be ...

that contributes to our

and

experience Experience refers to Consciousness, conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience i ...

of the world in subtle but often intentional ways.

References

{{reflist Architectural theory Landscape Landscape architecture Environmental design Garden design Psychogeography

Europe

Minimalism

See also

References