The Content of Landscape Form [The Limits of Formalism] 2001

This chapter focuses on ecology, social/historical aspects, and form themselves. The photograph superimposes a rectangular frame upon the landscape, against which are composed the linear rotations or regular bed plantings. In the main office complex, for example, the architect convoluted the perimeter of the building blocks, using courtyards as transition spaces between the landscape of the architecture and the architecture of the landscape. Despite the appreciation and enjoyment of landscapes such as these, problems do result from using pattern-making as the basis for landscape design. The landscape architects rejected the idea of bringing the downtown to the river, and instead convinced the city to bring the river to the downtown. Unlike the San Jose Park, the Louisville scheme occupies a single shoreline. The land, given its history of industrial use, required detoxification and regarding; severed from the urban fabric by freeways and bridge approaches, the design proposed replanting trees as links between the park and the downtown.