THE

LANGUAGE OF

LANDSCAPE

Anne Whiston Spirn

Photographs by
AlIIle W/,;sroll Spim

Yale University Press

New Haven and Londo n
Copyr ight © 1998 by Anne Wh isto n Spirn.
AJI righ ts reserved.
Th is book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in
any form (beyond that co pyin g permitted by Sectio ns 107 and 108 of the u.s.
Copy right Law and except by rev iewers for the public press), wit hout written
permissio n from the publishers.

Designed by Mary M. Mayer

Sct in Minion type by Amy Stor m

Printed in the United States of America by Thomso n-Shore,l nc.

Library of Congress Catalogu ing-in -Publication Data

Spirn, Anne Whiston , 1947-
The language of landscape I An ne Wh isto n Spirn.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical refere nces and index.
15BN 0-300-07745-9
I. Landscape architecture. 2. Landscape. 3. Landscape assessment.
4. Human ecology. I. Title.
5B472.5685 1998 98- 7487
7 12- dc2 1 e lP

A ca talogue record for thi s book is ava ilable from the British Library.

T he paper in this book mee ts the gu idelines for permanence and durab ility of
the Com mittee on Productio n Guidel in es for Book Longevity of the Council on
Library Resources.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
 Contents

[II/rodt/Clio ll 3

Prologue: Tile YellowlVood and the Forgotten Creek 10

One " NATUR E' S I NF I N ITE B OO K" : T H E L AN G UAGE OF

LAN DSC AP E
,
1 Dwellillg and Tongue: The Ltl1lguage of La ndscape 15
L.1 ndscape Is Language ~ Lan d scape Is Mean ingful and
Expressive (> Landscape Has Co nsequences

2 Survival and Imagination: Reading (Iml Telling the Mc(ltIillgs of Latldscape 27

La ndscape Contested, Celebrated, Recla imed: Slcsv ig and the Dan ish
Heath (> Mea nings: Inherent, Invented , Ambi guo us 0 L.1 ndsca pc
Dialogues: Reading and Respo ndi ng

3 Ar/f,I/ 1elling, Deep Reading: The Literai li re of w lldscnpe 47

The Poetry of Wo rship. Conq uest, and Defense: Mo nt-Sa int -Michel 0
La ndsca pe Sto ri es: Folklore, Myth, Traged y, Comedy. Ep ic, Poetry 0
La ndscape Genres: Of Worship. Me mory. Play, Movcmcnt and Meeting,
Productio n and Waste, Ho me and Comm unity ¢ Art ful Telling, Deep
Read ing: A Lite rature of Lived Life

Two " W ITHOUT FO RM AND VO I D" TO " H EAVE N AND EART H ":
LAN DS C A P E COMPOS ITI ON

4 Is a Palh Like a Noun. Flowing Like a Verb? Elelllellts of Landscape

a"d Language 85
Process: Acti o ns and Pattern s of Events ¢ Mall er: Sensual and
Dynam ic ¢ Fo rm : Shape and Structu re ¢ Perfo rmance Space: Places
of Need and Usc ¢ The Nature of Material, Fo rm, Process, and
Perfor mance: Frank Lloyd Wright's Tali csins

vii
 5 Dyllamic Weavillg, Fabric of Stories: Shaping Landscape COl/text 133
Mountain, Sea. River, Forest: Japan's Deep Context (> Elemental
Landscapes: Tree, River, Cloud, Mounta in, Human , Bird (> Dialogues
in Con text: Place <> Sustaining th e Fabric of Place: Japan

6 Rules of Context: Landscape Grammar 168

Principles of Gram mar: Scale and Tense, Mod ifying and Agreeing,
Order <) Followi ng and Breaking the Rules

Three USING THE LANGUAGE OF LANDSCAPE: PRAGMATICS,

POETICS, AND POLEMICS

7 Shaping: Pragmatics of Landscape Expressioll 191

Creatin g a Frame for Stability and Serendipity: Mamas ¢ Autho rs'
So urces: Reproductio n, Adaptation, Abstraction, Invention <) Thinking,
Building, Carin g <) Weaving a Fabric

8 A Rose Is Rarely Just tl Rose: Poetics of Lalldscape 216

Figures of Speech and Rhetoric: Emphasis, Anomaly, Metaphor,
Paradox, Irony, Address !) Expressive Cont ex t: Eupho ny, Cacophon y,
Mood, Mystery ¢: Magic Kingdoms: Disney's Worlds

9 Polemical Landscapes 240

Remembering, Recreating, Destroying the Past: Berl in ¢ Polemical
D ialogues: Of Nature, History, Function, Art, and Powe r ¢ Transcending
Polemics: Cultivating Paradox

Epiloglle: Reimagillil1g Mill Creek 267

Mill Creek Parks ¢ Mill Creek Art Folk Park and Min i-Golf ¢ The
Urban Forest ¢ The Grove

Notes 273

SOllrces 288
La ndscapes ¢: Landscape Authors ¢: Read ing <1nd TeUing L<1Ildscape:
General References

Acknowledgments 31 1

Index 315

VIII
 8
A Rose Is Rarely Illst a Rose:
Poetics of La1ldscape

Landscape materials. phenomena, and forms arc emp hat ic, paradoxical, analog;_
cal: wind is an exaggerated breeze, water is yielding yel erosi~, roses bloom and
wither, so do humans. A rose is rarely just a rose; it is encrusted wilh meaning ac-
creted through centuries of poetry. painting, gardens, and rituals of everyday li k
And still roses arc mined for fresh meanings by Tl.'formulation. su rprising and
provocati\'c juxtapositions and combinations.
In Western cultures, where \'lOrds have primacy Oller images and olher sym -
bols, figurcs o f sp«'Ch and rh l.'lorical devices such as emp hasis. metaphor, para-
dox, irony. :lddrcss hal'c been codified elaborately, even excessively. in literature
but arc rardy applied to landscape. I The failure to recogni1.t' the pote nt ial figura·
tive power o f landscapl' in its own righ i, not si mply as a backdrop or a frame for
a building. is common. Yet all but a few figures and tro pes, so me of whic h turn Met.lphor and sou rce. University of Virginia.
specifically on wordplay (onomatopoeia ), are present in landscape literat ure.
Thomas Jefferson employed the figurative qualities of landscape masterfully;
later architects have modified and weakened his remarkable vis io n. His design for Rio Shopping Ce nter in Atlanta employs various figures of sl}('ech: hu ndreds of
the Unive rsity of Virgi nia at Charlottesville used two parallel rows of pavilions gilded frogs, larger than life. sit, equally spaced , facing a forty-foot-high geodesic
and colonnades to de fine a central lawn and frame a view to the Blue Mountai ns. globe and a central fountain that wou ld othenvise be insignificant. Here there is
One end was left open, the other closed by a large building, the library, facing the anachorism (a form of anomaly), interrogation (a form of add ress), and, for em-
mountains. Thus Jefferson linked two sources of knowledge: books and natUTe. phasis. placement, exaggeration, and parallelism. The effect is su rreal. Why frogs?
When, in the 189Os, the university's boa rd of visito rs elected to close the open end Why facing the fountain? Schwartz calls the choice of frogs serendipitous; they
of the space wi th a new building by the architect Stanford Whi te, the view to the were one of the least e,;pensive garden ornaments available in Atlanta. 4 But a frog
mountains was blon ed out, and the Lawn became an enclosed space, in ternally is not just a frog; it is a potent symbol, a sign o f fertility in certain cultures, linked
o riented, losing the reference to nature Jefferson had intended and provided. l to wa ter in most. It has a dark meaning, to some Christians, of avarice, a grasping
Some architects have lobbied to remO\·e th e trees from the Lawn so that the build· at wo rldly pleasures.} Was this an ironic message in a place devoted to shopping ~
ings can be seen more clearly, but it is the trees that intensify the experience of the Some years after construction of the Rio Shopping Center, the New York Timts
buildi ngs. ' The contrast of the trees' branching, fracta l form to the crisply Euclid · published a story entitled ~Silence of the Frogs..... It reported that, all over the
can geometry of the architectu re initiates a dialogue: in early morning, in late world, frogs are disappearing, for reasons unknown, though some speculate that
afternoon, low light casts shadows of branches against the smooth round while loss of habitat, environmental poisons, and the thinning ozone layer are causes.
columns- a dialogue between organic and inorganic. romantic and classical, When I think about the Rio courtyard, I am haunted by the silenct· o f the frogs.
metaphor and source. l.a ndscape as language, richl y figurative, attracts meaning beyond that originally
II1tended and foreseen.

FI GURES OF SPEEC H AND RHETORIC Emphmis

landscapes designed by Martha Schwartz are laden with overlapping figures and Placi ng emp hasis on o ne thing requires downplaying the importance of some·
rhetorical devices, provocative and disturbi ng in their eff« t. The cou rt YJ rd of th e th ing else, and this raises questions. Whyclll phasize one thi ng over another? And to

,,' "7

-

1>1~urmnl, framing, p;aralidism,addR'$$: K:o Uura, K)'OIo. J~p;an,
wha t end~ Emphasiswilhout meaning is boring; repe tition without variation may
be<ome monotonous, Ov~ruse of emphasis creates confusion: when o ne building
and landscape after another strives to be bigger, brighter, more ornate, or mol"('
distorted than the ones thaI preceded or that surround it, the result is cacophony,
PLAC EM P.N T.To sct something first or last, as a manor house at the end of a long
avenue of trees, establishes a hier.Jrchy. Planting a grove of Irees atop a hill makes
the hill seem higher. Siting a monument or building o n a moun taintop or hill top
stresses lhe structure's importance (the statue of Christ, the Corcov:ldo, at Rio de
Janeiro, Greek temples, Christian churches on older sacred sites); so does putting
a fountain at the center of a garden o r a piazza at the center of a town. Placing the
St:ltue of Ubert y at thl' entrance to New York Harbor at a time when most immi-
grants arrived there by ship gav~ it far mor~ significan c~ than if it had been erected
in the middle of Central Park, The position of l ouis XIY'sbedroom and the statue
of Apollo along the same central axis at Versailles implies a commonality betwee~
the two, So does the placeme nt of Philadelphia's City Hall and Art Museum at eI-
ther end of a broad tree-lined p:lrkway, thc significant connection between civics
and culture,
FltAM(NG, Framing brackets; it separates from context, focuses attention by
screening undesired or irrelevant views, bydirecting the gaze. Gates, walls, hedges,
,,'
«
and groves of trees may frame objects, scenes, or distant prospects by enclosing
with distinctive color, texture, sound, or scent. l ow, protruding roofs of Japanese
teahouses direct the gaze downward, emking humility; windows in buildings and
arcades at the Alhambra fram e expansive views to distant hills and sky, conveying
,I sense of power. Richard long and James Turrell pia)' upon and within, and Twist
this tradi tion of fram ing: in ~ En gla nd 1967," long placed a freestanding frame of
dark wood in rolling p;tTkland; in his "skyspaces" and at Roden Crater, Turrell
fr.Jmes the sky, isolating shifting light and clouds to focus contemplation.7
COlo'TRA~T, An oasis in the descrt, an island in the sca, a grove on the prairie, a
clearing in the forest-all conlrast with context. The more homogencousand ex-
tensi\'e the context, the more powerful the potential contrast: hot and cool, wet
and dry, light and dark, colored and monotone, open and enclosed, large and
small, loud and soft, rough and smooth, pungent and sweet. Freestanding e1e-,
ments o n a plain become landmarks, e\'en icons: the windmills and hedgerows of
Ho lland, grain elevators on the High Plains, stone pillars at Stonehenge on Salis-
bury Plain, Uluru in Australia's Red Center, Bright, reflective surfaces in land-
scapes with dark, oll('rcast, or misty climates arc mirrors, signs, beacons. Well-wa-
Tered urban landscapes in the arid American Southwest lose impact when too
prevalent , when The line between irrigated and dry is haphazard. In an oasis, less
can be more.
E.....GGEIlATION. fI.'lo unTain is an exaggeration of hill, wind of breeu. The wind's
force is increased when funneled through a small optning-tht Venturi tffl'ct.
Plants bred to exagger.Jte a desired form, color, scent heighten effect, so do "weep-
ing" beeches in arboreta and neon-bright azaleas in suburban yards. Which at-
tri butes arc sclected for exaggeration is significant. Steps o r paving stones far
wider Ihan human gai tmak~ one feel smaller; if the contrast is of superhuman or
extrahuman scale a person may feci insignificant. A person feels more comfort -
able, important, or powerful when a landscape feature is a smaller Ihan normal
scale: the bridge over the pond in Boston's Public Ga rden; Denmark's Legoland, a
combination of miniaturiza tion and exaggeration with diminutive buildings,
landscapes, and towns constructed from linle lego blocks, Exaggeration can also
deceive: steepening a slope creates a sensation of height, forced perspective an il -
lusion of distance, magnifying siu in contrast 10 surroundings, a surreal effect.
"Homage to Ihe Magnolia," a walk in the garden at Sutton Place, an estate ncar
Guildford, England, is a surreal 1;ll1dscape inspired by the painter Magritte.s
There, five ~ mon ster Roman vases" frame and ~ herald " the view to a magnolia tree
" too small and tender .. , to terminate such a lengthy vista." In th~ words of the
walk's designer Geoffrey Jellicoc, "The purpose is 10 disorganise the mind by a de-
liberate incongruit y in the juxtaposition of dispar.Jte objects. preparing it for the
tra nquility of the Nicholson wall," an abstrac t sculpture in a garden room beyond
the walk (see Allrgorybelow ).' Toward the end of his careef, Jellicoc was fasci nated
'"
with the unconscious and ex plored landscape design "the unreasoned fantasia of
the subconscio us, released in all their fun. oddity. and awesomeness. Mln
Exaggeration in rdigious and political landscapes diminishes the individual
and heightens a goo, ruler, hero, country or stale. The \'aSI scale of the gardens at
Versailles-the time it takes to walk from one end to another, Ihe broad a\·enues.
the long staircases. the canal that stretches into the distance-underscores the
power of their builder, Louis XIV. The ~'Iall in WashinglOn, D.C., with long, flat
sheets or water and strelches of lawn, has a breadth, length, and openness that
make gauging distance difficult; it takes much longer to wal k from place to place
than one anticipates. At the Lincoln Memorial, one feels dwarft'<l by the many
steps. the superhuman stat ue, and the high pedestal. Gigantic reprcscmations of
human f... atures emerging rrom ground o r water herald the heroic or monstrous:
the huge head and arm of Titan emerging from the middle of a pool in a fountain
at Versailles: a gateway at the entrance of Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma
formed by a cast of the founder's hands, clasped in prayer. The attri bute chosen
fo r exaggeration is significant. In I~aghdad, two enormous swords cross over an
avenue 10 form a Victory Arch more than 130 feet high, the entr y to a military
parade grou nd; the h:lllds tha t hold the swords, modeled on a cast of Saddam
Hussein's fore;ITI11S with a sword in e3ch fi st, scem to CX"plode OUI of the earth. 11
The roots of landscape hyperbole may lie in phl'noml'na like the awesome
heigh t of the Alps and dangerous force of storms. Frequent use diminishes its
effect. In the seventeenth century. the jl't of water on the Titan fountai n at Ver-
sailles was unusual and dramatic. but higher jets of water now surge up. hundreds
of feet, from lakes all o\'er the world. so commonplace they fail to impress. A
desert town. Fountain Hills. Ari7.ona, boasts Mthe world's tallest fountain. M
01 STOIIT10 N. A twisted or misshapen conditio n has been more fashionable in
some eras than others, chic in sixteenth·cemury Mannerism and in twentieth-
celltury postmooernism, with twisled axes common in buildings and streets. Dis-
torlion seems more disturbing in living things than in buildings, pla7.:ls,or streets,
perhaps because of the association with genetic birlh defects or mutations caused
by radiation or toxic chemicals. In southern Sweden, there is a forest of naturally
deforml'd beech trees (Fllg115 5Y/1'I11im IOrtuosa), their lrunks and branches twisted
and misshapen like the forest trees of Disneyland's Snow White ride. Some of the
beeches, with their sharply bent branches, resemble Japanese calligraphy; o thers
ha\'e curved. drooping branches that spring from the trunk at odd angles. Huge
stones mark the boundary, frame the place in monumental scale. On a summer
e'leni llg the low light, fi ltered through leaves, is reddish·brown. This is a pro-
foundly disturbing place. Sven- lngvar Andersson, who took me there, repor ts tha t
the t rees' deformed condition is ge ne tically determined. Because it is so ra re, the
forest is protected by law. Once, he says, few other trees grew here, and there was
lillie 10 distract from the trees and their bi7.arre forms. Now, ironically, with the
forest protected by law, ot!tl'r trees have appeared, eliminating the unifo rmity of
Using the Languagt of LanJsc:opt
«
SllCcies Ihal made the varie ty of distorted forms el'ell more appa rent. Andersson
first visi ted this place at the age of twenty, and it depressed him greatly for he
could not imagine being able to design a place as powerful as this; but why not
plant a grove of them? l!
A LUTUAT10S, ECJI01SM, ASSONANC E, Arching fountains at Generalife in the Al-
hambra that rl'peat both sound and shape are alli terative. The wind in the poplars
al Abend in Denmark echoes and alludes 10 the sou lid of rushi ng water; this is
echoism. as is the sound of the artificial SCil at North Point PrCSCT\'e in San Diego's
Sea World, ironic since the real sea is jusl bc.'yond, though invisible and inaudible.
Repeating shapes of trees or landforms, as in roofs thai echo trl"Ctops in Murcutt's
Ball House o r mountains al Taliesin Wl'5t and Deliver's Harlequin Plaza, is also
~choism. Ratt ling leaves of bamboo and dry leaves of beech hedges is assonance,
a resemblance or correspondence of sound or shape," providing a kind of rhyme'
between sounds or shapes thai echo, but do no t allude to each olher.
On a walk through Parc de La Villette in Paris a few years ago, I heard birds
in song, but saw o nl y one bird. As I moved forward, the sounds grew louder, and,
:11 a turn in the path, I saw a row of speakers, spaced evl'nly,sct amo ng thl' plants
111 a garden bordl'r, :llld sat down to listen, en tranced, to Ihe wonderful music, a
mix of il\Strumental music and sounds of the world, composcd in what seemed a
ra ndom blend and sequence. The music illcorporated surrounding sounds as if
they were an intl'ntional part of the whole-birdsong, rustling leaves, the rushing
traffic of the /xmlc1'IIrd peripiteriqllc, thl' sound of feet wal kin g o n the bridge over.
head, faraway \'oic('5 and clapping." I continued 10 hear the music as I moved on
(or did I ?), more aware of the tone, rhythm, and orchestration of sounds around
ml', no longer certain whether I was hearing music or just perceiving ambient
sounds in a new way. I was tuned into the sounds of the city and hl'ard an order,
the underlying base tones of traffic, then repetitive and random sounds in oom.
bination, a passing train. conslruction hammers. That was the first time I had cx-
IlCrienced what R. Murray Schafer calls a ~sou ndscape," the characteristic soulld,
frequency, and rhythnls of a place, alJitl'ration, cchoism, assonance. Since that day,
I am more aware how sound shapes conleXI, and sounds became less ephemeral,
more easily recalled.
RllYTllM. Rhylhm is a succession of accented bealS or pulscs, a pattern of sounds,
sights, o r sellsalions, a periodic recutrence o r regular alternation with interval,
1IIell'r, cadence: parallelism, epanaphora, el'anakl'sis. Rhythms emerge o ul of a
contexlual background; they go with or against, in counterpoint. In landscape, the
rhyth m of movement is most visible when documented on fil m or video then
viewed at a faster spl'l'd than normal. In Disneyland, Ihe stroll is the rhyt l;m. in
basketball the dr ibble, thl' ru n, and the jump.
I'A~ALJ..I!USM. P3rallelism repealS a formu la o r structural j)3ttern to create order,
establish 3 rhythm, emphasize a feature tha t departs from the pattern (an anom-
aly ). Trees in an allee or avenue direct attention to a monument at the end, as the
trees along the Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia direct attention to City Hall and
the Art Muscum at either end; when the trees were replaced recently, there was a
controversy over whether species should be varied, for the sake of ecological di-
versity, or whether all the tTl.'t'S should be the same species, for the sake of visual
effect, a conflict between the pragmatic and the rhetorical. In the end, a mixture
of species was planted. Alexander Pope satiri1.oo gardens in which such repetition
is taken to an extreme: MG rove nods at Grove, each Alley has a Brother, I And half
the Platform just reflects the Other."I. The pallern need not be,literally, parallel:
at Na!rum Garden Colony, the many freesta nd ing elliptical hedges of hawthorn
and bee<h revea l the rolling topography, rescuing the scheme from monotony.
The repetition of bright red follies at Pare de La Villelle, all about the same sire
and set on a grid, heightens the differences among the follies. The uniformity o f
parallel colonnades linking the pavilions that flank the Lawn at the University of
Virgillia highligh ts the variations among the pavilions. In the square-shaped Villa
I~otondo in Vicenza, th e repetitive symmetry of identical facades em phasizes each
of the varied landscapes that confront s each loggia: formal garden on one side,
then woodland; o rchard and vineyard; distant fields and floodplain. Though the
plan of the building is frequently reproduced , its landscape context is rarely Placement, framing. p.raUdism. addreu, metonymy: Sc..au~. Franc...
shown. Yet Andrea Palladio, the villa's designer, dtes its landscape context as the
reason for th is unusual four-part symmetry. The building is a foil for Ihe landscape:
landscapes are epanaphora, repeating an element to mark the beginn ing of a
Tht sitt is as pleasant and ai delightful 3sc.an be found; because it is upon a small hill,
scri .. ~ of S<'gments or mOlifs.
of very easy access, ~nd is watered on one sidt by the Bacchiglione, a navigable river;
and on the other it is encompassed with most pleasant risings. which look like a very In epanalepsis an element or combination of clements is stressed through
great thtater, and are all cultivattd, and aoound with most e~cell~nt fruits., and most rl.'petition, such as notes in birdsong, wo rds ill a refrain, or the diverse fountains
e~quisit~ vines: and therefore, as it enjoys from C\'ery pan most beautiful views.,some at the Alhambra and Generalife, each similar in sight and sound-the low bub-
of which are limitcd, $Orne more extended, and others that terminate with the hori· bler, the arc, the wall gusher. Many of the low bubblers are in small courtyards and
zon; then: are loggias made: in all the four fronts. os under porticos in shade, where their soft sound is amplified, their shifting shape
e:lpanding in ripples. Arcs in larger, open courts are transformed by sun into curv-
Ep"N" PItOIlA "N il Ep"N"LI!PSIS. Disney's sates to each land in the Magic Kingdom ing lines of light, their splashing sound bright; gushers spout from terrace walls
repeat to signal a beginning; equidistant road markers announce the beginning of and rush into basins. The visitor moves throu gh the gardens to th ese water re~
a new segment. Bands o f sto ne headers at intervals across a brick sidewalk Ihat frains, va ri ations 011 a theme.
mark the beginning of each segment of pa\'ement provide variety that sets up a
visual and audible rhythm. Progressi\'e passage through a ritual landscape is often Climax mId Autic/imax
signaled by a series of walls, gates, shrines, or signs. At lse, a Sllccession of gates C UM "X. In climax, thl.' " highest or most intense point in an experience or series of

in to nested enclosures marks th e ent.ry to increasingly more sacred domains; pil-
grims may not proceed beyond to the innermost. A million pilgrims a year jour-
ney to Jua~eiro, Brazil, home of a Roman Catholic "hol y mart who died ill 1934,
climbing two miles up a steep hill on the Rua do Hortoa to a huge statue of Padre
Cicero. Concrete statu es along the route mark each Station of the Cross and
prompt a prayer or aCiion; pilgrims tie ribbons and drape flowers around the stat-
ues of Christ, slap or spit at the figu res of Judas and Herod 's soldiers.l~ All of these
events," intl.'nsity and significance increase step by slep. When a canoist runs a
river, toward a waterfall, water flows faster, the rushing roar grows louder, then
cOl11es the climactic drop into crashing wate r. So, too, a view or monument at the
top of an ascending path (the church at Mont-Saint · Michel, the grove on the Hill
of Remembrance in Forest Ceme tery). Ecologists once $.1W a succession in plants'
growing mounting to a "climax" in a sequen ce of stages: from a cut forest a
meadow grows, then woody seedlings of shrubs and trees emerge,sun-Iovillg trees

2!J
grow into shady woodland, which die off, in turn, as forest trees grow higher. The
perception of climax as the ideal of progrcssion was in part a human idea pro·
jected onto landscape.
ANTICU,..U . In anticlimax, there is a fai lure to live up to expectations: when the
end of a journey disappoints, when no water is discovered in a desert waterhole,
when no view and nothing else of significance appears at the end of a long, as-
cending path. The eye.catching ruins atop a distant hill, seen from Sanssoucci (the
palace that lends its name to a grand estate in Potsdam outside Bertin), draw the
eye; up close, afler a long ascent, the climber finds no ruins at all, simply columns
placed artfully akiher, to hide the reservoir that feeds the fountains of the park.
JellicOI.' pre\'ented such a letdown in his design for the long walk at Sutton Place,
whose terminus in an insignificant magnolia is not anticlimactic but provoca·
tively surreal. After nineteenth·century tourists to Niagara Falls complained thaI
~ the Falls fail to astonish," Frederick Law Olmsted was hi red, in 1886, to prepare a
plan to red ress the disappointment. He changed the rhythm and varied the se·
quence of visitors' experience. 11
A/Joml/ly
Landscape that is incongruous is anomalo us; taking something out of time or
place provokes notice and promotes discove ry. To take something oul of context
on purpose can be crucial to invention and humor.
ANAC"~ONIS"', In anachronism, the antique is placed out of time, in a modern
setting, or vice versa. Replicas of gas lamps, benches. railings, and fences from the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, common in American parks of the late
twentieth century prompt questions. Why reproduce the old~ Why not simply
adapt it? Or in\'ent anew, as in Paris and Barcelona, where lamps. benches, and
fences in new parks arc frankly contemporary. as the celebrated Paris M4!tro
entrances o nce were? Battery Park Ciry, a new residential and commercial neigh-
borhood at the tip of Lower Manhallan, combines sieck modern buildings with a
landscape that reflects nineteenth· and early twen tieth.century style. but is sur-
rou nded by the city's crumbling infrastructure: potholes. decaying parks. aging
subways. Perhaps the ubiquitous reproductions in the United States arc expres·
sions of nostalgia for a period when more substantial investments were made in
the urban public realm.
The use of modern materials like plastic, steel, and concrete or of frankly
contemporary styles to reconstruct or interpret historic landscapes is also
anachronistic. Andersson ad vocates such an approach when the purpose is reno·
vation or renewal, but not when it is reco nstruction (which must, by definition,
employ historicall y accura te materials and construction techniques). Rcnovatio n,
he RoeS as guided by an understand ing of the o riginal conception and the elements
that contribu ted to its artistic quality, not a copy, but an artful translation. Free re-
newal, as defined by Andersson. preserves not the form itself, nor even the spirit,
but rather the original's artistic quality, an approach he supports when documen-
tation or funding are inadequate to make reconstruction possible and when too
little of the original is left to support renovation. Bener a new form with a strong
artistic concept than an imitation devoid of the aesthetic qualities that made the
I'
original memorable. His design for Urienborg, Tycho Brahe's observatory and
garden on the island ofVen. between Sweden and Denmark, is a fusion of all three,
reconstruction, renovation. and free renewal. "
I·~OCII~ONISM. World's faiTS and expositions typically display a representatio n of
something in the future as if it exists already. Disney's i!PCOT (Experimental Pro-
totype Community of Tomorrow), intended to ~entertain. inform, and inspire."
was envisioned as a showcase for American industry and research.!O In ~ Futurt'
Wo rld," each exhibit is sponsored by a big corpora tion: ~Wonders of Life" by Met--.
ropolitan Life Insu rance, "The Living Seas" by United 'Ib:hnologies, ~Universe of
Energy" by Exxon, "Horizons" by Ge neral Ele<tric. ~ J ourney into Imagination" by
Kodak, "CommuniCore" by UNISYS, "World of Motion" by Ge neral Motors. All
demonstrate the conviction that environmental and social problems can be
resolved by technology. In Kr:lft Foods'''The Land," a film titled Symbiosis praises
" working in harmony with natu re and listening to the land,"implying that pollu-
tion has been overcome. The film ends with a lone farmer, hands in back pockets,
staring across a field of grain, as if the family farmer is still ali\'C and well, but then
the camera pulls up to show development nearby. Since the category ~farmer" has
now been dropped from the U.S. census, this scene is deeply ironic. The landscape
and buildings at !!PCOT recall those of the 1939 New York World's Fair.
This is yesterday's tomorrow, an anachronism whose landscape. with its swirling
bands of brilliant blooms. is meant to reassu re the visitor that the future will be a
happy place.
A NACJlOIIISM. An anachorism is a foreign dement. something out of place rather
than out of time. Exot.ic plants transported in the late nineteenth century from the
outpoSIS of the British Em pire to the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew are anacho-
risms, so are the pastoral parks and gardens with green lawns and groves exported
from Britain to Australia, India, Africa, and, today, to the American Southwest.
AS"STllOPIIII. Anastrophe is an inversion of the normal or expected order for em-
phasis, or humor, or priority. Thus, casts of human legs, upside down, st.ick up out
of the pavement in SITE'S plaza outside the railroad station in Yokohama, Japan.
The sponsor. the Isuzu Corporation. wanted the pl;na to feature their cars and
all ude to their work in high technology for outer space. Inspired by pho tographs
of astronauts floating upside down in space capsules, SIT!! designed an inverted
plaza with upside-down cars and legs cast from citizens of Yoko hama. A field of
Texas bluebonnets, the state flower, hangs upside down (rom the ceiling of Austin's
airport, waving in Ihe breezes of the ventilation system. "The Hanging Texas Blue.
Pwlics of lA"dsc,,~

Metaphor alld simile: Harlequi ll Plaza. Colorado.
bonnet Field" is part of a larger comm issio n of hedge TOWS, windbreaks. and allm
designed by Martha Schwartz to lead travelers from the ai rport's parking lOIS and
roads to the entry.
Melllphor
Metaphor involves a transfer of meaning from one th ing or phenomenon to an-
other, an Uimagina tive, o ften unexpec ted, com parison between basically d issimi-
lar things.~ll Seen broadly, ~all figures o f speech that achieve their affect through
associa tion, comparison, and rescmblance~; seen more narrowly, Ua figure of
speech that concisely compa les two thin gs by saying tha t one is the other.~ 12 Is the
distinClion between simile Ind metaphor relevant in landsca pe? Wh at would
landscape examples be of simi/I.', a direct comparison , and metllpllOr, a condensed
simile? Is it a ma iler of how literal the co mparison~ Is the gra vel at Ryoanji, raked
in wavy lines to look like water, a simile ~ Is Astroturf a simile for grass ~ Are ruins
as memento mori, a reminder of human mortality, or Patio de la Reja, as the hy-
drologic cycle, met aphors~ And is a me taphor the same as representa t io n ~ Ryoanji
and Harlequin Plaza, in an office park outside Denver, represent landsca pe, are
they similes or metaphors? Mirro r-clad pyram ids at Harlequin Plaza ccho th e
form of Rocky Mountain peaks, the checkerboard paving echoes the midwestern
grid. What transfer o f meaning is here, a ~fanciful or unrealistic comparison"?
Harlequin Plaza was o nce high ly controversial, rega rd ed by many as a polemical
,,.
landscape that asserted the autho rit y of art, flJunted concerns for funClion, and
failed to respond appropriatel y to its context. 8U1 the desig ner George Hargrea\'es
took elements of the office park's "a nypl ace~ charach.'r and used them inventh'ely,
calling attention to the distant mountains and highlighting the unsettling charaCler
of th e new development. The pla1.a is a metaphor that can be read on severalle\·els.
Tree of life, tree of knowledge, tree as man or woma n -are all metaphor o r
are they simile? At the hea rt of th e campus at Arhus University in Denmark, oaks,
long-lived t rees of stro ng wood and native to Denmark, are a symbol of the na-
tion. Here are multiple metaphorical dimensions. The landsca pe arc hitect C. Th.
Sorensen proposed planting acorns instead of larger trees at th e university, sym-
bolic. in economic terms, of construction beginning just after the Depression and
during the German Occupation. Sorensen said, "When my newborn dau ghter
Sonja is eighteen, she will walk under the oak trees"; and she did.» The oak tree
has become the symbol of the univt rsity; a large ceramic relid of an oak, Till! Trte ...
of IVlow/ei/ge, hangs at the main entrance, the only explicit refe rence to th e land-
sca pe's metapho rical mea ni ng.
SYNI!C DOCIt P'. A part that sta nds for the whole, a synecdoche, is often a land mark,
a clue that points to an enti re landscape, city, or nation: Half Dome fo r Yosemite,
Eiffel Tower for Paris, Empi re State Huild ing for New York, the Mall in Washi ng-
ton, D.C., for the nation. The fountains built by American cities at the end of the
~l ineteenth century, like Bethesda Fountain in New York's u ntral Park, symbol-
Ized and celebrated new public water systems. The name Bethesda alludes to the
pool in Jerusalem where an infirm person "was made whole of wha!SOC\'er disease
he had ,~ making explicit an implicit link between water and health.24 Today's
wi ndmill fields and powerlines, parIS of th e networks of power on which modern
culture depends so heavil y. render tha t network visible.
MI!TONYMY. When an attribu te of a person or thing sta nds fo r the thillg itself, it is
a Ille tonymy. As a chi ld, I thought the Iron Curtain was an actual metal drape
drawn across the landscape of Europe. casting a long, dark shadow. For many
people the Berlin Wa ll came 10 re-prese nt just such an idea. Buckingham Palace
and WeSiminster stand for thc 8rit ish monarchy and parliamen t, much as the-
Wh ite House stands for the presidency and Lafayeue Park and th e Ellipse are now
k~own as President's Park, or as the Hill represents Congress. A NC'W England
Village green stands for th e town; Disneyland's fairy castle fo r Fantasyland, Main
Street for the midwestern smalliown. Landscapes have o ften been seen as repre-
senting the people who occupy theill. In th e ea rl y twentieth centur y, the Prairie
Style of land scape and architect u ral design celebrated "th e prairie spirit" where
prairie plants and landscape stood for"na tive beauty," and the " independence and
progressiveness of the pioneer" who settled the prai rie.25
Ho uses and gardens built to represent their owners are employed by art and
literature, as well. In Jane Austen's Pride alld Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet dates her
i>Mlirs of l.mtllsmpt "7
 love for Mr. Darcy from her fi rst view of his estate: "P.:mberlcy House I"as a large,
handsome stone building, stand ing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge
of bigh woody hills; and in front. a stream of somc natural importance was
sw"U"d intO greater, but without any artificial appea ran ce. Its banks wer" l1"ither
formal nor falsely adorned. Shc had never seen a place for which nature had don"
more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward
tastt'."!6 ~A man's home is his castl"" was a sixtet'nth-century English rderence to
Roman law.1i Such ninetC\'nth-century landscape designers and authors as J, C.
Loudon in England and Andrew Jackson Downing in the Uni ted States advised
how a middle-class villa garden could be landscaped in the style of an eighteenth-
century English estate. l 8 There is a direct link between tht' dt'sign of such English
estates, with house and garde n standing for owner and rustic collage for rural
ideal, and the design of American suburban grou nds as pastoral miniestatt's. Is the
separation orthe workplac" and the home that is dic tated by mod"rn zoning an
extension of tht' idea of Everyman's home as his/her "castle"?
Pf.ItSONIFICATION. Personificat ion, id"ntifying the nonhuman with the human (3
tree is like 3 man, but not the r"verse), abounds in popular culture: th" Old Man
of the Mountain in a rocky cliff, the willows that weep in ct'meteries, the ravages
of fires, floods, and earthquakes as Mother Nature's rev"nge. [n gardens, allusions
to classical literature ar" personified in sculpture: at Vaux-lc- Vicom te, two statues
overlook the central canal, the god of the Anqueil, the local river, and the god of
the Tiber. Are we, thereby, invited to compare Vaux with the great Italian gardens
or France under Louis XIV with the Roman Empire? It was the god of the Tiber
who foretold the founding of Rome and reassured Aeneas of his future victory. At
Stourhead, the statue of tht' god ofth" Tiber is an explicit reference to this passage
from the Arneitl.:!'I
EUPtlHMISM. A landscape euphemism dresses up nasty things or things people
pref.'r not to confront, the dress o r screen standing for the th ing screenC'<!, for
examplt', garbage bins and s"rvice areas around large office buildings behind a
green screen of shrubs or tr"es. A planted island ill an intersection in Rive r Oaks,
a wealthy Houston suburb, a ~designer" pump station that pumps sewagt' to a
treatme nt plant rather than dumping it into Houston's Buffalo Bayou, a pudgy
putto holding a basin on his head, drapery concealing his groin. Resort landscapes
arc euphemisms designed for play, with no signs of work save by those who wait
o n those who play. What a society chooses to screen in euphemism is a clue to its
values and its anxieties.
CoNCEIT. Schwartz's Splice Garden, on the roof of the Wh itehead Institute in Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts, relating th" act of gene-splicing to the juxtaposition of
French and Japanese ga rden styles, is a conc"il: th" relating of two quit" dissimilar
things ~ the plants representing living things, tht' inorganic plastic material stand-
ing for artificiality. The Splice Garden can be read as an allegory, as wdl, for the
Using the Language of Land5Ca~
228
plastic cannot reproduce itself; after ten years it is fadC'<! and brittle, esscntiallydead.
ALLEGO RY. An allego ry is an t'xtended metaphor, a story that can be read on more
than one le\'el, whose purpose is to enlighten and instruct. Males hav" been built
as allegorical objects of amusemen t and means of rt'ligiolls experience. The maze
at the Shaker settlement in New Harmony, Indiana, was described in ISn as ~a
most elegant flower garden with variQlI.1 hedgerows d isposed in such a manner as
to pUlllt' people to ge t into the lillie t ~m ple , emblematical of Harmony, in the
middle. The Labyrinth rep resents the difficulty of arriving at Harmony." .10 Paral-
lels ha ve been drawn betwC\'n the male and life's haza rds: ~ The world's a lab'rinth,
whose enfractious ways arc all compos'd of rubs and crooked meanders.".!l
The landscape of Sutton Place, designed by Jellicac, is an elaborate allegory
of"Creation (the lake landscap")' Lift' (t he gard"ns), and Aspiration (the Nichol-
son V'/all ) ... and like all allegories, is intended to lift the spirit for a brief period,
Ollt of the present.".!l The lake, in a shape suggestive o f a fi sh, waS conceived as the
beginning of the allegory, with three hilts rt'presenting fath"r, mother, and child.
Around the house arc a kitch"n garden, a swimming pool garden, a wild gardt'n,
a surrealist garden, a paradise garden. To reach the paradise garden from the
house, on" must cross a moat with lily pads o n st"pping-stones, for, says jellicoe,
"the allegory is that you must have a hazardous journey if you arc to reach" par-
adise." The secret garden, "the heart of the allegory," was inspired by Midsummer
Nigll t, a painting in the cli"nt's coll"ction by Atkinson Grimshaw (1876), of a fair y
and woodland. The Nicholson Wall, thirty-two feet long, sixteen fed high, is a
carved abstr:lCt relief sculpture of white ImlrbJc by Ikn Nicholson that stands at
the end of a dark reflecting pool in a garden room framed by hedges.
CLlCllt. As twistt'd axes and fragmented spaces became fashionable in post mod -
ern l:uldscapes and buildings they lost their original bite and became cliches. As
symbols of rebellion against modernism and as commentary on the fragmenta-
tion and chaos of contemporary lift', they were metaphors whose power was
eroded through overuse. A concrete path rolled up at the end like a carpet is a pun;
seen mort' than once, it is a clicht', the standard fat" of obvious puns, which lose
im pact and become annoying wi th repetition. However, when Peter Walker and
Ma rtha Schwartz used Astroturf to clad sloping planes of plywood, al ludi ng to Le
N6 tre's inclined planes o f clipped grass, and in the context o f other, similar allu-
sio ns, in their roof garden in Boston, they reclaimed the lost meaning through re-
fo rmulation and novel use.
Pflflldoxll/ullrol1Y
Paradox and irony, th., ont' cOlllradictory ret true, the other an incongruity be-
tween what is and what seems to be ~ expected and ac tual, expressed and in-
te nded ~ are closely related and often combined. Both arc d ualisms, but irony
cont rasts surface meaning and underlying reality, Denver's Rocky Mountain
Poerirs of L",dsmp~ "9
AI"Sl.·nal is both: a toxi c dump. contaminated by nerve gas and abandoned. yet a
wildlife refuge rich with a diversit y of plants a nd animals.}<
Denmark in Jun e: blue sky. no clouds. clear ai r. bright sun, white light, cool
br~ze. cool air, hot sk in ~ KOn7.3 Prairie, Kansas, in October: how soft the hills look
to lie in, light rellow grass stems softly curving; close up, sharp limestone chips on
the ground, grass stiff and prickl y. Both arc paradox. So is water, both solid and
gas, visible and invisible; so, too. are built landscapes, like parks or planted
prairies, th at are comm onl y seen to be naturally occurring, while natural mead-
ows o n vaca nt urban lo ts, unplanted and untend ed, are pe rceived as artificial.
Both, in fact. are natural and both are constru cted. The fulse idea o f natural as ex-
cluding the human ca uses this error. Every landscape is in herentl y paradoxical, a
fusio n o f the managed and th e wild.
Japan is a landscape of paradox. Violence and repose, discord and harmony,
excess and economy, com plex and simple, hidden and revcaled. large and small.
ex traordi nary and ever yday, enduring and ephemeral, traditional and new. Juxta·
posed, each co nt rast prompts contradiction and confusion; fused, they have rare
dept h and reso nance, the simultaneous presence of co ntradictory qualities that
enhan ce the experience of eac h. Japanese gardens are especially renowned for this
phenomenon, but it is present, too, in villages and shrines of traditional charac- I'uadox. o><ynloron, roner;!: Splice Garden. Cambridg... Massachu~ns. (A lan Ward )
ter. Today, the fusion is d isappearing, while juxtaposition remains, the conse·
qu ence of a growing sense of unresolved contradiction and cultural confusion.
pose of a roof is to shed it. Rich ard Long's circles of rocks and branches seem to
ANTI"'I ~SIS AN I) OXYMORON. An tithesis opposes antithetical elements by placing deny the cirde's structure; circular in shape and chaot ic in structure. they are oxy-
them in a balanced , parallel stru cture; oxymoron fuSt'S contrad ictory elemenls in morons. The disintegrated grid of the woods al Chantilly owes ils magical q uality
a si ngle expression. It is easier fo r opposed elements to make each more striki ng to the fusion of planted grid, chaotic regeneration, and rando m dispersal of seed.
and mo re significant. th e juxtaposition of clipped and uninhibited growing like The curving line of poplar lrees along the ri w r Rance in Dinan in north-
the thr~ parallel rows of lindens framing an interior ring of freel y growing ho rse western France is bolh antithesis in th e contrast of arc and meander and oxy-
chestnuts in Ihe Place des Vosges in Paris. or the branches of elms at th e center of moron in the paradox of chaotic growth of tret'S planted in a precise arc. These are
Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen encircled by rigid, stubby twigs o f cli pped elms. among the oldest devices in garden desig n, as Antho ny Hecht reminds us in "The
A view of a city skyline seen agai nst a leafy foregro und is also antithesis: Boston Gardens of the Villa d 'Esle."JS E\'en an unbuih landscape. like inert rock formed
from Mo unt Auburn Cemetery; Philadelphia from Belmont Plateau in Fairmount by flowing minerals, can be so read. Alexander Pope criticized gardens for lacking
Park; Ho uston from Buffalo Bayou. such cont rast: ~No pleasing Int r icacies in tervene. I No artful Wilderness to per-
Stone seems th e antithesis of decay, but fossiliferous limestone, composed of plex the Scene."J6 If ever strictly true or nOI, il is no longer so, fo r wilh few armies
plant and anima l remains, is an oxymoron. Vizcaya, an estate near Miami, Flo rid a, of ga rdeners to dip, pluck, plant , and mow. even Versailles now has its wild, vege-
is surround ed by dense, subtropi cal foresi . Its house, terraces, steps, ra ilings, and tative rui ns.
pa ths are built of limestone that teems with fossils. anim al and vegetable, indud- Community gardens in the Mill Creek floodplain are both paradoxical and
ing large corals, resembling slices of brain. The ga rd en ai r is full of the d ank smell ironic: they stem from lack of u se and also fro m prese rvatio n, from dosed op-
of rotted organic ma iler. Schwar lz's Splice Ga rden em ploys both an tithesis and portunities fo r investment and from new reconstruction. The successional mead-
oxy moron: Japanese and French garden motifs are juxlaposed; all the plants are ows on vacan t lots -both nuisance and reso urce-arc also paradox. To be ap-
plastic. A plastic flower is an oxymoron, a condensed paradox th at owes its effec· preciated as a reso urce, the pa radox must be seen: the meadow must show signs
tiveness to synthesis, not juxla l)()sition, of contrasts; so is a roof garden, for gar- of use, of care, for example, through a ca refull y designed and mai mained edge or
dens embody a sense of grounded ness and a garden absorbs water while the pur- fence , a frame of care that helps viewers perceive beauty.

Usi ng I~ l..'01l gU~gC of l..imd SCllp"

'"
..
 ANT1 ~ItRASIS. In antiphrasis, a material or form is used in a manner contrary to
the expected, the expression contrasting sharply with what is mean!. Schwa rtz
employed this form of irony in he r proposal for a New Yo rk City roof garden.n lt
looks like any other garden until its 897 daffodils bloom in spring, their bold yel-
low spelling IGNO R.... NCE before they fade, leaving green, then brown leaves. In
summer, purple Greek anemones spell EVIL, in early fall, Peruvian lilies emerge as
orange MONI!Y, followed by IIUSS in blazing red amaryllis. Flowers are used in-
congruously to challenge their commo n association with purity, beauty, and love.
I.tTOTII5. A litotes is an affirmation of something through understatement,
through the negative of its opposite (e.g., she is no fool). The opposite of hype r·
bole, it is an iro nic understatement of the negative of its o pposite: ~Less is m ore.~
said Mil'S van der Rohe; "less is a bore," declared Robert Ventu ri. His firm's design
for Franklin Cou rt , on the site of Benjamin Franklin's house and print shop in
Philadelphia's Independence Park, is not a mere replica; a white steel frame out ·
lines the house that was once there, another the print shop. Franklin Court is a
liloles, the understate ment in the "ghost" struct ure, the white steel fram e that out-
lines the house that was once there, the irony in incongruity within a historic dis·
trict, the mocking of mo re literal historic rc<onstruction. tro ny: tyl leway to Newporl CooSI. Or~nge County. California.
MBIOSIS. Meiosis is an understatement tha t belittles by using materials or form s
~ that make some thing seem less significan t than it really is or ought to be.
H
Irony can also be in the eye of the beholder, un rema rkable to some, ironical
Schwa rtz's experiments with materials normally not associated with gardens, not 10 others. To me sout hern California is steeped in irony and paradox: a paradise
only plastic flowcrs and Astroturf, but Plexigla"", wire gla"". colored aquarium wi th perfect climate, iridescent sky, ocean beaches. snow-capped mountains, free-
gravel, chicken wire, fish netting, and bagels, have been read by some as meiosis, dom of movement across a regio n laced wi th freeways, but an apparently idyllic
as attempts to belittle. to undermine the meanings of gardens. T he cover of lam/· landscape subject to violent ruptures of earthquake, wildfire, mudslide, riot. The
$Capt "'chittell/re magazi ne for January 1980, which featured a pho tograph of outsider there sees the fu ture as predictable and inevitable, homes destroyed on
Schwartz's Bagel Ga rden. provoked an immediate, and vi rulent. reaction; letters unstable hillsides or fault lines; the insider igno res the dan ger o r assumes it won't
to the editor filled pages of the magazine for many mo nths wi th protests. Some happen to them. The population of Orange Count y has ge nerally opposed gov~
landscape architects suspected she was poking fun at Ihem, not at the garden it- ernmental interference and control, yet neighborhood codes in Irvine limit what
self. T he Bagel Garden had low boxwood hedges in two squares, o ne inside the colo r owners can pain t their ho uses. The triumphal arches on either side of a pub-
other, wi th purple flowers in the center, and ninety-six weatherproofed bagels sit- lic roadway to gated communities a re an irony, so is Fo rt Pendleton, a de facio na-
ting on a square strip of purple gravel. Schwartz said she was taken aback by the ture prCSCT\'C where soldiers learn means of destruction.
reaction: "Why are you all takin g this so seriously? I was just ha ving fun." The
Bagel Ga rden (and much of her other work) employs rhetorical devices familiar Address
to twentieth-century art-collage, Dada, Pop Art - long since no surprise to the At Disneyland, a visitor is addressed by a statue of Disney, himself, hand in hand
art ",!orld, but an outrage to some lovers of gardens. wi th Micke y Mouse: MI thi nk most of all what I want Disneyland to be is a happy
DR O\Mo\TIC IRONY. In dramatic irony'S double vision of the futu re observers see
place ... where parents and children can have fun , together." Address announces,
what's coming, actors arc blind to it. Overviews of a maze where viewers watch appeals, or prays to someone or somet hing not presenl or unable to answer; a
Olhers wandering and can anticipate the dead end the wanderers will reach or place, an idea, a supernatural being, a dead person. Laying flowers on a grave ad-
their successful emergence, these are a form of dramatic irony. So are tricks in gar- dresses the dead, while the dead address the living throu gh gravestones.
dens where wate r shoots out unexpectedly, drenching the passerby, while others A~OSTROP II H. Sharp turns in paths of Japanese and Chinese ga rdens, an interrup-
watch knowingly. tion for effect, focu s attent ion on a view, increase awareness of the process of

'J' Using lilt Language of Landscape 'JJ


Addrcss. Mariebjerg Cemetery.lXnm ark.
walking, arc apostrophes, whose original meaning from the Greek is Uturning
away." At the Vale of the Whi te Horse in southwestern England the ho rse's o ulline,
scraped into the chalk y bedrock, faces the sky above not the valley below (most
photographs of this monument arc taken fro m the air, a view unattainable by
those who first traced its outline thousands of years ago ). Shrines wit h lit candles
and offerings in churches and at roadside shrines address Mary. At Ise, coin box
and rope arc a shrine to the winds: th row coin into box, pull gong, bow twice, clap
twice, bow, and back away. Trees withi n Japanese temple precincts covered with
twisted paper and wooden plaques tied to branches are pleas for help in passing
unive rsity e)l:ams or for the health of a child.
Al'OSJOPESIS. In aposiopesis a statement or address is broken off, to be completed
in the imagination: an eroded cliff whose former outline can be visualized: a path
or line with continuatio n implied; a path to the edge of a cliff o r to a prospect
whose continuatio n is the view, an incomplete circle to be completed by viewe r.
House and churches were moved and graves disinterred before the Quabbin Val-
ley in central Massachusetts was nooded in 1928 to create the Quabbi n reservoir:
the roads remain, leading hikers through the woods of the Quabbin Reserva tion
past old stone walls overgrown to the lake's edge, where one continues in imagi-
nation o n a road leading under water, past former farms and homes, to old towns.
The frame o utlining the former silhouette of Benjamin Franklin's ho use at
Franklin Court in Philadelphia, not a reconstruc tion, is an aposiopesis, in this
Using the Language of landscape
=
case, less is more, and in no way a bore. Andersson's design for Urienborg, Tyeho
Brahe's garden on an island bt'tween Sweden and Denmark, is also aposiopesis.
The original formal ga rden had a four-part symmetry, and Andersson chose to re-
construct one quarter only. It is deliberately incomplete, suggestive rather than ex-
haustive. An invitation to imagine.
EXCI.A~' ATlON AND INTERROGATION. On New Year's Eve of 1903, when Isabella Stew-
art Gardner welcollled her first guests to Fenway Court, a version of a Vrnrtian
palazzo (built with architrctural details transported from Italy to Boston ), they
were enchanted by the garden within the house. There is no sign of it from the en-
trance or through the dark, narrow vestibulr: the visitor emerges into a covered
courtyard gardrn, three storys high, filled wi th light and the brilliant color and
scent of nowers year round. T his is exclamation, a strong statement standing OUI
from its context. When designers say a building or garden makes a statement, tliey,
usually mean it embodies an exclamation. Interrogation resembles it, something
unexpec ted but one prompting a question (m, an anomaly, a path that ends in a
wal1, an unexpected juxtaposition like the golden frogs at the Rio Shopping Cen-
ter or the huge vases in Sutton Place.
EXPRESSIVE CONTEXT: E U PH ONY, CACOP HONY, MOO D, MYSTERY
If personification attribu tes feelings, thoughts, intentions to the nonhuman
world, expressive context attri butes the abili ty to evoke or amplify human feeling
to landscape fratures and phenome na. Life-threatrning events, such as wildfire,
flood, hurricanes, and tornadoes seem to dici t similar feelings from people of
different times and cultures. Sunlight and darkness, heat and cold, evoke common
responses that vary fro m culture to culture and wit hin a culture. But do land-
scapes embody gloom, mystery, confusion, calm ~ Or do the y merely receive pro-
jected humans feelings r Authors and artists usc landscape to signify or reinfo rce
mood: many stories, written and painted, portray a dark pine forest, a sunny
meadow, or a "looming" mountain to establish an atmosphere of gloom, cheer,
fear. Poussin, Claude, and many other paintrrs depict Aeneas meeting Dido in the
cave as a thunderstorm pours rain and hail; ~boomingsea" and Uhowling" treetops
are a stormy setting fo r the turning point in Yukio Mishima's Somld of tile Waves.
A scnse of melancholy or pathos, influenced by English poet-philosophers
and their landscape gardens, fashionable in early ninrtrent h-century United
States, was cultivated in that century in new "ru ral" cemeteries like Mount Auburn
near Boston. Mount Auburn's designers sought to evoke sadness and promote
reflection through uwinding paths leading from sunny lawns through areas of
cool dark woods, ... dark and reflrctive water bodies, flowing streams, material
evidence of the ravages of nature such as blasted tree trunks or of deciduo us
plants disp laying nature's cycle of symbolic seasons, and vistas of great distance,
height, or depths."-'4 Many nineteenth-century cemrteries seem maudlin today.
Poetics of l.m"fullp<"
'"
 In I.'uphony landscape paHerns arl.' perceived as harmonious, in cacophony
as dis.;:ordant. At Paley Park, a narrow park on East SJrd StrC'Ct in New York,;! water-
fall masks the cacophonous traffic noise on the street. The Villa d 'Este in Tivoli
and the Villa Lame in Uagnaia. both in Italy, employ water for cuphonious effect.
jellicoe describes how, inspirl.'d by the Villas d 'Este and Lante, he <lcsigned four
cascades for the garden at Shute House in England meant to create a harmonic
watl.'T chord as thc water mows dow nstTl.'am through succcssive cascadl.'s striking
trl.'bles, al tos, tl.'nors, and bass.JlI
How one arrives at or enters a place. the transition bctwC'Cn outside and inside,
the na ture of boundaries and gates, is critical to mood. So is sequenc.:: the ordl.'r
of c}{perience, the rhythm of movement, ,1I1ticipation and thl.' ell.'ml.'nt of surpr ise.
M AGIC KING DOMS: D ISN EY 'S WOR LDS
Walt Disnl.'Y told designers wha t he wan tl.'d visitors to feel: "I want them, when
they leave, to have smiks on thei r faces. Just remember that; it's ali i ask of yo u as
a dl.'signl.'r."010
Arrival at Disney World outsidl.' Orlando, Florida, is designed to put "guests"
in a carefree mood, to cn."atl.' the sense of entering a world apart. Offth.: highway
at thl.' Disnl.'y World Exit, one drives for miles through Disnl.'y-owned territory,
manicured parkland with signs in brilliant red, green, purple, and yellow tha t are
unli ke real highway signs. Park the car, then ride a tram to thl.' tickl.'t booth, buy
tickl.'ts, ,Hid board a steamboat bound for thl.' Magic Kingdom. TIII.'re, a journey
begins. ac ross water, 10 an apparent island. L'Indmarks stimulate anticipation; the
spires of Cinderella's Castle suggl.'sl a royal domain, synecdoche for the Magic
Kingdom. At the dock one walks up a red path, under a sign that says" "'Here you
kavc today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy," through a
short. dark tunnel to the Tow n Square, full of bright shades and sounds, and
roaming actors in costume. Munchkin land. It is as though, like Dorothy in Tire
\Vizard orOz, having gone to sleep in real black and white, one wakes up to Tech-
nicolor and fantasy! In both Disnl.'yland in Anaheim, C.1lifornia, and Disney
World in Florida, red , yellow, and orange flowers, red paths, nostalgic music in
major key create an upbeat setting; d iminutive buildi ngs suggest that one is a gi-
ant, ruler of the kingdom. California and Florida as their sites arc no accide-ntal
choice; both arc warm, sunny vacationlands.
Main StrC'Cl, in both places, is a straight ax is wi th a Victorian train station at
one end and Cinderl.'lIa's castle- at thl.' other, framing views to both. Seen from
'Io wn Square, the castle is a lure, an eye-catcher in garden te rms, or "wienie,Has
Disney called it. Cars, buildings, lampposts, eVl.'n trees arc smaller than no rmal.
One feel s larger than life. On Main Street the build ings decrease in scale- wit h
h.:ight: the ground floor is 90 percent of normal height, the sl.'cond floor 80 per-
cent, and the third floo r 60 percent. 41 Anachronisms are delibcrnte, so arc the
," UsillS Ihe lallgu3ge ofland!iC3pe-
proch ron isms of 'Io morrowland" presenting the futurc as the present. Victorian
ma terials and motifs like the exaggerated ornam.:nt on ~b in Street sto res and the
soundtrack of old tunes like "School Days~ I.'voke nostalgia. Tomorrowland, with
its sleek ch rome rockets, its moving sidewalks (the "WED-way People Mover~),
and a landscape swirling patterns of colored flowl.'rs rl.'miniscen t of Rolx"rto Burll.'
Ma rx's gardens of the 1940S in IJrazil. is a dated fantasy" neither then nor tomor-
row.41 A bronze plaque at the entrance 10 Disneyland underscores the intention:
"To all who coml.' to th is happy placl.': welcome. Disneyland is your land. Hl.'re, agl.'
relives fond memories of the past ... and here you th ma y savor the challenge and
promise of the future.~ H
Just as Disney's cartoons usc exaggeration and distortion to evoke responSl.'
in the audience, so the Magic Kingdom's landscape functions as expressive con-
te}{t. In Mickey Mouse's Birthdayland (Disney World ), enlarged law n mower, gar- ,
den hose, windowboxes, shutters, picket fence, clothesline, wa tering can, rake.
paths are neithe r awesome nor threatening, but co mfo rting, familiar icons of
American suburbia of the 19S0S. In comparison to thl.' miniature scali.' of houSl.'
and yard, these huge objects make one fC'C 1simultaneousl y small and big, a child
again yet an adult Mickey and Minnie's car is parked in front of a garage with a
huge lock. "Vhy a lock? What's inside? The simulated landscap<" of the rid.:s (trC'Cs
with twisted trunks and branches in Snow Whi te) titillate fearful delight in young
ch ildren, the only kind of intended parado}{ in the park. The rides arc allusions to
cartoons and movies; as Disney said , "We're trying to tell a story in those ridl.'s."u
Artists drl.'w storyboards of the rides, and Disney "desc ribed the entire Snow
White ride as if it were a movil.' cartoo n, visualizing all thl.' park's attractions for
the designers just as he had brought cartoons to life for his animators."4 ~
" If you can keep a phlce clean," said Disne-y, "pl.'ople will respect it; if you kt
it get d irty, they'll ma ke it WOfS(!'."46 A staff of six hundred copes with Disnl.'),land'5
dirt; during the day, white-clad sweepers eliminate spills and litter; every nigh t af-
ter closing, crews hose down thl.' e-ntire park, pluck faded blooms, replace tram -
pled plantsY "Just make ]the park] beautiful and you'll appeal to the best side of
people. They all have it; all )"ou have to do is bring it out."48 Perhaps Disney was
right, at least about Americans; as funds for maintenance of urban parks shrank
in the 19805 and parks became liHered, vandalism seemed to increase. Boston's
Public Garden-fenced, well maintained, with swan boats and miniature bridge,
and formal flower beds changing by season-seemed to inspire decorum and dis-
courage mischil.'f, while Boston Common - ta ttered and littered, its frog pond of-
ten dry-seemed to attract litter and graffiti. 49
Still, obsessive cleanlinl.'SS accompanied by much I.'uphemism can sel.'m cloy-
ing and oppressive, like thl.' white painters' cart and the whi te cleaners' carts at
Disney World with their tools, paint, soap, and d isinfectants and, no doubt also,
dl.'odo rizers for tidying up after the ( rl.'al) horses tha t defl.'cate and urinate on
Main Stree\. Those who mai ntain and clean the park arc themsel\'es dressed up in
'37
 sparkling while costumes. O ther maintenance is hidden or tucked away on the
perimeters, unacknowledged. There is an underground city th at supports the do-
mains above, reached through doorways with signs that say. ~Mem bers of the Cast
Only.~On the peri meter of Walt Disney World in Florida,a sign says, M you are now
leaving wow." BUI yo u aren't really. The warehouses and fire station Ihat service
Wah Disney World, all color-coded, are just outside next to the road, though there
is no sign of any connection to WDW.
Disney regretted that he had not controlled the land surrounding the o rigi-
nal Disneyland in Californi a; the hotels, restaurants, and bars that grcw up aro und
his theme park created a " honky- to nk" context at odds with the park's fa mily at-
mosphere. He also rea lized that there was more profit to be made in food and
lodgi ng than in Ihc park itself. The pu rchase of 27,500 acres in Florida, more than
150 times th e si7.c of his Californi a Disneyland, provided greater scope to shape the
visitors' context and extend it through ho tels and campgrou nds, each with its own
fantasy theme.
For James Rouse, developer of Columbia, Ma ryland, Balti mo re's Harbor-
place, and Boston's Quincy Market, as for many other developers, Disneyland is a
mode1. ln 196), he told the graduating class at Harvard's Graduate School of Design,
I hold a view that may be shocking to an audience as sophisti cated as this, and that is.
that the grea test pi«c of design in the Un ited Slates today is Disneyland. If yo u thi nk
about Disneyland and th ink of its performance in rdation to its purpose-its mean-
ing to people more than its meaning to the process of development-you will li nd it
the outstanding piece of urban design in the United Slates. It look an art~ of activity
- the amusement park-and lifted illo a standa rd so high in its performance. in its
resp«1 for people, in its functioning for people, that it really became iI br.md-n_
thing. It fulfi lls the funct ions thai it set out to accomplish unself-consciously, usefully.
and profitably. I find more to Ie;lm in the standards that ha.'(' h«n achieved in the de-
\'('lopnlCTlt of Disn~Jnd than in any omt!' w,gJe piece of de\'('klpment in 11K- count ry.'"
and Walt Disney. Ad\' isors wCfe asked to prepare stateme nts beforehand abo ut
goals fo r the "desired future" of President's Park twe nty years from now, and these
we re compiled in a document circulated 0 all participants. Disney's influence was
pervasl\·e. "The appearance of the White House gro un ds at President's Park are at
least at the standard maintained by Disney at ils theme parks," was o ne partici-
pant's stated goaL Another was, "There arc no visually in trusive landscape ele-
ments, permanent or temporary.... Eliminate, whe re~r possible, above-gro und
utilities, mismatched sidewalks (no asphalt), the homeless, cars parked around
th e Ellipse."s,
Report edly, Walt Disney's body lies froun in a cryogenic institute in Irvine,
California, as Snow Whi te's did in the enchanted forest. wai ting. If he awoke to-
mo rrow and stepped outside, he might think he was ill Disney World.
It is easy to praise Disneyland and Disney World. and easy to condemn them,
but no matter whe ther o ne is an admirer o r a critic, both are models o f rhetorical
ex pression. To know landscape poetics is 10 unde rstand how such sett ings are
fashio ned and how the y achieve their effects. To usc figura tive language well is to
create landscape literature that is imaginative, affecting, and eloquent.

Disney's Magic Kingdoms are expressive landscapes with the power 10 move
people. Designers and developers o f new residential communities and sho pping
centers have learned much from Disney, and many parts o f southern California,
and of America, now resem ble this world: themed communities and shopping
malls wi th vivid f1owers,turn -of-the-century lamps and benches, o ut door sou nd-
t racks of upbeat music. Bounded do mains wi th guarded gates. kingdoms unto
themselves managed by central authorities, in vite prospective residents to live out
th eir fantasies and leave crime and the poo r outside. There is danger in longing to
in habit fantasyland. to fo rget real life, the mistakes of the past and th e problems
of the present, the gen uine promises and risks of the future.
In (,111t993, [ took part in a one-day workshop to advise th e National Park
Servi ce on the fu ture "Site Character" of the White House landS<'ape. newly
dubbed Presiden t's Park. Traffic and trees, monuments and barriers, sights and
so unds were all d isc ussed in the context of the presidency, th e state of the natio n.

", Using th~ la nguag< of l.andscJIH'

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