Temporality in Designed Landscapes

TEMPORALITY IN DESIGNED LANDSCAPES
Dr. Lee Heykoop

My study into temporality in designed landscapes, based its footings on the co-existence of time and space, of temporality and spatiality. Thus, necessarily, a designer's spatial configurations also bring about temporal configurations. Temporality is not an optional add-on. However, a poor understanding makes it susceptible to ad hoc and incoherent treatments, which in turn reinforces it being undervalued. The study focused on finding what were the characteristics of temporality in designed landscapes and how had they been valued.

Searching beyond the invisibility of an omnipresent, taken-for-granted time, and suspecting that our designed spaces had resulted from a design process that was mostly unable to conceptualise temporality, I wanted to find how to understand it as an approach to designing landscape. The subject was not time: it was temporality, a sense of time. This simple sounding invocation, a sense of time, entails the reader's effort to mentally disengage from measured time and universal time; engaging instead phenomenologically with temporality, as we experience it and as it is meaningful to ourselves.
Qualities of temporality observed in designed landscapes were delineated. Common themes, loose categorisations, emerged from groups of characteristics. The scaffolding for the terms and vocabulary of key characteristics was built in stages. I became sensitised to the temporal implications behind a great number of words. Some themes were already anticipated (tempo, process and duration). Among words that implied process were: many words with the suffix "ing"(for example, passing, continuing), also flow, fluid, indeterminacy, making, open-ended, transform. Words implying tempo were: dynamic, frozen (in the sense of stillness), motion, release, restless, tight and loose (where tight implies taughtened muscles for faster movement, and loose implies relaxed muscles for slower movement). Words implying duration were: attention (that tempo of being-in-the-moment or attentive phenomenological engagement), continue, infinity, permanence, ephemeral.
Other themes, of layers and imagination, were demanded by expressions that were not largely associated with tempo, process or duration. These were words that involved temporality but whose temporality I could not, for a while, organise into a common grouping. Collectively, however, these were clearly about a layered temporality. Ambiguity is about the layering of different possibilities; anticipation involves layers of guessing yet unknowing; threshold and arriving are similar to this; to juxtapose demands a comparative evaluation of two or more things, which in the physical world of landscape also involves moving towards one and leaving the other; relatedness, relationships and sequences are similar in this regard; a mystery is something that may be disclosed in the future; as are also revealing and unfolding. Words implying imagination were fewer, as often texts expressly called on imagination as their modus operandi; playfulness, fantasy and illusion are three further aspects to gather here.
There is a confusion about time within the profession of landscape architecture, a kind of sense of its importance accompanied by a poverty of understanding of what it is and where it manifests (Grosz 1999, p2; Pohl 1992, p82; Meyer 2000, p242;Way 2013, p38; Duemplemann & Herrington 2014). Broad generalist statements from other disciplines such as cultural geography excited the topic, though without specifically diagnosing it. In contrast to this uncertainty are incisive contributions from Bakhtin's literary thinking and his perceptions of our experience of the world as heterochronous, as multiple overlaying senses of time at any juncture (Morson 1993, p477): and from the philosophy of phenomenology came clear conceptualisations of temporality as infused in and necessary to understanding our lived experience.

These then, were the main armoury for exploration. As I was writing up my doctoral research, I read Anita Berrizbeitia's (2014, p43) paper on Charles Eliot and the Boston Metropolitan park system, in which she identifies the need for a scheme of 'reference for describing time in spatial and material ways'. A landscape designer needs a clear articulation of temporality that can be, actually, designed; my thesis, I think, contributes towards an important design theory for landscape architecture.
The conceptual foundations of the theory are built on the work of Husserl, Bakhtin, Ricoeur, Bergson and Berleant which, with integrity to those concepts, I have applied to landscape. My study looked at the different characteristics of temporality in work of a number of well documented landscape designers from 1945-2005. I will touch on a few examples here.

Tempo
The Swiss designer Ernst Cramer is something of an anomaly among those whose work was expressive of dynamic tempo. His earlier designs had showed an unremitting control of tempo and it seems that it was only later in his career, in the early 1970s, that he embraced a use of dynamic design. Cramer's work largely evidenced tempo as it might be associated with visual shapes; a conceptually erupting tempo for the 'volcanoes' at Wintherthur Technical College; and sweeping across an ocean hinted at by the upward sail-like structures at Postplatz in Vaduz.
In contrast, the exciting tempo presented mid C20 by Carl Theodore Sorensen's Naerum allotments, made a kinaesthetic appeal to run around and through the interconnecting spaces between the oval boundaries. Their choreographic sympathy entices us to their 'breath-taking elegance' (Weilacher 2001, p176).
Sven-Ingvar Andersson was interested in people's physical involvement and responses to his designs. His close work with Sorensen included his own exploration of using ovals and his fascination with the 'importan(ce) --- of typical sequences of human movement provoking effect of his strip of white marble paving at La Defense in Paris. Its anomalous presence acted like a release from the serious rhythm of the place, becoming a focus for triggering different tempos, for fast moving skaters, cyclists and walkers altering directions (ibid p163: Spirn 1996, p120-121).
Although a wall may be among the last objects to be thought of as expressing tempo, this is what Luis Barragan's walls did. The long Red Wall at Las Arboledas has a dynamic run along by the paving, yet halts movement at its perpendicular orientation. Entrances punch through his walls' obstruction, as at San Cristobal, freeing movement that is otherwise stopped.
Thomas Church's work was characterised less by any urgent dynamism than by a mellow visual rhythm that flowed through the site. The Donnell garden may be read as a continuous flowing sequence (Treib 2005). Additionally, Church's frequent improvement by pruning (he was known to always carry secateurs with him) was his articulation for that dynamic change of views that happens when a person is moving in relation to the framing of foreground, through which middle-ground and distance are in constant changing relationships.
Grids in their multitudinous repetition, yet different in the orthogonal/ diagonal geometry of identical elements, are able to convey dynamic and rested tempos simultaneously.
Fig. 11.1 Children's playground, Keyaki Plaza, From Peter Walker & Partners 2006, p239Fig. 11.2 The Chicago Art Institute South Garden diagonal view From Kiley & Amidon 1999, p52
Fig. 11.1 Children's playground, Keyaki Plaza, From Peter Walker & Partners 2006, p239
Fig. 11.2 The Chicago Art Institute South Garden diagonal view From Kiley & Amidon 1999, p52



The two gridded tree plazas pictured above, Peter Walker's Keyaki Plaza and Dan Kiley's south garden of the Chicago Art Institute, although similar in that each has trees and raised planters with generous dimensions for seating, suggest a very different rhythm. The relationship of the elements within the two designs significantly affects tempo. Kiley's grid is of tree/ in planter/ plus people with neutral space in between. When people are seated, they group themselves with planter and tree. The low canopy of the Crataegus crus-galli reinforces an empathetic relationship, which, in looking across and walking through the grid, would, I suspect, have a kind of resonating tempo. In Walker's grid, the raised elements are spare and without planting: the Zelkova trees thrust upwards and miss the close relationship of Kiley's hawthorn trees. Walker's design is actually two offset grids, a tree grid and a seating grid, two detached elements at identical intervals. Together do they create a staccato rhythm; or does the flooring with its linear directional paving hurrying through give some energy to what would otherwise be a stolid repetition of two less than interesting elements?

Layers
Temporality is inherent in the principle of layered or heterochronous representation. Morson (1991, p1085) explains Bakhtin's understanding of the heterochronous nature of our lived world as, 'multiple senses of time that can be applied to the same situation; thinking and experience therefore often involve a dialogue of chronotopes.' This theme of layers, less acknowledged in our everyday language than is tempo, process, duration or imagination, is based on the multiplicity of temporal relationships combined with 'attention to consciousness and experience' (Burton 1996, p43). A layered recognition and understanding of a situation or place is one that has a simultaneity of significant meanings.
Juxtaposing is a form of layering in which attention is drawn to qualities by their unlikely proximity and contrast, cutting through inattentive complacency and alerting to both features. Impact from juxtapositions is strengthened through the close simultaneity by which their components are experienced. The focus might be on sensations and feelings. A landscape design might offer two opposing aspects and engender a feeling of being both enwrapped and exposed; or exuberant and relaxed. Transitions are a kind of juxtaposition, but involve passing from one aspect to another. Threshold is where transitions are likely to feature in designed landscapes. Thresholds mark an alteration from one chronotope to another. Like a caesura in poetry, the accentuation of leaving behind that which has just been experienced and of that which is about to happen is an acknowledgement of both layers, capable of holding emotional charge.
Dan Kiley's steps at the Currier Farm link one part of the garden to the next. They are described in his book with Jane Amidon as appearing 'to hover in the air, releasing visitors for just a moment' (Kiley & Amidon 1999, p45). The point to emphasise is that, for Kiley, his design operated simultaneously with both its 'classic structure' and with materials that spoke of their local provenance (ibid p44). Illustrative of this is the way the water was channelled by the base of the stone wall. The water connected and situated the garden in relation to its mountain source. The channel ran a short length in which the water was 'tamed and then let go as a feral agent' (ibid p45). This is the context then, within which the suspended steps, crossing the wall and joining the two parts of the garden, made of local marble, 'appear to hover in the air, releasing visitors for just a moment from the solid earth as they pass from one terrain to another' (ibid p45). Awareness is drawn at this threshold to the significance of the water, its mountain source, its brief visit, and its further destination.

Aesthetic values
Assembling instances of work within these temporal themes has demonstrated their aesthetic use by designers. This is an aesthetics not residing in objects set outside from a site user. It is a transactional aesthetics, not placed or given by a designer, but one whose potential uptake has been designed in with layers at juxtapositions, at thresholds, in dramatic tension; with tempo in somatic immersion and with stillness; with durational temporality, ephemera and longevity; and with prompts to imaginative associations. Other temporal characteristics, for instance, layers in collage, and intentional processes, are attributed as communicating meaning by designers, even though not primarily aesthetic meanings. All these temporal design strategies have been working to connect people with landscape. This is landscape as 'interworld' (Conan 2003, p316): one where landscape processes increase the 'subjective dimension' (Berrizbeitia 2007, p177). This should not surprise when we reflect back to Husserl for whom temporality 'consititut(ed) the bedrock of phenomenology' (Zahavi1 2003, p81). Temporality's phenomenological base makes each theme an expressive medium, able to confer meaning.
As the work progressed, I have found that aesthetics has developed into one of the major features of temporality. Effects of temporality's characteristics incline towards 'the vital engagement of intense appreciation, the grasping of embodied meanings, the expansion of what is called, poetically, the human spirit' (Berleant 1997 p75): and an 'involvement with an environment (that) is strongly perceptual, (and which) takes on an aesthetic character' (ibid p164). This indicates a fresh engagement for landscape design in the discourse of aesthetics. Perhaps this work will contribute towards a response to Gustavsson's (2012, p28) plea for landscape design aesthetic to go beyond 'formal properties such as hierarchy, harmony, shape and rhythm': and, through phenomenological temporality, might provide her an 'offer (for) more philosophical relevance in methods for evaluating landscapes and practicing design than is currently the case'.

References:

Berleant, A. (1997). Living in the Landscape: toward an aesthetics of environment, University Press of Kansas.

Berrizbeitia, A. (2007). Re-Placing Process. Large Parks. Julia Czerniak. & George Hargreaves. New York, Princeton University Press: 175-197.

Berrizbeitia, A. (2014). "Between deep and ephemeral time: representations of geology and temporality in Charles Eliot's Metropolitan Park System, Boston (1892-1893)." Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 34(1): 38-51.

Burton, S. (1996). "Bakhtin, Temporality, and Modern Narrative: Writing "the Whole Triumphant Murderous Unstopppable Chute"." Comparative Literature 48(1): 39-64.

Conan, M. (2003). Landscape Metaphors and Metamorphosis of Time. Landscape Design and the Experience of Motion. M. Conan. Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection: 287-317.

Duemplemann, S.& Herrington, Susan (2014). "Plotting Time in Landscape Architecture." Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 34(1): 1-14.

Grosz, E. (1999). Introduction. Becomings: explorations in time, memory and futures. E. Grosz. London, Cornell University Press: 1-12.

Gustavsson, E. (2012). "Meaning Versus Signification: towards a more nuanced view of landscape aesthetics." Journal of Landscape Architecture 7(2): 28-31.

Kiley, D. a. A., Jane (1999). Dan Kiley in His Own Words: America's Master Landscape Architect. London, Thames and Hudson.

Meyer, E. K. (2000). The Post-Earth Day Conundrum: Translating Environmental Values into Landscape Design. Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture. M. Conan. Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks: 187-244.

Morson, G. S. (1991). "Bakhtin, Genres and Temporality." New Literary History 22(4): 1071-1092.

Morson, G. S. (1993). "Strange Synchronies and Surplus Possibilities: Bakhtin on Time." Slavic Review 52(3): 477-493.

Pohl, N. (1993). In Which the Spirit of the 'Volkspark' also . . . Modern Park Design: recent trends. Hans Opius, Martin Knuijt, Peter van Saane & David Louwerse. Bussum, Thoth 70-81.

Spirn, A. W. (1996). The Language of Landscape. London, Yale University Press.

Treib, M. (2005). The Donnell and Eckbo Gardens. San Francisco, William Stout publishers.

Walker, P. & Partners (2005). Peter Walker & Partners Landscape Architecture: defining the craft. London, Thames & Hudson.

Way, T. (2013). "Landscapes of industrial excess: A thick sections approach to Gas Works Park." Journal of Landscape Architecture 8(1): 28-39.

Weilacher, U. (1996). Between Landscape Architecture and Landscape Art. Berlin, Birkhauser.

Weilacher, U. (2001). Visionary Gardens: Modern Landscapes by Ernst Cramer. Basel, Birkhauser: 287.

Zahavi, D. (20031). Husserl's Phenomenology, Stanford University Press.