On Artificiality

Artifice. Not just the overtly artificial or fake, but something more cunning - the insertion of a specific and devious intention - a stratagem of deception. While not necessarily bad per se, as we deal in landscapes there a distinct line between the artificial and the real - and often the use brings the intentions of the designer into question. Growing up my mother decorated our house with plastic plants - both to disguise her personal 'brown thumb' and to ward against labrador retreivers who liked to dig in the soil of any real plantings.

We are often confronted with these dilemmas on a daily basis (take real vs. artificial turf debate for instance) which can be debated, but essentially has no real 'right' answer. Barring that innate duality, we have examples of the specifically fake to the somewhat ambiguous to the downright imperceptible. While there is the need for analogs that translate into the artistic when the opportunities or desire to go the extra mile is not possible - there is the simple fact that for all the visions of nature (i.e. photos, paintings, projected digital images) the only multi-benefit version of nature is really nature.


:: GSC Group Office by SOM - image via Coolboom

Often, the abstraction is less artistic - resulting in a hybrid and often comical application where the idea is bastardized to the point where the original intention is lost.


:: Pipe-cleaner green wall - image via Inspiration Wall

While anecdotal, the idea of artifice is not new in landscape architecture. From the recent post related to James May and his plasticine garden, and the more specifically artificial Martha Schwartz' 'Splice Garden' at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge.


:: image via Martha Schwartz Partners

While the driving force is something of a functional site limitation of weight, maintenance, available water, and the like, the 'idea' of a garden becomes the mechanism for applied artifice. "However, it was entirely possible to convey a sense of a planted garden by providing enough signals for the site to read as a garden. There are many examples of other cultures that create garden abstractions. For example, in Japanese gardens, symbolic landscapes often imply a larger landscape. This was the strategy at Whitehead -- to create a garden through abstraction, symbolism, and reference. Schwartz wanted the narrative of the garden to relate to the work carried out by the Institute. The garden became a cautionary tale about the dangers inherent in gene splicing: the possibility of creating a monster. "

Some info on the project illuminates the artifice, but also at least some of the deeper satirical reasoning behind the ruse. "This garden is a monster -- the joining together like Siamese twins of gardens from different cultures. One side is based on a French Renaissance garden; the other on a Japanese Zen garden. The elements that compose these gardens have been distorted. The rocks typically found in a Zen garden are composed of topiary pompoms from the French garden. Other plants, such as palms and conifers, are in strange and unfamiliar associations. Some plants project off the vertical surface of the wall; others teeter precariously on the wall's top edge." All the plants in the garden are plastic. The clipped hedges, which double as seating, are rolled steel covered in Astroturf. The green colors, which are the strongest cues that this is a garden, are composed of colored gravel and paint. The intent was to create for the scientists who occupy this building a visual puzzle that could not be solved. The garden is an ode to "better living through chemistry."


:: image via Harvard GSD

That brings me to what passes for a point to this post. That is one of the most wildly flaunted shams of landscape architecture to be perpetuated since the afforementioned 'Splice Garden'... the (now ASLA award-winning) 'Museum of Moder Art Rooftop Garden' by Ken Smith which left me agape at first viewing and now just leaves something ill-feeling in my stomach when I see photos of it. The simple description via ASLA Design Awards site: "The garden breaks new ground esthetically in terms of design vocabulary, wit and irony, materiality and public visibility. While physically inaccessible the garden is highly visible as a viewing garden at the urban high-rise scale of Midtown Manhattan."


:: image via ASLA

There's always the idea of site constraints, as mentioned in the Splice Garden above, and echoed in the description of the project: "The roof structure and waterproofing membrane had already been constructed. The surface had been designed with a landscape live load of only twenty-five pounds per square foot; there were to be no structural attachments to the roof or penetrations to the building’s waterproof membrane; the garden was to be designed for a program requiring minimal maintenance and no irrigation; and use of living plant materials was discouraged. Because the museum had already purchased the black and white gravel the design was encouraged to incorporate those materials as well. "




:: images via ASLA

There is the conceptual idea in the use of camouflage, derived from the WWII era idea of the "The notion of simulated nature and the simulation strategies and theories of camouflage were used to generate the roof garden forms. The design team did a periodical literature search of camouflage articles in architecture and design journals from the late 1930’s and early 1940’s."


:: image via ASLA

The specific elements of camouflage are integrated into the fabric of the design: "The four major methods of camouflage are: 1. imitation, 2. deception, 3. decoy, 4. confusion. The landscape architect used these four strategies to develop the initial design alternatives for the roof garden. The alternate design studies were presented and discussed with the client along with representatives of the neighboring residential tower. The "deception" scheme was selected." So what we get is artifice... specifically deceiving the viewer in a literal application of camouflage. What we really get is a plastic, large, and less contextually derived copy of the Splice Garden, with repeated pseudo-rocks, and derivative topiary.


:: images via ASLA

But I'm sold... it's witty, it's eloquent, and it takes a tough site with a ton of constraints and makes it a space worth talking about. It'd be more appropriate if it pulled from something more relevant than that of japanese dry-gardens and mid-century war-inspired research related to camouflage. It's cool, fun, and a great addition to the pantheon of art-inspired post-modern landscape. Just don't call it a garden. Much like the Splice Garden... it's a monster. It could however, but what Bill Thompson is looking for in the low-cost green roof perhaps, at least in relation to maintenance?

For more, read this post at Pruned on his version of the ur-garden, which captures an essence of the issue in another, totally different way.