Put well-planned space before beauty

Press, 8 September 1982, Page 20

Put well-planned space before beauty

Our first landscaping column in this series of six presented some ideas on types of spaces. Today EARL BENNETT explains the importance of considering the relationships between these spaces.

Earl Bennett, today’s guest columnist, is sole principal of a Christ-church-based landscape architectural practice. He holds a bachelor of science in Landscape architecture, with honours, from California State Polytechnic University, at Pomona, is vice-presi-dent of the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects, and chairman of the Canterbury Landscape Group.

Outdoor space is like indoor space. A room is made up of a floor, walls, and a ceiling. An outdoor space is made up of a base plane the ground, on which there may be lawn, paving, water; the verticles fences, walls, planting; and an overhead the sky. a timber frame, a tree canopy.

It is the relationship between these three elements which contributes most to the character of a space. These elements can be used, independently or in combination. to divide one space from another.

Spaces rarely exist in total isolation from others. An obvious exception is the space formed by the shell of a jet aircraft at high altitude over the sea.

Adjacent outdoor spaces — like the rooms within a dwelling — may be firmly separated by walls, connected over some distance by a corridor, or flow into one another through a wide archway. Changes from one space to another are often called "transitions.”

The most obvious type of transition is a gate or door which provides a break in the verticle enclosure.

A transition may also be formed by changing what is

overhead. This can be done by having an area open to the sky between two fullyenclosed spaces, or by lowering the overhead between two open spaces. Changes on the ground can also be .used to reinforce the sensation of moving from one space to another. This can be done by changing paving materials or patterns, or by changing levels abruptly with steps, or gradually with a ramp.

The effect of the transition is determined by the kind and number of elements used.

A simple change in paving usually creates a subtle transition. A combination of steps, with verticles on each side, and an over-hanging tree will emphatically mark the movement into another space. In both interior and outdoor spaces, appropriate subdivision of space gives us more usable area.

We are often reluctant to break our relatively small suburban garden into even smaller spaces appropriate for a variety of uses. Using such a garden is like trying to carry out normal family life in one enormous room. Generally we prefer to live in a series of smaller interior spaces which are independent, but related.

In the “single-space" garden, all the usual activities — rubbish storage, housing the dog, clothes drying, vegetable and flower gardening, family recreation, and entertaining — must co-exist. Obvious conflicts and unpleasantness result.

Problems can be resolved, even in small gardens. We can provide separations between activities that do not mix, such as rubbish storage and entertaining. Connections can be made between compatible uses, like recreation and entertaining.

In our garden, as in our house, each use or activity has an ideal kind of space and location within the distribution of spaces. Determining what these are for each situation is an essential first step in successful garden design.

Contrary to popular belief — unfortunately reinforced by glossy picture magazines — the “look” of the garden should not be your first consideration. Fulfilment of the garden’s purposes will give it a large part of its “beauty.”

A garden of spaces adequately providing for the activities of its inhabitants will have a beauty about it

regardless of any titivating done in the name of aesthetics. A garden which consists

primarily of titivating, and lacks a sound organisation of spaces and uses, will never be truly beautiful.