January 2007

(Original in post with enclosure)

An unwelcome technical problem has arisen. Yseult Ogilvie, who is working on the model, has pointed out that the north point is wrongly given both on the FOA project and, astonishingly, in the original survey from which you were working. I won’t go into why this information was wrong but I do sincerely apologise. I think surveyors should at least always carry compasses.

The error is about 50 degrees, with the ‘mouth’ of the parabola orientated too far eastwards. I need to ask you how quickly Emory could revise the presentation of climatic information (wind, sun) in the project pdfs. Crucially, of course, we also need to know whether this suggests changes in the pattern of paths.

I attach a correctly orientated copy of the ordnance survey for information. I would like to do this before we make the formal Submissions call in about three weeks. Is this going to be possible?

You asked about comments received on the Hadspen scheme, and whether they bear, directly or indirectly, on your proposal. To make this easier we have printed out all the correspondence so far, and have highlighted specific criticisms and discussion. (Each stapled ‘package’ represents a month of letters, and should in each case be read from the back, following the sequence of exchanges as far as this is possible).

I think we can agree that some very specific aspects of the proposal may require more thought at a later stage. For instance: the path widths, the problem of planting a sharply pointed corner, the water channels, the pond, and the question of whether the paths are set level in section - or are laid with the terrain (and if the former, what happens at the corners?). None of these points have any impact on the basic diagram, and some will be resolved much more easily when we know more about the approach of the gardener.

I have not attempted to extract from the correspondence the broader criticisms that have been received. Professional designers have on the whole been hostile; many of their comments do reflect individual style, preference, or practice in making a garden. It’s not surprising that some of these are quite hard to integrate into the pattern of zig-zags. I cannot tell you, incidentally, the number of appeals I have heard to design ‘principles’.

Another, much more general, attack has been on the process that you and I adopted together. That is, it is felt that the paths are too restrictive or prescriptive for the designer to be able to add much. (The plants-people are mostly dismissed by the designers, and have in any case remained very silent). There has been a deal too much discussion about all of this, and a lot of misunderstanding. My own very simple view is that it is open to these critics, in competition, to come up with something more convincing .

Finally there have been a few impassioned comments to the effect that it is hard to feel any visceral connection between the path-grid and the site. Clearly these are the ones to take most seriously, although I agree that we won’t necessarily know the answer for some time. Overall, I do believe that there is a strong and legible connection between project and place; I thought it would be helpful for everybody, including FOA, if I tried to say why.
Some of the arguments are surprising because they were not necessarily part of our original thinking on the project, but they are none the worse for that.

Looking now at the cleared site, the strongest characteristic of the interior space defined by the wall is its relationship to the landscape outside. In fact, it is impossible to ignore what happens outside, or indeed the relationship between inside and outside. A planting scheme that set out to exclude the bigger landscape and also the views inwards (otherwise the most conventional approach to any walled garden) would in this case be the most aggressive possible way of intervening . Of course I am not saying that such an approach would be wrong.

Once one has accepted this relationship between inside and outside as something any scheme has to address in one way or another, then one can make the following comments on the path-grid:

1. The curves, and the sharp corners, offer the maximum opportunity for precise, and varied, interrogatory views of the landscape beyond.
2. This characteristic does indeed seem to privilege the idea of moving through the garden (though it absolutely does not exclude areas of tranquility and seclusion). Many people have commented that the dynamic structure of the paths themselves speak more to movement than to sitting still; now perhaps we can see why.
3. I feel the inside/outside relationship as all about understanding, or re-finding, the horizontal viewpoint. The principle (which drove the grid) of using the minimum possible gradients for the paths becomes interesting in this context because the gradients have a strong tension from the horizontal, even as the paths themselves are ‘forced’ down the slope.
4. I still like Raoul Bunschoten’s comments, in August, about the relationship of wall to planting that is determined by the zig-zag form.
5. In asking an architect to make a proposal, I was perhaps expressing a preference for an architectonic approach - or at least for architectural thinking.
This is clearly what I got; and to the extent that a planting brief is emerging that favours something strongly spatial, then your plan might yet fit well with bold volumetric experiments in planting.
6. Finally (and this is as much true of what we now know about the site, as it is of your project for it) all of the above encourages the view that gardening does always involve a questioning of what we understand as natural.
I do still much prefer the idea of making a sort of instrument of enquiry that endlessly throws up surprises, sometimes even subversive surprises.
It is worth noting that this is a preoccupation that has been reflected, sometimes obliquely, in the theoretical exchanges on the website: - gardening as activity in itself, or as the making of an artifact? gardens as isolated from the landscape, and as places of isolation in themselves? how to recognize as as one gardens both the passage of time, and previous interventions on the site? and finally, the impossible issue of who a garden is actuallly made for.

Over the last six months I’ve heard lots of diverse and uncompromising answers to all these questions; they generate strong feelings, but it is very obvious that not everybody can be right.

PS The best, at least most imaginative, suggestion for what we do so far has been to leave the space exactly at it is, blank and empty. This seems like a really good challenge to received ideas of ‘nature’.

You’re right. And I think now I know what I want to do with the
synopsis. It should be presented as an act of resistance! To the
barricades!

In making my own garden I’ve so far spent two years, and maybe forty grand.
I’m not yet even at the point at which other people start to make theirs.

With this model, it is haste and capitalism that are conceived as the
problem.

You are welcome to post but it was hasty and capitalistic.

One can make oneself gloomy anytime about this project by assuming that a
built something is the only outcome by which to measure success.

And too pragmatic, maybe; or too easily swayed by the prevailing
practice, when it is the practice in itself that makes any interesting outcome so
nearly impossible?

Certainly what you fear may yet happen, but that is the risk I knowingly
took. I do feel that the risk has been rather reduced in my perception by
what I now understand about the general entrenchment of the industry; and
reduced in fact by the way the process has modified itself since we started.

The largest risk I still perceive is that the gardener/designer who has an
idea may not have the articulacy to access the web correspondence which
does, in aggregate, constitute the Brief. The Popes did fine for me in their
way, and they took the chances that you say were unacceptable; but they
might not have managed to show themselves at their best against this sort of
challenge.

That’s where you come in.

Why not post it to the site, incidentally?

Re: A Fatal flaw

This is not to be posted to the site

As I start taking stock of the parabola competition, with a day’s web
research on what else is going on out there, I wonder if the process
has a built in prescription for failure.

The conventional structure of garden design is in three
specialisations, as follows: Designers conceive and plan and supervise
– this is where the conceptual talent is supposed to be (and is for
the most part); installers (take up to 3 years) to scape and plant;
gardener comes in to maintain, conferring with designers as years go
by to adjust and modify. Good designers don’t want to do one project
and then maintain it. Unless they have a proprietary interest in the
place — or they can use it as a showcase that opens the door to other
work — designers want to leave this scheme behind — offering
supervisions but not moving in to look after it — and go on to other
work and ideas. Even then why should they live there? Wouldn’t they
rather operate out of Paris or London? No-one enters a competition to
win one job, but to open the door to many. And most of those who can
propose an innovative and exciting project don’t want to settle in and
maintain it, especially when it is someone else’s place. So — you
might be condemning yourself to another Pope situation — only
‘gardeners’ and plantsmen wanting the job, and only people at a
certain point in life (kids, grandma not living with them, or able to
move) .

Think of it like this — you are inviting an architect to design one
brilliant building, then move into it to continually refurnish, clean,
and light it, welcoming visitors and selling postcards rather than
designing the next 100 brilliant buildings. And in x years the owner
of the property might just ask him to leave so that he can pull it
down and ask someone else for another one.

And even at that, is there not a very limited pool of people willing
to pick up stakes and move somewhere where their future is at the whim
of a client. I know, I know, you want to break the bounds and get an
organically minded designer/gardener on site to treat this as an
ever-evolving site. But I wonder if you aren’t conflating
irreconcileable skills and ambitions and will only find yourself
anointing the best of a bunch of Popes? Or conflating an
owner/hobbyist’s situation with a more distant one?

Am I being too pragmatic???

One can make oneself gloomy anytime about this project by assuming that a
built something is the only outcome by which to measure success.

And too pragmatic, maybe; or too easily swayed by the prevailing
practice, when it is the practice in itself that makes any interesting outcome so
nearly impossible?

Certainly what you fear may yet happen, but that is the risk I knowingly
took. I do feel that the risk has been rather reduced in my perception by
what I now understand about the general entrenchment of the industry; and
reduced in fact by the way the process has modified itself since we started.

The largest risk I still perceive is that the gardener/designer who has an
idea may not have the articulacy to access the web correspondence which
does, in aggregate, constitute the Brief. The Popes did fine for me in their
way, and they took the chances that you say were unacceptable; but they
might not have managed to show themselves at their best against this sort of
challenge.

That’s where you come in.

Why not post it to the site, incidentally?

Thank you for your comment about email submissions.
 
The answer is that we did consider this and decided that there were technical problems with the question of anonymity, possibly with the printing out. I hope this isn’t a disappointment to you. It would very nice if you did submit nevertheless. We are considering using an address in London for submissions in case there is a problem with delivery.