Landscape for Living by Garrett EckboReview by: H. F. ClarkThe Town Planning Review, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Jul., 1953), pp. 146-148Published by: Liverpool University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40101517 .

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LANDSCAPE FOR LIVING by Garrett Eckbo. Pp. 262. 270 line drawings plans and plates. (architectural record, f. w. dodge Corporation, 19^0). $10.00

BOOK REVIEWS

There are few enough publications on Landscape Architecture and a new arrival is assured of great good will before any critical estimate of its worth. This is a well produced publication fully illustrated with excellent photographs of

contemporary gardens, plans, perspectives of work produced, for the most

part by the firm of Eckbo, Royston and Williams of Los Angeles and San Francisco. It also contains a useful bibliography of books on the history and

design of gardens and landscape and other allied subjects. It has unfortunately no index.

It is not an easy book to review with justice as it is written in a style which is often obscure and made the more difficult by the constant use of what I can

only describe as Giedionesque jargon. The words ' concept

' and * spatial

'

are used to excess and ' concept '

appears in combinations such as - new * social

concepts,' '

plan concepts,' * form concepts,'

* open space concepts,'

* concepts

of space formation,' even ' lake and island concepts ' as well, of course, as the

still more fashionable ' spatial concepts.' What do these terms really mean?

I venture to think that they are, in the expressive American phrase, just so much double talk. A concept is an idea or a notion so why not use the simpler and more widely understood words? And are the ideas of proportion, ideas of form, social ideas and open space theories mentioned in this book and in many of the sources quoted, as new as is suggested? The modules for expressing proportions or for defining space used by many present day painters, particularly of the constructivist school and by some contemporary architects are based on or are close to the Golden Section. The new social ideas mentioned and new plan forms are those which are the result of neighbourhood unit planning, which is after all is said and done, a new dress on an old form.

New ' spatial concepts

' will not be seen by our generation, I think. Only twice in European history have original ideas of proportion and visual scale been produced, once in the Italian Renaissance and expressed in painting and architec- ture and again in 1 8 th century England and expressed in the English landscape garden. They were the result of a synthesis of art and science and other no less important secondary influences and were distilled from cultures which were self assured and unified. Unfortunately the conditions for such a synthesis do not now exist, though that does not mean to say that they will not be present in the future perhaps. Experimental work has been carried out by painters and sculptors for two generations on the introduction of time and movement into space relations and it is possible that a new aesthetic will in time result from them.

The book has been planned and written in four parts, - Background, Theory, Practice and What Next? The section on history is the weakest. It

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1953 BOOK REVIEWS 147

suffers from oversimplification which in places is inaccurate. With Mr. Eckbo's statement of aims one can agree enthusiastically. These are that landscape design is for * the establishment of relations between buildings, surfacing and other outdoor construction, earth rock forms, bodies of water, plants, open space and the general form and character of the landscape; but with special primary emphasis on the human content, the relation between people and

landscape. . . . ' and that the function of landscape design, ' is more than the

design of outdoor space. ... in the larger sense it is the continuous establishment of relations between man and the land . . . This admirable aim is however more than just a problem of design, as is suggested here,

' of tying in those hills and valleys . . . through design elements/ It is a point of departure and not only a need for ' wholeness of view control (spatial continuity).'

The author's sections on the material of landscape are also admirable

except that surprisingly, in his remarks on the uses of surfacing, he omits one of the most fruitful that of textural diversity. On the use of plants one could

disagree with some statements but agree heartily with the principles. On maintenance he rightly emphasises the close association and interdependence of design and maintenance and that the one kind of maintenance which requires the utmost sensibility is trimming and pruning. On gardens and garden design the author re-asserts the theme of the interpenetration of house and garden. This section depends, sensibly enough, on illustration rather than text, and plans and sketches of work, carried out or projected, are included.

In the last section, ' From Art to Planning/ the differences and contrasts

between the design problems of architecture and landscape architecture are discussed. Among these the author mentions as differences the problems of scale as between the human form and structural elements in the building and a scale which is determined by the relation between the building, the site and the

surrounding landscape. And a design for building structures in which all the

parts have an actual physical connection with each other is compared to land-

scape which is concerned with invisible and imaginary balances and space framing. Another contrast, which is not mentioned, might be found in the differences between the materials of each, the one immobile and static and the other living and in motion.

On the landscape of housing the author appears to have had considerable

experience as he has been concerned, as an associate designer, in fifty rural

projects for the Farm Security Administration and in fifty War Housing projects for the Federal Public Housing Authority. One's own small experience in this

country seems contrary to his in that one cannot agree that * essentially it (the

problem) is the same as that in a private garden extended in scale and complicated with more elements of building and site.' There are qualitative differences that one meets with, a group-client being a different order of being from an individual client in requirements and behaviour. The change in scale between a single site and a neighbourhood also must produce fundamental differences in treatment.

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148 BOOK REVIEWS july

Of the plans shown, many do not perhaps do the designer justice and modifications will, it is certain, have been carried out in practice. There is too great an emphasis on pattern for pattern's sake. Plant material cannot too rigidly be forced into abstractions. The designs and the photographs of completed gardens show the result of a lively imagination and are refreshingly free from cliches, except those of his own making. H. F. Clark

2000 YEARS OF ENGLAND by John Gloag. Pp. 313. Illustrations 123. (Cassell & Company Ltd. London, 1952) 18s.

Under this rather daunting title Mr. Gloag describes with refreshing spirit the salient characteristics of successive ways of living in England from pre- Roman days to the present time. He selects the more significant aspects of these ways, making them actual and vivid as much by what he himself has to say about them as by his effective use of contemporary sources. His flair for apt citation and quotation is indeed one of the outstanding merits of this very readable study of an inexhaustible subject.

Taking England as * still a living guide-book to over twenty centuries of civilisation ' he discusses with zest and illuminates by original comment the processes by which our countryside has acquired its present structure and appearance, the growth and character of our villages, towns and cities, and the phases through which our architecture has passed, especially as those phases are exemplified in the English home and its furnishing. All this he has related to our national needs, idiosyncracies and conventions.

If, in forcibly expressing his own personal likes and dislikes, he sometimes commits himself to overstatements and even appears to sacrifice consistency to effect, that is a tendency which enhances rather than diminishes the spontaneity of his writing and gives to it the engaging quality of vigorous and unpremeditated speech. In any case there can be no doubt about the sincerity of his response to what is, in the best sense, truly English in our traditional heritage, nor any doubt of his genuine independence of judgment on issues of taste. In these days when the intelligentzia are discovering unexpected aesthetic virtues in the least attractive manifestations of the Gothic Revival, Mr. Gloag does not hesitate to refer to it as ' a disruptive form of taste ' which ' had a profound effect upon the Englishman's environment and gradually debilitated his critical powers to the point when ugliness was accepted as an inevitable accompaniment of what was called progress/ The whole history of the Gothic Revival in architecture and of the ancillary activities it stimulated, he forthrightly asserts,

* records the growth of an artificial legend ; not one handed down from father to son, that fitted into the traditional folklore of a country; but an amalgam of spurious beliefs, arising originally from the trivialities of fashion and in the course of a century acquiring an emotional appeal that was partly religious and partly nostalgic/ As a corrective to the perverse connoisseurship that now overvalues the works of a fundamentally misconceived movement in architecture this plain speaking is surely to be welcomed.

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