Is This Good Design?……..or Meaningless Scribbles!

It’s great that so many universities are jumping onto the garden design band-wagon because it not only spreads the word, but helps create interest in the subject.

The problem arises when what is being taught, amounts to little more than ‘meaningless scribbles’. I appreciate what I am saying is controversial but this Video to me, represents everything bad about garden design teaching.

This is not supposed to be a personal attack on Dr. Ann Marie VanDerZanden, but why did she choose such a dreadful design example?  What she is passing off as a ‘typical residential design’, shows a fundamental lack of design appreciation.

The pattern is anything but simple, looking more like an angry jelly fish attacking a building.  Rhythm and line remain unexplained and she then goes on to say that proportion can’t be seen in a plan view….may be not in this design, but it should be there!
Balance was tackled next and asymmetry and symmetry introduced, but to suggest that this ‘amoeba’ is a symmetrical design makes me wonder if we are looking at the same drawing, as there is nothing formal about this plan.

The building looks like it has just landed from space and been 'plonked' onto the landscape.

The organic shapes used, show a total disregard for the geometry contained within the building and to my mind the house and garden quite simply clash.  

I think this design is Awful!!!!! ……….Yet this is the design style being taught to thousands of would-be garden designers around the world every year, by teachers who should stick to horticulture but  never venture near a drawing board!
I appreciate that design is subjective and I would love to talk to these people to understand where they are coming from, however, 70 years after Thomas Church and 40 years after John Brookes why is this mediocrity still being taught?

Technorati Tags: Garden Design,Bad Design

John Brookes; a Landscape Design Legend

On Thursday 11th March 2010, I had arranged a very special ‘MasterClass’ at the Oxford College of Garden Design with Landscape design legend, John Brookes. 

 

I’m not exaggerating when I say that he is the most influential garden designer of the 20th Century alive today and we were very honoured to have him talk at St Hugh’s College Oxford, as he rarely agrees to speak at these types of events anymore.

John, now into his 70’s, has a career spanning nearly 50 years and without his contribution to the world of garden design, I suspect that many of us, would not be in practice today. 

His 24 best selling books kick started the garden design revolution back in the 60’s and continue to play a major role today.

Books like the Room Outside and the The Garden became hugely popular all over the world and have influenced two generations of home owners and landscape designers alike.

At a time when the garden was little more than a place for drying clothes and growing vegetables, he coined the phase ‘the room outside’ and so introduced the world to the concept of the garden, as an extension of the living environment of the home.

John will undoubtedly go down in history with the likes of Russell Page and Thomas Church, but when I asked him at the end of his talk during the Q&A session “what he wanted his legacy to be” he quietly replied that he “just wanted someone to look after his gardens”

Such modesty from someone so influential, touched many in the 60 strong audience including myself. A lesson several others in our industry (who shall remain nameless) would do well to remember.

Extracts from the John Brookes MasterClass

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