frederick law olmsted writings on landscape culture and society

Since the late 19th century, gardeners and landscape architects the world over have worked to conserve, adapt, and transplant Shakespeare’s flora-those represented in the plays and those surrounding their author-to urban centers. This essay appears as a chapter in 'Enchanted, Stereotyped, Civilized: Garden Narratives in Literature, Art and Film' (Königshausen & Neumann, 2018), eds. In this paper however, two landscape designs are discussed to understand this concept. The used strategies and design methods can direct and intervene the development of certain landscapes. The specific focus of landscape architecture is understanding some of the formative elements that makes up the landscape. As such, it is not of recent history that design has been used for the construction of structures and restoration of lands. The stylistic devices that have been deployed in relation to the topography, indigenous habitat and water sources depicting the strong sense of architectural designs put in place. The description of two designed landscape including the stylistic attributes, cultural context and the design philosophy used. The interaction between the architect and the design created is illustrated as a coherent methodology. This paper aims at discussing the history of landscape architecture and introduce a methodology characterised by techniques and theories that converge research by design and architecture of the land.

The spatial techniques derived from Olmsted’s work challenge accounts in political theory and urban planning that contend free movement through cities encourages tolerance and fluid identities and instead contends that structured, mediating spatial structures might be necessary to facilitate the cultivation of such characteristics. The park accomplishes this spatially by encouraging citizens to journey through distinct geographies that enable associational styles Olmsted calls the “neighborly” and the “gregarious.” Through alternating between environments conducive to intimate, reassuring neighborly groupings and exciting, superficial, gregarious interaction, the park user encounters others within distinct spatial and temporal qualities that allow them to appreciate otherness without being overwhelmed by it.

This article examines how Frederick Law Olmsted’s parks, especially Prospect Park in Brooklyn, can be thought of as spatial technologies that mediate between individuals and their urban environment to foster an open, creative, and democratic relationship with the differences of their fellow city dwellers.

Frederick law olmsted writings on landscape culture and society