Drifting: walking in relation to the terrain

 

A path in the desert. Las Vegas, NV. Personal archives, 2021.

I have chosen the name of this blog "Inbuilt Landscape" as a representation of my inner terrain-desire to be in contact with nature, and feel it as part of me. Being a child, I used to walk alone among Eucalyptus trees in my father's farm, crushing the leaves on the ground, smelling the leaves, sometimes graving my name on the trunks.... And when I went to a beach city for vacation, my favorite sidewalks where those adjacent to pine trees with branches I liked to touch and smell while walking. Being in any city, the detours to hidden streets are my favorite ones. Even in cemeteries, my passion is looking inside all mortuary buildings and walking randomly in a search for abandoned tombs. 

What I did not know at the time of my childhood, was that I have always been an unconscious situationist practitioner of "drifting" or "dérive," with the difference that I prefer to walk alone, rather than in small groups, and discover the "mystery" of the surroundings by myself. 

From Theory of the Dérive. Guy Debord Les Lèvres Nues #9 (November 1956) reprinted in Internationale Situationniste #2 (December 1958) Translated by Ken Knabb:

ONE OF THE BASIC situationist practices is the dérive [literally: “drifting”], a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll. In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one might think: from a dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones. But the dérive includes both this letting-go and its necessary contradiction: the domination of psychogeographical variations by the knowledge and calculation of their possibilities. In this latter regard, ecological science — despite the narrow social space to which it limits itself — provides psychogeography with abundant data.

An informal path at the Long Beach Green Belt, CA. I took this photo with a special interest in the cactus scale. Personal archives, 2023.

Walking down an informal path to the lake among Eucalyptus trees. Note the colors, the light and shadows. Huntington Beach Central Park, CA. Personal archives, 2023.

I'd call this path "the light at the end of the tunnel", that's they way I felt when I walked along this path at the South Coast Botanic Garden, Palos Verdes Estates, CA. Photo from my personal archives, April 2024.

In this post, I am applying the term "drifting" to walk in landscape. Here I am sharing some of my impressions -which I love to keep represented in photographs-. It is important to see and feel the sounds, textures, enjoy the -healing- forest, the colors, the smells, the light and shadows.

Walking along a path in the Secret Garden of Huntington Beach Central Park, CA. Personal archives, 2022.

Walking along a path in the Secrete Garden of Huntington Beach Central park, CA. Here, at the fork, we have the choice of taking one path or the other. This will lead us to a different experience. Personal archives, 2022.

A path surrounded by cactus and succulents. Rancho Dominguez, CA. Personal archives, 2019.

Phil Smith, in his book Enchanted Things (Triarchy Press, 2014, page 70) illustrates the concept in this poetic way:

"When walking in relation to the terrain is complemented by a dancing in relation to entangled inner and outer lives (what the choreographer Siriol Joyner calls "mining", the extractive counterpart to our construction of an inner landscape), then this is where the resources of an otherwise irrecuperable surplus can be spent: in the reconstruction of interiority. 

But the starting point is not within, subjectivity has been too damaged recently to sustain a simple quietist mysticism. Instead, the increasing scatterings of enchanted objects in the streets are the required things "ready-to-hand" (or rather, escaping Heidegger, "ready-to-tentacle") to fashion new inner landscapes of terrain-desire."

For further information, please read my interview with Phil Smith on concepts of Mythogeography:

https://theclubofcompulsivereaders.blogspot.com/2010/03/concepts-on-mythogeography-interview.html?m=0

My photo of an "inner path" in Rancho Dominguez, CA, to illustrate Phil Smith's words. Personal archives, 2019.

Landscape and hardscape design around a swimming pool

 

This is a project from 2023 in Orange County. The address and the rest of the plans are not shared for the client's privacy purposes.

The lot has an existing two story house with a rear attached patio cover. The landscape design shows an improvement of the front yard with a continuation of hardscape to allow a (requested) RV parking. There is a transition zone between the proposed permeable pavers, the landscape and the existing slabs.

An open pool house was designed as well, with an outdoor kitchen, a living-fire place area and a bar that is covered by a trellis. I located the fire pit next to the bar, with a round hardscape of permeable pavers, connected to a path leading to the solarium and swimming pool.

Behind the swimming pool, we see a water fall wall with two decorative vase planters on each corner, and adjacent to this wall, a mini golf surrounded by native bushes has been designed. It also has a bridge crossing a pond that gets the water from a round fountain in the planters.

The location of the fountain is in straight perspective with the swimming pool and jacuzzi, as a final point of interest.

The path to the existing storage is informal, with stepping stones and lighting across the grass.

This is the outdoor kitchen and fire place "pool house" floor plan. The barbecue, since it is under a roof, is fully covered and the exhaust is through a chimney. The kitchen walls are full height, one of them next to palm trees. They are hiding the existing swimming pool filters. A stepping stones path next to the planter is proposed behind the pool house to reach the filters. 

Since the sun is on this side during the afternoon, the fire place side walls are lower to allow the entry of natural light. On both sides of the fire place, there are shelves. 

The left side projection is the trellis above the bar seats and the entry of the pool house.

There is a full view of the swimming pool from the fire place area.

Concealing a structure with fake nature

 

A metal tower disguised as a tree. Long Beach ecological trail. Personal archives, 2024.

During 1950-1970 the tendency in landscape design was the development of models focused on problem-solving. Later on, landscape design was more related to arts. 

In current times, there is common ground between science-technology and arts-design. There are lots of projects where the technology is advanced enough to help us create structures that are similar to natural organisms. We have the possibility of designing buildings with the abstraction of an animal morphology, or a plant, or any other natural element. But we are not disguising the building which has been conceived and developed like this from the very beginning. 

The World Trade Center Station in Ground Zero, Manhattan, NYC. One can see the bird like morphology resolved with the structural members. Personal archives, 2022.

Landscape design is an agent of culture that bonds man and nature. It can be artistic and-or practical. When I see these metal towers spread out in Southern California disguised as trees, I think they are no art, no landscape, but just a deformation of its technological quality. 

I blame it on the planners, who are not architects. They may know how to plan a city, divide it in zones, write codes and laws to procure light and ventilation, open spaces and so on, but in my experience in Southern California, their input in architecture is just "simulate the Mediterranean design- hide structures- add planters to hide the cars- install all windows the same- everything has to be to match existing...". The final product is a pharmacy building like a supermarket, like a mall, like a house, etc. The lack of creativity is painful, and the example that hurts me the most is those ridiculous towers as trees. 

The example here is close to where I leave. This is a metal tube tower with a real pine next to it. I'm assuming the added branches are plastic and the trunk a piece of non textured concrete. Maybe this is even the structural tower column. We can even see how the top of the fake tree is different with pieces of green here and there, where the change of green tones between top and bottom is not the result of seasonal color changes. The scenography is disintegrated to be left only for the purpose of the Zoning code compliance. 

Claude Lorrain. Capriccio with ruins of the Roman Forum. 1634. Art Gallery of South Australia. Downloaded from geelonggallery.org.au

This is so different from the Picturesque and romantic effect, where the architecture is "softened" in time, it becomes a ruin, and it is partly concealed with vegetation in a natural process along the years.

This "tree like" solution is a tecnophobic deformity that has nothing to do with the revival of the 1960 "Environmental Revolution." This is not a positive contribution to the environment at all. I cannot imagine birds nesting here and I am even wondering about the branches material emission.  There is no visual and experimental research in the process of design; we must not overlook electrical-communication towers, high tension lines, etc.

A new aesthetic for the necessary infrastructure -with a reasonable sense of purpose-, is yet to be proposed. Or we rather leave it as is, with the beauty of the structural components per se.

Central courtyard garden at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

I had the pleasure of visiting the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, MA), on the second day of Spring 2024. I am sharing here some of the pictures I have taken of the central courtyard garden, which is covered by a glass roof and has a classical symmetrical design with some ornaments (sculptures, a fountain, ceramics). It is mostly a foliage garden, at least at the end of Winter. 

This is a stunning view and I regret to say, visitors are not allowed to walk into the courtyard. 

(Do not reproduce the photos without permission).

From the museum's web page:

"Gardens, both interior and exterior, are an integral part of the Gardner Museum experience today. When Isabella built the Museum, she created an experience that was as much about flowers and plants, artfully arranged, as it was about masterpieces of art. The culmination of that vision is the Courtyard but botanical images can be found throughout the Museum."

 To see some of the flowers, you can access to the following link:

https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/courtyard

"Throughout the year, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s always-blooming Courtyard is transformed through a series of ten dramatic seasonal displays that reflect Isabella’s passion for gardens as well as the skill and dedication of the Museum's horticulture staff. From orchids to nasturtiums to Japanese-style chrysanthemums, there’s always something new to discover thanks to the changing seasons and the rotation of plants. Most of the plants for the Courtyard are grown in the Museum’s temperature-controlled nursery and trucked to the Palace location, where they are rotated in to keep the displays in peak condition."

Regarding the architect Renzo Piano's wing addition, it looks interesting from the architectural point of view, but the landscape didn't pick up my attention, though I have to clarify that the trees were not blooming yet. The thin trunks are somehow similar to the thin posts in the entry roof, I can't tell if it was intentional.

Here I am sharing three of the pictures I have taken: