Month: February 2020

Last week, we talked about how the French Renaissance influenced our preference on landscapes aesthetics today.  This week, we’ll be looking at another huge influencer of our modern landscapes:  the English Landscape School.

In order to understand why the English Landscape School was born, we must look at the historical context.  This was around the time Henry the VIII separated from the Roman Catholic church to create the English Church.  In doing this, he confiscated a lot of land and created the “landed gentry“, a social class that is defined by land ownership.  These people were upper-middle class who would have found the offered financial incentive appealing.  This influx of new settlers stripped the land of trees and vegetation, leaving a rather grey, barren, and ugly landscape.

Poets, painters, and philosophers began placing emphasis on picturesque landscapes, using nature as a prime source of inspiration and focus for their work.  This caused a shift in the attitude towards nature: people started to respect nature, even if it’s aesthetic is influenced or manipulated my humans.

The biggest characteristic of the English Landscape School is it’s preference for “idealized” landscapes–where picturesque landscapes are seemingly natural but were engineered by humans–vs. humanized landscapes wherein human interference is obvious.  The results were vast voids of green carpet, rolling hills, and paths that created a sense of longing by not allowing people to directly walk into the beautiful landscape they saw.

One of the most prominent figures of the English Landscape School is Capability Brown (his birth-given name is Lancelot).  He has done so many projects that he is practically the face of the English Landscape School; and his works, the face of England’s countrysides.   His signature features include winding bodies of water, (fake) ancient ruins or monuments, ha-ha ditches, clusters of trees, and big open lawns.  Again, the idea was that the landscape would look as natural as possible, but would be tailored to enhance human experience.

Because Brown has transformed close to two hundred landscapes, his style spread throughout the country. With this came the widening of canals and roads, which promoted international growth, trade, and globalization. His distinctive style is seen in English literature as well. Some of his works are sets for Downtown Abbey and Jane Austen’s Pride and Predjudice. Generally speaking, his unique approach to nature has inspired modern designers to think in similar ways. The ideology of the idealized nature aesthetic and simplicity and elegance of designs has been replicated and emulated in designs across the country and even internationally.

Today, let’s time travel around 500 years ago.  I know, history is boring, blah blah blah, I get it.  That’s what I thought too, before learning about how the French Renaissance influenced our landscapes today.  Think of any modern landscape (park, memorial, a place on campus, or even your own backyard.)  It probably has neatly trimmed plants arranges in neat rows or something of the like.  But the ideal, widely-recognized “neatness” of modern landscapes has to come from somewhere, right?

Most people have heard of Renée DesCartes, the French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist who gave birth to the “Cartesian” way of thinking with the infamous quote, “I think, therefore I am.”  The Cartesian Self is the separation of mind and body (wild tangent, but please watch The Matrix), which implies that humans are masters of everything around them.  This new way of thinking gives humans a controlling hand in nature, and results in the intense manipulation and exploitation of nature.

This is why a lot of French Renaissance landscape architecture features moats and large, flat bodies of water in non-organic shapes like rectangles; intricately maintained parterres and shaped vegetation; and elements arranged on an axis, pointing to monumental structures.  Let’s take a look at two famous sites from the French Renaissance.

Vaux le Vicomte is a hot spot for tourists.  Built in 1661 for Nicholas Fourquet by Andre le Notre, this summer home is a sight to see with many typical features of the French Renaissance.  In the picture below, it’s easy to see the intense control of nature through the expansive parterres flaunting sharp, clean edges with intricate designs, and multiple pools and fountains.  Everything is built on an axis, resulting in neat bilateral symmetry and heavy emphasis on the actual house.  All these elements together bring a dramatic flair to the estate, as it was a party house and it was practically illegal to be boring in the time period.

After this successful project, Andre le Notre went on to design Versailles for the Sun King (Louis XIV) who obviously wanted to assert his dominance as a ruler.  Imagine the estate above, but times ten in every aspect…including the control of nature and want for dominance and power.  Along with the precisely trimmed patterns of green, the orderly placed trees, and large pool of water are several design choices that scream for attention.  Among them is the impressive fountain engineering, which used 250 pumps to shoot water upstream into the chateau with 500 feet of vertical elevation in order to supply over 1400 fountains for 130 years.  If that doesn’t show an overwhelming control of nature, I don’t know what will!