THE UMBRELLA CONSIDERATIONSChapter 2

THE UMBRELLA CONSIDERATIONS

Attention to purpose, people’s needs, function, and aesthetics are the umbrella considerations which spread over the entire period of design thinking. The key words: “why”, “people”, “efficiency”, and “experience” focus attention upon basic issues with which the designer contends and, therefore, comprise the tests which must be passed by every development commitment.

PRINCIPLE 1: EVERYTHING MUST HAVE A PURPOSE

Design must have purpose. The purpose must establish appropriate relationships between the various parts of the park complex: natural elements; use areas; major structures; minor structures; people; other animals; in addition, all are affected by forces of nature. No part can work in isolation from another. Interdependence among all the parts must be recognized and accommodated.

PRINCIPLE 1: EVERYTHING MUST HAVE A PURPOSE MATTERS OF CONCERN

1A. Relation of Park to Surroundings

The design of the park should consider what will be its impact to the surrounding. Will the proposed park development cause flooding in the valley below? Will it cause traffic to back up into residential streets? Will the arrangement of the new facilities replace the pleasant view of undeveloped land with an unpalatable distraction? Will the location of play areas encourage baseballs to fly into backyards?

The reverse, the impact of the surroundings on the park is equally significant. Will adjacent land uses send unpleasant odors across proposed picnic areas, create safety hazards, or encroach upon park serenity? Do the surroundings offer potentials to be “borrowed” – a good view, a major access route, a utility source?

PRINCIPLE 1: EVERYTHING MUST HAVE A PURPOSE MATTERS OF CONCERN

1B. Relation of Use Areas to Site

Land cannot be wasted. Every corner of every site must be assigned a use. Land may serve as buffer or a viewing panorama. It may be left as conservation acreage if it has been determined that active trespass would cause loss of wildlife cover or vegetation that holds back flood waters.

Whether they be for active or passive uses, facilities should be assigned only to portions of the site that are compatible with that use.

All uses can be cataloged as to their demands for slope and much more: type of soil (stability, fertility, and permeability), need for vegetative cover, nearness to water, utilities, and transportation, orientation to sun and wind.

It is essential in design to identify both the limitations of the site and its potentials.

PRINCIPLE 1: EVERYTHING MUST HAVE A PURPOSE MATTERS OF CONCERN

1C. Relation of Use Areas to Use Areas

Various uses, before being assigned to locations on the site, should be analyzed in terms of compatibility with each other.

By locating common units together and segregating them from noncompatible use areas, activity enjoyment is enhanced. In addition movement orientation is simplified; area supervision is also assisted; and maintenance procedures are simplified. 

PRINCIPLE 1: EVERYTHING MUST HAVE A PURPOSE MATTERS OF CONCERN

1D. Relation of Major Structures to Use Areas

Special attention should be paid to the relationship of various rooms to adjacent outdoor areas.

1E. Relation of Minor Structures to Minor Structures

PRINCIPLE 2: DESIGN MUST BE FOR PEOPLE

People are the benefactors of any park development, therefore the design purpose for parks is to develop an environment which fits people.

The elevation of impersonal matters to prime measures of development success can lead to the creation of an uncomfortable mold in to which people must be forced.

PRINCIPLE 2: DESIGN MUST BE FOR PEOPLE MATTERS OF CONCERN

2A. Balance of Impersonal and Personal Needs

To meet the requirements of machinery is essential, but the demands of it must not overshadow the needs of the people whom these inanimate objects propose to serve.

Administrative efficiency is another essential in the park agency operation, and it is often met through the purchase of standardized equipment. But, standardization sometimes create sameness which dulls visual appetite.

In addition, standardization can actually benefit people for purpose such as the giving of information. Since repetition creates familiarity, similar styles among signs and waste receptacles, for example, provide immediate signals for someone in the time of need.

PRINCIPLE 2: DESIGN MUST BE FOR PEOPLE MATTERS OF CONCERN

PRINCIPLE 2: DESIGN MUST BE FOR PEOPLE MATTERS OF CONCERN Landscape architects seek to understand the

sociological, psychological, and physiological effects of surroundings and incorporate such findings into his works so as to relate their works to the satisfaction of human needs. There should be a collaborative interplay among (behavioral) researchers and appliers. People have psychological need to shy away from

circumstances of potential pain or injury. Designers should go to great lengths to separate vehicular from pedestrian traffic patterns.

People have need for companionship. To designers, this implies that convenient gathering places should be part of every development. Every facility should be designed to encourage human interaction. Where interaction is to be encouraged, benches should be grouped to face each other.

Automobiles and pedestrians should be separated.

DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA

Orientation of sitting places toward activity spots encourages human interaction.

Curling benches allow both interaction and isolation. Intimate curves fosters conversation-making, while outside curves can be offered for people who wish to sit alone.

Estes Park in Colorado

Jacob Javits Plaza

PRINCIPLE 2: DESIGN MUST BE FOR PEOPLE MATTERS OF CONCERN

Another human need is freedom, to be unencumbered by domineering authority and chart one’s own course. This suggests a need to provide space which is unallocated to predetermined activities. This would be arenas for satisfying whim, “do as you damn well please areas”.

Mental exercise and pride are other needs of people. To provide the exercise of the senses and to satisfy a need to ask, answer, formulate, and analyze, designers can enrich projects with fascinating details and provide surprises (e.g. an unanticipated opening to a view, a bubbling pool or other discovered feature set in a hidden place). To engender pride or satisfy the need to be recognized and command the respect of others, landscape architects can personalize areas with characteristics familiar to the user, thereby establishing a development with which he can readily identify.

PRINCIPLE 2: DESIGN MUST BE FOR PEOPLE MATTERS OF CONCERN

This task of satisfying behavioral need in design is further complicated by the fact that each of the foregoing requirements appears to have an equally strong contradictory partner. Need to avoid circumstances of possible harm

must be paired with challenge or need to show evidence that one can take care of himself.

Companionship is coupled with solitude or desire to have some time alone.

Freedom has its counterpart in security or lack of anxiety.

PRINCIPLE 3. BOTH FUNCTION AND AESTHETICS MUST BE SATISFIED MATTER OF CONCERN

  3A. Balance of Dollar and Human Values To bring quality into park design, both money and human value

aspects must be weighed. Functional considerations – upon which money sign can be placed Aesthetics – from which pleasured human responses is gained

These two aspects should work hand-in-hand and never apart.

Every tangible object and relationship system proposed must function in the most efficient manner possible. Therefore, judgment regarding highest dollar value or top degree of function can be wrapped around the term “efficiency”.

At the same time, the word “experience” can be used to trigger critical thoughts about aesthetic success of the same parts. Matters of aesthetics address themselves to the refreshment of the mind. It must generate an impact that makes its presence unmistakably felt.