FIGURE GROUND

It is commonly thought that rugs or carpets created from Persia to China were significantly influenced by the landscape.  As far back as the 6th century grand carpets were depictions of formal gardens.  

“Ardabil”, a Safavid carpet at the V&A Museum in London

Fast forward to the eighteenth century in Rome when a planner/surveyor transposed Rome onto a map…

a close-up of which looks like this...

and the detail...

 

This is Giambattista’ Nolli's 1748 figure/ground map of Rome. You'll find reproductions for sale in Rome, Little Italy/NYC and on the Internet.  The extremely accurate, entirely black and white map was commissioned by Clement XII partly to serve as an instrument of control over the city. Nolli's inventive map-making strategy was to show all public spaces in white and private inaccessible spaces in black. Solids vs. voids. The Nolli map, as it's known, was the result of seven years of measuring and recording by a group of surveyors.

This map is a seminal example of what is referred to as “figure-ground” or “figure-field” – “the pictorial relationship between positive and negative spaces in an art work; in this case architecture/landscape design, the spatial and hierarchical relationship between primary (usually functionally or symbolically important), spaces which may be “figured” or sculpturally elaborated to signify their importance and the less important support and service spaces which surround them.” (Theories of Urban Design by Roger Trancik)

The building coverage is denser that the exterior space, thereby giving shape to the public openings – in other words- creating space as object, redefining negative space.  The open space in Rome is carved out of the building mass as a continuous flow-linking interior and exterior spaces and activities.  In Nolli’s map the void is figural.

Which brings me full circle to this carpet I found at "Skitch", a home products retailer based in Milano.

or a less detailed version can be found at Target!

 

PROSPECT - REFUGE THEORY

Why do we appreciate certain landscape design and shun others?

Prospect-Refuge theory is a concept established by Jay Appleton in his 1975 text - The Experience of Landscape.  (Rather expensive, if you can locate it!)  His idea is that human aesthetic experience of landscape is based on perceptions that are evolved for survival.  The concept is rooted in evolutionary psychology.  On one hand you have places to hide, versus areas which are escape routes, places with a clear view.

Appleton predicts that within a given landscape preferred locations are found at interfaces between prospect-dominant and refuge-dominant areas . These vantage points combine unimpeded visual prospects with a ready opportunity for concealment and/or withdrawal to a safe refuge. Thus a treeless landscape is less visually attractive than a habitat containing isolated trees that can provide opportunities to hide or escape from potential predators.  

Landscapes that enable prospect while providing refuge are considered  desirable when designing the sensory driven landscape.

ROOF GARDEN - COMMUNITY

Thought I'd share some additional precedent on roof gardens that I've researched...

Roof gardens are believed to have been used in ancient times as a communal space, an extra room to be used for an occasional visitor.  In these earthen homes, which were built in the warm climates of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt there is evidence of roof gardens above the house.  Many times basic furnishings such as a bed, table, chair, and candle were set up for the occasional visitor. Interestingly, even downright surprising is the interpretation by some of roof gardens in the Holy Scripture.  In 2 Kings 4:10 “Please, let us make a little walled upper chamber and let us set a bed for him there, and a table and a chair and a lamp stand; and it shall be, when he comes to us, that he can turn in there.”

While the psychological benefits of a hospital roof garden for patients are known to be beneficial, the physical and medicinal benefits of being several stories up above the city streets are thought to have validity. Tenement buildings in Brooklyn during the turn of the century (known as “wage earners’ homes”) were designed in some cases with roof gardens for the “general good health” of laborers.1 

Hospital Roof used for the benefit of chidren

“The tuberculosis roof camp was another development in the early 20th century.  Sufferers from ‘the malady,’ were invited to spend the day in these camps.” 2    Some of the press and medical field called for these tuberculosis “light” hospitals to be on the roof of every large apartment building in poor neighborhoods.  There would be playground areas and covered areas for beds.  The belief was that you would quarantine the already sick from healthy children and provide them with a better chance of recovery in this “purer atmosphere.” 2

The restorative benefits of time spent in a roof garden are well documented in the American Journal of Nursing.  In 1935 the local garden club helped to create vegetable and flower gardens atop the Children’s Hospital of Akron, Ohio, “with a wish that blessings of health be restored to each little one entrusted here.”3

Illustration for nursing building with roof garden

 

According to Theodore Koch in “A Book of Carnegie Libraries”, ninety years ago along the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Public Libraries created open-air reading rooms on their roofs, complete with tables, chairs, flower boxes, awnings and lighting for late-night readers.

 Young girl reading @ roof garden library circa 1910

1.Fortmeyer, Erik, “Were There Ever Roof Gardens in Boerum Hill?” http://www.boerumhillbrooklyn.org/archives/cat_history_of_boerum_hill.html
2  Shaw, Albert, (editor) American Review of Reviews Vol XLII, July-Dec 1910: Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press 1910
3 Chambers, Marion, “A Roof Garden”, The American Journal of Nursing, Vol 35, No. 4 (April 1935) pp. 315-318