Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tom R. Ryan, FASLA, is Principal of Ryan Associates, Landscape Architecture and Planning. He has more than thirty years of experience as a practicing landscape architect, and has taught in the landscape architecture departments at the University of Pennsylvania, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Edward Allen, FAIA, has been a member of the faculties at Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has frequently taught as a guest at other institutions across the United States over the past thirty years. He is also the best-selling coauthor of Fundamentals of Building Construction and The Architect's Studio Companion (both with Joseph Iano), Form and Forces (with Waclaw Zalewski), and Architectural Detailing (with Patrick Rand), all published by Wiley.

Patrick Rand, FAIA, is a Professor in the School of Architecture at North Carolina State University, where he teaches design studios, construction systems courses, and detailing seminars. He is coauthor of Architectural Detailing along with Edward Allen.

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The new industry standard on landscape architectural detailing

Detailing for Landscape Architects takes the reader on an educational journey across three major areas of landscape architectural detailing―aesthetics, function, and constructibility―to demonstrate how powerful design patterns can transform thematic ideas into awe-inspiring built realities. Richly illustrated examples accompany concise discussions of a varied blend of landscape design/detailing issues such as water movement, soil environments, articulating structures and construction assemblies, life cycle costing, sustainability, health and safety, and more. This book approaches the subject of detailing in a systematic manner, and provides a balanced framework for design and workmanship that conveys the essence of the built landscape.

Detailing for Landscape Architects shows how details can:

• Reinforce design ideas through the continuity and discontinuity of patterns
• Actively contribute to the overall form or geometry of the design
• Be designed to be durable and flexible while enhancing the entire design
• Gracefully accommodate the natural growth and change of plant materials
• Anticipate maintenance needs to minimize future disruptions
• Maximize their cost effectiveness through understanding their function while designing to meet those functions

Including chapters that apply detail patterns to the design of an urban plaza, a roof deck, and a residence, Detailing for Landscape Architects offers guidance on solving specific technical requirements, while preserving and enhancing the visual qualities that celebrate innovation, and carry forth a timeless quality of building.

Aus dem Klappentext

The new industry standard on landscape architectural detailing

Detailing for Landscape Architects takes the reader on an educational journey across three major areas of landscape architectural detailing—aesthetics, function, and constructibility—to demonstrate how powerful design patterns can transform thematic ideas into awe-inspiring built realities. Richly illustrated examples accompany concise discussions of a varied blend of landscape design/detailing issues such as water movement, soil environments, articulating structures and construction assemblies, life cycle costing, sustainability, health and safety, and more. This book approaches the subject of detailing in a systematic manner, and provides a balanced framework for design and workmanship that conveys the essence of the built landscape.

Detailing for Landscape Architects shows how details can:

• Reinforce design ideas through the continuity and discontinuity of patterns

• Actively contribute to the overall form or geometry of the design

• Be designed to be durable and flexible while enhancing the entire design

• Gracefully accommodate the natural growth and change of plant materials

• Anticipate maintenance needs to minimize future disruptions

• Maximize their cost effectiveness through understanding their function while designing to meet those functions

Including chapters that apply detail patterns to the design of an urban plaza, a roof deck, and a residence, Detailing for Landscape Architects offers guidance on solving specific technical requirements, while preserving and enhancing the visual qualities that celebrate innovation, and carry forth a timeless quality of building.

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Landscape Architectural Detailing

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

Contributive Details

All of the details of a landscape should contribute to its formal and spatial theme. They support and embellish the main design ideas in a landscape.

1. Many details are associated with a style. The style may be the incidental byproduct of practical actions, as might be found in good vernacular design, or the intentional expression of a particular body of work such as the California Modernists of the 1950s and 1960s. The flowing concrete patios and walls, redwood decks and fences all contributed to the "look" of the modern gardens of that time. They were a departure from the symmetry and ornament of the Beaux Arts that preceded it, and the detailing complimented the new aesthetic. Styles in landscape architecture are not always as well defined as in architecture, but the aesthetic sensibilities of a time are reflected in landscape architecture as well as the other arts.

2. In similar fashion we can analyze the details associated with any landscape architectural style: Baroque landscapes, which used highly finished materials with ornate profiles that were unified in balanced symmetrical compositions directly contrasted with Contemporary design, where elements may instead juxtapose machined and unprocessed materials in asymmetrical unresolved compositions with overlapping forms.

3. Every designer of landscapes works in his or her own manner or style. It may not have a name, but it has a consistent personality, sensibility, or a guiding ethic. This personality or ethic stems from an approach to space, form, light, color, and to details. The style of the details must be integral with the style of the landscape. As a designer's manner evolves and changes with each project, so must the details. The details must contribute their proportional share to the character and content of the landscape. For some landscape architects, a particular material or detail is the seed from which the landscape's design grows. Even if not the source of the central design concept, details are the voice of the concept, the means through which the concept is expressed. They are evident in the earliest conceptual drawings and must be developed as the design evolves.

4. A landscape's details should be all of a family. It will not do to copy one detail from one source, another detail from another, and patch together a set of details that function well but bear no visible resemblance to one another. The designer should develop a matched set of the most important details as an ongoing part of the overall design process. This set of key details should then serve to guide the preparation of every other visible detail in the project. Details may become related by sharing a common compositional approach, which may be evident in their proportions, materiality, alignment, and orientation.

5. Dissimilar elements and architectural palettes can also be joined. Special attention must be given to their technical and compositional compatibility. One paving pattern may spill out over another. The details of the edges are the key to expressing either a low-key harmonious transition or to accentuate the tension and drama of the contrast between two different patterns and forms. Landforms marching across a plaza should have an edge detail that makes it clear that the landforms are dominant and overlapping the plaza below as opposed to rising up from below (see A and B).

Timeless Features

Details embody all that we know from the past, they respond to the certainty of the present, and they will serve an unknown future. They should be designed with this broad time frame in mind, not focused too narrowly on the present.

1. Nothing grows wearisome faster than a trendy detail or material treatment. The longer the life expectancy of the project, the more timeless its materials and details should be. It is usually inappropriate to detail a park or institutional landscape which will have a long life in the public realm, in the fleeting fashion of the day. However, it may be appropriate to do so in a hotel or retail project that will be continually renovated to stay new, or for an individual's garden where the aesthetic expression is personal and specific to the changing preferences of the owner. Well-designed details, made using durable materials and installed using appropriate workmanship, have a timeless quality.

2. Timeless details are more likely to be understood and appreciated by people in the future, much as good literature or music is appreciated by successive generations in a culture. A landscape with well-proportioned forms and spaces, a logical plan, and meaningful and well-made details will live a long time, almost certainly longer than the initial program. Owners in the future will become the landscape's stewards, maintaining it, introducing new elements with care, and being respectful of its basic ordering principles. Such landscapes should not be made with features that become aesthetically obsolete in a short period of time.

3. To be timeless, a detail does not need to have been done previously, or selected from a catalog of stock solutions. Innovation remains essential. New details and materials will always be part of a landscape architect's work. New details should be based on sound compositional principles, contribute to the overall themes of the design, have a grasp of the relevant physical phenomena, and should not waste human or material resources. If this is done, the details will likely achieve this timeless quality.

4. The means of production and "best practices" du jour often become a date stamp on the project. As industry introduces new materials and processes, or as new methods of construction are introduced at the construction site, eager designers explore their technical and aesthetic possibilities. Each designer nudges the envelope of authentic insights regarding the new material or process. Initial uses of new materials and tools are often ersatz imitations of their predecessors. Insight follows imitation: plastic was first used to imitate ivory products, such as billiard balls and piano keys; only later were the unique possibilities (and limitations) of plastics discovered. As light sources have become smaller and more energy-efficient, the design of light fixtures has expanded the range of lighting options tremendously. Detailers should actively participate in the exploration of new materials and construction processes, striving to distinguish between formal possibilities that are timeless and those that are merely today's fashion.

Hierarchy of Refinement

When designing a project, landscape architects usually establish a hierarchy of importance for spaces and elements, reflecting the importance of each part of the landscape in relation to the other parts. The level of refinement of details within the project should be consistent with this hierarchy.

1. Important spaces are often finished and detailed more lavishly or specially than other spaces of lesser stature. The front entrance of an office building is more extensively detailed than the loading dock. Plazas and squares are more refined than the pathways leading to them.

2. Details that will be viewed at close range are generally more refined than...