The following opening sentences to a recent article in Architectural Review struck me as debatable. In response, I wrote a letter to the Editor (below). I welcome your comments as well!
“Unlike architecture, which requires solidity to provide shelter over time regardless of style, landscaped gardens are ephemeral by nature. They may possess a degree of flamboyancy and fantasy expressive of the philosophical tone of their times and their creators without concerns for function. This is particularly true among the rolling hills of southwest Scotland, where… Charles Jencks… and his late wife, Maggie Keswick, created a 30-acre garden on a family estate that engages both the mind and the senses.”*
Dear Editor:
I feel compelled to comment on behalf of the word “function” and its function thereof. Upon reading the opening sentences for the July 2009 article “machine in the garden: Charles Jencks’s Garden of Scottish Worthies” I was disturbed. And I am not a landscape architect.
The first sentence is mostly fine: architecture is required to provide lasting shelter, whereas landscape architecture is not. The part that is not so fine is the part that says “regardless of style.” Why do we talk about anything created by humans using the phrase “regardless of style” as if something can be created by a human without style? All we can do is clearly avoid another particular style, but we as designers can no more claim there is no style to our buildings than we as people who get dressed in the morning can claim our outfit has no style (albeit an ugly or frumpy or plain one… even “style-less” is a style).
However, I digress. The more troublesome sentence is the second, followed by the third. First, the author implies that only landscape architecture can ”possess a degree of flamboyancy and fantasy expressive of the philosophical tone of their times and their creators…”. Since when is this an exclusive right of landscape architecture?
Second, since when does landscape architecture not have a function (”…without concerns for function.”)? The author clearly states in the next sentence that it does: “…30-acre garden…engages both the mind and the senses.”
I have often heard and been a part of debates about “function” as it relates to art, design and craft, and I am aware of the tendency to assume a certain definition for the word which is usually about utility as it relates to our perceived basic needs and activities in life (eating, sleeping, protecting, containing, etc.). But, as designers, does this assumption help us any? Don’t we often find it hard to sell a design move that is not obvious to the client to be what they assume is “functional” or “necessary”?
Two of the definitions at Dictionary.com for “function” are: the purpose for which something is designed or exists; role.
More than getting kicks out of being “semantical,” I simply hope to see more accurate writing in Architectural Record. And as someone who has created art, design and craft—some of which was crap and some kind of lovely—I don’t ever want to embark on making something thinking it is doomed to a functionless existence no matter how much it engages the mind or senses.
Thank you,
Molly Kunselman
*Machine in the garden: Charles Jencks’s Garden of Scottish Worthies by Paula Deitz appeared in Architectural Review on pages 50 – 54, in the July 2009 issue.