landscaping without plants

salk-looking-west

From my desk at work it’s less than a fif­teen minute stroll to this view­point, which has got to be one of the most famous places to stand in all of mod­ern architecture.

The view is of the cen­tral plaza of the Salk Insti­tute of Bio­log­i­cal Stud­ies, which archi­tect Louis Kahn designed for his client, polio vac­cine pio­neer Jonas Salk. The plaza fea­tures this sim­ple water fea­ture that pulls your eye towards the water, 400 feet below, and to the hori­zon and the sky. The mate­ri­als of the plaza are reduced down to water, traver­tine mar­ble and the angled con­crete walls of the research buildings.

No plants. When Kahn was work­ing on the design he’d had a con­ver­sa­tion with Mex­i­can archi­tect Luis Bar­ragán. Ken­neth Framp­ton recounts Barragán’s sem­i­nal response in Stud­ies in Tec­tonic Cul­ture: The Poet­ics of Con­struc­tion in Nine­teenth and Twen­ti­eth Cen­tury Archi­tec­ture:

“I would not put a tree or blade of grass in this space. This should be a plaza of stone, not a gar­den.” I [Kahn] looked at Dr. Salk and he at me and we both felt this was deeply right. Feel­ing our approval, he added joy­ously, “If you make this a plaza, you will gain a facade–a facade to the sky.”

As much as I love plants, I have to agree that this was the right deci­sion. There’s an unpho­tograph­ably joy­ous expe­ri­ence of pure space that set­tles into your mind as you stand or sit to con­tem­plate the view.

salk-looking-north

If you can pull your eyes off the horizon–not an easy thing to do–you start to notice, how­ever, that plants do fig­ure in the plaza’s final real­iza­tion. Imme­di­ately to the east are some steps, and plant­ing beds on either side of the steps. As with a lot of mod­ern plant­ing design, the planters fea­ture one kind of plant and one kind only. Con­sid­er­ing the plant­ing design was exe­cuted many years ago, prob­a­bly in the late 1960s or early 1970s, long before the cur­rent focus on edi­ble land­scap­ing, it’s sur­pris­ing that the plant of choice was orange trees, at least four dozen of them. (Maybe it has some­thing to do with the envi­ron­men­tal ethic that was devel­op­ing while the Salk was being designed, an ethic that we’re finally redis­cov­er­ing today.)

Below is a 360-degree panorama from the top of the steps. Just imag­ine walk­ing west towards the hori­zon, at dusk, on a calm evening, as the orange trees begin to flower and scent the air.

salk-panorama-horizontal

April 24 2009 06:28 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: • • • •

15 Responses to “landscaping without plants”

  1. James Golden on 25 Apr 2009 at 5:11 am #

    Thanks for show­ing this. It’s beau­ti­ful, and I’d never have seen it oth­er­wise. I’d call it a gar­den even with no plants. (Though I’m gen­er­ally wary of archi­tects design­ing gar­dens.) Have you seen Tim Richardson’s book on con­cep­tual gar­dens, Avant Garderers?

  2. tina on 25 Apr 2009 at 6:17 am #

    I must say that though this is the right deci­sion for the archi­tect and designer. I’m not lik­ing it. We all need green in our lives, not just stone and the token water. It just feels cold and ster­ile. Seems more like Greece than California.

  3. lostlandscape on 25 Apr 2009 at 8:29 am #

    James, for gar­den­ers who approach a site with its spa­tial qual­i­ties fore­most in mind, I think the Salk will make sense. I find the space deeply affect­ing. Funny that you men­tion Avant Gardeners–I’ve been dip­ping in and out of the book for the last sev­eral months as bed­side read­ing. There’s some fine work in there, along with some projects that seem to stall at the con­cept. But I do appre­ci­ate a lit­tle provo­ca­tion, and the book does that well.

    Tina, your com­ment about Greece is very inter­est­ing. The archi­tect was greatly influ­enced by some of the mon­u­men­tal archi­tec­ture he encoun­tered in South­ern Europe. Where this build­ing sits, on a bluff high over the Pacific, the site reminds me a lot of what I think coastal Greece would look like (not hav­ing ever been there).

  4. Greg on 25 Apr 2009 at 1:21 pm #

    At first, I con­fess I was a bit dubi­ous at this idea of no plants, as arrest­ing as the framed vista may be.

    Its funny how quickly I came ’round to it, though, once you assured me that plants do indeed have their impact on the site and its experience.

  5. lostlandscape on 25 Apr 2009 at 3:39 pm #

    Giv­ing a fair approx­i­ma­tion of the expe­ri­ence is tough–something like try­ing to pho­to­graph fra­grance. But the place exceeds most people’s expectations…

  6. Country Mouse on 26 Apr 2009 at 4:48 am #

    I’ll have to take your words on it. To me the open­ing shot looks like a place where nuclear fuel might be pro­duced. By robots.

  7. Steve on 26 Apr 2009 at 6:56 pm #

    LOL, I like it myself although, to be hon­est, some green or at least some­thing organic would be cool. Imag­ine some kinky designer with “blues” in mind, for exam­ple. What it does do is focus, as you say, on the sky like some invi­ta­tion. It is there­fore evoca­tive, at the very worst. Isn’t that what art is all about?

  8. James Golden on 26 Apr 2009 at 7:00 pm #

    Inter­est­ing that your pho­to­graph of the “gar­den” seems to be so con­tro­ver­sial. The cen­tral rill recalls Islamic gar­dens, and even the pre-Islamic par­adise gar­den. I actu­ally dis­like many of the plant­less con­cep­tual gar­dens in Avant Garderens, but I think Kahn’s design is beau­ti­ful in it’s purity and simplicity.

  9. Alice Joyce on 27 Apr 2009 at 4:10 pm #

    As always, I’m refreshed, and at the same time, pro­voked by your post.
    Every type of gar­den inter­ests me, and that includes a space such as this one.
    Your eye is keen, and your mind aware, James. Thank you.

  10. lostlandscape on 27 Apr 2009 at 6:59 pm #

    Woooo, con­tro­versy! Gar­dens nest in dif­fer­ent places between human logic, emo­tion and nature, and this space def­i­nitely roosts clos­est to the log­i­cal tip of the tri­an­gle (as do the Islamic gar­dens that James men­tions). It prob­a­bly won’t appeal nearly as much to some­one whose ideal gar­den pulls clos­est to nature and emo­tion. I guess I’m pretty omniv­o­rous (or unde­cided?). I love this space, but I also love exam­ples of spaces that soothe or seduce.

  11. Alice Joyce on 28 Apr 2009 at 10:09 am #

    FYI, I’ve been tweet­ing on TWITTER about this post (and I mes­saged Noel, too.)
    I’m find­ing this dia­logue refresh­ing, so I’m tak­ing it upon myself want to enlighten the ‘tweeples’ — gar­den designers/writers/et all/ about Lost in the Land­scape.
    Let’s see if they join the fray!

  12. Grace on 28 Apr 2009 at 11:36 am #

    At Alice’s rec­om­men­da­tion, I’m vis­it­ing. What do I think? I think the world would be very bor­ing if we all had the same idea of what con­sti­tutes beauty. That being said, I don’t find it beau­ti­ful. The first thing I thought of was how HOT it would be, the sun radi­at­ing off of con­crete, gran­ite, mar­ble or what­ever. Plants offer shade and shadow that is sorely lack­ing. But this is just my opin­ion. Art is highly subjective.

  13. Javier on 03 May 2009 at 10:26 am #

    I agree, the right com­bi­na­tion of materials/design can cre­ate a highly intrigu­ing plant­less hard­scape. I’m fas­ci­nated by this kind of design. I also like to see this con­cept applied to smaller home areas (like in the pic­tures here: http://www.yardshare.com/myyard.php?yard_id=210)

    thanks!
    Javier

  14. ryan on 03 May 2009 at 8:36 pm #

    In my expe­ri­ence, archi­tects are most inter­ested in build­ings, and the plant­i­ngs at famous build­ings often look like an after­thought. This place looks beautiful.

  15. lostlandscape on 04 May 2009 at 7:06 pm #

    Con­sid­er­ing how ram­bunc­tious the plant the plant was dur­ing the wet sea­son, I’d guess that there’s plenty of nitro­gen for a five foot radius!

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