Some Ideas On the Unfolding of Form and Space In Landscapes

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Some Ideas On the Unfolding of Form and Space In Landscapes
Bernard Pyron

In Form and Diversity In Human Habitats: Judgmental and Attitude Responses, Environment and Behavior, March, 1972, pp. 87-120, I gave an example of the unfolding of environmental perceptions and of experiencing different form and space arrangements in that sequence of views.
"To illustrate these ideas of space structuring, lets look at a landscape of about 600 by 1800 feet. Within this space there are seven or eight quite different areas within which an individual can be embedded. There is a spruce forest with fire lanes running through it, three larger open spaces, a field of tall grass, and a tangled thicket. There are landmarks - two streams, a pond, two natural springs, some man-made rock work forming a circular ring, a lakeshore, and a large rock dedicated to Ho-Ne-Um, a Winnebago Indian. A winding footpath connects each area with the next. This is not a dream space, because it does exist as part of the Arboretum in Madison, Wisconsin."

See: http://s188.photobucket.com/user/halfback_photos/media/1970-1-1.mp4.html?sort=3&o=12

The link above is to a small section of a 16mm movie I made of the Ho-He-Um area of the Madison, Wisconsin Arboretum. The bad photography clears up a few seconds into the video.
"Suppose I go into this space and decide to sit in the spruce forest, surrounded by spruce trees, where I can see nothing but spruce trees, which is a unity, with pattern, and familiarity. After a while I might want to get out of the interior of the spruce forest. If I had to walk a few miles to get out of the spruce area, I might get bored with all the unity, all the similarity and all the spruce trees. But if I only have to walk fifty yards to get out of the spruce forest and can soon enter a quite different area, without ever leaving this small sector of land, the experience will seem more diverse to me. Each embedding area and each landmark has a unity in that space, and each is quite different. Not only does each area have a unity and an individual character, but the patterns within each area are complex. To understand the form of the spruce forest, for example, I have to put together imaginatively a model of the area in my mind as successive views unfold when I walk through the space.

It is the change in succession of views, the variety of space - from embedded-in-forest to space enclosed by forest, to more open space - that is diverse and interesting. It is also the different character of the various embedding areas seen in sequence which determines the amount of diversity of the sector. If the different areas were more alike, the diversity would be lower. Areas much be large enough, relative to scale and terrain, to form embedding wholes, in which I have the feeling of being surrounded by an environmental order that has a particular quality. If spruce trees, elm trees, tangled vines, tall grass, and oak trees were randomly mixed together in this sector of landscape, the experience of the succession of views would be much less diverse and delightful. Such a randomization would reduce diversity to the lower end of the scale.
Variation between enclosed and open spaces is one dimension of space diversity. Enclosure without immediate view and access to open space can be constricting and claustrophobic. But no access to enclosure in an environment of wide expanses of open land may be agoraphobic or oppressive. Open space may be more inviting when it is seen or entered through a hole in enclosed space,and closed space is most inviting when entered from open space. Space enclosure on an intimate environmental scale is rarely found in the contemporary environment. But the enclosed court or garden, either private or semi-private, is found in much of the domestic architecture of the past, in the Chinese courtyard house, in the Roman villa, and even in some examples of Mayan architecture. Of all environmental spaces, the intimate, enclosed space is perhaps the most valued by inhabitants (Whyte, 1964).

A second concept of space diversity is the degree of uncertainty within a given enclosing space. If the interior space within a clump of buildings is totally rectilinear, or even circular, this space would tend to be static, contained, and easily comprehended. In experiencing such a space, one might become aware all too soon of its rigid rectilinearity or circularity. In a more uncertain, or complex enclosed space, space flows beyond one's view from any given point in a succession of views. The entire space is never seen as a whole. This uncertainty is greater when the spaces within the interior of clusters of buildings vary in size, depth, and form."