In a different context, but toward a not so different end, D. H. Lawrence wrote, .. men cannot live without masters. There is always a master. And men live in glad obedience to the master they believe in, or they live in fictional opposition to the master they wish to undermine.”
Present-day landscape architects lack both.
To learn how landscape architecture is made today, one must study the machinations of its nearly deified design process. Certainly there is no denying the essentiality of methodical analysis of program, site, and their fit. After all, the landscape is a much-varied entity, difficult to understand and manipulate.
When in doubt, we stoke the fire under design process, hoping it will produce one more alternative, one more flash of insight. But while, breeder reactor-like, the design process often manufactures more information than it consumes, it has sadly never produced one gram of insight.
This is not the fault of the process. It never promised us solutions to our problems— just a means toward their logical scrutiny. In our haste, confusion, or indolence, we overlook the fact that the process collapses just when we approach the fearsome gap between the functional diagram and design development. Up to this point, the process is well illustrated. But then it provides only a blank space or a vague innuendo. Halprin acknowl¬edges this dilemma in his RSVP Cycles, but went on to say, “Scores tell what and why, but they leave the ‘how’ up to the individual.” So now he tells us: No Trade Secrets! Well, I suspect that none will ever be forthcoming. We admittedly are talking about the moment of artistic creation. And if John Dewey was correct in his assessment of art as a nondiscur- sive symbol, words must prove inadequate.
So, this prescribed retreat to process must be seen as an expedient, yet hopelessly self- deceptive strategy. We delude ourselves in believing that by energetically invoking the process, we will definitely arrive at a creative design solution. We can only dissolve this obeisance by facing the great risk—by recognizing that creation/invention is an emotion-, intuition-, intellect-, and energy-intensive task. We must learn to tolerate two experiences that the design process is explicitly intended to circumvent: substantial personal terror and uncertainty—even good designers usually do no know exactly where they are going when they are creating/inventing.
Blasphemy? Not at all. Consider the fictional attempt by would-be novelist Daniel Martin. John Fowles writes:
He suddenly saw the proposed novel as a pipe dream, one more yearning for the impossible.
The terror of the task: that making of a world, alone, unguided, now mocked, like some distant mountain peak. He could never do it. Never mind that what he felt was felt by all novelists, all artists, at the beginning of a creation—that indeed not feeling the terror was the worst possible augury for the enterprise. (Author’s emphasis)2
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