This paper introduces an innovative curricular approach—the Health Humanities Portrait Approach —and its pedagogical tool—the Health Humanities Portrait. Both enable health professions learners to examine pressing social issues that shape, and are shaped by, experiences of health and illness. The Portrait Approach is grounded in a set of “critical portraiture” principles that foster humanities-driven analytical skills. The HHP’s architecture is distinctively framed around a pressing social theme and utilizes a first-person narrative and scholarship to explore how the dimensions of the (...) personal and the structural are mutually constituted. We argue that when creator-educators adopt the Portrait Approach and its critical portraiture principles to design and teach the HHP, they enable learners to become proficient in synthesizing and analyzing—with both depth and breadth—the human and social dimensions of patients’ lives. This inventive curricular intervention provides a needed contribution to health professions education in that it utilizes health humanities methodologies to elucidate the multiple aspects of health, illness, disability, and healthcare. (shrink)

Built in between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century in a mountainous region in Romania, the Peleş Castle and its gardens were conceived according to the mid sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries landscape design principles. Thus, the surrounding landscape, the park and gardens at the royal residence in Sinaia make up an overall image of a Mannerist landscape in which the Villa or, in this case, the castle, is integrated in a (...) complex allegorical, alchemical and political programme. To explore this chronologically incongruent design and to explore gardening principles perhaps invisible in plain sight for modern eyes, the following study aims to emphasize the presence of early modern Western European gardens in the design of the park and gardens at Peleş. This analysis will also reveal the various ways in which, by manipulating nature according to Late Renaissance and Mannerism principles, nature was staged to achieve political goals. (shrink)

We present an investigation into the relation between design principles in Japanese gardens, and their associated perceptual effects. This leads to the realization that a set of design principles described in a Japanese gardening text by Shingen (1466), shows many parallels to the visual effects of perceptual grouping, studied by the Gestalt school of psychology. Guidelines for composition of rock clusters closely relate to perception of visual figure. Garden design elements are arranged into patterns that simplify figure-ground segmentation, while (...) seemingly balancing the visual salience of subparts and the global arrangement. Visual ‘ground’ is analyzed via medial axis transformation (MAT), often associated with shape perception in humans. MAT analysis reveals implicit structure in the visual ground of a quintessential rock garden design. The MAT structure enables formal comparison of structure of figure and ground. They share some aesthetic qualities, with interesting differences. Both contain naturalistic asymmetric, self-similar, branching structures. While the branching pattern of the ground converges towards the viewer, that of the figure converges in the opposite direction. (shrink)

We present an investigation into the relation between design princi- ples in Japanese gardens, and their associated perceptual effects. This leads to the realization that a set of design principles described in a Japanese gardening text by Shingen (1466), shows many parallels to the visual effects of perceptual grouping, studied by the Gestalt school of psychology. Guidelines for composition of rock clusters closely relate to perception of visual figure. Garden design elements are arranged into patterns that simplify figure-ground segmentation, (...) while seemingly balancing the visual salience of subparts and the global arrangement. Visual ‘ground’ is analyzed via medial axis transformation (MAT), often associated with shape perception in humans. MAT analysis reveals implicit structure in the visual ground of a quintessential rock garden design. The MAT structure enables formal com- parison of structure of figure and ground. They share some aesthetic qualities, with interesting differences. Both contain naturalistic asymmetric, self-similar, branching structures. While the branching pattern of the ground converges towards the viewer, that of the figure converges in the opposite direction. (shrink)

Though more connected today than ever before, the Far East and the West are still divided by an issue which first arose more than 400 years ago: the complaint of the West that its ideology has never been fully adopted by China. To provide a useful conceptual framework for a discussion of this intriguing situation, this essay invokes the instructive give-and-take of market exchange on the famed Silk Road in the long ancient past and takes a careful and close look (...) at the analogous enactment of the same principle in the quiet but consequential transplantation of Chinese horticultural and related philosophical ideas to England and continental Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and in the initially skeptical but eventually appreciative reception of many Western political and technological ideas in China in the last two centuries. (shrink)

As the application of the Internet of Things technology continues to deepen in various fields, it also continues to develop in the agricultural field and the agricultural landscape. This article uses the agricultural Internet of Things to conduct an in-depth analysis and research on the planning and design of smart gardens and combines field research and project practice on the basis of theoretical analysis. Through the combination of agricultural Internet of Things technology and agricultural landscape, the planning and design (...) of smart gardens are studied. The theories used include Internet of Things technology, agricultural industrialization theory, sustainable agricultural development theory, new rural construction theory in agricultural disciplines, ecotourism theory, tourism psychology theory in tourism disciplines, landscape ecology theory, landscape aesthetics theory, and garden planning and design theory. From related theories to planning and design practice, a more systematic study of the smart park has been carried out to provide scientific guidance for the agriculture of the smart park. To provide scientific guidance for the planning and design of agricultural IoT of smart gardens, the theoretical system of planning and design of smart gardens based on the integration of agricultural IoT is proposed and systematically elaborated, including its concept, characteristics, related theories, and guidance methods. (shrink)

It is common for visitors to have rich and varied experiences in the limited space of a classical Chinese garden. This leads to the sense that the garden’s scale is much larger than it really is. A main reason for this perceptual bias is the gardener’s manipulation of visual information. Most studies have discussed this phenomenon in terms of qualitative description with fragmented perspectives taken from static points, without considering ambient visual information or continuously changing observation points. A general question (...) arises, then, on why depth perception can vary from one observation point to another along a garden path. To better understand the spatial experience in classical Chinese gardens, this study focused on variations in perceived depth among different observation points and aimed to identify influential visual information through psychophysical experimentation. As stimuli for the experiment, panoramic photos of Liu garden were taken from three positions at Lvyin Pavilion. Considering the effects of pictorial visual cues on depth perception, the photos were processed to create 18 kinds of stimuli. Two tasks were presented to the participants. In Task 1, 71 participants were asked to rate the depth value of the garden using the magnitude estimation method in a cave automatic virtual environment. Statistical analysis of Task 1 revealed that depth values differed significantly among different viewpoints. In Task 2, participants were asked to compare 18 stimuli and 3D images presented on three connected monitors and to judge the depth of the garden using the adjustment method. The results of Task 2 again showed that depth values differed significantly among different viewpoints. In both tasks, ambient information significantly influenced depth perception. (shrink)

What is life? Is it just the biologically familiar--birds, trees, snails, people--or is it an infinitely complex set of patterns that a computer could simulate? What role does intelligence play in separating the organic from the inorganic, the living from the inert? Does life evolve along a predestined path, or does it suddenly emerge from what appeared lifeless and programmatic? In this easily accessible and wide-ranging survey, Claus Emmeche outlines many of the challenges and controversies involved in the dynamic and (...) curious science of artificial life. Emmeche describes the work being done by an international network of biologists, computer scientists, and physicists who are using computers to study life as it could be, or as it might evolve under conditions different from those on earth. Many artificial-life researchers believe that they can create new life in the computer by simulating the processes observed in traditional, biological life-forms. The flight of a flock of birds, for example, can be reproduced faithfully and in all its complexity by a relatively simple computer program that is designed to generate electronic "boids." Are these "boids" then alive? The central problem, Emmeche notes, lies in defining the salient differences between biological life and computer simulations of its processes. And yet, if we can breathe life into a computer, what might this mean for our other assumptions about what it means to be alive? The Garden in the Machine touches on every aspect of this complex and rapidly developing discipline, including its connections to artificial intelligence, chaos theory, computational theory, and studies of emergence. Drawing on the most current work in the field, this book is a major overview of artificial life. Professionals and nonscientists alike will find it an invaluable guide to concepts and technologies that may forever change our definition of life. (shrink)

This examination of gardens--particulary English gardens of the eighteenth century--offers possible links between garden design and the arts.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Aztecs and Their Kings Nezahualcoyotl: Renaissance Man of Aztec Culture The Uses of Nezahualcoyotl: Bridging Spanish and Aztec Cultures Nezahualcoyotl's Place, and the Place of Gardens, in Aztec Political History Texcotzingo Notes.

My focus in this article is on a small group of German theorists, designers and patrons who thought extensively about the relationship between national identity and garden design: Christian Hirschfeld, Prince Franz von Anhalt-Dessau and his wife Luise, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Prince Pückler. These garden enthusiasts knew one another through personal contact or their writings, and they responded to and developed their ideas in relation to the newly framed creative enterprise in German lands of “garden-landscape-art”. What they shared (...) was a conviction that garden forms affect feelings, with the role of the garden artist to determine paths that would alter and diversify the visitor’s experience of place. This essay explores how spontaneous emotions, elicited by movement through the garden, were linked with a growing sense of patriotism that contrasted with cosmopolitan judgments in the writings of Hirschfeld, Pückler, and Goethe. (shrink)

School gardens are part of many schools. Especially in primary schools, but also in secondary schools, they are used as a learning space and experience space for the pupils. Their importance for the development of cognitive and emotional-affective abilities of pupils is empirically well proven. It is also empirically well proven that exposure to nature has an influence on the prosocial behavior of children and adults. However, there is a lack of studies investigating the effect of the stay in (...) the school garden on the social behavior of pupils in secondary class. To investigate whether a school garden is a good environment for social learning, a self-report study and standardized observations with sixth-grade pupils were carried out. Thus, the socially competent behavior of the pupils (communication and cooperation) and their emotions could be analyzed. In order to provide emotional access to the scientific content of biology lessons and to strengthen social learning, each pupil was responsible for their own plant and the group bed over a period of 10 weeks. The design of the lessons followed the principles of basic needs—competence, autonomy, and relatedness—of the Self Determination Theory. The observations were made during a 90-min class, in the school garden as well in the classroom. The 31 girls and 22 boys, aged 11–12 years, changed weekly between the garden and the classroom. Over 150 observations were made in the school garden (82) and in the classroom (68). In summary, pupils showed more socially competent behavior in school garden lessons than in classroom lessons. The school garden lessons, designed according to the basic needs, seem to create favorable incentives for social learning. Due to frequent social interactions, it can be assumed that learning activities in school gardens can promote emotional and social competence. (shrink)

The paper addresses the question of why there is no treatise on Japanese gardens in Arthur Schopenhauer's system. First, it is explained that the system philosophy of the 18th and 19th centuries aimed at completeness in conceptual representation. Schopenhauer therefore treats the national characteristics of the garden arts in Europe and Asia, among many other arts, and conceptually determines their similarities and differences. Due to the isolation of Japan, however, Schopenhauer had no knowledge of Japanese gardens. The last (...) part of the paper argues that Japanese gardens would have fitted well into Schopenhauer's system, as the Rock Garden, Pond Garden, Moss Garden etc. correspond well with the ideas that ground Schopenhauer's aesthetics. ###Extended and translated version of the paper "Der japanische Garten im System Schopenhauers" (2021).###. (shrink)

This paper presents a case study of Gardens and Green Spaces (GGS), a resident-driven, grant-funded project in Cleveland, Ohio working toward community change. Through both placemaking and entrepreneurial strategies, the main grant objectives are to effect change at the intersection of food (and agriculture), arts, and culture in Kinsman, a 96% Black Neighborhood on Cleveland’s east side. While community development (CD) projects are often designed by outside ‘experts’ who inform the scope and focus of grant-funded projects, this project is (...) rooted in the hypothesis that a resident-driven approach to CD will lead to increased community buy-in and participation, resulting in more lasting and substantive community change. GGS works across sectors, integrating arts, culture, and food to promote placemaking and community-based entrepreneurial engagement as a path towards greater health, equity, and economic resilience. This paper argues that community-based and resident-driven development—although not without its own challenges—can result in more holistic community transformation across sectors, with the potential for greater resident participation, sustainability, and equity. The case study presented in this paper, including in-depth interviews and neighborhood surveys, is an examination of the pilot phase of GGS, and argues that both placemaking and entrepreneurialism represent a negotiation between market driven community development and a solely philanthropic model. It provides insight into more equitable and sustainable change that has the potential to shift the traditional paradigm of expert driven, or “outside-in” community development. (shrink)

New York may be most easily recognized by its trademark skyscrapers and brick tenement buildings, but the truth is that the city is actually teeming with luxurious roof gardens and private courtyard oases. Creative gardeners and architects have risen to meet the unique challenges of the urban landscape, designing spaces that celebrate the city while providing a restful escape. New York City Gardens presents New York’s evolving tradition of garden culture through images and discussions of thirty of its (...) most outstanding gardens, from world-famous botanical gardens to richly re-cultivated public urban spaces, luxurious penthouse terraces, and innovative art gardens without soil or plants. Many of the gardens are set against vistas of the quintessential New York—Central Park, the Empire State Building, skyscrapers of Midtown, and the sensational skyline of Lower Manhattan. Other gardens reveal surprising and exotic intimate retreats from the bustle of the city. While most were designed by noted landscape architects, including Dan Kiley, Hideo Sasaki, Ken Smith, and Halsted Wells, many others were created over decades by talented homeowners themselves. As more and more city dwellers in New York and beyond look to cultivate their own kitchen and container gardens and individual outdoor sanctuaries, this book provides hundreds of inspiring images as well as historical background and insight into the practical and imaginative solutions of city garden designers. (shrink)

En este texto se afirma que, en los sistemas sociales contemporáneos, sobre todo en ellos donde prima el capitalismo multinacional, de redes sistémicas de consumo, se habita al modo de un pastiche esquizo/paranoide, cuyo diseño consiste en inscribir y luego interpelar, de modo fragmentario, al sujeto devenido consumidor, en un mandato productivo “deseante” objetualizado en el gozo, como máscara efímera de la felicidad. Se trata de la propia pauta de integración tejida hacia ese sujeto que habita los sistemas sociales contemporáneos. (...) En este clima, en donde es la propia vida cotidiana la que se vuelve “loca”, y que se da hasta la desestabilización del par normal/patológico, el sujeto deviene consumidor “loco”, en una imperiosa lógica “maquínica” de la productividad capitalista. This text argues that in contemporary social systems, especially in those where raw multinational capitalism, systemic network consumption is dominant, there inhabits a pastiche schizoid / paranoid mode, whose design is to register and then challenge, in a piecemeal fashion, the subject become consumer, desiring a productive term objectified in joy, as an ephemeral mask of happiness. It is the integration pattern that is woven into that subject which inhabits contemporary social systems. In this climate, where daily life becomes "crazy", and where the norm is the destabilization of the few normal / pathological couples, the subject becomes a "crazy" consumer in an imperative machinistic logic of capitalist productivity. (shrink)

In the 1790s, a close-knit group of German philosophers published several garden theory texts. These works are unique in that a close-knit group of philosophers had never before--and has not since--produced so many works on the topic of garden design. In essence, this cohort sought to imbue the most visionary concepts that had been inherited from the German garden tradition with the intellectual resources that were newly available through Kant’s critical philosophy. The most important of these concepts was the prescription (...) for a new Mittelweg, or "middle path," garden that would mediate between the perceived excesses of French formalism and the English picturesque. In close analysis, the author demonstrates that Kant used similar "middle path" techniques in the design of his own "critical path" between dogmatism and skepticism. This similarity is most apparent when he uses topographical metaphors to describe the organizational principles of his system. By interpreting Kant’s topographical metaphors in relation to contemporary garden theories, this book offers new insights into the structural similarities between his "critical path" and the German garden’s "middle path" between French formalism and the English picturesque. (shrink)

In the 1790s, a close-knit group of German philosophers published several garden theory texts. These works are unique in that a close-knit group of philosophers had never before--and has not since--produced so many works on the topic of garden design. In essence, this cohort sought to imbue the most visionary concepts that had been inherited from the German garden tradition with the intellectual resources that were newly available through Kant’s critical philosophy. The most important of these concepts was the prescription (...) for a new Mittelweg, or "middle path," garden that would mediate between the perceived excesses of French formalism and the English picturesque. In close analysis, the author demonstrates that Kant used similar "middle path" techniques in the design of his own "critical path" between dogmatism and skepticism. This similarity is most apparent when he uses topographical metaphors to describe the organizational principles of his system. By interpreting Kant’s topographical metaphors in relation to contemporary garden theories, this book offers new insights into the structural similarities between his "critical path" and the German garden’s "middle path" between French formalism and the English picturesque. (shrink)

This essay discusses ways of thinking about botanic gardens that pay close attention to their particularity as designed spaces, dependent on technique, that nonetheless purport to present (and preserve) natural entities (plants). I introduce an account of what gardens are, how botanic gardens differ from other gardens, and how this particular form of garden arose in history. After this I contrast three ways of understanding the function of botanic gardens in the present time: as sites (...) of recreation, of conservation or of encounter with nature. Finally I develop the idea that these gardens may serve as archetypes of collaboration with nature. I conclude that, in principle, botanic gardens can model alternative, creative new ways for human beings to relate to the natural environment. (shrink)

Inscriptions of Assyrian kings disclose that these rulers maintained and improved the land near the palace. This paper brings together the pictorial versions of what may be described as the “Assyrian royal landscape,” that is, outdoor scenery designed for royal purposes and represented on the stone panels that lined the walls of the palaces at Nimrud, Nineveh, and Dur-Sharrukin. The royal landscapes differ from reign to reign, since they each reflect some aspect of the particular king’s rule. The description and (...) discussion of the individual scenes also take into account the rationale behind their creation. Textual and archaeological data are supportive additions, and the previous studies of other scholars are also considered. The discussion of scenes carved on the stone panels follows in chronological sequence the reigns of four Assyrian kings: Ashurnasirpal II, Sargon II, Sennacherib, and Ashurbanipal. The chronological presentation demonstrates that royal landscape imagery in the sculptural arts progressed as a method of documentation by the Assyrian kings. (shrink)

In the traditional sense, a work of art creates an illustration of the outside world, or of a certain text or doctrine. Sometimes it is considered that such an illustration is not literal, but is an interpretation of what is visible, or an interpretation of a certain literary or ideological message. It can also be assumed that a work of art creates its own visual world, a separate story or a separate philosophical statement. The Parc de La Villette represents the (...) last of these possibilities: it is a philosophical statement that develops the premises derived from poststructuralist philosophies and the philosophy of deconstruction. The uniqueness of its being status, however, is that it does so not only at the level of the theoretical assumptions, but also through its functioning as an active philosophical work. This means that a park is a happening philosophy. Its activity, however, does not refer only to the present tense, but is also an attempt to penetrate the future, all otherness and impossibility. This kind of activity assumes that the work, in a sense, does not yet fully exist, but is also still produced in the processes of its interpretation. The theoretical foundations of the park included texts by Bernard Tschumi, in which he questioned traditional ways of creating a work of architecture, postulating in return the use of a long series of negations, which were comparable to the crisis of metaphysics characteristic of contemporary philosophy. It is therefore no coincidence that the publication containing Tschumi’s theoretical text on Parc de La Villette was accompanied by an essay by Jacques Derrida developing some of the architect’s concepts. The next step in integrating philosophy into the process of park design was a series of discussions between Peter Eisenman and Derrida, who completely moved the creation of the park into the world of thoughts, without accentuating the need for their realization in the material reality. The main topic of these discussions was the problem of the chôra, which was taken up by later commentators and used to interpret the park as a work in which the philosophy of the beginning is manifested relating to issues of politics, morality and religion. The park was therefore interpreted as a space of invention within the scope of creating new rules of functioning of the community and democracy. Thinking about the political future may, however, exceed the horizon of ordinary expectations. Although philosophical thought is always connected with contemporary problems and metaphysics sometimes intertwines with current politics, yet at the same time the customs of philosophy also include crossing horizons and thinking about absolute otherness and impossibility. Initially, the chôra, différance, Absolute Otherness (tout autre) and the Impossibile were concepts of pure philosophy of atheistic character, but with the further development of the discussion, more and more theological motifs began to emerge. One of the reasons for this phenomenon was the fact that radical negations of all being, which were contemplated in contemporary philosophy (by Heidegger and Derrida, among others), had previously been manifested in negative and apophatic theologies (by Master Eckhart, among others). Also the category of the “Other”, taken from Emmanuel Levinas, was clearly connected with the thought about God. A further reason for connecting the chôra with the theological thought was the interest in the philosophy of deconstruction expressed by some theologians. Caputo in particular managed to persuade Derrida to participate in discussions on the current status of religion. In the late period of Derrida’s writing, further statements on religious topics appeared. All these reasons led to posing a question about the identity of the chôra and God. Although there were no satisfactory conclusions on this issue, the discussion was also important to create an interpretation of the park as a place of worship. The chôra, representing, according to Plato, the preoriginal emptiness is the place of every beginning, but it turns out that it is not neutral to the being created in it. The chôra deposits itself in every being as an irremovable beginning that interferes with its stability. The chôra, therefore, forces us into a palintropical movement, but it also turns out to be a pure compulsion, an erring necessity and a fundamental force from which, in the human perception, motifs useful to the individual and to the community are extracted. All definitions of this force, including its anthropomorphisation, are formulated in such a way that they allow for building private and collective morality upon them. Such definitions are changed depending on variable political situations. It is difficult to determine whether in the processes of changes in the formulation of “God’s names” any essential value is retained, which is not subject to change. The current definitions of the chôra (God?), which can be found, for example, in the philosophy of Caputo, stress that she is a combination of various and contradictory forces. This characteristic inherits much of Plato’s concept, reminds us of Master Eckhart’s views on Gottheit and, at the same time, is not unfamiliar to Tschumi, whose essays were an apologia of contradictions. The current concept of chôra, transferred into the sphere of politics, is the praise of social diversity and the protection of the difference from the forces of order. In the Parc de La Villette, the future community and democracy were elevated as a system of safe existence of individuals in all their singularity. The park is a temple of a future community in which individual beings have nothing in common. (shrink)

Resumo: Um parque cultural urbano é um símbolo da cultura urbana regional, além de refletir o acúmulo da cultura humana. Ele pode se tornar uma forma importante de herdar o patrimônio cultural e histórico regional e de promover o excelente espírito cultural tradicional chinês. Entretanto, o papel cultural desempenhado pelos parques culturais é bastante insatisfatório e ainda necessita de melhorias. É extremamente importante resolver esses problemas e promover o design dos parques culturais urbanos, a fim de mostrar melhor suas ideias (...) culturais e suprir as necessidades de disseminação e desenvolvimento culturais. Por isso, este artigo introduziu elementos de montanhas e analisou a simbólica importância deles no design de parques culturais urbanos. Esta investigação tentou interpretar as ideias contidas nos parques culturais urbanos modernos, a partir das perspectivas de parques culturais urbanos e elementos de montanhas, e elaborou estratégias de design, métodos de expressão, técnicas de expressão e troca de ideias sobre parques culturais urbanos. As pesquisas mostraram que introduzir elementos de montanhas no design de parques culturais pode torná-los mais agradáveis esteticamente, com formatos mais complexos, de modo a destacar melhor as ideias de temas para interpretações e expressões culturais regionais. Esta pesquisa oferece mais projetos de design e elementos para o design de parques culturais urbanos, estudando os elementos de montanhas, enriquecendo a expressão e o significado ideológicos de parques culturais urbanos, ajudando a promover o patrimônio e o desenvolvimento da cultura e fornecendo mais base teórica para o design de paisagens. (shrink)

Environmental virtues have become an essential ingredient in an ethics of nature. An account of environmental virtues can contribute to this ethics of natre by exploring the virtues that the gardener displays in cultivating and caring for plants. An approach that relates to the virtues of gardening is helpful in explicating a more general approach in a certain domain of interaction with nature. Good gardeners get involved in processes of natural growth and decay, they are aware of their position within (...) the garden, and they endure ambivalences in nature. This relational account of the virtues of gardening is also exemplary in processes of active co-designing of nature and in landscaping. (shrink)

In recent decades, designers, architects, and landscape architects concerned with their contribution to today’s ecological problems started formulating a new way of designing and creating artifacts. Called “ecological design” and promoted as a corrective alternative to conventional practice, its basic tenet is to draw from nature a guidance for design, rather than imposing our design on nature. This newapproach signifies a welcome change, first by calling attention to the ecological implications of artifacts, a subject matter generally neglected in environmental ethics, (...) and, second, by providing useful, specific suggestions regarding the ecologically responsible way of designing artifacts. However, the conceptual basis and resultant implications of ecological design deserve and need critical analyses. I argue that the basic premise of ecological design—that nature should act as the authority—is problematic by examining analogous strategies from social, political, moral, and aesthetic realms, as well as by exploring its specific application in the promotion of “native” plants in gardens. I end with another issue often neglected in the practice of ecological design: our aesthetic response to the created objects. (shrink)

Analysis of Chinese landscape design offered a challenge to test the concepts of environmental aesthetics developed in the West. With comparative approach we improved our understanding of art and environment, and of different strategies in designing forms of Chinese gardens. In order to describe the "hidden" symbohsm of Chinese landscape design we applied various concepts and metaphors: completeness, large and small, mirror and mirroring, garden as entrance and separate reality, disclosure and concealment, and returning to the source.

The standing screens on the title is the oldest work extant of KANO Motonobu's work as folding screens of thick colored flowers and birds with golden background. This thesis designates that the scenery and the motif of the work are in correspondence with both descriptions of the scenery of Pure Land in several Buddhist scriptures and the design of actual gardens. Firstly, a peacock on the right hand screen is focused to indicate the bird connotes the elements of auspicious (...) birds in Buddhism, such as Mahamayuri and Kalavinka.Secondly, the elements of the scenery in the work, such as the four seasons at the same time ∼ the depiction of perpetuity ∼ and the existence of a pond, are identified with the description of Pure Land in Kwan-mu-liang-shou-ching and Ta-wuliang-shou-ching. These elements of the garden in the work are placed similarly to the Pure Land style gardens, which are illustrated in "Center and Surrounds of Kyoto" 's. In consideration of the above factors, the conclusion that, in the work, KANO Motonobu succeeded to portray the ideal garden by combining the scenery of Pure Land and that of actual gardens, is drawn. (shrink)

In recent decades, designers, architects, and landscape architects concerned with their contribution to today’s ecological problems started formulating a new way of designing and creating artifacts. Called “ecological design” and promoted as a corrective alternative to conventional practice, its basic tenet is to draw from nature a guidance for design, rather than imposing our design on nature. This newapproach signifies a welcome change, first by calling attention to the ecological implications of artifacts, a subject matter generally neglected in environmental ethics, (...) and, second, by providing useful, specific suggestions regarding the ecologically responsible way of designing artifacts. However, the conceptual basis and resultant implications of ecological design deserve and need critical analyses. I argue that the basic premise of ecological design—that nature should act as the authority—is problematic by examining analogous strategies from social, political, moral, and aesthetic realms, as well as by exploring its specific application in the promotion of “native” plants in gardens. I end with another issue often neglected in the practice of ecological design: our aesthetic response to the created objects. (shrink)

What is the normative significance of school gardening for environmental activism and activists today? Philosophical treatments generally highlight gardening's importance for human well-being, aesthetic theory, and urban landscape design. Several accounts of John Dewey's educational philosophy draw attention to the school gardens tended by students at the University of Chicago's Experimental School. However, these typically neglect the social and political significance of Dewey's writings on school gardening. One way to bring the normative dimension of school gardening to the fore (...) is to compare Dewey's work on the topic with more recent scholarship on the politics of gardening movements. In this paper, the object of comparison is an essay by the Community Studies scholar Mary Beth Pudup. While Pudup's and Dewey's approaches are not identical, the comparison proves fruitful in so far as it exposes the political reasons for gardening education, relates school gardening to contemporary gardening movements and gives the call for creating more school garden projects greater normative force—or so I argue. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Chronos and Kairos Chronos and Scientific Time Climate and Garden Aesthetics Subjective Time Objective or Shared Time Cyclical Time The Garden's Times Moving Through the Garden Experiences of Time in the Garden Notes.

Abstract:With the development of literati gardens during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the layout and design level of gardens reached an unprecedented height. As the representative of Suzhou gardens, The Humble Administrator's Garden (Zhuozhengyuan, 拙政园, 1530) has unique natural conditions and mature garden design, and its water management art is particularly exquisite. The best-preserved graphic information of The Humble Administrator's Garden are the poems and paintings by Wen Zhengming (文徵明, 1470–1559), including Thirty-One Scenes of The Humble Administrator's Garden (...) (拙政园三十一景图, 1533), thirty landscape poems, and the biography Wang's Humble Administrator's Garden (王氏拙政园记, 1533). As the research object, this article aims to restore the image of The Humble Administrator's Garden by analyzing the water scene of the garden, summarizing its water technique and art, and extracting "Source of inflowing water" (为有源头活水来), "Esteem the mountain, revere the water, imitate the heaven and earth" (敬山畏水, 象天法地), "Fusion of the imitation of nature and the subjective ideas of the artist" (外师造化, 中得心源), and "Free and unfettered, enjoy the joy of leisure" (逍遥自得, 享闲居之乐) as the water aesthetic thoughts of the garden. In addition, this article provides some reference for the current landscape design. (shrink)

School gardens and garden-based learning continue to gain great popularity in the United States, and their pedagogical potential, and ability to impact students’ fruit and vegetable consumption and activity levels have been well-documented. Less examined is their potential to be agents of food system reskilling and transformation. Though producer and consumer are inextricably linked in the food system, and deskilling of one directly influences the other, theorists often focus on production-centered and consumption-centered deskilling separately. However, in a school garden, (...) the production/consumption disconnect is erased, by virtue of the design of the site itself and how it is utilized by the actors within it. School gardens provide the critical component of education in alternative food networks, and contribute to the producer/consumer reskilling that is a necessary part of food system transformation. We conducted a case study of an established school garden program during its transition from autonomous non-profit to official, district-funded program of a rural school district in the Midwest. By participating in the full “seed to plate” life cycle of a garden crop, students in the garden were actively involved in the reconnection of producer and consumer, while educators were fostering in students an appreciation for fresh, healthy foods and actively challenging the “McDonaldization” of both students’ diets and education. Based upon these findings, we argue that school gardens in rural areas could leverage the dominant role of rural America in developing and shifting food system paradigms. (shrink)

Sir William Chambers was one of the most important English architects in the eighteenth-century, but both in his day and later his international recognition was closely connected with his admiration for and promotion of Chinese art, particularly Chinese landscaping. Between 1757 and 1773, Chambers published three treatises praising the ingenious mixture of nature and art in a Chinese pleasure ground, criticizing the then influential English gardener Lancelot Brown, and trying to goad English garden design into the direction of China. He (...) did not achieve his purposes mainly because he mixed what he knew as genuine about the Chinese gardening art with what he fantasized about it. While recent scholarship has focused on his fantasy, this article examines what Chambers knew or imagined about Chinese landscaping, what he and his detractors were for and against, and how the fiasco of his 1772 and 1773 treatises, which he brought upon himself, nevertheless helped to usher in a new phase in th... (shrink)

The concept of geometry may evoke a world of pure platonic shapes, such as spheres and cubes, but a deeper understanding of visual experience demands insight into the perceptual organization of naturalistic form. Japanese gardens excel as designed environments where the complex fractal geometry of nature has been simplified to a structural core that retains the essential properties of the natural landscape, thereby presenting an ideal opportunity for investigating the geometry and perceptual significance of such naturalistic characteristics. Here, fronto-parallel (...) perspective, asymmetrical structuring of the ground plane, spatial arrangement of garden elements, tuning of textural qualities and choice of naturalistic form, are presented as a set of physical features that facilitate a systematic analysis of Japanese garden design per se, as well as the geometry of the particular naturalistic features that it aims to enhance. Comparison with Western landscape design before and after contact between Western and Eastern hemispheres illustrates the degree of naturalness achieved in the Japanese garden, and suggests how classical Western landscape design generally differs in this regard. It further reveals how modern Western gardens culminate in a different naturalistic geometry, thus also a distinctly different vision of the natural landscape, even if these designs were greatly influenced by the gardens of China and Japan. (shrink)

Essential skills and attitudes necessary for active citizenship need to be cultivated as early as prekindergarten. This exploratory study investigated if three and four-year olds could be actively engaged in social studies practices through inquiry learning in a school garden. Eleven children openly interacted and conducted personally-driven investigations on a daily basis in the school garden located on their playground over nine-months. Three interviews with children, teacher observation notes, and lesson plans were analyzed to discover whether NCSS preK-12 learning themes (...) (2010) for the social studies curriculum could be correlated with garden inquiries. Three prevalent NCSS themes surfaced from data analysis with Civic Ideals and Practices, People, Places, and Environments, and Time, Continuity, and Change being most prevalent. Results imply that working in a school garden through inquiry learning can foster the development of democratic competencies and thus, could be used to design C3 lessons for preschoolers in the garden. (shrink)

This paper aims to fill the gap in literature concerning community gardens in post-communist countries by focusing on the situation in Prague, Czechia. It introduces Prague′s newly emerged community gardens and presents the results of a first representative survey of these gardens. Information was gathered about eleven of the sixteen larger community gardens and the data were collected by semi-structured interviews with the managers of the particular gardens. The paper compares the Czech community gardens (...) as representatives of civic agriculture forms in post-communist countries with their counterparts and stresses their similarities and differences. The results show that the new community gardens reflect much of what can be seen elsewhere in terms of spatial and organizational design, as well as reasons for starting them, motivations for participation and some of the challenges experienced. However, in contrast to many community gardens in the USA, Canada and UK that focus on food and nutrition provision, in Prague the community is more of a priority than food and the other mentioned benefits. The paper shows that different activities, events and functions make gardens important hubs of their communities and potential tools of further community involvement and social change. (shrink)

Assess to quality diets is a basic human right. Geographical challenges and cultural traditions have contributed to the widespread malnutrition present among ethnic minorities of mountainous areas in Northwest Vietnam. Home gardens can play a role in increased diet diversity and micronutrient intakes. However, low production yields and plant diversity in ethnic home gardens have limited their contributions to household food security and nutrition. The pilot study tested a home garden intervention in weekly vegetable harvests and increasing household (...) production and consumption of diverse vegetables year-round. Food ethics issues encountered included limited access to quality food by resource-poor groups, conflicts arising from low preference and value given to some nutritious foods, limited access to information and technology for food production and consumption, each of which were addressed in the study design. The intervention includes: (1) nutrition-focused home garden training and (2) locally-adapted home garden packages consisting of garden planning, technical assistance, and high-yielding seed varieties. Twenty households from two ethnic villages in Son La province participated in the study and were randomly assigned into two groups (intervention and non-intervention). The total vegetable supply from weekly harvests of home garden produce was significantly higher in the intervention households (226 kg) compared to the non-intervention households (39 kg). The intervention group yielded 5.8 and 1.7 times more vegetables by weight and weight per area than those without the intervention. The vegetables were mainly consumed at home for both groups, but the intervention households gave more vegetables as gifts to neighbors. The intervention group cultivated a higher diversity of vegetables with a total of 42 different vegetables compared to 24 in the non-intervention group, which is reflected in an overall higher nutritional yield of vitamin A, iron, other micronutrients and phytochemicals. The home garden training significantly improved the amount, diversity and continuity of household food and nutrient supply. The home garden model is effective and could be scaled up to improve household vegetable supply and consumption, particularly in Northwest Vietnam. (shrink)

In this response, I suggest that Black southern women in the U.S. have always been central to the “reconstruction” that Taylor identifies as a central theme of Black aesthetics. Building on his allusions to Alice Walker and Jean Toomer, I explore Walker’s tearful response (in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983) to Toomer’s Cane (2011). Walker identifies their mothers’ and grandmothers’ informal arts of storytelling and gardening as the hidden roots of both her and Toomer’s work. (...) I suggest that Walker’s tears function to water her mother’s (and othermothers’) gardens, thereby sustaining southern Black women’s foundational work in reconstruction. Through telling their stories and planting gardens, along with crafting meals, designing clothes, and designing and decorating homes, southern Black women have always been necessary to Black aesthetics—filling worlds with aesthetically-rich and energetic artworks that Black formal artists such as Walker channel and transfigure into their formal artistic productions. (shrink)

In the final sessions of the first year of his seminar on The Beast & the Sovereign, Jacques Derrida takes up the question of modernity as the epoch of biopolitics. In a remarkable close reading, he critiques Michel Foucault’s and Giorgio Agamben’s reflections on the threshold of biopolitical modernity, both in terms of conceptual content and, especially in the latter’s case, style. He takes as a prominent example the revolutionary transformation from princely menagerie to public zoological garden, as well as (...) Carl Hagenbeck’s subsequent “revolution” in zoo design, which inaugurate, he suggests, not a new biopolitical apparatus of power/ knowledge, but only a different form of the same fundamental structure of .. (shrink)

In the traditional sense, a work of art creates an illustration of the outside world, or of a certain text or doctrine. Sometimes it is considered that such an illustration is not literal, but is an interpretation of what is visible, or an interpretation of a certain literary or ideological message. It can also be assumed that a work of art creates its own visual world, a separate story or a separate philosophical statement. The Parc de La Villette represents the (...) last of these possibilities: it is a philosophical statement that develops the premises derived from poststructuralist philosophies and the philosophy of deconstruction. The uniqueness of its being status, however, is that it does so not only at the level of the theoretical assumptions, but also through its functioning as an active philosophical work. This means that a park is a happening philosophy. Its activity, however, does not refer only to the present tense, but is also an attempt to penetrate the future, all otherness and impossibility. This kind of activity assumes that the work, in a sense, does not yet fully exist, but is also still produced in the processes of its interpretation. The theoretical foundations of the park included texts by Bernard Tschumi, in which he questioned traditional ways of creating a work of architecture, postulating in return the use of a long series of negations, which were comparable to the crisis of metaphysics characteristic of contemporary philosophy. It is therefore no coincidence that the publication containing Tschumi’s theoretical text on Parc de La Villette was accompanied by an essay by Jacques Derrida developing some of the architect’s concepts. The next step in integrating philosophy into the process of park design was a series of discussions between Peter Eisenman and Derrida, who completely moved the creation of the park into the world of thoughts, without accentuating the need for their realization in the material reality. The main topic of these discussions was the problem of the chôra, which was taken up by later commentators and used to interpret the park as a work in which the philosophy of the beginning is manifested relating to issues of politics, morality and religion. The park was therefore interpreted as a space of invention within the scope of creating new rules of functioning of the community and democracy. Thinking about the political future may, however, exceed the horizon of ordinary expectations. Although philosophical thought is always connected with contemporary problems and metaphysics sometimes intertwines with current politics, yet at the same time the customs of philosophy also include crossing horizons and thinking about absolute otherness and impossibility. Initially, the chôra, différance, Absolute Otherness (tout autre) and the Impossibile were concepts of pure philosophy of atheistic character, but with the further development of the discussion, more and more theological motifs began to emerge. One of the reasons for this phenomenon was the fact that radical negations of all being, which were contemplated in contemporary philosophy (by Heidegger and Derrida, among others), had previously been manifested in negative and apophatic theologies (by Master Eckhart, among others). Also the category of the “Other”, taken from Emmanuel Levinas, was clearly connected with the thought about God. A further reason for connecting the chôra with the theological thought was the interest in the philosophy of deconstruction expressed by some theologians. Caputo in particular managed to persuade Derrida to participate in discussions on the current status of religion. In the late period of Derrida’s writing, further statements on religious topics appeared. All these reasons led to posing a question about the identity of the chôra and God. Although there were no satisfactory conclusions on this issue, the discussion was also important to create an interpretation of the park as a place of worship. The chôra, representing, according to Plato, the preoriginal emptiness is the place of every beginning, but it turns out that it is not neutral to the being created in it. The chôra deposits itself in every being as an irremovable beginning that interferes with its stability. The chôra, therefore, forces us into a palintropical movement, but it also turns out to be a pure compulsion, an erring necessity and a fundamental force from which, in the human perception, motifs useful to the individual and to the community are extracted. All definitions of this force, including its anthropomorphisation, are formulated in such a way that they allow for building private and collective morality upon them. Such definitions are changed depending on variable political situations. It is difficult to determine whether in the processes of changes in the formulation of “God’s names” any essential value is retained, which is not subject to change. The current definitions of the chôra (God?), which can be found, for example, in the philosophy of Caputo, stress that she is a combination of various and contradictory forces. This characteristic inherits much of Plato’s concept, reminds us of Master Eckhart’s views on Gottheit and, at the same time, is not unfamiliar to Tschumi, whose essays were an apologia of contradictions. The current concept of chôra, transferred into the sphere of politics, is the praise of social diversity and the protection of the difference from the forces of order. In the Parc de La Villette, the future community and democracy were elevated as a system of safe existence of individuals in all their singularity. The park is a temple of a future community in which individual beings have nothing in common. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe popularity of botany and natural history in England combined with the demographic changes of the first half of the nineteenth century to bring about a new aesthetics of gardening, fusing horticultural practice with a connoisseurship of botanical science. Horticultural societies brought theoretical botany into the practice of gardening. Botanical and horticultural periodicals disseminated both science and prescriptions for practice, yoking them to a progressive social agenda, including the betterment of the working class and urban planning. Finally, botany was (...) incorporated into systems of education, reinforcing the union of theory and practice.Three garden plans from the 1790s, 1835, and 1846 illustrate the embodiment of this theory and practice in the design of private suburban gardens. These horticultural/botanical gardens, described in the second half of the article, represent a neglected side of botany's bifurcated descent from Renaissance collections of curiosities into horticultural gardening and herbarium-based systematics. (shrink)