DESIGN A CHINESE SCHOLAR GARDEN EXERCISE

It is an very enjoyable quick homework from the course Design Approach led by Pro. Greg Missingham, who knows Chinese garden better than most Chinese architects or landscape architects and has his own creative theory and approach methods in designing traditional Chinese scholar garden.  

NAME

For Chinese Scholar garden, name is something essential to the whole sense of the garden. It is not just a simple symbol says who owns it or who uses it. The name is the  reflection of the owner's/user's characteristic, wish, value view, life attitude or combination of them.  Usually, the name is related to poem or story which illustrates the identity of the garden as well.

水陆草木园

水陆: means the water and land, general description of the combination of different topography of the environment.

草木：means the herbs and trees, the total collection of plants.

水陆草木 is the first sentence of 《爱莲说》，"Ai Lian Shuo" or "The Love of Lotus". This prose was written by Dunyi Zhou/周敦颐 in early Song Dynasty (960-1127). It expresses the lobe of lotus' characteristics to metaphor the characteristics of gentlemen. 

SITE

Locate the 水陆草木园，which is about a suburban block size in Royal Botanic Garden. Botanic Garden is the place where displays all the collections of plants. At this point, it fit the 草木 best. Meanwhile, it has few pounds and hills, the different topographies, matching 水陆. 

ALLEGORIES

Different plants are compared with different human characters. In this prose, Dunyi Zhou compares four different flowers and each of them also a sign for one season as well. The garden is telling stories about season changes and human characters.

Four Directions ........Four Seasons

Reflecting seasonal change is the soul of Chinese garden. The romance in different season is vary but attractive to scholastic. Most of them are poets and artists. Their gardens usually are the places inspiring them. In an other words, they looking for inspiration in their gardens.

A year around, different plants growth and bloom in different time. There are season icon plants, they show the changing of time in the garden.  

In different time of the year, the activities happening in the garden changes as well. Thus the buildings and structures are designed to provide comfort and entertainment to users.    

VILLA LANTE

Fountain of the Moors pen with colour pencil on tracing paper drawing from reference photo (p131, Italian Gardens, Masson. G.)

Villa Lante, the finest Italy's villa, is designed by Vignola and built during 1566 to 1578 at Bagnaia, near Viterbo, 60km northeast of Roma.

It is personal favourite villa to me. The symmetries, terraces and water axis are the most fantastic Harmonia landscape design, which provides the whole villa a strong identity as well as creates plenty pleasure for different human sense in verier spots. 

Plan and Section pen with watercolour on watercolour paper

 

The plan illustrates the strict symmetrically geometrical layout of this villa. However, this not means that it is a boring place to be, as what symmetric and geometric usually applied for. 

Changes of the sense of space is the key method to suggest the movements, actions and focus to visitors. To achieve these changes, it is not difficult to be noticed from analysing the section with the plan together that the different arrangement of land levels and plants along the water axis through this villa. From the highest level to the lowest level, where the Moors fountain is located, the view and space is generally opening up. 

The water axis is the pearl necklace, the highlighted spots, the connector inbetween of spaces and the singer. 

Four fountains are vary in size to suite the space sense and terrace change. From the main entrance, they are lay in the geometry centre line of the villa and become bigger, as well as louder. When view can not reach the next fountain, the sound tells where it is. The water line figures, such as water steps and water table, provide the direction sense and suggested view, as well as different pleasures which may not be experienced around fountains.

If one day I go to Italy, I will spend a day in the Villa Lante, walking down the water steps and feel the moss on the edge stone, doing nothing else than counting the light spots on the steps.

 Water Steps watercolour with pen on tracing paper

SWIMMING POOL WATER

Acrylic Panting (copy)
Size: 180 * 270
premed Cardboard

Such an enjoyable Saturday night, sat in the lounge room with my love in front of the heater and challenged myself by drawing, after back yard cleaning, shower, dinner with friends. 

This is a copy of Swimming Pool Water (P101, Acrylic Workbook, Jenny Rodwell). 

As a landscape architect, painting landscape view, plants, and architecture figures is what I am familiar with. Human figure is something new to me. Further more, the underwater illusion of light and colour is something I deeply in love with but difficult to catch by drawing. 

However, the out come is much better than what I expected. The lady has fantastic body shape standing on her toe in the swimming pool facing the shadow of water wave and herself.