Introduction
What has all this meant in terms of detailed design,
the main concern of this book? There is little doubt
that it has focused attention upon the qualities
of hard materials. The balance between formality
and informality in landscape design has shifted, for
the moment at least, towards formality. We might
label the work of contemporary French designers
as post-modern or deconstructivist, but it revives
classical idioms and insists upon precision, neatly
clipped hedges and crisp patterns of paving. How
extraordinary it is to see the most ‘continental’ of
horticultural techniques – pleaching – being used
to create an outdoor room in the middle of Dublin’s
O’Connell Street. Modernist simplicity and func-
tionalism survive in the design of street furniture,
the strikingly contemporary braziers at Dublin’s
Smithfield, or the elegant and practical benches of
Budapest’s Erzsébet Square.
In Britain, characteristically perhaps, design is
quirkier and ironic. Thomas Heatherwick’s Blue
Carpet in Newcastle certainly uses contemporary
materials in a precise and controlled way, but at
the same time the whole design is a deliberate
joke. The Peace Gardens in Sheffield are almost
impossible to pin down stylistically; despite the
use of contemporary materials and technologies,
they hark back to traditional civic patterns of forma-
lity, yet they are infused with post-modern whimsy
and a hint of the exotic.
Another theme, clearly identifiable in the Danish
and Swedish chapters, is the reuse of former indus-
trial or dockland sites. This is not something unique
to Europe. Richard Haag’s celebrated scheme for
Gasworks Park in Seattle, constructed on the site
of a former coal-gas conversion plant, was opened
in 1975, keeping the rusty chimneys and retorts
and recycling the abandoned machinery, brightened
up with coats of paint, in a playbarn. Equally iconic,
the more recent Landscape Park Duisberg Nord,
designed by the German practice, Latz + Partner,
turned a steelworks with blast furnaces and bun-
kers into an award-winning park.Back in the 1960s, reclamation was generally seen
in Modernist terms; the site had to be swept bare or
covered over to create a history-free tabula rasa for
new construction. Gradually we came to see that too
much that was valuable, socially, culturally and ecolo-
gically, was destroyed in such a process. The Harbour
Park in Copenhagen exemplifies the new philosophy
of conservation, conversion and reuse. Original gra-
nite sett paving and railway tracks have been retained
and the inverted hull of an old ferry-boat forms an
eye-catching shelter. Across the Öresund, Malmö’s
Daniaparken reuses a harbour site, but with less
recycling of on-site materials. Nevertheless, the char-
acter of the new park is derived from its openness
and from its traditional palette of materials, mainly
granite, gravel and tarred wood.