Modern beautification of urban environment uses more and more often along with greenery planting installation of architectural landscape elements in the city area. What are they? The notion “architectural landscape elements” appeared long time ago. It implies constructions, equipment and decorative elements of outside beautification that supplement the main building-up of populated areas. Architectural landscape elements include stalls, vending machines, outside lanterns (otherwise called “landscape lanterns”), advertising stands, stairs, fences, garden and park constructions, fountains, obelisks, memorial plates, urban street furniture, litter bins, etc. The notion is old, but if in the past beautification of micro districts ended with asphalting, paving and installation of several litter bins, nowadays the mayors (for instance, Krasnoyarsk mayor) pay great attention to aesthetic modification of cities. All this results in the fact that beautification of urban environment uses architectural landscape elements.
In most cases architectural elements bear not only functional meaning, but lately also decorative meaning. Thus, installation of architectural landscape elements in squares and parks lets separate the area on various zones with various purpose or emphasize necessary places. Not long ago there appeared a tendency of unified decoration of micro districts in the cities. The style of architectural landscape elements also should (in the theory) suit urban areas design and match harmoniously with the building-up concept.
Landscape elements can be either assembled of prepared details on site or delivered to the installation site bodily.
There are a lot of requirements put forward to finished architectural landscape elements. They are standard (such as economy, aesthetics, safety, functionality, technological properties) and non-standard (the main one is universality). Customers (as a rule they are city governments) mostly want a standard set of architectural landscape elements to be assembled into a non-standard, more functional urban furniture combinations. Use of such combinations leads to uniqueness of the decorated areas, they become more comfortable for rest and, consequently, more popular with people. This, finally, brings positive impressions on city government.
Unfortunately, there are very few companies working on creation of architectural landscape elements and unification of urban furniture components. They prefer just making cheaper street furniture and, thus, work up the market. Moreover, according to modern law the regional governments must choose the cheapest offer while declaring tenders on architectural landscape elements purchasing. But low price not at all means high quality and, which is more important, aesthetic correspondence of architectural elements with the already established image of urban building-up. That is why in these conditions the main responsibility lies on architects and designers who work out this or that project of building-up or urban environment beautification.
By: Alexey Skorobogatov
In 2003, we received a call from John and Jennifer Randall of West Houston. They had decided to build a French-style home just off of Piney Point near Memorial Drive. Jennifer wanted a modern French landscape design that reflected the symmetry, balance, and patterns of Old World estates. French landscapes like this are popular because of their uniquely proportioned partier gardens, formal garden and constructions, and tightly clipped hedges. John also wanted the French landscape design because of his passion for his heritage (he originally came to Houston from Louisiana), as well as the obvious aesthetic benefits of creating a natural complement to the architecture of the new house.
The first thing we designed was a motor court driveway/parking area in the front of the home. While you may not think that a paved element would have anything at all do with landscape design, in reality it is truly apropos to the theme. French homes almost always have paving that extends all the way to the house. In the case of the Randall home, we used interlocking concrete pavers to create a surface that looks much older than it really is. This prevented the property from looking too much like a new construction and better lent itself to the elegance and stateliness characteristic of French landscape designs in general.
Further blending of practical function with the aesthetic elements of French landscaping was accomplished in an area to the left of the driveway. John loved fishing, and he requested that we design a convenient parking area to temporarily store his boat while he waited for a slip at the marina to become available. Knowing that this area would function only for temporary storage, we came up with the idea of integrating this special parking area into the green space of a partier garden. We laid down a graveled area in the shape of a horseshoe that would easily allow John back up his truck and unload his boat. We then surrounded this graveled area with a scalloped hedge characterized by a very bright, light green color. Planting boxwoods and Holly trees beyond the hedge, we then extended them throughout the yard. This created a contrast of light and green ground cover that is characteristic of French landscape designs. By establishing alternating light and dark shades of color, it helps establish an unconscious sense of movement which the eye finds it hard to resist following
Parterre gardens like this are also keynote elements to French landscape designs, and the combination of such a green space with the functional element of a paved area serves to elevate the mundane purpose of a temporary parking and storage area into an aesthetic in its own right. Also, we deliberately chose the horseshoe design because we knew this space could later be transformed into a decorative center for the entire garden. This is the main reason we used small stones to cover the area, rather than concrete or pavers. When the boat was eventually relocated, the darkly colored stones surrounded by a brightly colored hedge gave us an excellent place to mount an outdoor sculpture.
The elegance of the home and surrounding French landscape design warranted attention at all hours so we contracted a lighting design company to ensure that all important elements of the house and property were fully visible at night. With mercury vapor lights concealed in trees, we created artificial moonlight that shone down on the garden and front porch. For accent lighting, we used a combination of up lights and down lights to differentiate architectural features, and we installed façade lights to emphasize the face of the home itself.
Although a new construction, this residence achieved such an aura of stateliness that it earned fame throughout the neighborhood almost overnight, and it remains a favorite in the Piney Point area to this day.
By: Jeff Halper