Architecture needs landscape. Our experience of architecture is affected by how we view the architecture within the landscape and how we perceive the landscape from within the building. How we approach a building can be as important to the experience of architecture as the building itself. By manipulating the visitor’s approach we can change how they view the importance or significance of the building. Do we wish the building to take precedence over its surroundings, to be dramatic, authoritative, or do we want to present it as an oasis, or an inviting haven or sanctuary, or merely a convenient shelter? How the visitor approaches the building will impact on how it is perceived.

Approach to Banrock Wine and Wetland Center

One word after another in a sentence.

One event after another in a story.

One element after another in a landscape.

We can think of an approach to a building as a narrative pathway. Narratives are stories.

According to Roland Barthes, the basic components of storytelling are "the units whose function it is to articulate in various ways a question, its response and the variety of chance events which can either formulate the question or delay its answer" (Barthes 1974, 17).

For a landscape to have a narrative it too must possess these qualities. It is possible to use the brutality of architectural intervention in the landscape as a means of confrontation, but it can also be reduced by methods of adaptation and masking. This can be achieved through a variety of ways through revealing and concealing, via masking and unmasking, transparency and secrets. Secrets, transparency, and masking/unmasking each create specific relations between the author and the reader. (Potteiger, 1998, 135)

Three examples of landscapes which can be considered narrative sequences are Melbourne’s City Link Gateway designed by Denton Corker Marshall, the Storm Surge Barrier by Adriaan Geuze and the Parc de la Villette by Bernard Tschumi.

Melbourne’s City Link Gateway
designed by Denton Corker Marshall

"Melbourne’s City Link Gateway marks its north entrance form the new ring road linking the Tullamarine Freeway with the Westgate Bridge. The ensemble comprises a monumental beam and a line of 39 30-metre sticks cantilevered at precarious angles; a concrete sound barrier raking 15 degrees back and forth along the freeway, and a 300 metre-long ‘sound tube’ enclosing an elevated road.

Cities used to have walls, not only for defence but to separate the urban from the non-urban realm.

Entry to the city was through a gate left open during daylight hours and closed at night. Like all thresholds, the gate baccate an important focus for activities other than acts of arrival or departure. Although the industrial Revolution changed the form of cities, the schema of wall and gate remains embedded in our subconscious… Contemporary cities have no walls or gates. Boundaries are blurred and the point of entry is unclear. Is it the airport? Or is it the freeway from airport to downtown? But the schema persists.

Testament to this is the hackneyed appending of "gate" to the names of commercial developments – Southgate, Westgate, Anygate… Denton Corker Marshall has deconstructed the schema and reconstructed it north of downtown Melbourne at the confluence of several important routes-Flemington Road, Tullamarine Freeway from Melbourne Airport, Moonee Ponds Creek and the connection to the new City Link freeway system."

The City Link Gateway

"This gate is a dynamic choreography of sinuous ‘DCM orange’ wall opposing a line of inclined tall, skinny, red sticks. A huge yellow beam cantilevers over all of this at an alarmingly awkward angle. Weaving through the composition are ribbons of freeway, one of which leads though a glimmering, elliptical bridge tunnel called ’the sound tube’. Designed to be experienced at 100kph, the ensemble works equally well coming and going. From the north, at the Brunswick Road exit, the freeway curves to reveal the city skyline seconds before the red sticks hove into view, enfilade, connected at the top to the yellow beam forming, for an instant, a portal. Seconds later, the thin red line breaks into its constituent pieces, the beam separates (becoming a boom) and the orange slash of wall appears. In the thick of the threshold, the apparently single line of sticks becomes two, the latter’s feet set in an elliptical pool-a retarding basin made into art.

The entry is pure cinema. Fragments seen form the surrounding streets mark the place as special. At night, the white-lit sound tube hovers above Flemington road like a flying saucer in a B-grade 1950’s sci-fi movie. The scale of the piece is monumental; its composition simple and astonishingly assured. Although abstract, with its roots in Lissitsky, it is figuratively powerful in its evocation of archaic urban memories of entrance and contemporary artefacts like power poles and boom gates.

Although the experience of driving the freeway may have an aesthetic dimension, the freeway’s primary purpose is instrumental. So it is with the City Link system. But this place, this moment of pure aesthetic pleasure may be City Link’s greatest gift to Melbourne."

Text and Images, Styant-Browne, A., Arrivista, Architecture Australia, v88, n3, 1999, pp.59-65

Oosterschelde Storm Surge Barrier
by Adriaan Geuze

The Oosterschelde Storm Surge Barrier Geuze "created an enormous plateau. The idea was that when you drive there, "you are `launched' by your momentum and then, suddenly, on a 10-metre level, you watch this incredible panorama of the sea and understand what is happening: you are going through the Oosterschelde, the estuary. Of course, the client did not understand that, but we had a more intelligent proposal."

Presentation Drawing for the Oosterschelde Storm Surge Barrier
by Adriaan Geuze

The plateau is covered by bands of black and white shells. "Shell is a waste material which can be obtained at no cost in these areas from the shell-producing industries. Moreover, we insisted on two types of shells: mussels and cockles, which are blue and white. We know that when you cover such a plateau -- a flatland covered with shells -- a bird colony will appear immediately. That was our bright idea beforehand, but it is tested and proven now. Black birds really prefer black surfaces, because they cannot be seen by predators. As white birds prefer white surfaces, you understand that we used those two colours to make a sort of living Zen garden out of these birds. When you shape and play with the pattern of black and white in a garden, you play with the species of birds as well. …you see how we played with the shell pattern in relation to the car speed. You have to understand that those areas can only be seen by cars. You don't go biking there. It is too big.

Presentation Drawing for the Oosterschelde Storm Surge Barrier
by Adriaan Geuze

This is why the perception of a driver is really important. When driving over or through those plateaus, you are facing a rhythm of black and white shells and black and white birds…. Here we see the plateau covered with black shells, mussels, and with machines. Then come the white shells and this was the final result. This is really Dutch -- all the ditches with frocks of lines or reeds, and then you have the cows, which are the Dutch antelopes, also in lines. Our landscape is ordered like that. I think ecology and human beings really interact in a very intelligent way. Here, we see what happens when you drive there.This is at approximately the speed of a car. And the most beautiful thing happens at night. The shells gleam and shine, illuminated soley by the traffic. The night there is really black. Only cars bring light. In my view, this project is a beautiful example of relation of technology -- the citizen speeding along in a car -- with the ecology of the Delta."

Text and Images: Geuze, Adriaan, "Black and White", Doors of Perception found at http://www.doorsofperception.com/doors/doors3/transcripts/Geuze.html

Parc de la Villette
by Bernard Tschumi

The final precedent to consider is that of the Parc de la Villette by Bernard Tschumi.

"Over one kilometer long in one direction and seven hundred meters in the other, La Villette appears as a multiple programmatic field, containing, in addition to the park, a large Museum of Science and Industry, a City of Music, a Grande Halle for exhibitions, and a rock concert hall. Tschumi’s winning scheme had been conceived as a large metropolitan venture, derived from the disjunctions and dissociations of our time. It attempted to propose a new urbanistic strategy by articulating concepts such as "superimposition,"

architectural "combination" and "cinematic" landscapes. Tschumi described the Park as "the largest discontinuous building in the world."

1. SYSTEMS AND SUPERIMPOSITIONS. Our project is motivated by the fact that the site is not "virgin land," but is located in a populated semi-industrial quarter, and includes two enormous existing structures, the Museum of Science and Technology and the Grande Halle. Rejecting the idea of introducing another mass, even of a linear character, into an already encumbered terrain and respecting the extensive requirements of the program, we propose a simple structural solution: to distribute the programmatic requirements over the total site in a regular arrangement of points of intensity, designated as Folies. Deconstructing the program into intense areas of activity placed according to existing site characteristics and use, this scheme permits maximum movement through the site, emphasizing discoveries and presenting visitors with a variety of programs and events. Developments in architecture are generally related to cultural developments motivated by new functions, social relations or technological advances. We have taken this as axiomatic for our scheme, which aims to constitute itself as image, as structural model and as a paradigmatic example of architectural organization. Proper to a period that has seen the rise of mass production, serial repetition and disjunction, this concept for the Park consists of a series of related neutral objects whose very similarity allows them to be "qualified" by function. Thus in its basic structure each Folie is bare, undifferentiated and "industrial" in character; in the specialization of its program it is complex, articulated and weighted with meaning. Each Folie constitutes an autonomous sign that indicates its independent programmatic concerns and possibilities while suggesting, through a common structural core, the unity of the total system. This interplay of theme and variation allows the Park to read symbolically and structurally, while permitting maximum programmatic flexibility and invention.
   
   POINTS LINES SURFACES

   • Points point-like activities

   • Lines linear activities

   • Surfaces surface activities

Image of Le Park de Villette

1. POINTS The Folies are placed according to a point-grid coordinate system at 120-meter intervals. They provide a common denominator for all events generated by the program. Each is essential for the program. Each is essentially a 10 x 10 x 10 meter cube or a three-story construction of neutral space which can be transformed and elaborated according to specific programmatic needs. The strict repetition of the basic 10 x 10 x 10 meter Folie is aimed at developing a clear symbol for the Park, a recognizable identity as strong as the British telephone booth or the Paris Metro gates. The advantage of this grid system are manifold. It is by far the simples system establishing territorial recognition and one that is easily implemented. It lends itself to easy maintenance. The structure prides a comprehensive image or shape for an otherwise ill-defined terrain. The regularity of routes and positioning makes orientation simple for those unfamiliar with the area. The advantage of the point grid system is that it provides for the minimum adequate equipment of the urban park relative to the number of its visitors.

   

   Image of Le Park de Villette

2. LINES The Folie grid is related to a larger coordinate structure (the Coordinates) an orthogonal system of high density pedestrian movement which marks the site with a cross. The North-South Passage or Coordinate links the two Paris gates and subway stations of Porte de la Villette and Porte de Pantin; the East-West Coordinate joins Paris to its suburbs. A five meter wide, open covered structure runs the length of both Coordinates. Organized around the Coordinates so as to facilitate and encourage access are Folies designated for the most frequented activities: the City of Music, restaurants, Square of the Baths, art and sciences displays, children’s playgrounds video workshops and Sports Center. The Line system also includes the Path of Thematic Gardens, the seemingly random curvilinear route that links various parts of the Park in the form of a carefully planned circuit. The Path of Thematic Gardens intersects the Coordinate axes at various places, providing unexpected encounters with unusual aspects of domesticated or "programmed" nature."

   

   Image of Le Park de Villette

Text and Images: Resource received from http://www.tschumi.com/2frame.htm on the 24th November 2000)