[HN Gopher] Frederick Law Olmsted: His essential theory (2000)
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Frederick Law Olmsted: His essential theory (2000)
Author : squircle
Score : 50 points
Date : 2024-10-18 11:45 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nps.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nps.gov)
| CRConrad wrote:
| About the man:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Law_Olmsted
| LFCotton wrote:
| All the Olmsted aficionados might be interested in our PBS film
| about FLO. I originated this project and served as chief
| content provider and consulting producer. Our website does not
| always show up at the top of searches. Here, you can watch the
| entire PBS film as broadcast, stream additional bonus videos,
| and select from a menu of essays about the Olmsted design
| legacy. (Though our film does indeed focus on Olmsted, Senior,
| here you will find an essay I penned about the legacy of John
| Charles Olmsted in the Pacific Northwest. I do recommend that
| beyond the appreciation of the life and works of Olmsted,
| Senior, you should also explore the legacies of John C. Olmsted
| and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., both of whom followed in their
| famous father's garden paths, so to speak. Cheers.
|
| https://www.wned.org/television/wned-productions/wned-histor...
| LFCotton wrote:
| PS The WNED production was directed by Lawrence Hott of
| Florentine Films/Hott Productions.
| roymurdock wrote:
| Love the exploration of Olmsted's idea of natural scenery
| "unbending" and untwisting the pent up anxiety inherent in urban
| life. To use landscape architecture to "sanitize" and heal the
| public.
|
| NYC and Boston (and the US in general) are lucky to have had an
| architect of his caliber designing green spaces...we could use
| some more of those to catch up with Europe ;)
|
| Also interesting idea here...correlates with talk is cheap...but
| wonder if there is a word or phrase that captures this idea from
| Bushnell, the Olmsted family pastor:
|
| "The most important and constant influence that people exerted on
| each other, Bushnell believed, was not verbal, but rather a
| silent emanation of their real character that showed in their
| habitual conduct and made itself felt at a level below that of
| consciousness."
| cduzz wrote:
| I was walking around the Smithsonian National Zoo / "the zoo in
| washington DC" and it really struck me as being very much like
| parts of where I live now (inner-ring suburban boston) and
| behold, same dude.
|
| It's amazing that the visual language so effective that a
| civilian like myself would even notice the correlation, and
| it's similarly amazing that these spaces were built in such a
| way that they're still consistent with each other and have
| survived even though I'm sure someone would love to put condos
| there.
| mmooss wrote:
| I wonder how his ideas could apply to scenes in games, where
| after all we have far fewer constraints (we can make any
| landscape or plant or tree), while we have other constraints that
| Olmsted didn't have (rendering).
|
| For example,
|
| _Through all the designs that Olmsted created there runs one
| dominating and consistent conception. He always insisted on the
| subordination of details to an overall composition whose
| strongest and fullest effect was to act unconsciously on those
| who viewed it. He vigilantly guarded against distracting elements
| that would intrude on the consciousness of the observer. In the
| process, he simplified the scene, clearing and planting to
| clarify the "leading motive" of the natural site and heighten the
| effect of a particular quality of nature._
|
| And at a greater level of detail ... do game studios work at this
| level of detail for the artwork (edit: I mean, do they think
| through the artwork conceptually at the level Olmsted did)?
|
| _When employed the style of the Picturesque, Olmsted introduced
| "complexity of light and shadow near the eye" to heighten another
| aspect of nature--its mystery and bounteousness. To achieve a
| sense of mystery, he used a variety of tints and textures of
| foliage that made forms indistinct and created a constantly
| changing play of light and shadow. At the same time, he planted
| profusely to secure greater richness and lushness of growth than
| nature would produce unaided. He planted one layer upon another,
| beginning with ground cover, then shrubs, then trees above them.
| To complete the effect he often added creepers that covered the
| trunks and branches of deciduous trees, keeping them green with
| foliage even in winter._
| reneherse wrote:
| I too am interested to know if anyone has experimented with
| these ideas in a virtual environment.
|
| It seems there would also be an opportunity for enriching
| procedurally generated worlds with these concepts of landscape
| (and shelter) patterning.
|
| And not only Olmsted's ideas. Though I'm not up on the state of
| the art, a couple other useful landscape and architectural
| theories come to mind:
|
| -Jay Appleton's "Prospect and Refuge" theory of landscape
| painting analysis (and its extension into architecture by Grant
| Hildebrand) [1]
|
| -Chris Alexander's "A Pattern Language" and other books.
|
| I wonder how one would go about training a model using data
| from existing environments, paintings and photography that
| exhibit these patterns?
|
| [1]
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286123657_Prospect_...
| joncrane wrote:
| Isn't Olmstead mentioned heavily in that novel about the serial
| killer in Chicago?
| pvg wrote:
| Are you thinking of _The Devil in the White City_? It wasn 't a
| novel although structured like one. Olmsted is in there quite
| bit.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_in_the_White_City
| joncrane wrote:
| Yes! It was so well written that I thought it was a novel
| pimlottc wrote:
| It's not exactly a novel but it's not entirely non-fiction as
| well. There's a fair bit of liberty taken in the details of
| Holmes' activities. An excellent read, regardless.
| pmdulaney wrote:
| Olmsted's "essential theory" in a nutshell:
|
| "Olmsted realized that he had learned much about scenery from his
| father's silent appreciation of it, and soon combined his own
| experience with the theories of Zimmermann and Bushnell to
| produce his own theory of the effect of scenery on man. Scenery,
| he decided, worked by an unconscious process to produce relaxing
| and 'unbending' of faculties made tense by the strain noise and
| artificial surroundings of urban life. The necessary condition
| for such an experience was the absence of distractions and
| demands on the conscious mind. The effect came not as a result of
| examination, analysis or comparison, nor of appreciation of
| particular parts of the scene; rather, it came in such a way that
| the viewer was unaware of its workings."
| nberkman wrote:
| Olmsted's work also foreshadowed "urban renewal" practices that
| often displaced marginalized communities.
|
| https://www.archdaily.com/993748/revealing-seneca-village-th...
|
| https://www.aaihs.org/towards-usable-histories-of-the-black-...
| frmersdog wrote:
| If you visit the Gilded Age mansions of Newport, Rhode Island,
| the audio tours mention him somewhat frequently as a
| collaborator with the Robber Barons in the design of their
| properties. Considering that much of the intent of their
| conspicuous consumption was to impress and then marry into the
| noble lines of Europe, Olmstead's connections to the notion of
| "gentrification" are, "humorously", at least two-fold.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| 225 people need to move, so that millions of people every year
| can enjoy one of the greatest urban parks in the world?
|
| Seems like a fair deal.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Another interesting factoid is that the final verse of "America
| the Beautiful" is about Olmsted's White City in Chicago.
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