Peter Walker

Peter Walker (Image taken from google images)

An landscape architect with an international reputation for his work from small scale work gardens to large scale urban city plazas. His approaches to landscape designs are minimal been inspired by minimal  art believing it has an unique expression as well as inherent inspiration from the past from Zen Gardens, Geek Temples and also Renaissance. As well as approaching designs in an artist mind, Peter Walkers  analysis the relationships and approaches designs with diversity of geographic contexts and cultural contexts.

''Peter Walker: ''Landscape as Art'' : by Process Architecture - An great book to read if your interested or inspired by Peter Walker and his landscape architecture.

Here I will like to share an interview/conversation between Peter Walker and Yoji Sasaki, which did get me thinking and to understand Peter Walkers approaches to designs in his own style and how he separates - Art from Design - Design from Art or -  or How both relates to each other.

A conversation with Peter Walker Yoji Sasaki (page 25) 

Yoji Sasaki: Then What is the difference between art and design?

 

Peter Walker: The main difference between art and design is function. Design MUST function. Art MAY function. When design ceases to function, it can only be considered as art. When design DOES function, it can be considered as art AND design. Now, a building or a garden must in some manner be enter able. Therefore, even if you're going in only mentally, it has to be spatial. At the simplest level, the viewing gardens are functional. They function as elements of religious ceremony - of contemplation, if you will.

''a sculptor or a painter have a signature, or some obvious way of making his work recognisable. It's very difficult, but not impossible, for landscape architect to have a signature. The more site-specific your art is, the harder it is to impose a signature, because the art is interacting with the forces of the site - the smaller the project - a series of small gardens, for example - easier it is to develop a signature, because the situations are similar and constant, and the form can dominate the site. Architecture tends to dominate the site. Urban architecture tends to dominate the site even more than suburban or rural architecture. In Landscape architecture, you rarely have the power to totally changed the site. You're always playing what you are doing  in the landscape against that which you aren't doing: that which somebody else has done, or which is there before'' (page 26 - Peter Walker)

I could say I agree with the statement Peter Walker has said within his conversation with Yoji Sasaki. Landscape Architects tend to have a more difficult job to identify themselves within their landscape designs, if an landscape architect is designing an landscape surrounding an building, the landscape architect tends to approach the design in a more suitable way for the landscape to fit in with the surrounding architecture. So the landscape architect designs an landscape that suits the architecture and compliments the architecture, fits in with the architecture, so wheres the signature of the landscape architect if it's all about the architecture :)

Do you agree with Peter Walker ? What do you think ? :)