Frederick Law Olmsted: His essential theory (2000)

https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/frederick-law-olmsted-his-essential-theory.htm

by squircle • 2 years ago

59 18 2 years ago

CRConrad• 2 years ago

About the man: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Law_Olmsted

LFCotton2• 2 years ago

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...

LFCotton2• 2 years ago

PS The WNED production was directed by Lawrence Hott of Florentine Films/Hott Productions.

roymurdock3• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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.

roymurdock3• 2 years ago

Yeah he has a very unique, beautiful, and consistent visual language that really captures and conveys majesty. The emerald necklace around the charles is a top US treasure to be sure.

roymurdock3• 2 years ago

its like the christian version of karma or dharma

mmooss• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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_...

joncrane2• 2 years ago

Isn't Olmstead mentioned heavily in that novel about the serial killer in Chicago?

pvg• 2 years ago

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

joncrane2• 2 years ago

Yes! It was so well written that I thought it was a novel

pimlottc• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

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• 2 years ago

Another interesting factoid is that the final verse of “America the Beautiful” is about Olmsted’s White City in Chicago.

Frederick Law Olmsted: His essential theory (2000)

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