Charles River

The Concept of Water

Five senses of water

1. Symbol
2. Reflection
3. Contemplation
4. Container
5. Moderator

Transition

To actualize the senses and water in design landscape

1. Existence
2. Population
3. Vague form

“ Water is of as much use in a landscape, as Blood is in a body.”

— William Gilpin, A Dialogue upon the Garden… at Stows174||

 

Water is an essential element in landscape design.For example, water played a vital role in the Arabian garden and great subtlety was required to create sophisticated compositions due to the scarcity of this precious liquid. In the Italian Renaissance, water elements were used in abundance, where the uneven lie of the land could result in dynamic features such as waterfalls, fountains, or ponds, which facilitated the creation of focal points. During the French baroque period the same effects were created in totally flat landscapes, which called for the development of hydraulic systems and technology applicable to garden design. On the other hand, the model of the romantic English garden allowed natural forms to be incorporated in the garden design. Today people feel the need to be a part of the landscape and ask for integration of water and public life. However, behind these explicit general understanding, is there an underlying relationship between human and water which suggestsan intrinsic and instinct content that enrich the quality of water subconsciously in landscape design?

Significance to understand the intrinsic content

My architectural background told me that architecture informs nothing when it is without material but form merely. Material determines the intrinsic beauty of object while form is the result of processing of the material. Therefore, it is important to understand the material during the design. In landscape, I wonder if it shares the same appreciation of material, if it does, then water would be the crucial element. Although the technical advancement of water did play an important role, here I want to focus on the concept and the cultural aspect of water itself.

Imagination

To understand its intrinsic influence to human, we need to understand our mind. In the book Poetic of Space by Gaston Bachelard, it distinguishes two forms of imagination, the formal imagination and the material imagination. The formal imagination creates all the beauty of variety and novelty, while the material imagination aims at producing that which, in being, is both primitive and eternal. It is directly linked into the substance, the material. It is a transcendence of a substance from its form to its natural charactor of permanency present. As Bachelard remarked, it is something given to the matter and inseparable from it. Perception to the landscape may suggest similar way. Here I suggest five different sense water possesses and share some quotes related.

1. Symbol
2. Reflection
3. Contemplation
4. Container
5. Moderator

Symbol

Symbol is a contextualized product following the need of civilization. It develops in religions as well as philosophy. In Taoism, water expresses wu-we,” the strength of weakness”. “ It cleanses, a symbol of spiritual purification used for ablution, holy water, baptism…”by Anne WhistonSpirn, The language of landscape

Reflection

“ One can always ask a person before a mirror the double question: for whom do you look at yourself? Against whom do you look at yourself? Are you aware of your beauty or of your strength?…”

by Gaston Bachelard

Contemplation

It is more than reflection, which makes it different from mirror.

“ … It is in it that we materialize our reveries, through it that our dream seizes upon its true substance. From it we solicit our fundamental color. Dreaming by the river, I dedicated my imagination to water, to clear, green water, the water that makes the meadows green. I cannot sit beside a stream without falling into a profound reverie, without picturing my youthful happiness… It does not have to be the stream at home, water from home. The nameless waters know all of my secrets. The same memory flow from all fountains…”

“ …water serves to make our image more natural, to give a little innocence and naturalness to the pride we have in our private contemplation. A mirror is too civilized, too geometrical, too easily handled an object; it is too obviously a dream device ever to adapt itself to oneiric life…”                by Gaston Bachelard

—

“If we imagine Narcissus in front of a mirror, the resistance of glass and metal sets up a barrier to his ventures. His forehead and fists collide with it; and if he goes around it, he finds nothing. A mirror imprisons within itself a second-world which escapes him, in which he sees himself without being able to touch himself, and which is separated from him by a false distance which he can shorten, but cannot cross over. On the other hand, fountain is an open road for him…”  by Louis Lavelle, L’Erreur de Narcisse ( Paris, 1939 pp.11-12)

On top of that it is about identiy and self-acknowledgement;

“repetition in the finite mind of the external act of creation in the infinite I AM”

By  Claude Lorraine

—

“ Man creates for himself a world that is the product of his own self-consciousness, deriving nothing either mechanically or at second hand, just as God did in the creation of His world”

By  JohnDixon Hunt

Container

The deepness of water gives it a power to carry and contain. Always it possesses human affection and emotions.

“A pool contains a universe. A fragment of a dream contains an entire soul”

By Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams. Pp50

—

“ Away, then, my dearest

Oh! Hie thee away.

To lone lake that smiles

In its dream of deep rest,

At the many star-isles

That enjewel its breast”

By Elgar Allan Poe

—

“…You are at the origin of the river, I am at the end of the river…”

By Zhuangzi, the song for the lover

—

“… It is rather a deepened perspective on the world and ourselves. It allows us to hold ourselves at a distance from the world.”By         Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams. Pp50

““…In the presence of deep water, you choose your vision; you can see the unmoving bottom or the current, the bank or infinity, just as you wish…”   by Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams. Pp50

Its content is accumulated after years of literature and hence open a door for imagination

“A symbiosis of images gives the bird to the deep and the fish to the firmament. The inversion which played on the ambiguous inert concept of the star-isle here plays on an ambiguous living concept, the bird-fish. ”

Moderator

“It assimilates so many substances, draws so many essences to itself and receives contrary matters…”

by Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams

“Water is paradoxical: yielding yet powerful, transparent yet reflective, a leveler, eroding mountains into plains, cutting valleys, smoothing stones. Seeking level, it fills valleys, forms flat, reflective plane… it absorbs, carries, and release  other materials; it is a link among them – earth, air, and living tissue. Translucent, it takes on the color of air, of suspended sediments, of bottom.”by Anne WhistonSpirn, The language of landscape.