Contemporary Landscape

What makes the contemporary style of landscaping different from other forms of landscaping?
Perhaps the most distinguishing attribute of contemporary landscaping is the preeminence of feeling over form. Other design styles tend to develop the landscape using established forms that represent historical periods, emotional sensibilities, or intellectual concepts. For example, an outdoor room might be constructed to mimic a tropical bar in order to establish a feeling of vacation in the back yard. In such an instance, the form of the structure itself is used to establish the nature and atmosphere of events and activities it hosts.

Contemporary landscaping inverts this principle, refusing to allow the ego the convenience of assuming any fixed form as a sure point of reality. Rather, it demands that feelings be understood first, if not cognitively, at least intuitively. Only after the sense that one is seeking to express is grasped on some level can the form then begin to shape itself around the sentiment. This is similar to the literary maxim of American poet Ezra Pound, who abandoned traditional verse and declared instead that form follows content.

This is only an analogy, however; not a direct correlation. The poet has a vocabulary to work with, and usually a very advanced one at that. Any number of words can be used to convey thought and emotion. The landscaper is often more challenged. Many landscaping elements are either stylistically branded or period dated, making them difficult to use as constructs to represent abstract and subtle realities. In most contemporary landscaping projects, the designer has to often play Skywalker on the property, and unlearn all that he or she has learned so new forms can emerge of the raw energy of client desire, personal lifestyle, and preference. The designer may also have to resort to using very rudimentary elements as building blocks to use in creating these new forms, because nothing like the project at hand has been done before in quite the same manner.

Even though this is highly subjective, a remarkable order always results in a contemporary landscape—although quite often it is an order unlike anything else. Matter is nothing more than energy given a form, and all matter is organized according to principles, which are visually perceived as geometry to the naked eye. As the subjective becomes objective in contemporary design, both linear and non-linear geometric patterns emerge. Sometimes these are easily recognizable as cubes, circles, and linear angles whose stark appearance creates a sense of absolutism or contrast. Other forms emerge blended, discombobulated, or distorted, suggesting an unconscious, unexplored part of the mind.

Home architecture and personal lifestyle play a critical role in this process. Normally homeowners who prefer the contemporary style of decorating already live in a home that reflects this process of form emerging from essence. You will see homes in many parts of Houston that look almost like sculptures in their own right. Others look futuristic, as if built ahead of their time, and transported back to ours. Still others are built around simple designs that are combined into eclectic patterns to convey a sense of the avant garde, or to serve as emblems for a personal proclivity toward fine art collecting. The wise designer will take a clue from the house, get a feel for its essence, then seek to bring that same essence out of the earth with patterns and principles common to both organic and inorganic realms.
In each contemporary landscaping project, the outcome is always very different than the last thing completed. It is a science of individuation; an exploration into the undiscovered country of sense and sensibility made concrete by forms of both living and non-living materials that converge into a new world of experience where greenery, stone, earth, and water blend together into a new, personal expression of pure Mind.