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A local
Houston art collector hired us to create a low maintenance,
sophisticated, contemporary landscape design. She wanted her
property to compliment her eclectic taste in architecture,
outdoor sculpture, and modern art. Her house was built with a
minimalist approach to decoration, emphasizing right angles and
windows instead of architectural keynotes. The west wing of the
house was only one story, while the east wing was two-story. The
windows in both wings were larger than usual, so that visitors
could see her art collection from the home’s exterior. Near one
of the large rear windows, there was an abstract metal sculpture
designed in the form of a spiral.
When she initially contacted us, the surrounding property had
only a few trees and indigenous grass as vegetation. This was
actually a good beginning point with us, because it allowed us
to develop a
contemporary landscape design that featured a very linear,
crisp look supportive of the home and its contents. We began by
planting a garden around the large contemporary sculpture near
the window.
Landscape designers planted horsetail reed under windows,
along the sides of the home, and around the corners. This
vegetation is very resilient and hardy, and requires little
trimming, weeding, or mulching. This helped unite the diverse
elements of sculpture, contemporary architecture, and
landscape design into a more fluid harmony that preserved
the proportions of each unique element, but eliminated any
tendency for the elements to clash with one another.
Before
Construction
 We
then added two stonework designs to the landscape surrounding
the contemporary art collection and home. The first was a linear
walkway we build from concrete pads purchased through a retail
vendor as a cost-saving benefit to our client. We created this
walkway to follow the perimeter of the home so that visitors
could walk around the entire property and admire the outdoor
sculptures and the collections of modern art visible through the
windows. This was especially enjoyable at night, when the entire
home was brightly lit from within.
To add a touch of tranquility and quite repose to the stark
right angles of the home and surrounding contemporary landscape,
we designed a special seating area toward the northwest corner
of the property. We wanted to create a sense of contemplation in
this area, so we departed from the linear and angular designs of
the surrounding landscape and established a theme of circular
geometry. We laid down gravel as ground cover, then placed
large, circular pads arranged like giant stepping stones that
led up to a stone patio filled with chairs. The shape of the
granite pads and the contours of the graveled area further
complimented the spirals and turns in the outdoor metal
sculpture, and balanced the entire contemporary landscape design
with proportional geometric forms of lines, angles, and curves.
This particular contemporary landscape design also has a sense
of movement attached to it. All stonework leads to a destination
of some sort. The linear pathway provides a guided tour around
the home, garden, and modern art collection. The granite pathway
stones create movement toward separate space where the entire
experience of art, vegetation, and architecture can be viewed
and experienced as a unity.
Contemporary landscaping designs like create form out of feeling
by using basic geometric forms and variations of forms.
Sometimes very stark forms are used to create a sense of
absolutism or contrast. At other times, forms are blended, or
even distorted to suggest a sense of complex emotion, or a sense
of multi-dimensional reality. The exact nature of the design is
always highly subjective, and developed on a case-by-case basis
with the client.
For more the 20 years
Exterior Worlds has specialized in servicing many of Houston's
fine neighborhoods.
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