Minimalist
design
  Minimalist
design is a design style that takes a less is more approach to aesthetics.
In landscaping, it refers to a subservience of content to form more than a
specific style. Minimalism can be found in many different types of gardens
and landscapes, including formal,
French,
Italian,Mediterranean,
and small garden design. This is due to the fact that all of these styles
originate with the Greeks and Romans designs, who were the first in Western
Civilization to actively pursue minimalism in their civil engineering and
landscaping projects. We could describe such minimalism as classical in
the sense that it originated during classical times and was motivated by
classical values.
One of the many
reasons that the Romans adopted minimalist design in their cities and landscapes
was to socially condition subject people into seeing the empire that taxed them
as a safe, controlled environment that offered them a safer, more comfortable,
and more predictable lifestyle than they would have living in their old villages
and nomadic shelters. It was basically a subliminal message of sorts that
said “Isn’t it great to be conquered by an empire that keeps you safe from all
the bad stuff out there?” For the most part, the message worked extremely
well.
Pliny the Younger
had a garden whose minimalist design was distinguished by boxwoods that
symmetrically balanced and divided his estate into different sections. He
also had many topiaries shaped, as they are today, into the forms of wild
animals. This had more than a decorative significance. During Pliny’s
time, there were fewer people in the world--and far more predatory animals
roaming about in the countryside. Lions, elephants, and leopards were not
afraid of ancient people until guns were invented, so during ancient times,
being ambushed by a predator was just as real of a threat as being ambushed by
highwaymen. Shaping plants into animals was yet another way of showing
that man had the power to not only overcome Nature, but directly manipulate its
forms.
Of course,
minimalist design was no longer needed for civil and social conditioning after
the empire fell. European aristocracy continued the old traditions partly
out of a love for posterity, and sometimes out of a megalomaniac desire to
rebuild the Roman Empire. Such Humpty Dumpty politics never achieved their
political goals, but they did lead to a diversification of classical garden and
landscape designs into all of the many cultural forms we are familiar with
today.
Again, while none of these forms have to be minimalist by nature, all of them
share common classical roots and can be applied to Houston landscapes with minimalist
intentions similar to those of classical landowners. We may not be afraid
of Nature like our progenitors were, but we want more than ever to still feel
like we are in control of it.
This obsession with
controlling Nature has always been present with humanity since we made a
conscious, collective decision not to be eaten at some previous mid-point
halfway up food chain. However, over the past 150 years since the
Industrial Revolution, we have become obsessed with controlling virtually every
aspect of Nature. No longer are we looking to simply control wildlife and
ecosystems, but the very laws of Nature itself. Consequently, the
mathematical, the scientific, and the abstract have now replaced the organic and
the symbolic elements of art and spirituality.
Geometry is more
important than ever to minimalist design for these and many other reasons. It is
the one link between what remains of the organic world, the architecture of the
home, and the vast, unknown parameters of the human mind. Unlike their
classical equivalents, these gardens and yards do more than simply try to
control and limit natural growth. They actively seek to replace natural
elements with inorganic structures such as hardscapes, rocks,
gravel, statuary, and outdoor art. This challenges the viewer’s sense of
order and reality, and forces the viewer to draw conclusions on an exclusively
subjective basis.
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