PROJECT STATEMENT: J.B. Jackson observes that the essence of a garden “satisfies the aspirations of everyday existence” with “work that has quality and measure, capable of humanizing a small
fragment of nature.”
This garden’s emotive qualities are shaped by a belief held both by the client and
landscape architect that the stewardship of a landscape is an art form, one that balances the studied appreciation of its life-content and the development of its ritual
occupation—in this case through the crafting of a passage through a small wooded site to a lake. Within the practice of landscape architecture, this project demonstrates the difficult-to-achieve balance between the imposition of design and the invitation of a site’s dynamic capacities for successional growth.
Project Context
The Maine landscape is classically identified by the proliferation of kettle pond lakes and dense tracts of native woodlots. Located at one end of a horse shoe-shaped lake in a small community in Stoneham, Maine, this small site accommodates the client’s passion for kayaking by affording
access to the lake. The design of the house and the landscape both
foster the illusion that the occupation of the site necessitated minimal
intervention, while in reality the woodland ground plane required an
extensive amount of reconstruction. The damage to the site from the first phase of construction, which included building the house, set in
motion an iterative process of field observation and the design of site
improvements.
Project Tectonic
The long concrete site wall edging the vehicular court initiates the
tectonic narrative with a rhetorical threshold to the woodland beyond. After crossing this threshold, and passing by the front door to the house, an informal walking path negotiates a steep wooded slope to a boat dock on the lake—the design of which extends the idea of introducing discrete architectural elements as a means for fostering an awareness of the subtle changes in the character of the woodland floor (hydrology, light regime, ground plane planting, existing tree species). The design employs a limited palette for the pathway architecture, consisting of boulders retrieved from the initial site work, native rounded river-stone,
cast-in-place concrete and steel—the combination of which constantly changes with the shifts in the site topography and the ground plane plant community that is encountered.
Passage
The construction of the path and woodland ground plane was phased in four iterative planning steps, each arrived at by on-site discussions and field investigations with the client. A broad range of design
methodologies were employed within the various phases of the project: drawing traditional contract documents, exploring low impact
construction methods, researching mail-order components, engaging a metal fabricator to make a specialized bracket, selectively editing
volunteer plans, and transplanting plants from other parts of the site. In total, the project work on site spanned eight years, with each
progressive step becoming increasingly less invasive and more focused on the qualities of the forest floor—the process of design and the finished project both amount to a kind of meditative passage, one that constantly invites new observations of the qualities of this small
woodland site.
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PROJECT RESOURCES |
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Landscape Architect:
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc., Landscape Architects New York, NY
MVVA Project Team:
Phase 1: Michael Van Valkenburgh, Matthew Urbanski, A. Paul Seck
Phase 2: Matthew Urbanski, Gullivar Shepard
Phases 3 and 4: Gullivar Shepard, Jason Siebenmorgen
House Architect:
Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects
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House and Site Structure Contractor:
Mark Conforte Builders
Landscaping Contractor, Phases 1 & 2:
Daisy Mountain Garden Works
Landscaping Contractor, Phases 3 & 4:
Lucky Landscaping
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