i6 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Esthetic 

 Analysis in 

 Design 



Unity 



and perhaps, appreciating his client's inchoate wishes, to complete 

 them consistently, to relate them logically to the special circumstances 

 and bring them to a successful expression. And he may thereby evolve 

 something which the client should certainly like better than any " ready- 

 made" design, and which may well be more original than anything which 

 could have sprung from the designer's brain without the stimulus of 

 the client's personality. 



The landscape architect produces the various forms of esthetic 

 pleasure which we have been discussing, through analysis of his prob- 

 lem into its various pleasure-giving possibilities and their synthesis in 

 his design. This process may not be conscious. It is true that the 

 brilliant man, the genius, may arrive at his goal by "feeling," and not 

 by consciously applied knowledge. He may make a composition which 

 produces sensory, perceptive, and intellective pleasure in the highest 

 possible degree without having phrased to himself the possibilities of 

 these forms of pleasure. But this can be done only by a genius, and 

 few of us are geniuses and none of us are geniuses all the time. In 

 most cases, therefore, this esthetic analysis can well be a conscious, de- 

 liberate, and business-like process, which, while it will never enable an 

 ordinary man to produce a superlative work of art, will at least help 

 him to become a good workman, and prevent his making many ele- 

 mentary mistakes. 



In our discussion of the various forms of pleasure, we seemed to 

 have discovered that this pleasure, which it is the purpose of the de- 

 signer to create in the mind of the observer, is due to the presence of 

 a perception of some kind of unity. Man lives in and is part of an 

 organized universe. All the impressions which he receives, all the 

 objects which he learns to recognize, all his ideas, have organization 

 as their constant essential characteristic, and the completeness and 

 kind of this organization might well be the source of his pleasure in 

 them. 



We have different names for this completeness of organization, ac- 

 cording to the field in which it is found. The unity may be perceived 

 in the field of logic, in which case it is called truth, that is, the com- 

 plete accordance of a group of ideas with universal law as we know it ; 

 or in the field of morals, in which case it is called goodness, that is, the 



