316 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Buildings in 

 Relation to the 

 Park Land- 

 scape 



Minor Struc- 

 tures: Park 

 Furniture 



Important viewpoints in a park may be marked by shelters, which 

 not only give a comfortable place from which the view may be enjoyed, 

 but serve as a definite goal for a walk, a definite marking of the place 

 from which the view is best, and give perhaps an added interest to a; 

 high point which would otherwise not be sufficiently dominant in the 

 view. 



Any of these shelters may serve as a refuge in case of rain and some- 

 times where there are no buildings for other purposes, shelters may be 

 constructed for this use alone. 



The smaller necessary buildings in a landscape park may be, and 

 usually should be, more or less concealed. The larger buildings, res- 

 taurants, overlook shelters, boathouses and so on, should be so set and 

 enframed as not to be unduly conspicuous, and by choice of material 

 and color and even, within limits, by modification of their form, they 

 may be made more harmonious with the landscape.* In a park more 

 than in some other situations, the form of a building may be legiti- 

 mately modified to make it better fit the landscape composition, because 

 the landscape beauty is a primary purpose of the design (see Plate 

 35), but even here it is seldom desirable to sacrifice architectural form 

 and reasonable fitness to use by adopting curved and irregular shapes 

 for the sake of making the building inconspicuous in the landscape. 



The various minor constructions in a park, like seats, drinking 

 fountains, light standards, and guide signs are subject in their way to 

 the same considerations which we have already discussed in relation to- 

 the larger architectural structures. They should not be unduly con- 

 spicuous so that they introduce any unnecessary incongruity into the 

 landscape character. They should, however, be effective for their own 

 purposes. Seats and drinking fountains may be made very inconspic- 

 uous, often resembling natural bowlders, without being less useful. 

 A drinking fountain, however, like a statue, may be used as an object of 

 esthetic importance in the design, it may be adorned with sculpture, or 

 at least bear an inscription and perhaps serve as a memorial. Similarly 

 a seat may be treated as an exedra at the end of a vista, formal or 

 informal, and given considerable importance in the general composition, 

 or a number of seats may mark definite points in a formal concert 



* Cf. Chapter X, p. 189. 



