APPENDIX 341 



sketches, than to erase one sketch to supplant it by another on the same 

 sheet, for even though an alternative be thrown away on account of 

 some insuperable objection, still it may suggest an excellence in some 

 other respect which may be incorporated in the solution finally adopted. 

 If it is possible to get the client's cooperation in the design and his 

 acceptance of a rough sketch at this point, it is very desirable. It 

 should be remembered, however, that the client is probably less used 

 than is the landscape architect to making decisions among possibilities 

 of this kind, and that the submission of too many alternative schemes 

 may cause in his mind present confusion and future regret over in- 

 congruous excellences foregone. 



Having determined the main outlines of the design, a similar pro- 

 cess may be applied in the decisions as to the details of the parts. At 

 this point, if not before, the ordinary busy practitioner turns the work 

 over to an assistant and contents himself thereafter with the function 

 of critic, or of designer of such smaller things as are of particular im- 

 portance or which particularly appeal to him. In all this matter of 

 design, the landscape architect should have a feeling towards his work 

 much like that of the modeler towards his plastic clay. The land- 

 scape architect draws lines on paper, but in his mind's eye he sees the 

 ground, and the houses and trees and roads, and other three-dimensioned 

 objects upon it, and as he makes and compares and discards his alter- 

 native sketches, he is in his imagination first arranging his design in 

 simple and somewhat formless masses, next determining the main out- 

 lines and parts of these masses, and then and not till then dealing with 

 the subordinate beauties and intricacies of detail, which if they were 

 sooner brought into being might be discarded and utterly wasted with 

 the discarding of some larger mass which they adorn. 



It is one thing to determine on a good design ; it is another thing 

 to record this design on paper, and then to bring it into actual realiza- 

 tion on the ground. There are many conclusions which cannot be re- 

 corded, indeed which cannot be reached until they are wrought out on 

 the ground under the personal direction of the designer.* The archi- 

 tect can represent his design with considerable accuracy by drawings, 

 nevertheless architectural superintendence requires many decisions 

 * Cf. Superintendence of Construction and of Maintenance, p. 351-353. 



