194 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Building 

 Groups 



Texture Rela- 

 tions of 

 Buildings and 

 Landscape 

 Surroundings 



the setting. This knowledge of form will be an abstract one, not based 

 on knowledge of architectural detail and material, and therefore limited, 

 when applied to architectural forms, and subject to practical correction 

 by the architect's greater knowledge of what can be built and how the 

 economic and esthetic ends of the building itself should be served. 



These same general considerations apply to the design of groups 

 of buildings in their relation to the landscape, but since the separation 

 of the units makes the whole scheme more flexible, it is possible to adapt 

 the form of a group of buildings to its surroundings more completely 

 than can be done with the form of a single building. The esthetic 

 conception of the whole group may be absolutely formal, — a formal 

 harmony of size, shape, position, and orientation of the buildings. 

 If this conception is chosen for a scheme, the buildings must be large 

 enough and close enough together, and in general their formal relation 

 strong enough, to leave no doubt of its dominance. Formally-related 

 college buildings surrounding a large and irregular open space, large 

 formal designs for civic centers carried out in diminutive buildings, 

 can be found as examples of ineffective design of this sort. In other 

 cases, the relation of the buildings in a group to each other and to the 

 landscape may be one of mass and texture and color harmony rather 

 than one of axial relation and orientation. In such groups the shapes 

 of the buildings themselves are likely to be more irregular, and the 

 influence of the topography more directly recognized. Trees and 

 other vegetation may play a part less subordinate to the architecture 

 than they do in a more formal design. If the effect of a group is de- 

 sired, however, the relations of size and position of buildings are to be 

 studied no less than in a symmetrically balanced scheme. This matter 

 of building grouping is one in which the landscape architect may well 

 have a hand, but, at the scale at which this book is written, it can hardly 

 be treated in more detail here.* • 



The texture and the color of the surface of buildings are often deter- 

 mined by the choice of material of construction ; and the necessary 

 relation of texture to form, and of form to architectural style and use, 

 will in man)^ cases make the choice of material and texture the un- 



* See articles by A. M. Githens : The Group-Plan^ in the Brickbuilder, July, Sept. 

 1906, V. 15, p. 134-138, 179-182. 



