PRINCIPLES OF PARK DESIGN 



design will be found to be dependent upon strength of " tie." Tie, in 

 design, means recognition of architectural plan, a coordination and 

 knitting together of parts into a well organised whole according to 

 rules of symmetry, balance, and axial relationship. 



RELATION AND SCALE 



The fourth principle of park design to be recognised is that of 

 scale. A designer will be rendered helpless at the start by too many 

 fixed dimensions. He naturally must accept the bounding lines of 

 the park and perhaps one or two other dimensions, but beyond that 

 the scale of park features should be determined by the scale of the 

 proposed design. It is impossible to obtain design pleasing in the 

 proportion of its spaces if they are determined by dimension rather 

 than by relation. It is always a surprise to the layman, in inquiring 

 of the designer as to the width of certain walks or the exact size of 

 certain pools or fountain basins, to see the designer lay his scale on 

 the drawing to determine the dimension before being able to answer. 

 It is inconceivable to him that the designer should not have known in 

 advance the exact dimension of the different parts of the design which 

 he composed, and yet such is rarely the case. A designer is merely 

 concerned that everything be " in scale," as he expresses it. By this he 

 means that the integral parts of the design shall possess a certain 

 harmony of size in relation to each other and to the total park area. 

 A water basin or artificial pond which should usurp over one-half of 

 the entire area of a small park would be said to be out of scale with 

 that park; on the other hand, the same pool might be so small as to 

 appear insignificant in a very large park, and for exactly the opposite 

 reason would be said to be out of scale with the second park. A walk 

 four feet wide in one park may have reached the very limit of size 

 without seeming disproportionate, and yet in a park in Washington, 

 not so extensive as one might suppose, the design called for a promen- 



66 



