The Need for Landscape Professionals - Part 1

This trip has been a great experience, it has been interesting as I spend more time at various plazas. I see landscape elements I would do differently, as well as, I have seen many great ideas.

The one thing that stands out about all of the designed landscapes I have seen so far, is the lack of professionally educated landscape designers and designs. Chile is just now starting to offer degrees in landscape architecture and horticulture at very few and select colleges and universities.

This lack of understanding of basic design principles and/or basic horticulture practices is sad to see because in this area of Chile the land is very fertile and green and can grow just about anything with little or no skill. There is an abundance of beautiful trees and plants. I see many attempts to create a beautiful concept, but overall the final effect was not completely achieved due to a lack of basic landscape knowledge and skill. For example:

Four different kinds of plants were installed in a very small area with little thought about how they will appear when they are fully grown. Is the space large enough to accommodate each plant and its needs for space, water, and sun?

In addition, these same four plant species were never used again in the rest of the plaza. Repetition of plant material is a basic design principle that was ignored.

Here is another example:

Notice the Palm tree in the foreground. It does not work here, in fact, it distracts from the beauty and design of the other trees. Because there is only one tree of its kind here it does not belong. It appears that it was an extra tree that someone just decided to plant in that spot.

Yet another problem with this Palm tree:

It was obviously planted after the other trees had matured and is directly under the canopy of a larger tree. No planning regarding the future growth of the palm was considered. The palm tree has room to grow right now, but in five years it will become a problem. It will collide with the canopy of the other tree.

I see this same pattern of design problems over and over again. I see a house with a small yard space and a big old oak tree growing that completely hides the house and ten different kinds of plants all competing for the same area.

Note: I want to clarify that if you take a short drive through any neighborhood in Utah, you will see the same problems. In the US, professional landscapers will try to address these issues. I am in no way trying to put down Chile. As I have stated earlier, there are no landscape professionals here. I have seen many beautiful buildings and other structures that obviously had a professional Architect involved in the design and planning, but Building Architects and Landscape Architects are not the same thing.

The need of Landscape Professionals Part 2

The thing that has always had me so interested in design is the problems solving aspect of it. You are given certain criteria for a space for example this area needs to accessible for the public , it needs to have places for events, it needs to be able be maintained with this amount of money and have these amenities. You then take all this information and have to come up with a design that can satisfy as much of these different criteria as possible. The ability to do this and come up with new way of satisfying these need all in a ascetically pleasing way gets me excited and remind me that I picked the right career.

I watch the gardeners taking care of the plazas and i see all of the issues that they have to deal with and think no wonder they can't keep up with it and thats why there always are maintenance problems. So many of these issues could be solved with some simple redesign. now don't get me wrong if they threw more money at these spaces they could fix it, but isn't that always the issue with public spaces are that they are under funded since it falls upon the government to pay for it.

Can you imagine trying to water a whole park with a hose. luckily here he get help with some rain but still as you can see there are still a lot of dry spots. the bigger problem is that if he has to spend all of the time watering the grass when will he have time to do all of the other stuff like weed, maintain the play equipment. This problem could be fixed by adding a sprinkler system. The issue here is not money because there is the money, the problem is that no one knows how to design one. water pressure, evaporation rates, soil types, hydro physics and grass requirements which you need to know to do a efficient irrigation system at this scale are not know. Thats the point, if you have people knowledge you can overcome most money constraints. As Chile develops careers in the Landscape Industry these problems will start to be solved.

The Hill

There is a hill that rises above equator park. I think it used to be some kind of defense for the spanish and then the Chileans fighting the spanish. It has since become a natural park where you can hike, picnic, and get a pretty good view of the city. It fits good with the equator Park below because the hill has more of the natural side where as the equator park is more of a structured park with play equipment, tennis courts, grass areas and such. I liked the original design of the hill even though it seemed fairly run down. I find that this is a common problem with much of the parks here in chile where they have built something great but never thought of the upkeep of it. The other big problem I saw with the park was the plant selection. most of it is natural plantings but you can see near the trail they have added plants and they don't work on a couple of levels. They don't fit the style, they need more maintenance then they are getting, and even placement many times is not right for that plant. I did really love though the ramparts and the cobblestone street. It kind of took you to a different time in history and made you want to go and explore the whole hill looking for other old relics of the past. There were some great views of the city and for being a five min. walk from my apartment in downtown Concepcion I was able to feel like i was out in the country and not in a urban setting

This is the view from close to the top of the hill. You can see most of Concepcion, with San Pedro in the back ground.

This is how most of the hill is with just a natural pine forest that all this area was before Concepcion was developed.

There are ramparts all along the hill that you can take trails to. They are pretty cool and most of them have a pretty good view over the park below. The only problem is there really has not been much upkeep. nothing ruins a pretty space like graffiti.

You can kind of see the cobblestone street. I love the texture that come with a cobble stone street. I would suggest paving all street in it because it make quite a bumpy ride but it definitely fit this space.

The tennis court is actually a private club so thats why its so nicely up kept. I love the color of the clay court.

These two pictures are examples of what I was talking about before where they went wrong in integrating the natural with their design and a lack of upkeep. There is so much potential here just needs a better choice of plant material and also some maintenance and fix up.

Plaza de Tome

I have been to Tome a couple of times so it's about time that I write post about it. Tome is a smaller town on the coast north of Concepcion. It is a interesting town, in that it used to be built around a Textile mill that was built there, but it is shut down. A good part of the town died with it. But in the last 5 to 10 years it has come back to life as somewhat of tourist town due to the fact that its right on the coast and that it has some beaches that people like to come and visit. The plaza embodies this change in the town. The plaza was built when the city was formed and it's history is tied very much to the history of the town, but It was expanded a while ago. The older part very much has the colonial typical look that many of the other plazas that I have looked at have. There is a classical looking fountain with some old Araucana trees.

On the new expanded side there is another fountain that is has very modern design to it. There are many younger trees. The problem I see with both the town and the plaza is that there is not any connective elements or even any kind of transition from one design to the other. It's more like a fight between of the older part to maintain the history and the new part to be come hip and relevant for the tourist. You see this fight for dominance in the plaza. The two fountains are on either side of the plazas and instead of leading you from one to the other, it is more like a competition for attention.

It was interesting, I was talking to this man that is working with the city trying to restore some of the historic parts of the town that he thinks is being destroyed in the new developments I could see many of his points but he told me that the city was going to redo the plaza and he showed me the preposed plan. He then told me that they had successfully talked the city into keeping the plaza as it is. I didn't tell him at the time, because he felt pretty passionately about it, but I liked the new design a lot better then what is there right now. I felt like it retained a lot of the older elements but did a lot better job at combining the new style and the connectivity of the whole plaza.

This is the proposed plaza:

The idea was to move the older fountain to the middle of the plaza to make it the focal point with all the paths crossing so that they all lead to the fountain. The idea was to also add a stage with a bathroom underneath. They also wanted to open up the one side and take out much of the grass and trees so that they could use the space for exhibits and activities. I don't agree with all of the ideas but I like it better then how it is right now.

This is kind of how the plaza is right now:

Parque Ecuador

This park is very close to the apartment, it is just a few blocks away. This park is more like the parks we have here in the states. It's kind of cool because it is actually a hill that the have conserved as a park. They left most of the hill with its native plants and have made a road to the top. Along the bottom of the park, they have put in a bunch of grass, paths, play equipment, and big trees. Some of these trees are ancient, they are incredible just to look at. There is this cypress tree in particular that I just love. I still haven't got a great picture of it but I will I think we need to go later in the evening. A new attraction that they have at this park is a community water park. Everyday that we have been there it been full of people. It seems like quite a fun idea though I wonder about how healthy it is but then I think the same of public pools.

The hill is quite large and fairly tall, we still haven't gone to the top but I have been told that it has a great view of the city. Like I said before, most of the hill is left just as a natural woodlands area, the part that is actually maintained is just the bottom of the hill. It makes for a very long and narrow park. I would say that it is about a one and half city blocks wide and about a mile to a mile and half long. We found out today that the park also hosts different fairs and that the biggest art fair had just started today. My wife loved looking at all the different handmade crafts from not just Chile but all different countries in south america. Luckily for me I didn't have much money on me but I am worried because she is already planning on going back there next week and with a lot more money. While she was there she took a bunch of pictures and I thought they made a good slide show with all the colors and types of things that they have here in Chile.

Sitting

In one of my books, I have been reading that they did a study on what makes an urban public places work and what doesn't. It was interesting in that they found that the number one variable was the amount and quality of sitting. After I read this I decided to go to the Plaza de Armas in Concepcion and test it out. I found a couple of interesting things in the plaza. The first one is that for the most part I think the Plaza fits with the research in the book.

Second I found that the people didn't have any problem sitting very close together. So that they take advantage of all of the seating space. You can be sitting and then right next you on the same bench, you can have someone making out and on the other side of you a whole family eating ice cream. They don't seem to have the same kind of issues of personal space like we do in the states.

The people used all of the sitting space that was available to them, there were people sitting in the grass, sitting on the benches and sitting on the ledge of the fountain. The only idea I had was that they could of made some of the planting areas raised beds so that people could sit on the edge of the planting beds.

It would be interesting to see the plaza in the winter because there are not any covers over the seating area so I don't know where you would sit and not get wet when it rains. You couldn't sit in the grass because it would be wet and none of the benches or the fountain are under the trees so as to give some protection from the rain. My guess is that the plaza gets a lot less use in the winter due to the lack of good sitting. Understanding sitting space is a important step in making a good public space.

Plaza de las Armas-A great example

The first Plaza that I have gone to study is the Plaza de las Armas in Concepcion. It is the central plaza of Concepcion. I will take advantage of this plaza as an example of what the basic elements of central plazas are in Latin American countries. First off, Plazas are one of the oldest parts of a town, they are put in place when the city was built or colonized and towns and cities would begin to spread out from the centralPlaza. In so saying, most often the plaza has a lot of historical significance. You will generally always find a catholic church or cathedral

at one side of the the plaza. you will also generally see government buildings, banks, commercial areas and sometimes prominent schools there also. In the plaza itself you will see things like statues, fountains and even stages for events. The statues usually have some historical significance like this one,

which is of a Mapucha Indian chief who helped the Chileans win there independents from the Spanish. They will also a lot of times have religious ties like this angle atop of the fountain.

The thing that amazes me and which has drawn me to study plazas is the amount of use by the people and the way it draws the community together. As you can see the whole plaza is filled and not just with one certain demographic but of all kinds. There are parents with their kids, old ladies, old men, young couples making out, beggars, Gypsies, street performers, groups of teenagers, business men, rich, poor, religious missionaries from different sects, street vendors and tourists. I was able to see and witness all this in just one visit to the plaza. It is a marvel that one space could be utilized by so many different kinds of people. This is what designers rarely ever achieve or even strive for.

As I was writing this blog I came up with the idea of this slide show to at least give the feeling of what I see going on in the plaza and the variety of people and their activities. Here is a quick video that I put together from what photos I have right now and then I will put a final one together. My wife says that this so far has been her favorite part of our trip. She calls it going to the plaza to people watch.

Intro-Purpose

So this is the start of my blog/journal of our trip to Chile. I am doing this in part for my class and in part so that those that are interested in what I am doing down here can follow along. I am a Landscape Management major at BYU which is a unique major, in that it mixes Landscape Architecture, Horticulture and Business Management into one degree. I am looking to graduate this coming fall and so I needed/wanted to do some research. I came up with the idea of studying Latin American plazas. I will give you a condensed version of my perposal so that you can get why I am doing this and that no, I haven't just come down here to vacation. Though after reading my proposal, I may not have persuaded you.

Urban design is the area of design that looks at all the spaces that come within urban space or highly dense areas. This is quite a broad definition but for me I am specifically interested in those urban spaces that are considered "green" such as parks, plazas, roof top gardens, or pretty much anywhere there is vegetation in the urban area. This focus of urban design has become a lot more important and relevant with in the last decade with something called the Urban Revival. This is what they call the phenomena, due to gas prices and other variables, many of people that lived in the suburbs are starting to move back to the city. With this influx of people to cities and urban centers, there has also come a desire to make these urban space better and more "green". A family that lived in a house with a yard in the suburbs now lives in an apartment downtown, yet they still want a place to walk the dog, lay under a tree or to let their kids play.

This all leads to what I am doing down here in Chile. A interesting solution to this issue of green spaces in urban environments has been in place for centuries in Latin America. Their use of Plazas encompasses much of what we are looking for and lacking in our urban environment. So I came down to Chile to see how they use their plazas, what materials they use, how they function, what interactions the Chileans have with the space, what advantages/disadvantages are there in its design and many more similar questions. The hope is that through an exhaustive study, I might better see how we can incorporate the design principles in the US, in not just large urban development projects but in many different things ranging from mixed use projects, to neighborhood developments.

So I hope to detail much of my findings and thoughts in this Blog. I think for most who, after reading just a little bit of the above paragraphs were completely bored I would suggest just looking at the pictures. I plan on using a lot of pictures because I think they better illustrate the point then me writing about my thoughts. I will also have a lot of pictures of plants and garden elements that I think are interesting or note worthy. I guess more then anything, this post is not only a introduction, but also a way to get you interested and excited about future posts or as the case maybe a disclaimer for those that had other expectations of this blog.