28229 - History of Gardens and Landscape

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course unit the student acquires the basic notions in the field of the history of gardens and landscape, with particular attention to the main historical styles (the Islamic, Italian, and French garden, etc.), useful to understand the past and contemporary landscape design. The student acquires the main theoretical references related to the concept of landscape and to landscape  analysis, diagnosis and design. In particular, the student is able to identify the main styles of historic gardens and the basic elements necessary for the analysis of landscape at different scales.

Course contents

A first goal of the course unit is to provide a theoretical education in the field of garden and landscape architecture, focusing on the analysis and interpretation of historical and contemporary projects. The study of history is aimed to allow the student to start developing a sensitivity in the field of the design of open spaces, further developed in the other design courses which follow in the study plan. A third goal is to lay the foundations for the development of a critical/interpretative method, suitable to understand the complexity of functional, social, symbolic, and aesthetic values of gardens and landscapes. Within this method, green areas design and the vegetation project are thought as part of a wider creative process, suitable to define the structure and image of sites in their different components and in their fundamental  relationships with the surrounding context, in terms of the architecture, city and its periurban fringes, rural and natural environments.

CONTENTS 

1.     Introduction

1.1. Presentation of the Program, contents and objectives of the course unit and planned teaching activities

1.2. Glossary: ​​landscape, garden, hortus conclusus

1.3. Analysis of contemporary gardens in which it is possible to perceive the archetypal idea of garden as "enclosed/separate space"

2.     Garden and landscape in antiquity [6 hours]

2.1. Cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, Greece

2.2. Republican and imperial Rome

2.3. Treaties of botany and agriculture in ancient times 

3.     The Middle Ages [3 hours]

3.1. Cultural framework and Typologies of hortus conclusus (hortus catalogi, hortus ludi, hortus contemplationis)

3.2. The Hispano-Arab gardens

3.3. Treaties of botany and agriculture in the Medieval period 

4.     Humanism and the Renaissance: the Italian garden [3 hours]

4.1. Cultural framework and Treaties

4.2. Discussion of projects

4.3. Definition of the stylistic canons 

5.     The Sixteenth century [4 hours]

5.1. The mannerist garden in Italy

5.2. Thematic Gardens: Origin, purpose, architecture of the Botanical Gardens; Labyrinth and Irrgaten, in the culture of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth centuries

5.3. The Sixteenth century garden in France: influences by the Italian garden and elements of originality 

6.     The Baroque [4 hours]

6.1. Poetics and work by Le Notre and style codification

6.2. The development of the classic park in Europe

6.3. Evolution of the Italian garden in Italy in the Seventeenth century

7.     The English garden in the Eighteenth century [4 hours]

7.1. Cultural influences and new conception of the garden in relation to the landscape: Ut pictura hortus

7.2. Authors and projects

7.3. Diffusion of the picturesque style in Europe

8.     The Origins of the Public Park [5 hours]

8.1. Folies, jardins spectacles, pleasure gardens

8.2. Urban and landscape transformations in Paris, Vienna and Berlin in the Nineteenth century

9.  The contemporary garden. Part I  [3 hours]

9.1. The Mediterranean garden

9.2. English authors: William Robinson, Gertrude Jekyll, Vita Sackville-West, Geoffrey Jellicoe

10. Open spaces as a system: utopias, experiments and design models since the Nineteenth century [6 hours]

11.   The contemporary garden. Part II . The garden as a total work of art [3 hours]

11.1. Luis Barragan

11.2. Roberto Burle Marx

11.3. Isamu Noguchi

12. Summary / Historical excursus: relationships between architecture, garden and landscape from the ancient times to the Twentieth century [2 hours] 

> Ex-tempore: Garden and landscape Representation Techniques [4 hours]

  Copyright 2006    [build.553 del 21/08/2014] 
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - Università di Bologna

Readings/Bibliography

Bibliography

Grimal, P., L'arte dei giardini. Una breve storia, Donzelli Editore, 2005.

Panzini, F. Progettare la natura. Architettura del Paesaggio e dei giardini dalle origini all'epoca contemporanea, Zanichelli, Bologna 2005.

Zoppi M., Storia del giardino europeo, Alinea, Firenze 2009.

Other reference texts

Aben, R. , Wit  S., De, Enclosed Garden, The History and Development of the Hortus Conclusus and its Reintroduction into the Present-day Urban Landscape, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam 1999.

Mosser, M., Teyssot, G., L'architettura dei giardini d'Occidente. Dal Rinascimento al Novecento, Electa, Milano 1990 .

Panzini, F., Per i piaceri del popolo. L'evoluzione del giardino pubblico in Europa dalle origini al XX secolo, Zanichelli, Bologna 1993.

Articles and documents

Barba i Casanovas, R., 1995, Argumentos, practicas y trabajos en el proyecto del paisaje. GEOMETRÍA”, n. 20, Paisaje (I), Málaga (España). in “ RI-VISTA. Ricerche per la progettazione del paesaggio”, n. 5, 2006, Firenze University Press.

Council of Europe, The  European Landscape Convention, Florence, 2000.

Venturi Ferriolo, M., Etiche del paesaggio, in “ RI-VISTA. Ricerche per la progettazione del paesaggio”, n. 1, 2004, Firenze University Press.

* Other texts and articles will be provided by the lecturer to help with specific topics and with half-term and final exercises.

 

Teaching methods

The teaching method consists in lectures dealing with the theoretical content of the course. 

 

Assessment methods

The course is part of the Integrated Course of "History of Landscape and Drawing", together with the teaching of "Drawing and CAD for the Design of Green Areas".  Therefore, the evaluation of the course takes into account jointly the level of knowledge and skills acquired by the student in relation to the contents of all of the above teachings.  The knowledge and skills taught in this course are evaluated through oral questions.

Teaching tools

Overhead projector and PC. Lectures may be supported by TV projector, photos, texts and other graphic material. 

Office hours

See the website of Moreno Daini