An Ideological Landscape
- Amritha Ganapathy
- Nov 2, 2017
- 7 min read
Seen through the Gardens of Stowe and the New Town of Milton Keynes
The word “Landscape” was translated from German through Dutch into English. Central to this evolution of the word from ‘Landschaft’, expressing experiential and organisational relationships between people and land, to “landschap/landskip”, which relates to the more abstract and pictorial representations of land.[1] The English garden was designed to be the quintessential English landscape, based on notions of the countryside developed through the years, being a place where the tradition and integrity of the English go together with the pastoral landscape. Numerous references in European literature, for instance, even Rousseau’s double-edged compliment in La nouvelle Héloïse (1761), [2] testify to the prior claim of the English.It is with good reason that the landscape garden remains the outstanding example of England not being on the receiving end in its exchange with the Continent in the field of fine arts; indeed it made a lasting impression on all of Europe.
In the county of Buckhinghamshire in the greater county council of London, the city of London spills over onto the landscape through this Arcadian thought. The Gardens of Stowe; as the political manifesto of the Whigs; and the New Town of Milton Keynes; a preferred home for the over-spill population of the city. They both use design elements born from the English garden to leave lasting impressions of the imperial fantasy, mercantile acumen and temporal power of the city on the countryside, designing urban situations within the preferred pastoral landscape.
With the Hanoverian ascension to the throne in 1714, the Whigan nominee, “George of Hanover” was crowned the King of England, Wales and Scotland. This began what is known as the Georgian era in Britain which lasted till 1837. It signified a period of great growth in Britain, industrialisation and growing imperial power that led to the rapid growth of London and its increasing role as the centre of the evolving British Empire. With the influx of many workers into the city, the aristocracy moved out into the ideal rural landscape, taking with them the ideas of “imperial fantasy, temporal power and the mercantile acumen of the city” [3], which left their impressions on the landscape.”
In 1697, Richard Temple, a renowned member of the Whig party, became the fifth owner of the house of Stowe and its gardens, which were already large enough to attract the envy of Queen Victoria.[4] In 1713, Temple became Baron Cobham, four years later moving up to Viscount Cobham. It was at this period that Temple employed garden designer Charles Bridgeman and architect Sir John Vanbrough to enhance the gardens. The gardens of Stowe were the political and philosophical manifesto of Sir Richard Temple of the Whig Party. It was a place for contemplating the relationship between politics and virtue, the embodiment of the beliefs of the Whigs, of aristocratic power – “government by the best citizens”.[3]
The house and garden were a tourist attraction from 1724, attracting visitors including Thomas Jefferson. The first guidebook was made in 1744 by Benton Seeley, with continued editions and updates for another 70 years.
“… the road to the House leads through the arch, in which are dwelling rooms for the keeper, and is beautifully diversified with hill, valley, lawn, river, and a perpetual change of scene arising from the numerous buildings intermixed with wood, and “ bosomed high in tufted trees,” which strike the eye with a most picturesque and ever varying magnificence” [5]
The landscape of the gardens of Stowe, designed by Sir John Vanbrough, William Kent, Lancelot (Capability) Brown is designed around path leading to the main building of the house. A succession of smaller buildings and sculptures which include the rotunda, the artificial ruins, the Temple of Venus, the shepherds cove, the lake pavilions, the Temple of Modern Virtue, and the Temple of Ancient Virtue, statues of his late Majesty and Princess Caroline, the Temple of the British Worthies, and many others are designed as a series of walks that terminate at the different structures.
“A strictly geometric plan , the main axis of the house is offset from the other axes in the gar- den rotunda is at the centre overlooking the home park, at the edge of the garden ..”nothing is more irregular on the whole, and nothing is more regular in its parts” – Sir John Vanbrough [6]
The landscape of the garden consists of hill, valley, lawn and river, tamed and ordered. The entrance gates and ha-has mark the boundaries while extending views from inside the gardens, the bridges of different description that span over the river, reconstruction of ruins as temples for the river as if integrated with the with the ‘natural’ landscape, a Temple for Venus as a representation not as a relic of an ancient world, and the temple of the British Worthies celebrating contemporary British achievements among many others. While the selection and design of these different objects within the landscape,and the design of the landscape itself was carried out by a succession of landscape designers and architects, working for different patrons; albeit of the same family; through three generations, the overall landscape retains the fundamental characteristics for which it was created – i.e.;a cultural landscape, that portrayed the sensibilities of the aristocracy of Britain, that was to take Britain into the new age of technological revolution and imperial power.
“The landscape of Stowe is not only socially specific,but a privileged point of view. It is a garden that has to be learnt to be read.”[1]
200 years since,in the light of disbanding of the British Empire and the aftermath of the second world war, London was being rebuilt. With lack of space, shortage of housing and amenities, many new towns were built around London as satellite cities, to house what was called the “overspill population”. One of the last and maybe the most ambitious New Town, Milton Keynes, made for a population of 250,000, was located in Buckhinghamshire, equidistant from Lon- don, Birmingham and Manchester. It was made unlike the other New Towns, not only to house people, but a place to begin new businesses and relocate old ones, in a place in the countryside, with cheaper rent and fresh air. The TV advertisements from 1970, urged people to move away from the crowded London underground to the countryside that could offer the opportunities that London could. Milton Keynes Development Corporation, an organisation specially formed for the design and execution of the New Town, that included architects like Llewellyn Davies and Derek Walker, also set-up offices in San Francisco and Japan to woo companies to invest in Milton Keynes, situating it as a financial centre located in between London and Birmingham, that did not rely on either for resources. “Wouldn’t it be nice if all cities were like Milton Keynes,” was the message of one lavish TV advertisement filmed in the early 1980s, showing red balloons drifting through leafy, child-filled suburbs.
Tasked with housing 250,000 new residents, Llewellyn Davies’s solution was a wobbly grid of 1km “village” squares. Each would have its own distinct feel and its own centre, connected by a network of highways and roundabouts. The aim, according to Derek Walker, one of the members of the Milton Keynes Development Council, “was to lose the city in a re-created forest.” [6]
The idea being seen as a development of the idea of a Sir Ebenezer Howard’s garden City, leading to what is described by Derek Walker as a specific English device -”the London landscape parkland inside the town”. Not based on modernist ideas of towers in a park, or town parks in Germany and France, the landscape according to the Milton Keynes Development Corporation, is based on urban hunting grounds, like St.James’s Park, Hyde Park or Regents Park, hypothesising that the English were interested in close contact with the countryside, with the possibilities of open-air life in attractive surroundings; but were unwilling to sacrifice the services of the city. [7]
Within each wobbly grid is a regular grid. Central Milton Keynes, a long rectilinear strip consists of two linear parks that are connected with the city centre, and the shopping centre, is a huge rectangular building surrounded by an avenue of trees, approached by the midsummer boulevard which is aligned to the sunrise on the summer solstice.
The drawings of Helmut Jacoby, a German artist hired by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation, made to promote Milton Keynes among new possible settlers, show the midsummer boulevard and shopping centre in a sea of trees, as if the urban experience of Milton Keynes is comparable to the experience of the natural landscape of a forest.
A series of drawings entitled “How a planting policy can affect the image of the city. Innormal distance view-shallow oblique perspective-buildings begin to disappear when trees reach roof height. Comparatively small amounts of planting can curtain the city, leaving only glimpses of building – “a city in a forest” [6 ]- show how a city for 250,000 residents was meant to be hidden in the landscape, merging it with the surrounding countryside. The Milton Keynes Centre; i.e. the shopping centre is the main focus of the landscape, located on the axis of the midsummer boulevard. The other objects that contribute in the planning of the city, like the sunken grid roads, bridges over existing waterways, roundabouts, bus stops, overhead streets that cross over the sunken highways and the famous Milton Keynes concrete cows are woven in with the existing features of the natural landscape; the rive Ouze, the Grand Union Canal, the clay plateau, the existing woodlands and Oak forests. Through the design of Milton Keynes, as an urban city that situated itself on the rural landscape, imbibing some characteristics from it, can be traced as an evolution of the ideals imposed upon the countryside or the “landscape” by the British. In moving the urban phenomena of economy, employment, accessibility and convenience into a rural setting while reinforcing the relationship of an “ideal life” to the landscape, Milton Keynes creates a situation that could be comparable with the Gardens of Stowe, in formulating a relationship between the City of London and its countryside. Seeing the countryside as an extension of the intentions and ideals that are formulated in the city, at the same time idealising the landscape, open air and ‘natural’ environment that they create for themselves. A diptych comparing the concrete cows of Milton Keynes and the Artificial ruins of Stowe as elements of constructed landscape that symbolize cultural integrity and the love for a rural life.
1. Pg.12,13 Harvey, Sheila. The cultured landscape: designing the environment in the 21st century. London: Routledge, 2007 2. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/stowe/features/history-of-stowe 3. Meade, Jonathan. MeadesShrine. Accessed June 13, 2017. http://meadesshrine.blog- spot.nl/2007/01/aa.html#ep5 4. Benton Seeley, Stowe- A description of the House and Gardens, 1744 5. Caroline Dalton, Sir John Vanbrough and the Vitruvian Landscape, 2012 6. Derek Walker, The Architecture and Planning of Milton Keynes, London, 1982 7. Pg.4,5. Harvey, Sheila. The cultured landscape: designing the environment in the 21st century. London: Routledge, 2007
Work produced in seminar conducted by Filip Geerts; Verluste de Mitte: Architectures of centrifugality and centripetality in the hinterlands of London and Buenos Aires, The Berlage Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Urban Design