|
Note: For this article,
IS journal editors chose excepts from articles I have written over the
past several years in order to present an overview of my evolving work:
the development of A Living Library, an international network of indoor/outdoor
culture-ecology parks that also function as community learning laboratories
and information magnets. Also called "Life-Frames," each branch Living
Library is meant to synergize the local resources in an area: human, ecological,
economic, historical, technological, and aesthetic, and result in site
and situation specific environments integrated with programs and curricula.
Each "Life Frame" involves a multi-generational public in the creation,
use, maintenance, and communication of its many elements. These include:
the built and ecological environments; plants and other living forms;
all of the arts; programs of lectures, demonstrations, workshops, research
institutes; and state-of-the-art communications technologies. At the local
level, the resources are integrated and framed so that we see and experience
them better. And when linked together interactively, the many branch living
libraries in different parts of the globe bring to life the cultural and
ecological diversity of the planet and beyond.
–Bonnie Sherk
I. The Park or Garden
As a Living Library
(From: Meanings of the Garden: Proceedings of a Working Conference to
Explore the Social, Psychological, and Cultural Dimensions of Gardens,
Mark Francis and Randolph T. Hester, Jr. Editors, Center for Design Research,
Dept of Environmental Design, 1987, University of California at Davis)
When we think of parks today, we usually think of
them as passive green spaces - tranquil oases for leisurely reflection,
recreation, and communion with nature. This is the legacy left to us
by Frederick Law Olmsted and others of the 19th century English picturesque
landscape tradition. Central Park and Prospect Park in New York are notable
examples of Olmsted's work. But they represent just one kind of park.
If we examine the history of parks and gardens from an international perspective,
we find many other traditions that join the aesthetic with the symbolic,
historic, ecological, social, or educational resources of an environment
and milieu.
For example, in China and Japan, the ancient parks
and gardens were created for meditation and contemplation, and were symbolically
laid out with precise meaning given to each rock, pond, plant, and animal.
And today in China, the park is a place where students learn about science.
“The botanical garden was originally meant to
represent the Biblical Garden of Eden before man's fall”
The ancient enclosed parks of Persia, named "pairideza,"
from whence comes the term "paradise," were arranged in squares separated
by the four "rivers of life" and planted with symbolic plants and patterns.
The medieval garden in the West was also enclosed
and was often a place of learning. In face, the modern sciences of botany
and medicine come from the observation and careful tending by the monks
of the many herbs and vegetables in the garden knot beds.
The botanical garden, which became prominent in medieval
times, was also laid out in squares - but here, each section represented
a different portion of the known world, each with its corresponding plants.
The botanical garden was originally meant to represent the Biblical Garden
of Eden before men's fall, where all manner of delight and fertility coexisted
peacefully.
In the Renaissance, the garden became even more geometric
and architectural, with great artworks, fountains, topiary, and elaborately
patterned beds. The 17th Century French formal garden displayed geometry
in the extreme with great avenues laid out so that the ruler could look
in any direction and see his great wealth. The French formal garden had
even more elaborately embroidered patterns and the whole garden was a
place for social interaction and cultural creation with poetry, music,
and dance often being composed for special events. Versailles provides
an excellent example.
The English reacted very strongly against all this
rigid geometry. In the 17th and 18th centuries, they explored a more romantic,
naturalistic environment. These gardens were narrative, representational
landscapes with elements from antiquity, like fake ruins from mythological
places. This picturesque tradition led, in the 19th century, to the development
of the kind of park and garden that we primarily know today - the tranquil
green oasis.
As we can see, there is a great deal of landscape
diversity that has existed. We can draw on elements from the past and
invent new ones, so that our environments for today and tomorrow will
be ecologically and socially sound, and visually unique, with precedents
from history.
And, in so doing, we will counteract many of the typical
problems found in public gardens and parks - particularly in urban areas:
the seedy, undercared for, vandalized places where drug dealing is usually
rampant and most people feel repelled and unsafe.
But, at the end of the 20th century, it is
possible to transform these derelict places into vibrant, healthy parks
and gardens if we combine the aesthetic, ecological, educational, social,
and symbolic, with elements from history. As the eminent observer of cities,
Jane Jacobs, wrote in the early 1960's, only a genuine content of economic
and social diversity, resulting in people with different schedules, has
meaning to the park and the power to confer the boon of life upon it."
Such a garden and park concept that integrates many of these ideas, and
creates new ones, is A Living Library,
an idea to
create an international culture park and contemporary botanical garden
of analogies. A Living Library is also a “Life Frame,” a vehicle
that links
|
 |
diversity - the human, ecological, historic,
and economic resources of a given locale - so that they work better together.
A Living Library is also meant to connect ideas and events from different
cultures and ages. With a Living Library, the humanities and sciences
come to life through plantings, visual and performing
artworks, computer/video/telecommunications capabilies, and changing thematic
programs.
A Living Library also shows a way to meaningfully involve people, from
all sectors and of all ages, in the park environment - to nurture it and
be nurtured. It is an innovative way to bring a community together in
a celebration of learning, creating, and maintaining the environment and
the diversity of cultures. It is a way to heal the urban environment and
the public's attitude toward it. It is also much more.
“Every great advance in education
has issued from a new audacity of information.”
–John Dewey
The park would link artists, environmentalists, historians, horticulturists,
ecologists, professors of all subjects, students of all ages, telecommunications
and computer experts, theologians and their congregations, small and corporate
business people, families, foreign diplomats and consulates, and senior
citizens.
Although transferable to other places (parks, town
squares, university campuses), A Living Library was initially designed
for a site in the middle of New York City, a public, open space called
Bryant Park. About nine acres in size, Bryant Park is adjacent to the
Main Research Branch of the New York Public Library at 42nd Street and
Fifth Avenue. This park has typical urban problems; it's an under-utilized,
derilict, and vandalized environment inhabited primarily by drug dealers
and drifters.
A Living Library would transform the energy of the
park while preserving its original elegance (although built in 1934, Bryant
Park is based on a 17th century French formal garden design). A Living
Library would also relate to its location next to the Main Library and
in the center of New York City, with its international diversity and its
role as a world leader of communications and culture. It would also relate
to the history of the site, where, in the 19th century, the Crystal Palace
stood, housing the first exhibit of its kind in America of the "art and
industry of all nations." International culture has a fascinating precedence
in Bryant Park.
For the schematic design of A Living Library, a conceptual
overlay of the Dewey Decimal System was chosen because it's the most accessible
library methodology and it fit very neatly on the existing formal grid
of the park. So for example, there would be a Generalities Garden, a Philosophy
Garden, a Religion Garden, a Social Science Garden, a Language Garden,
a Science Garden, a Technology Garden, a Garden of the Arts, a Literature
Garden, and a History and Geography Garden - ten in all.
In each garden of knowledge, there would be live plants
corresponding to each subject. Plants have different cultural meanings
as well as botanical, medicinal, and economic values. There would be visual
artworks that relate to the subject, as well as a multilingual program
of lectures, demonstrations, workshops, and performing artworks - all
connected thematically. In addition, there would be interactive computer/television
capabilities so that more detailed information could be communicated.
There would also be an interactive telecommunications capability linking
the park electronically to other Living Libraries or like projects in
different parts of the country and the world. In this way an international
interactive network of creative living/learning centers would be established,
allowing the unique resources of a place (or places) to be interconnected
locally and globally.
(Although some may balk at the idea of having "technology"
in a garden or park, two things need to be mentioned: First, creating
a garden or a park is a form of technology. Second, the physical amount
of hardware would be very minimal, housed in a sculptural way, in relation
to the amount of growing forms. It is actually a wonderful opportunity
to utilize the new technologies as the tools that they are, and to create
a sensitive balance between the mechanized and non-mechanized forms of
nature.)
There are three component parts to A Living Library.
They involve a professional staff of experts and volunteers who are also
educators. First, there's the implemented form - what it would look like.
Second, there’s the way it's maintained. And that would be through
programming so that the park would become a living, learning laboratory
involving a multi-generational public in its planting, nurturing, and
upkeep. And, third, there's the way its created. This is where the Research
Institute component fits in. The changing, seasonal themes of the park
would be developed in conjunction with the leading experts and educators
in the area. In addition to stimulating and involving artists, historians,
ecologists and others the programs of the park would relate to the curricula
of the schools - elementary, secondary, college. Students would be involved
in the creation of programs. They would use the library and other resources
to research information on a given theme. This would then be translated
into the information, visual and program forms of the park. Students could
choose their special area of concentration, whether it be literature,
history, or sciences. Technologies students, with staff and artists, would
be developing the databases, computer graphics, software, holograms, and
other technological possibilities.
Next:"a wonderful opportunity"
|
