Inflected Landscapes

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Ryoan-ji. Kyoto, Japan.A classic example of the garden of omission:natural material within a framed void.(Photograph by Marc Treib. 1978)

: Vaux-Ie-Vicomte. france.

Andre Ie Notre. c. 1660.The garden of restatement: all elements referto and augment the presence of the axis.(Photograph by Marc Treib. 1975)

Places Voltlllle 1 umber 2

nflected Landscapes

Marc Treib

Even the architects most committedto modernist imagery have admiredthe quality of anonymous folkarchitecture. Though theirevaluation might have been basedprimarily on building shape or theappropriateness of materials andconstruction technology, therelation of folk buildings or villagesto their sites rarely failed to elicit

appreciation. Yet now, late in thecurrent century, the isolatedstructure which stands in contrastto its landscape backdrop, withonly the comfort of some transitional planting, represents themost common approach to sitingthe detached building. Were we toreconsider the range of possiblebuilding/topography relationships,we might realize that the object, incontrast to the landscape, is but oneof three categories. The other two,often more harmonious, are themerger of building to site and/orthe inflected landscape.

In spite of extended discussion ofthe order of nature, that order, atleast in visual terms, is difficult toapprehend. The ordinary person,for example, finds little apparentpattern in the depth of the forest.The trees seem irregularly disposed;the mix of plant species belies nogrand plan. rom

avantage point

sufficiently distant from the forestfloor, however-high above in anaerial view or one afforded by aneighboring h i l l - an indisputablesense of order in the landscapeemerges. Trees are seen to growprimarily in the narrow valleys orravines where the excess runoff o fthe rains or underground s p ~ l g

provides more reliable sources ofwater. Certain species of treesthrive in these conditions, perhapsgrowing on just one side of the hillwhere the sun, wind, and moistureare most favorable to existence.Smaller plants occupy analogouslyappropriate locations on the land,deferring to the predominance ofthe trees and directed by other

environmental factors. An orderto the natural en vi ronment does,indeed, exist; but it is an orderthat may be understood better inconceptual, rather than perceptual,and biological, rather than visual,terms. Only with sufficient distance,or, conversely, with the extremecloseup of the microscope, isscrutiny rewarded withcomprehension.

Industrial society tends to favorstrong statements upon the face ofthe land whether by intention orbenign lack of consideration.Because the sense of order ismost difficult to perceive near thehuman scale, those making placeshave devised effective strategiesfor making order manifest.One approach dismissesnoncontributing elements,fashioning gardens or sacred spacesby omissiol1 The dry gardensof Japan, produced under

theinfluence of Zen Buddhism withinthe Shinto religious tradition,presence by actions such as clearinga plane within a aplane of territory, or arrangingrocks as the subject within thiscontrived void. By reducing thegarden clements to rock, gravel,and a few bits of moss, a


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such as Ryoan-ji in Kyotoeliminates extraneous distractionand focuses attention internally.

Restatement occupies a secondcategory: the repetition of relatedforms and/or their alignmentswithin an explicit ordering system,designed so that each fragmentrestates and contributes to thepower of the whole. The line andthe geometric figure are vehicles

commonly employed to render thisrepetition apparent. The Frenchformal garden, perfected in theseventeenth century by landscapearchitect Andre Ie N6tre is theprincipal representative of the type.The axis provides the overridingstructure to which each element isreferred, analogous to the bass lineof the three-part, baroque musicalcomposition. At the estate of Vauxe Vicomte, Ie Nbtre extended theprimary axis from the oval salon of

the chateau beyond the horizon.The geometrically rendered plantmaterials, clipped in a severetopiary nearest the chateau,reinforce the architectonic conceptof the linear order. The treatmentof the landscape becomes lessmannered and more naturalistic asone moves away from the central

line and eventually dissolves intothe surrounding woods.

In both instances the notionof garden implicitly constrainsthe relationship of the building tothe landscape. At Ryoan-ji thegarden exists only to be viewed: atrapped field of gravel and lithiccomposition, encircled by an oiledearthen wall. The space remainsuntrampled seen only from

the veranda, a platform formeditation. At Vaux Ie Vicomte thegarden and chateau are more firmlyintegrated, disposed along asingle axis that weds natural toconstructed elements. In bothexamples, however, the buildingstands free on its site, perceivedas a discrete object.

In the past architects, builders, andlandscape gardeners have alsoattemptecl to create picturesque or

naturalistic landscapes and evennaturalistic buildings. Gardensintended to replicate nature aremore easily realized and are foundin both the East and the West. Theintention of merging structure withlandscape, on the other hand hasrarely been achieved in an idealform. Works such as Frank Lloyd

Wright's Kaufmann residence,Fallingwater, or the Parc Guell by

Antonio Gaudi probably interest usprecisely because of their inabilityto merge completely with thenatural contour-as if the veryimperfection of the merg er formsthe basis of its success in terms ofperceived order.

t is doubtful that a natural ordercould be truly replicated by

architectural means. The act ofconstruction, as the creationof places for habitation work,worship, or pleasure, distinguishesthese places from the preexistingorder almost by definition.Fallingwater, in spite of the

prevalent myth, is hardly coincidentwith the landscape. The white,horizontal planes of the composition easily distinguish thehouse from the tone and form ofthe surrounding woods. s a

balanced assembly the centralfireplace-mass counters the sweepof the horizontal terrace-planes,locking the composition intoequilibrium. Interestingly, thesevertical masses, perpendicular tothe ground, are constructed of fieldstone as if to diminish the disparitybetween intention and realization.

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3 Fallingwater. Bear Run, Pennsylvania.Frank Lloyd Wright. 1938.While striving for merger with its landscape.the structure is simultaneously distinguishedfrom it.Photograph courtesy of the Western Penn

sylvania Conservancy)

4 Parc Guell. Barcelona, Spain.Antonio Gaudi. 1914.The naturalistic forms and materials of theretaining wall soften the regularity of the order but cannot hide it.Photograph by Marc Treib. 1967)

5 Double Negative. Nevada.Michael Heizer. 1969-1970.The sculpture is earth reformed.Photograph courtesy of Xavier Fourcade.

Inc.

6 Cliff Palace. Mesa Verde, Colorado.Anasazi culture. eleventh to thirteenth centuries. The limits of the cave structure theordering of the individual cells.Photograph by Marc Treib. 1981)

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The composition, thus, deals witharchitectonic necessity-theselection of building materials withthe intention of joining the house tothe site.

A second example, the ParcGuell in Barcelona, was conceivedas the first phase of a housing estatethat was never completed. Builtto designs by Antonio Gaudiand constructed by 1914, the

meandering features of the parkgrow from the topography andnative vegetation and wouldnever be mistaken for naturalsurroundings. Even the most rusticof the park's constructions, thestone retaining-wall with its crudecaryatids, must be seen as aninflection of the land rather than arecreation of what had previouslybeen present. Indeed its p o w e raside from its formal or chromaticbeauty-lies in this de Jarture fromnature. Inflected landscapes such asthis occupy that middle zonebetween the natural and the made,creating a state of soft tension thatevokes a perceptual ambiguitybetween the identities of boththe natural and the constructed.Contributing to this ambiguity,the exact nature of their

interrelationship seems to shiftand change under differingenvironmental or temporalconditions.

A gradient of possible construction/natural site relationships mightsituate merger or coincidence atleast as an aspiration) at one end,and distinction at the opposite.Certain heroic modernist structuressuch as Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye

1929) are examples of the lattercategory, although even in thisstriking instance the distinction ofbuilding from site is not absolute.The roof garden, the siting of thehouse, and even the rigid blockgeometry of the villa reflect on thelandscape through contrast andcontradiction. Definition derivesfrom opposition: what the structureis not. Merger, 011 the other hand,is most clearly represented by thepicturesque garden type, withthe contrived park blended into thewooded surrounds. Constructedcaves or follies serve as architectural examples in this instance,as do the more contemporary

bermed or buried energyconcerned structures. Somewherebetween the two extremes, thoughcloser to merger, lies the landscape


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of inflection: places that retain inpart the natural order or materialwhile articulating an order distinctfrom the natural form of the land, adistinction sufficient to generate asense of entity.

In terms of pure landscape, worksby sculptors such as RobertSmithson or Michael Heizer serveas excellent examples of this lastcategory. In Smithson's Spiral

Jetty (1970) the eloquentconstruction o f natural materialsinto the controlled form of thespiral demarks a place thatsimultaneously occupies both zonesof perception. The materials arenative, common to the place,unworked; the order suggestsmetaphysical intention by theartist. Heizer's Double Negative(1967), formed of the earth itserves to articulate, consists of asimple cut into the surface of themesa that aligns with a secondscraped channel on the oppositeslope. The gesture is simple albeitpowerful; a gesture whose reductivesimplicity contrasts obviously withthe rugged and irregular edge of themesa and the strata of the earththat comprise it. In both works theact of ordering, rather than the

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reforming and finishing of thosematerials employed, is basic to themaking of the place.

Released from the burdens offunction these earth sculptures areintended to be approached as art,and the ritual for their perception ispreordained. Functional places forhuman habitation are anothermatter, though as strictly formalcompositions both share common

properties. The architecture of theAnasazi, built mostly from theninth to twelfth centuries in theFour Corners area, closely parallelsthe mood of the earthworksculptures. For the cliff dwellings ofMesa Verde the cave itself providedthe superstructure, the frame intowhich each piece of the village wasfit, each part adjusted to the whole.In this example, too, theconstruction material is the same asthe mesa; but in the act of piling,chinking, and plastering thebuilders have fashioned regularlyshaped dwellings within theirregular confines of the cave. AtPueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon theordering device is the formallyconceived plan. The arc of thelayout is developed in three majorstages over time; only in its mature

phase does it complete the D-shaped composition of multistoryapartments and round subterraneankivas that loosely face south.

The issue of appropriatenessof building to topography, ofmerger or contradiction, ariseshere. Yet the very distinctionof morphological orders, thedifferences rather than thesimilarities, I would suggest, are the

sources of their power. Imagine inthe place of these structures anaturalistic construction of anirregular cliff adjacent to the trueescarpments. f the imitation wereso perfect that it might be mistakenfor the prototype, it would stillpossess none of the sense of historyand record imbued in the naturalstrata. Would this imitation evokethe same sense of suitability or evenawe that these native communitiesdo-even in ruins?

But these dwellings are part ofhistory. Technological andecological necessity constrainedtheir construction, restricting thebuilders to utilize the very materialsof the site. What, then, might beparallel case studies from themodern era, in which the

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1 Pueblo Bonito. Chaco Canyon, NewMexico.

Anasazi culture, eleventh to thirteenth centuries. The loosely south-facing D form of thegrouping integrates the living cells and roundsubterranean kivas.(Photograph by Marc Treib, 1983)

complexity of the twentieth centuryvastly complicates the problem athand? There are two places inScandinavia-of necessity in atleast semi rural settings-whichprovide instances from which wemight learn. In the first, theextension to the South Stockholmor Woodland Cemetery by GunnarAsplund and Sigurd Lewerenz, thebuildings and landscape serve asthe balanced articulation of one

another and in so doing announcetheir presence. n certain places thebuildings form a literal edge to theforest-both distinct from thevegetation yet curiously akin to thetrees. At the Villa Mairea, thesecond example, the relationshipchanges from a literal to ananalogical or even metaphoricalone. The structure of the houserationalizes and reinterprets thestructure of the trees in the forest.A romantic appropriateness results,with the interior and its structuralsystem maintaining a continualdialogue with the surroundingpmes.

Erik Gunnar Asplund occupies apivotal position in the history ofSwedish architecture. s it had toAlvar Aalto and Erik Bryggmann in

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Finland, the task of convertingthe Swedish population to anacceptance of modern architecturefell to Asplund, Sven Markelius,and several others. Heaccomplished this through hiswritings and, primarily, throughthe object lessons of his buildings.Today he is remembered for threemajor projects that crossed frommodernism to classicism to aunique blend of the two. The first

project, the Stockholm City Libraryof 1929, fused the heroic forms ofLedoux with the elegance of themodern idiom. Asplund also servedas chief architect for the 1930Stockholm Exposition, the firstlarge-scale Howering of modernismin the North. And third Asplund swork at the Woodland Cemeteryexemplified his ability to conceiveand execute a narrative landscapeof trees and stone.

s early as ] 918 Asplund hadjoined with Sigurd Lewerenz tdesign the cemetery and chapels forSkogskyrkogilrden or WoodlandCemetery. The buildings that heand Lewerenz built there, and theirentire setting, constitute a superbrepresentative of the use ofcontrasting orders. The preexisting

landscape of the site was coveredwith some stretches of pine forests,and a portion was cleared and usedas a quarry. The first phase( 1918 - 1920) included a masterplan for the site that suggests littleof its eventual complexity anddetail. It contained someroads-some windy, somestraight-and a neoclassical chapelby Lewerenz whose nave liesperpendicular to the axis it

terminates.

Asplund s own architecturalcontribution from this period, thetiny Woodland Chapel, exemplifiesan attitude toward building in thelandscape that is characterized byan extreme sensitivity to both placeand occasion. The form of thechapel suggests the wooden,country churches that dottedsouthern Sweden in the seventeenthcentury. Its sophistication reflectsthe polish of the Liselund villain Man, Denmark (built from1792-1795 by Andreas Kirkerup),which was popular in Scandinavianarchitectural circles early in thiscentury. The use of wooden shakesas a covering material determinedthe steeply pitched roof thatdominated the image of the church.


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8 Woodland Cemetery. South StockholmSweden.

Erik Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerenz,1915 1922.Plan with entrance below.Plan courtesy of the M T Press)

9 Woodland Cemetery

The slowly dripping fountain built within theashlar walls.Photograph by Marc Treib, 1982)

1 Woodland Cemete ry

The high stone walls serve as blinders tofocus vision ahead, into the void.Photograph by Marc Treib, 1982)

Woodland Cemetery

Emergence into the void: the meditationknoll to the right and the Chapel of the

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Holy Cross to the left.Photograph by Marc Treib, 1979)

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12 Woodland Chapel, WoodlandCemetery.

Erik Gunnar Asplund. 1918 1922.The chapel s profile recalls the countrychurches of seventeeth-century Sweden. butits execution is more decidedly classical.(Photograph by Marc Treib. 1979

13 Woodland Chapel

The crypt. literally of the earth. reinforcesthe release of resurrection.(Photograph by Marc Treib. 1979

14 Woodland Chapel

Within the small chapel. the pure world ofthe hemisphere and the flood of light invokea sense of the celestial and pure.(Photograph by Marc Treib. 1979

15 Chapel of the Holy Cross, WoodlandCemetery.

Erik Gunnar Asplund. 1935 1940.Seen from the knoll. the portico and chapelsstrengthen the edge of the forest while retaining their own architectural identity.(Photograph by Marc Treib. 1982

16 Woodland CemeteryThe open atrium of the portico admits lightto the sculptural group and allows the eyeto rise upward unimpeded.(Photograph by Marc Treib. 1982

17 Woodland Cemete ry

The trees on the knoll read as the naturalprecedent for the columns of the chapel sportico.(Photograph by Marc Treib. 1982

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Simple columns of a proto-Doricorder elegantly support the shingledroof of Asplund s chapel. Moreimportant is the integration of thechapel compound with theremainder of the forest site.

A circumferential wall secures thechapel s courtyard, a wall too highto see over, too solid to seethrough. And yet, almost in theJapanese manner, one perceives theroof even beyond the wall. As oneenters the gate, the expectation of acontrolled world or the courtyardof omission is unfulfilled. Asplundhas permitted the forest topenetrate and continue into theconfines of the court. The architecttypically spurns a simple yes orno decision and substitutes anambiguity and a softness created bythe admission of the trees into what

should be a more formal space. Thewall and the resulting courtyardinflect the texture of the forest, butthey do not create a presencedefined by an opposition to it.

Within the walled area in front ofthe chapel a crypt has been duginto the earth. Asplund sought noconflict with the chapel; theresurrection of the soul and hopefor the living, not the mortal body,was consequential. By burying the

crypt Asplund reduced it to a mereinflection of the earth s surface.Architecturally a parallel transitionoccurs, though its progression hasbeen inverted. From the rough,shingled exterior of the chapel oneenvisions a folksy, dark, broodingwooden in terior in the manner ofthe country churches. In its place,

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the chapel radiates the rationallypure vocabulary of the cube andthe hemisphere. Light pours downthrough the rooflight, flooding thedome and the interior beneath it.The eye is drawn magneticallyupward. The architect orchestratesthe sequence of movement andview; the path leads from thenatural, to the inflected natural, tothe highly wrought, to the celestial.

Asplund worked atSkogskyrkogarden from1935 to 1940 to complete thetransformation of the landscapeand the construction of a series oflarger chapels. The canonical viewof the largest of these, the Chapelof the Holy Cross, is justifiablyfamous, and the place is imbuedwith a sense of the religious earlierthan the iconography of its stone

cross. In totality, the cemetery ismarked by repose and silence, bythe uncanny calm that IngmarBergman depicted in his film TheSeventh Seal the calm that comesjust before the first rays of dawn,just after the first snowfall, or whentwilight turns to night.

The site-plan of the complex showsno real axes though the straightwall of chapels and burials providethe planar splint that structures the

landscape as an entity apart fromthe natural pattern of the pines.Around the entry way to thecemetery the design isuncompromisingly rigid, but, again,in the Japanese manner, it softensto semiformal and informal orderwithin the precinct of the cemeteryproper.


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Today one disembarks from thesubway train at the station

Skogskyrkogarden, WoodlandCemetery. The station and itsimmediate environment aretypically modern; nothing muchmarks them as special. To the rightof the station a small flower standprovides the first hint of thecemetery s presence, and beyond itextends a formal row of pleachedtrees, clipped and f1xed in time, thatdef1nes the spatial corridor leadingto the semicircular exedra of themain entrance. From this point theroad leads directly into thecemetery grounds. Two stone wallsframe the road and entrance; theiron gates are left open during theday. A fountain is built within onewall and housed in a small, classicalportico. The fountain neither dripsnor flows; the slow movement of its

waters is barely suff1cient to markthe passage of t ime- there issomething eternal about it. Lookingthrough the conf1ning stone wallsone is led into the void and to thegrass below and the sky above.

The order feels natural. From therigidity and the straight geometryof the s tone walls, which likeblinders focus the eyes directlyahead, one is pulled to the softundulations of the gently rolling

valley. [n summer the grass is verygreen and the sky is very blue.Powerful cloud formations oftenpepper the blue dome and give itcontour. But our attention fallsalmost immediately on the stocky,stone-cross icon; detached from thechapels it stands as a monument, anelement, and an independent entity.

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Quickly now we are drawn to thestructures, to the line of chapelsand their stone walls running to ourleft, paralleling the p a t h a lineacross the land that runs over thehills, through the woods, to thehorizon. But to our right, atopthe knoll, a formation of trees feelstoo regular to be natural, yet itsvegetation appears too unkempt tohave felt the hand of the gardener.The knoll straddles the edgebetween the natural and the made.

We proceed to the left along thestone path through which themeadow s grass meanders. Alongthe way the rhythm of the graveswithin the court emerges. Our eyes,directed straight ahead, rest in theinterval between the cross andthe chapel; the vi ew remainsunterminated. Nearing the building

we note the portico, the sculpturalgroup thrusting through the openatrium that provides both theneeded illumination and a hint ofthe impending resurrection. Wemove from the open f1eld to therestricted spatial channel, to theroofed portico, to the open skyabove, through the doors to thechapel. The totality is contrivedwith consideration.

From the knoll one can look back

to the Chapel of the Holy Crossand view the buildings that are socarefully f1tted into the Iandscapeand, yet, so strongly expressive ofthe architectonic order. A patioringed by low f1eldstone walls and asquare of trees crown the knoll, aconf1guration apparent only whenseen on the crest. It, too, shares

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both orders. The grove of bircheswe pass through seems natural atf1rst although it has been laid outand planted with the mathematicalregularity of an orchard. Its orderreflects, in natural materials, therhythm of the portico colonnadethat it addresses across themeadow. But this is summer.

In winter another world emerges.The green is now white, and thebuildings are the darker rather thanthe lighter forms. It is beauty of,perhaps, an even higher order,particularly in the a fternoon whenthe sun slashes across the land andalmost parallels its contours. Treesthat were mass are now linearskeletons. Light def1nes the softtopography of the surface. Thisplace would feel sacred even tosomeone lacking an understanding

of Christian religious symbols.

At Woodland one senses thecoexistence of people and nature aspart of a continuity. One ordercomments on and, in turn, def1nesthe other- l ike the f1gure andground of a two-dimensionalcomposition. t is difficult, almostimpossible, to look at one withoutlooking and sensing the existence ofthe other. This continuousreflection and alternation ofperception, rather than thearchitectural forms alone,ultimately yields a state of harmonyand equilibrium.

Across the Gulf of Bothnia inFinland, Alvar Aalto began hisprivate architectural practice inthe 1920s. During the decade he



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architecture as an orthogonalcontrast to nature and the naturalas the mitigating force againstarchitecture. In his studio inMunkkiniemi for example, theinterior court is a grand bite carvedfrom the quiet rectangular blockthat fronts the street. Within thisconcavity, the earth terraces inboarded contours to fashion anarchitecture of earth. A moredramatic application appears in thegreat grass staircase at Siiyniitsalo,where the steps actuallygeometricize the natural slope, orthose contours resulting from fillingthe central court. The earth ispermitted to ooze out from theupper level in a rather controlledand rationalized manner.

At Seiniijoki the earth moundsagainst the south wall of the town

hall in sweeping angular contoursthat appear in profile as the roof ofthe council chamber. The fluidcurve of nature becomes, in Aalto shand the segmented curve, moreeasily constructed, rationallydetermined, an appropriatetransition between nature andarch i ecture.

The Villa Mairea built in 1939near Noormarkku in westernFinland, illustrates many propertiesof Aalto s involvement with thecurve and the inherent order innature. The villa was constructedfor Mairea and Harry Gullichsen,noted patrons of the arts and theinheritors and builders of aconsiderable industrialconglomerate. s a family estate thesite already possessed two major

residences including a sprawlingvilla built about the turn of thecentury. Pine woods cover the land;grass grows underfoot. Thetopography exhibits few dramaticchanges as the land slopes slightlyover the granite bedrock.

A nearly regular grid of columnssupports the interior spaces of thehouse and augments the bearingprovided by the walls. Thetreatment of the columns, however,betrays little regularity. Aalto hasrationalized the forest; from thevery first to the very last, nocolumn has been left untreated:modifications link one column toanother or distinguish it from thenext. Some columns are primarilystructural yet are treatedaesthetically; others are used onlyfor architectonic purposes.

Approaching from the south we seethe principal facade with its angledbay windows and the free curve ofthe projecting entrance canopythat recalls Paimio. Upon closerinvestigation we see that the canopyis curiously supported: On the rightis a thick concrete column, nodoubt the primary support. But thecolumn has been wrapped withunpeeled saplings. On the left side agroup of poles of slightly larger

diameter, that have been joined bylashing, contribute to the structure.One recalls the more romanticaspects of Aalto s work such ashis pavilion at the 1937 ParisExposition, and the earlier TurkuFair, and the period from 1880 to1905 that is known in Finland asnational romanticism, during which

various architects and artists builttheir own villas in the manner ofvernacular farmhouses.

Entering the house at the lowerlevel, the view is controlled. Arailing reads as a wall fromthe entry side; a number ofnonstructural poles form a screenand suggest the saplings outside.Some fall on the entryside andsome on the opposi te-Aaltoobscures the clarity of theintervening wall, and the spacesbegin to blend. Stepping up the fewsteps toward the living room ablack lacquered column comes intosight. It is wrapped with splitrattan, a treatment that Aaltowould use in many later projects,particularly when he substituted incivic buildings marble or granitefor the fragile rattan. Further along

arc double columns bound intandem. Throughout the lowerfloor no two columns seem alikealthough they are regularly placedand share the same palette ofmaterials.

Turning back, one sees the mainstaircase to the second floorinserted between the living anddining rooms. It is contained withinits own forest of poles, some ofwhich are plugged together like the

canopy saplings at the entrance.The vines have overgrownthe staircase and complete thenaturalistic metaphor. Thestructural approach is augmentedby a myriad other, consideratedetails used throughout the site,such as the fence and hillsidethat articulate the pool area in a

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20 Villa MaireaPlan. The regular spacing of the columns structures the individual.unequal treatment.(Photograph c ourtesy of the Museum of Finish Architecture)

21 Villa MaireaA screen of poles at the lower entrance level stripped of barkin this variation leads to the living room beyond.(Photograph courtesy of the Museum of Finnish Architecture)

22 Villa Mairea

The twin black-lacquered columns in the winter area of the livingspace are bound in rattan to the height of the fireplacemantel.(Photograph courtesy of the Museum of Finnish Architecture)

23 Villa Mairea

In the spring area of the living room the columns vary inclustering and wrapping.(Photograph courtesy of the Museum of Finnish Architecture)

24 Villa Mairea

The vines covering the principal stair complete themetaphor of the column and the forest.(Photograph by Marc Treib. 1967)

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Inflected Landscapes

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