The Telegraph: Who are the Capability Browns of today?
Red Ribbon Tanghe River Park, China, designed by Kongjian Yu. Credit: Kongjian Yu
The noise around this year’s celebration of the tercentenary of "Capability" Brown's birth begs the question: who are the “Capabilities” of today? Brown has a status in landscape design similar to that of Shakespeare in literature, and one might wonder what he would be doing if he were alive in 2016.
In Shakespeare’s case, the cliché would be that he would now be designing apps or video games – but what about Brown? Well, just as I think Shakespeare would probably still be writing plays, so a new Brown would still be engaged in landscape architecture.
There is simply no modern substitute for working on a landscape scale. The crucial difference, for a designer with such a big vision physically and conceptually, is that he or she would probably be working in the urban realm, for civic clients, rather than in the countryside for the aristocracy.
Royal Botanic Cranbourne, by Kate Cullity. Credit: John Gollings
In Britain today, few great landowners consider their wider estate (as opposed to the garden) as an opportunity for creative work – though there are so.
Those of Brownian mindset, who seek to enhance or alter the identity of large tracts of land, as opposed to decorating what is already there, are most likely to find satisfaction working in cities in a “post-industrial” environment – typically renovating and making “fit-for-purpose” urban zones such as ex-docklands, derelict mines and factories, underused riverfronts and decayed city centres. These are the areas where ambitious landscape architects tend to get big commissions nowadays.
The Australian Garden. Credit: John Gollings
There are opportunities, too, for work on what is effectively virgin land – mainly in China and Dubai, where new towns and cities are being established, and in special cases such as the creation of large botanic gardens and Olympic parks. Some things never change, however.
As in Brown’s day, the single most challenging aspect of landscape design remains working with water. Brown’s mastery of water was one of his strongest suits, and it remains a distinct specialism today.
It’s not just the scale of the endeavour, of course, that characterises Brown’s work – it is the skill and finesse he used to imbue each individual project with its own specific character or sense of place. Not every modern landscape company is able to emulate that, which is why we have so many identikit modernised town centres in Britain today – “generic regeneration” – and why the quality of much of the new urban design in China thus far has been uninspired.
Based in Manhattan
There are, however, certainly some “new Browns” out there. James Corner, for example, is a Briton (hailing from Preston) who moved to the United States as a young man to carve out a career, the highlight of which thus far is the High Line elevated urban park in Manhattan, the most important piece of landscape design of the past half-century at least.
For Corner, whose New York-based firm Field Operations works all over the world, Brown’s chief skill lay in “editing, selecting and highlighting” aspects of the existing landscape, a philosophy he says he has come to adopt himself over time.
High Line by James Corner. Credit: Getty Images
“Related to that is the principle of subtraction,” he says, “the removal of trees, moving earth to open up a view, modifying a watercourse.” But, he adds, “it’s not only about removal”: Brown was also interested in “amplifying” the natural effects he found at a place. Brown’s very subtlety has led to his designs often seeming to be invisible; in many cases they have come to appear entirely natural. But Corner says that this is a legitimate aspiration in itself for a landscape designer.
It is something he has pursued at Fresh Kills, a landfill island off New York (and final resting place of the remains of the World Trade Center), where his firm has been working to transform it into a landscape of rolling hills to be used for walking, cycling and running, while making the most of residual features such as creeks and streams.
James Corner with Prince Harry and Boris Johnson in 2014. Credit: Getty Images
“There is always a danger that landscape architecture can actually kill a place, through the deployment of clichéd design moves.” he says. “The design of the High Line was very much inspired by what we first encountered there – the wildness.”
Corner is most wary of projects that necessitate the creation of something entirely new, as with China’s cities. But he thinks it can also go wrong in more developed places – including London, where he says the Garden Bridge, for example, is “a vanity project” that makes landscape design “appear effete” because it is unnecessary. His criticism is based on the contention that it does not reuse existing infrastructure, is not sited in an area in need of regeneration and nor can it be counted as “transport”.
Australian relations
Kate Cullity is a partner in the Australian firm of Taylor Cullity Lethlean (TCL), which undertakes work at all scales, including numerous city regeneration projects. Cullity’s inspiration is chiefly drawn from the natural landscape of Australia, and she feels a kinship with Brown in that he was “abstracting” and then realising a pastoral ideal which has deep cultural resonances.
“I think Brown was looking for a new way of exploring the landscape,” she says. Brown was notable for the way he incorporated the working estate into his aesthetic design, by means of grazing and woodland management for game, for example, and the “new Browns” must be equally alive to economic factors.
TCL’s renovation of the Auckland Waterfront, for example, revived the old fish market and working wharf, and found new uses for two huge silos that were effectively local monuments.
Kate Cullity
“A previous redevelopment had been rather too ornamental,” Cullity says. She draws a distinction with Brown in that TCL typically uses a narrative device – as opposed to Brown’s “immersive” technique – to make reference to natural landscape.
“In the Australian Garden [at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Cranbourne, near Melbourne, opened in 2006] we used the story of water – both its lack and abundance in the Australian landscape – to underpin the design.” She suggests that telling stories is an effective way to communicate with a modern audience.
A Chinese connection
Perhaps the most prolific landscape designer worldwide at present is Kongjian Yu, professor at Peking University and president of Turenscape, a landscape firm that has undertaken a huge amount of work across China in the past decade. Yu set up the company 18 years ago “as the speed of urbanisation in China was just picking up”, mainly as a way of dealing with environmental problems and the encroachment of new developments on the countryside.
As a result, the scale at which he tends to work is vast – his regional master plan for the Beijing area covers 7, 700 sq m (20,000 sq km), for example. Yu’s design philosophy is based on the dictum “Think like a king, act like a peasant”, keeping in mind urgent ecological problems and protecting the cultural heritage, while at the same time creating places that have a practical relevance to the Chinese people.
A park by Kongjian Yu.
He sees a similarity between his own work and Brown’s in that his underlying design aesthetic is based on an understanding and celebration of the agricultural history of China, including the iconic and ever-present rice paddies and fishponds.
“Brown upgraded the pastoral language of the peasantry into a romantic language. My design philosophy has the same root,” he says. “I have been inspired by traditional Chinese agriculture. That is quite different to traditional Chinese garden design, with its rockwork and so on.
“Many of our projects are on brownfield sites, and we want to preserve memories of the landscape as a layer of meaning – just as the British landscape will always tell a story.”
The resultant landscape may be more stylised and colourful than Brown’s, but Yu feels he is working in a Brownian tradition. He highlights an underappreciated aspect of Brown’s design philosophy.
Kongjian Yu
“All of my projects are theatrical spaces in which people perform,” he says. “My ‘red ribbon’ walkway runs through a forest, which people walk along as if they are on a catwalk at a fashion show. It was the same with Brown – he creates a theatrical scene.” For Yu, as for Corner and Cullity, Brown has been inspirational in that he was able to blend an aesthetic vision with agricultural reality and an understanding of environmental processes.
Brown’s legacy is all around us in Britain in the form of the estates he transformed, but it is good to know that his approach to landscape is still inspiring leading international practitioners in the field today.
