The Landscape of Architecture

Imagine yourself strolling through an idyllic Victorian garden in West Sussex. As you walk through the footpaths, basking in the warm sun, the fall breeze, the stately oaks, you may think to yourself, “I wish every garden were like this.” But landscape architect Martin Rein-Cano has other ideas.

“The influence of [the English Garden] has been very, very important,” Rein-Cano said in a lecture delivered Sep. 16 at the Graduate School of Design. “And for that I must say I hate it. Because it’s like we’ve been copying a certain style for 300 years.”

Rein-Cano’s distaste for the well-trodden path echoes throughout his work and was evident in the very structure of his sprawling, eclectic lecture. Though nominally focused on landscape architecture and public spaces, Rein-Cano managed to address everything from the nature of sports (“regulated war,” he called it, gesticulating intensely) to the link between language and physiognomy (“the French make these farting sounds in their speech, and that’s what gives them the characteristic French lips”). Somehow, though, it all came together under the umbrella of landscape architecture—its philosophy, power, and effect on communities.

Rein-Cano began his lecture by emphasizing how the flaws of any entity, be it a space, a person, or a structure, give it its essential character. “[Acceptance of] the inability to be perfect and the fight to be what you want to be is what makes us different from each other,” Rein-Cano said. “Many times, solving problems, we also dissolve the idea of the character of a space.”

After expanding on his design philosophy, Rein-Cano told a few funny anecdotes about his encounters with other, non-landscape architects, which got some laughs from his primarily-GSD audience.

“We [landscape architects] all know we have to be at least as narcissistic as [building] architects to be taken seriously. So, when it comes to discussions with [building] architects, I always have this game asking them who was actually the first architect ever…they usually say Michelangelo…and I say, ‘Well, there’s nothing older than that?’ They get really angry and they ask, ‘What are you talking about?’ I say: ‘Look, paradise, be careful—he up there is one of us!’”

Rein-Cano rejected the idea of the park as a static, unchanging tableau, instead focusing on the potential dynamism of the space. As footage and music from the films “Rocky” and “Easy Rider” played in the background, Rein-Cano discussed the idea of the garden as a predecessor of the film. “Instead of the movie running in front of you, you walk through this movie from one scene, one picture to the other,” Rein-Cano said. “And this movie’s really 3D.”

The second half of Rein-Cano’s lecture focused on Superkilen, a park project undertaken by his firm Topotek1. A park built in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen, Superkilen consists of three distinct sections—a red “market” earmarked for shopping, a green park for sports, and a black “square” designed to serve as an “urban living room.” The park, built in a poor, immigrant-heavy area of Copenhagen, is now the 10th most visited site in Denmark.

Rein-Cano also noted the importance of input from the impoverished occupants of the area into the design of Superkilen. “The idea of integration of the people, the will of the people into the project was one of the important elements of the project.” Much to the amusement of the audience, Rein-Cano recounted how he badgered the residents of the area for personal artifacts to include in the park, even going so far as to fly a resident to Turkey to retrieve a particularly evocative dentist’s signboard featuring a “crescent and tooth” emblem. Extreme, yes. But Rein-Cano’s lecture was imbued with the idea of going to great lengths to achieve a vision, even if that vision strays from tradition.