Apocalyptic vision

Rules plus poles

During my university years, a project that seemed to be halfway between urban planning, landscape design and architecture rather dismayed us: the creation of a green space - a small park - at a street intersection. Having been indoctrinated by the obsessive and absurd geometries practiced by the imperial landscape gardeners of France, Prussia or Austria in our history of architecture and urban planning courses, we had only dull and outdated examples to choose from. All the gardens had compositional axes asymptomatically aiming at infinity, paths at right angles, concentric circles, vegetation trimmed and pruned along the lines of perspective, nature subservient to the ruthless eye of the master. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to receive a hint from my teacher, given to me in the form of an anecdote or a parable: if you want to organize a pedestrian area, have it plowed and then let people move around, then draw the paths where the most trodden paths are