The illusion of the natural

[Adam_F_Collins]

I would imagine - judging by the very common "otherworldly" appearance of modern golf courses, that creating a landscape that appears natural can be extremely difficult.

I did some landscaping at my wife's parents' place. We created a couple of small ponds connected by a stream. I don't know how many hours I've spent since moving little rocks here and there; altering, pacing around, poking here and there, adding subtracting - just to get the appearance of the natural.

Maybe it's because control and chaos are basically opposite, but most architects don't have the luxury of pacing around a site for years with a shovel and a pair of garden gloves, so how do people approach this?

One thing the Golden Age architects certainly have on their side is time. A hundred years can go a long way to making your stuff look "like it's always been there''. Hell, it HAS after that long. But now, many courses might as well have left the bulldozers on the fairways - cause they're still almost that evident. So some architects don't really go that hard for the natural - and, lucky for them, there's this modern "standard of maintenance" which allows a course to look like landscape of science fiction and still be widely embraced by the golfing public. However, as many of us know, there is also an increasing interest in a game more connected with the natural landscape.

I understand that you can try to leave as much alone as possible - but you're still going to have to cover your tracks - How do you do it? When do you let go? How do you know when to stop? How do you anticipate the effects of nature, and how do you let her help you smooth it all over?

How do architects and builders wrestle with the illusion of the natural?

[Tom_Doak]

Adam:

When we succeed, it's because of the same trial-and-error approach you take.  Architects themselves don't have enough hours on most jobs to succeed, but if your associates and some people on the construction crew are also trying to do their best to make things look natural, it's possible.

There are a lot of architects who don't even try to make anything look natural.  I'm sure that someone will come on here behind me and defend that, because a modern golf course is NOT natural in its conception; but I don't agree.  The great links are mostly natural, and that is a great part of their charm.

[paul cowley]

   i think some do more than others.

   raynor ,mcdonald et.al , and more recently pete  dye ,thought more about using the earth to build strategic features first and then tied into the existing landscape.

  fazio can go to the opposite extreme and create land forms on which he then drapes his golf courses very naturally.

   with the exception of some links ,most courses rarely lie naturally over the ground....different looks for different folks.

[TEPaul]

Adam:

While it's obviously true that some architects and probably a good deal of golfers around the world really don't care if golf courses (and architecture) look natural there're a number of architects and a number of golfers who sure do care. They obvsiously care because they think creating as much of the illusion of Nature or the natural is more enjoyable to golfers in the end--that it just looks and feels better to them.

Max Behr based almost his entire philosophy of golf architecture on this theme. He believed architects should strive to create the look of Nature for two basic reasons.

1. He felt some formations of nature itself were stronger and more durable and others weaker and less durable to other forces of nature such wind and water which cause erosion. Behr felt the convex angle or shape was stronger than the concave angle or shape and more likely to endure. The convex angle could also be used in architecture juxtaposed to the concave shape to protect the concave shape from erosion from the flow of water! He looked at that as a structural and functional application of what he called "Permanent architecture".

2. He felt that "the golfer" ("even the veriest tyro") even if subconsciously or subliminally would be less critical of what he perceived to be natural versus what he perceived to be artifical and man-made.

The fundamental reason Behr apparently felt that seemed to be a comparison between Man's basic relationship to Nature versus man's basic relationship to Man himself! He apparently believed man innately felt, again even if subconsciously or subliminally, that Nature itself was basically indominatable by him and so a natural obstacle put before him to overcome in golf was more acceptable and one he'd be less critical of than an obstacle that he perceived to be put before him to challenge him by another man (architect)---an artificial looking obstacle.

How some of yesteryear's and today's architects create a far more natural look is all in technique and the talent for that kind of thing and the techniques are many and very interesting. They try to blend their overall architectural "lines" sometimes with the specific "lines" of nature--particularly those specific "lines" on a given site and they try to make the smaller details such as grassing and random little lines of bunker edges and such look like they occured through the forces of nature---basically the controlling effects of the ages on the overall landscape and the eroding effects of wind and water on the ground.

Of course, Behr wrote those things about the importance of as much of a natural look as possible and the illusion of it in architecture about 75 years ago. There was a strong contingent of what might be called naturlistic golf architects then. Behr and those others felt natural architecture was extremely important maybe essential in fact.

It'd be an interesting study to determine if the ensuing 75 years proved them wrong or right or maybe just partially so!

[A_Clay_Man]

AFC, There's nothing sadder than seeing contsructed features on, or next to, terrain that was capable of creating good golf, all it's own. I don't know if you been to NM, but I could site a couple of great examples.  

When I do see designs of this type, I just assume the computer was the courses natural habitat, and the phone was a mere yard away.  

[Jeff_Brauer]

Adam,

In simplistic technical terms, we are usually talking about earthmoving, as most courses don't have the the luxury of building water features you use as an example.

As far as earthmoving goes, I think there are two simple tricks to making it look natural.  The first is to reflect the landscape.  If in a gently rolling area, use gently rolling features.  A few years ago, an architect writing here said he used a guide of not having steeper slopes that more than doubled (i.e. if natural grade is 4%, then any earth featuer you build should not exceed 8% slopes) the natural grade of a particular area.  

Probably not a bad idea for going natural, even if you cheat and to to triple once in a while.  I think the real trick is to keep the skylines of the earth forms no more than double the natural grade, ie no himalaya mountain tops in otherwise flat ground.

The second is to watch the tie ins.  Architects tend to build 25-33% mounds/earthforms that end abruptly at a rather flat natural grade, rather than transition from 25%, to 15%, to 10%, etc.  I think one of the oldies wrote about this similarly, but I call it tying in the slope.  The problem sometimes is that this takes a lot of room, and when you tie it in to a cart path, that may put the cart path too far out of play to be useful.  Also, real estate boundaries also confine the tie ins sometimes.

So sometimes there is a compromise in order, as in all design.

[Jeff_Mingay]

Tom,

You're starting to read like Behr  

[TEPaul]

Jeff:

If what I wrote about Behr was starting to read like Behr it'd take you about a full year to understand a single paragraph but perhaps that's true too of the way I write.  

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jeff:

If what I wrote about Behr was starting to read like Behr it'd take you about a full year to understand a single paragraph but perhaps that's true too of the way I write.  

Tom,

I'll get back to you next Easter if I've figured out your last post.....Both you and Behr must be a lot smarter than I.....

[paul cowley]

   ditto that......

[TEPaul]

Jeff and Paul:

What is it about my post #3 on Behr that you don't think you can figure out?

GeoffShac and I have been reading and rereading most everything he wrote that's available for a few years now. He does have a super labyrinthian way of writing but we feel we've got the nub of what he was driving at in architecture figured out and it's pretty fundamental really although sort of an unusual presentation or theme.

Basically two themes as I thought I outlined in post #3

1. The methods and reasons for structural integrity in golf architecture.

2. How the natural compared to the artifical effects the mind and feeling of the golfer and why.

A number of other architects of his time got into writing about #1 but not exactly in the detail (or reasons) that Behr did but as far as I can see no other architect or writer got into the subject of #2 the way Behr did. I think that theme was uniquely his own.

But as I said in post #3 I guess now that 75 years has gone by in architecture and things didn't exactly pan out the way he proposed they should it'd be a legitimate question to ask if the things he said were right or perhaps as necessary as he thought they were?

[Brian Phillips]

All of it...

 

[TEPaul]

How about #1? What is it about his mention of the durability of the convex shape compared to the concave shape that's so hard to understand?

[Brian Phillips]

Explain what those shapes have to do with nature..please..and explain how the durability of a shape can be proven to be more than another.

What does he mean by durability?

[Jeff_Brauer]

TEPaul,

I would love to see the actual quotes from Behr.  As with Brian, the stilted writing of the era is hard to decipher for me.

I understand about concave/convex shapesng, but not angles.  I also think I know about using shapes to control drainage, but this is a tortured explanation of it from my perspective.

I also wonder if the convex is stronger?  A concave shape (valley) will be eroded furhter in nature, while wind erosion would reduce a convex shape, which would stay in place longer, but gradually be reduced, no?

All in all, interesting stuff, but way to deep for me.  If you want an explanation of the same stuff on 'my" level, go to the above post of mine......

[TEPaul]

Brian:

I've got to try to get a magazine article in today. I'll be back to you on this tonight or tomorrow,