Tom MacW:
With all due respect, and I really mean that, I don't think I'm too focused on the 10%. The 10%, by the way, is your number, and I happen to think it's quite a good one, quite an accurate one if you really look at NGLA, for instance, with an eye as to what percentage of the entire site was given over to the construction of man-made architecture by MacD/Raynor. Naturally almost every golfer at NGLA probably wouldn't look at it that way but for us who are trying to look closely into its architecture that does seem reasonable.
But if we use 10%, then that would represent the percentage of NGLA that was manufactured and engineered and the part that appears to most who see or play the golf course to be unusually engineered which you yourself admit is the thing for which MacD/Raynor seem to get their reputation for "enginneering".
So Tom, that's the part of their architecture that even you have started a topic on to discuss how to view or explain the "paradox" of a real "engineered" look vs use of natural aspects in either untouched form or else an attempt to hide the hand of man in what they did construct.
What was the "paradox" to you? Apparently how such evident or even blantant manufacturing and "engineering" can really square with the ideas and principles of "naturalness" that you're so dedicated on analyzing and also defending in the art of golf architecture! So am I, but I think we have to look at it honestly and judiciously and also in its proper context which to me is its proper era!
Again, I really don't think it's worth it to concentrate on the other 90% of NGLA. Why? Because as I said, in that era (and long after it until probably well after WW2) moving large amounts of earth around a site (far more than 10%) was just not done by anyone simply because they weren't able to do it!
So in that way MacD/Raynor were no different than any other architects. So it isn't worthwhile to concentrate on the other 90% in this topic--it would be a good one for another topic because in that other 90% (at NGLA anyway) MacD/Raynor may have been different than most others in what they used that was natural and also in how they used it!
But you say later in this thread that you've now resolved your paradox since you've come to the conclusion that the "engineered" 10% is somehow attuned to the look of nature. I, for one, am never going to agree with that and most anyone who has seen NGLA wouldn't either! It's just quite blantantly not the case and I think you could not help but agree if you saw NGLA!
You may actually not be saying that at all--you may just want to shift this topic to the other 90% of the golf course, but again, I would prefer to stick to the 10% as that's the part that seems to be creating the paradox. And if you're not trying to shift this discussion to the 90% and you are truly saying the "engineered" 10% is attuned to nature in look then I really think you're into some pretty clever rationalization which is bound not to fly on analysis.
I very much admire "naturalness" in all of architecture but I'm willing to admit that at that time (NGLA-1910) some architects had not evolved to that point! MacD/Raynor were obviously one of them. That doesn't make them bad architects in my mind, quite the contrary. They just happened to be architects who were concentrated on other aspect of the art--like how to make really good golf holes--and they succeeded in that in spades despite the fact of blatant engineering!
You can try to explain this 10%, this apparent paradox, Tom, in what you've read on this subject-even that which MacDonald himself wrote about naturalness and using the natural apects of sites for architecture. I've read the same things you have on what he said about that. But reading it is not going to rationalize or explain away that highly "engineered" 10%!
I've also read what Ross and many of the others wrote about never designing holes with blind shots or blind greens but nevertheless their work and the landscape of their projects is riddled with blind holes and greens from the old days.
This obvious contradiction (and a number of others) in their writings doesn't really bother me, particularly when a man like Ross is honest enough to also admit that he sometimes broke some of his own tenets and written principles on architecture and he even bothered to explain why, thankfully!
So I think you should come to grips with the realities--we all should--that's half the fun and beauty of doing all this. And if you do, you will find, I believe, reasonable answers to these things, those apparent dilemmas, those apparent paradoxes, that are quite interesting, and are also largely understandable if one looks at these things in their proper context, which to me is their own eras, and also in how those eras fit into and certainly create the evolution of golf architcture!