Shivas. I can tell you have a background in economics by your habit of always placing your assumptions on the wrong side of the event in question.
Your Hypo begs two questions:
1) Could man build an exact replica of NGLA? If the "fake" procedure does not produce the quality of the natural, then there your hypothetical is impossible.
2) Would man choose to create land forms as interesting and quirky as the one's which produced our great courses. Not talking about duplication here, but rather what the architect would choose to do with the power you give him.
Both can be summarized in the following question: Would the non-natural courses be as good?
To just assume it so doesnt make it so, but does bypass the entire issue.
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While the economics are startling, this isnt about the economics. Except perhaps that the economics give one some sort of measure of just how hard it is to attempt to duplicate nature.
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TomPaul:
I am starting to wonder whether my posts are so boring that you can't bear to read them . . . Once again . . . I DONT GIVE A HOOT ABOUT THE DEMISE OF THE LIDO. I am talking about whether MacDonald's approach at the Lido fundamentally differed from the approach of the other architects of the era.
Quote from: TEPaul on Today at 05:24:49pm
Let a quotation from Max Behr, certainly an architect who had a thing or two to say about this entire subject of "Man" the architect and how he treated Nature in his designs be an indication of the answer to DavidM's premise.
"Golf architecture is not an art of representation; it is, essentially, an art of interpretation. And an interpretative art allows freedom to fancy only through obedience to the law which dominates its medium, a law that lies outside ourselves. The medium of the artist is paint, and he becomes its master; but the medium of the golf architect is the surface of the earth over which the forces of Nature alone are master.
Therefore, in the prosecution of his designs, if the architect correctly uses the forces of nature to express them and thus succeeds in hiding his hand, then, only, has he created the illusion that can still all criticism."
Max Behr, 1927
Tom, this is precisely my point! Behr believed that he was not the master of nature, but had to work with it.
But with the Lido, MacDonald attempted to become the master of nature in the way a painter is master over his paints. The allusion to MacDonald as a Power beyond nature is impossible to miss when MacDonald admits that the project made him feel like a "creator."
As for the rest of your post, you might want to be careful with just how broadly you interpret your beloved Behr.
By your reasoning interpretation, the architect could always do absolutely anything with an site anytime and still be consistent with Behr. Last time I checked, the "forces of nature" were immutable.
-- What part of Nature was MacDonald "interpreting" when he designed the Lido?
-- In the case of the Lido, what was the "surface of the earth" over which only the forces of Nature were master?
-- Can you give me an example of a golf course which is more antithetical to "the forces of nature" than the Lido?