Jamie:
I can't really answer your questions about whether the way Aronomink's bunkering (fairway bunkering) plays now (basically a 1 shot penalty) is the same as Ross intended it. I can't really even tell if the "look" of it is the way Ross intended it. But I am going to try hard to look into this because it's all extremely interesting to me!
What I do know is what Ross said (wrote actually) about what he felt was the overall playability or the principle of the playability of fairway bunkering generally. He said he believed that a player should have an outside chance of maybe getting to a green (or pretty far along) from a fairway bunker. He even explained architecturally how that was done--basically sand (or maybe grass sometimes) upslopes of enough length and degree to filter balls back down to the flatter sand floors obviously back enough from the bunker tops and lips to have a chance at that kind of play!
And, I also know that what Ross said (and wrote) and what he sometimes did was not particularly consistent that way. Ross actually did all kinds of bunker shapes and designs--sand flashed all the way to thin top lips, grass drapped partially down the faces, grass drapped all the way down some faces with flat sand floors throughout! The faces themselves, whether grass or sand or partial didn't have particularly consistent degrees of slope either. Why he did what he did where and when is an interesting study and I do think shows a bit about Ross's own architectural evolution or even his randomness from site to site and course to course!
Broadly he defined all the variations of his bunkering in his writing, calling them, "scooped out pits", "sunken pits with raised faces", "pot bunkers, "mounds and pot combinations", "cop bunkering", "diagonal bunkering formations", "hummocks" etc, etc.
As to what he wanted at Aronomink all I know is what I've seen on their aerials which as you know doesn't show anyone much about what a golfer will see at ground level or how it effects his recoverability and playability.
I also know that Ron Prichard had Ross's exact plans of Aronimink and they were very detailed and explanatory I think! There's no reason to think they wouldn't be as they appeard to be some of the best work of Walter Erving Johnson, who was Ross's excellent and quite detailed draftsman.
Whether Ron Prichard and the crew stuck exactly to those dimensions and those original drawings with original measuremnt explanations, I don't know. I do know everytime I saw Ron out there he had copies of those original plans in his hand!
So, I don't know but Ron Prichard sure would.
So, I guess you could say that's restoring things with both original plans and also photographic evidence. But aerials can only show you so much, like the actual shapes (even in some detail) from the air. Aerials can't show you all that much about the depths, though, even though some people have gotten quite good at actually estimating shadows in relation to estimating the time of day and sun direction from when the aerial was taken and estimating bunkering depth that way. That can show you something but nothing like old on ground photos!
But there's another way to estimate things like bunker depths and their original "playabilities". Unfortunately, that's only providing that the bunkers are in the same place and that their lips and surrounds are too.
This kind of thing certainly some architects and restoration architects do. I'd call it a form of architectural archaeology!
If the top profiles and lips are still there somewhat as they were you just probe down through the evolutionary build up to where the height was of original construction.
A man by the name of Mel Lucas called that probing at Merion down through the outside edges and so forth of the lips and surrounds as "finding Hugh Wilson's fingerprints".
So you find that and measure the heights. Then you do the same through the sand floors and measure that. Compare the measurements and you basically have the original depths that effect and influence the "playability".
But what if a course leaves the evolutionary build up on the bunker lips and surrounds and restores back to the original depths of the sand floors? Now you have bunkerinng that might be feet deeper in fact and playability.
Apparently, Merion left the heights of the evolutionary buildup of the surrounds and lips (maybe even increased it on some) and possibly went back to the original depths of the floors. So naturally you're going to get a much different depth playability than it may have been originally.
This kind of thing even in restoration I would call "architectural". But the little random shaping and edging, the grassing and such I would call the "look".
To me they are two separate things but put them together and you get how exactly any architect is going to "match" or "emulate" what once was with what will be.
Again, with Flynn bunkering at least I think that Hanse has done this more accurately and exactly than MacDonald has. But I don't even know what MacDonald was told to do on any project, if anything particularly that way.
These are all the kinds of things that go into really good restoration and competent decision making, in my opinion, and I would hope in the opinions of others involved somehow in any architectural restoration project. You've got to know all this first and only then can you decide intelligently which way to go!
And that does take a certain amount of understanding and agreement on the part of a lot of people--architects, contractors, shapers, detailmen, committees and members--and even guests, I suppose!
Again, I'm not saying they should all make any particular decison one way or the other about it all but if anyone along the line is uninformed, even partially, something is probably bound to go wrong--in somebody's opinion!