THE GARDEN OF THE COOL CHANGE:

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1 THE GARDEN OF THE COOL CHANGE: A GARDEN IN SUBURBAN MELBOURNE DESIGNED ON CLASSICAL CHINESE SCHOLAR GARDEN PRINCIPLES Greg Missingham & Alex Selenitsch Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning The University of Melbourne VIC 3010 Abstract The first of two, related projects, The Garden of the Cool Change is a project for a hypothetical garden in suburban Melbourne, designed on Chinese principles though it is NOT a classical Chinese garden. The project explores connections between poetry, painting, the garden and architecture in China and inklings of similar connections in Australia. The Garden of the Cool Change uses Australian means to do what a naturalised Song, Ming or early Qing, Jiangnan Chinese transported to the present might have attempted: to make an allusive, condensed picture of European Australia and some of its iconic experiences that are peculiar to its place. At the same time, the garden is a (curious) suburban dwelling, a private place of contemplation, art and writing and a centre for entertaining friends. It is not any Chineseness that matters, but the potential for experiential and intellectual richness as an unfolding, inhabited and embodied place. We think that designing is a particularly fruitful way to study something. The whole enigma of design is in its synthetic, nonreductive character necessary in art as opposed to the logical exploration or analysis in scientific thinking. Our project is an ongoing, open-ended experiment. Several particular interests drive our efforts: in translation and in design approaches, strategies and methods how do Chinese gardens attempt maximalism (lots of ideas packed into one artifact) and simultaneity (a symphonic composition), for example. But, our interest is especially in works of art which exist not entirely in the material artifact, but through that comprehension which is only possible with participation.

2 Mostly, the paper describes The Garden of the Cool Change and the principles on which it is based. It considers briefly the development of the project as it has been recorded in conventional files, lectures, drawings, participation in Exhibitions, Decision Diaries, written papers, Precedence Diagrams, seminars, the preparation of a multimedia design approach and design methods tool and the design of a second, quite different garden together with their mutual influences and interactions noting particularly two sets of rules for describing gardens that have been developed as the result of the research. The paper concludes with reflections on what has been learned from this experiment. 1 INTRODUCTION The classical Chinese scholar garden is the most sophisticated architectural design genre ever devised. i Yet they are strange gardens for Western eyes. They are visually busy, water seems to be the only material that provides flat surfaces, there are no lawns, too many buildings and lots of weird rocks. Our Interests The Garden of the Cool Change ( GCC ) is a hypothetical garden in Melbourne designed on Chinese principles but it is NOT a classical Chinese scholar garden. ii (Figure 1) GCC uses Australian means to do what a naturalized Song, Ming or early Qing, Jiangnan Chinese might have attempted in the present: to make an allusive, condensed picture of European Australia and some of its iconic experiences. iii We undertook this project because we shared several interests: making design strategies explicit, the problems of translation and the challenge of placemaking. Chinese gardens provide a perfect subject/topic/arena for the exploration of these interests.

3 2 STARTING The design of a Chinese garden can begin with site, Halls, scenes or writing. We began with writing, that is, with the name of the garden. Writing Chinese gardens use history and literature as the source of a theme. This theme is often poetic, suggestive and cryptic, and typically, three or four characters over a gate to a garden suggest how to read it. iv For our purpose, we found such a name which is rich in local experience and metaphoric extension. Cool change refers to a sudden, ten degree Centigrade drop in temperature in Melbourne that occurs after a number of hot, sultry days in summer. Metaphorically, any sudden change or resolution to a growing tension is implied. v

4 Site In China, the use of land was informed by Daoist feng shui principles of flow and articulation of cardinal directions, with complementary local specificities feng tu to help differentiate one garden from another. Set in the Melbourne suburb of Alphington, GCC s site is forty metres by sixteen. It is virtually flat and therefore quite appropriate for constructing a microcosmic model of Australian landscape experience. Nevertheless, liveliness and balance were sought and the positioning and nature of buildings acknowledges the weighting of compass directions. Halls The Jiangnan architect-gardener first positioned the principal Hall, together with its associated lake and mountain. Similarly, we located the Dayroom on the south boundary immediately east of the centreline of the site. The Jiangnan designer then arranged the labyrinthine interconnection of exterior spaces. Our site was divided both north-south and east-west into four: no pavilions occupy the same strip either way. Scenes Some sources describe gardens as compositions of scenes or points of interest. Zhao & Kvan (1984) insist this is where garden design commences. GCC has two scenes each exploring the idea of the cool change. In the east half, The European Fringes, the view represents a coastal agricultural scene and beach. In the west, The Centre represents the arid heart of the Australian continent with its grazing land and edges of tropical forests. 3 ELEMENTS In Chinese gardens, four classes of design elements are deployed in sequence. Like calligraphy, buildings, water, rocks and plants can frame experience, be companions in composition or be scene-focusing objects.

5 Buildings In GCC, halls are variations on the Innisfail Section, arguably an Australian type. (Selenitsch 1996) Various details of roof form, materials and wall treatment are matched, contrasted or mirrored within each of the Bedroom / Study and Dayroom / Bathhouse pairs. Water In China, water has metaphysical and aesthetic importance, and most halls have their lake. Water must also have a source and flow to a destination. Accordingly, in GCC, there is one major water feature, The Smoke Stream, (which is dry, like many inland watercourses), running from west to east, culminating in The Reservoir in front of the Dayroom simultaneously a dam, swimming pool and beach. The watercourse continues under The Dune and into a reflecting pool in the easternmost walled garden. Mountains In China, rocks are placed as specimens, used for walls and make false mountains. Mountains must be aesthetically satisfying at a distance, be climbable, and preferably have subterranean interiors. Accordingly, in GCC, the polished black granite mountain, named Broken Hill, is trafficable, interestingly shaped vi and has an interior grotto, a cellar and pantry. Each hall has its own mountain. The Bedroom has a white zigzag wall; the Bathhouse a pink granite boulder, and the Study two anthill-shaped rocks, The Source, and, at the rear, a staircase and parapet wall all constructed from a green Australian marble. Finally, in The Centre, Mount Voss is a square plinth of Barrabool sandstone. Plants In China, all properties of plants were exploited. Plants and companion creatures (birds, bats or insects) were valued for symbolic and aesthetic qualities. This is the least developed aspect of GCC, vii and awaits further design work.

6 4 TRANSITIONS Chinese gardens were not static experiences. Flow was achieved through transitions across and between areas or boundaries and the avoidance of aligned design elements. Paths In Chinese gardens, paths provide the structural spine. viii Covered walkways provide shelter without enclosing, ix often dividing gardens into larger and smaller zones, determining where people can see and be seen from. In GCC, a linear cubic frame provides the entrance pergola for half its north frontage, crosses from north to south (temporarily transforming into the Bridge) and runs, as The Gallery of Antipodean Manifestoes, along the south boundary to the southwest corner. It provides the armature for the whole composition. Paths in the landscape are possible nearly everywhere else. Walls Providing the cleavages between spaces, walls are important in Chinese gardens. So are the transitions through them. There should always be space for those walking in a garden to pause and reflect at a gateway, for example, before entering the next space. In GCC, there are three kinds of walls: perfumed masonry, timber palings and the remains of a post and rail fence. Close attention to thresholds has been paid most obviously at the Entry, in the approaches to the halls and at each end of the Bridge. 5 RESEARCH BY DESIGN(ING) The development of GCC has been recorded in conventional files, drawings, in the exhibition, written papers x, seminars, preparation of a multimedia design approach and methods tool, design of a second, quite different garden (both

7 latter still in progress) and a Visitors Guide. These materials offer opportunities for others to follow our work. Translation GCC is not a study of design, but through design, a study of cultural ideas. These ideas are embodied in artifacts that can only be decoded by making other, critical artifacts commenting on or transforming the original. Such decoding occurs if the ideas are translated or shifted to a new medium. It is commonly though mistakenly thought that translation applies only to spoken and written language. But translations can and do occur across different kinds of expressive modes. The challenge is to extract a set of relationships from the original and to establish them in a new medium or language. (Selenitsch 1997) At least five kinds of translation could have been employed: (i) (ii) (iii) Direct importation of Chinese elements, Importation of Chinese rules for the allocation and arrangement of elements, Finding local equivalents based on similarity of colour, texture, shape and so on, (iv) Considering what original elements represented and finding elements that represent similarly abstract concerns in Australia, or (v) Finding objects or things that could establish the same relationships. We avoided (i), tried for (iii) and (iv) but paid most attention to (ii) and (v). Principles Initially, we aimed to test Johnston s (1991) account of design sequence in Chinese gardens, undertaking a complicated procedure and expecting an interesting and surprising outcome. As a recommendation for practice, we think it sound, but we learnt much from considering the underlying principles of Chinese gardens and their flexible application: Search for qi yun sheng tong the spiritual liveliness without which art is dead; In all matters, express the (asymmetric) balance of yin and yang;

8 Compress experience, space, time: the universe in a pot, four seasons in a day ; Celebrate change and the propensity of things. xi In China, these principles were neither absolute nor rigid, interpretation was necessary, nonliteral exemplification and allegory operated and hints were always preferred to full manifestations. So, we didn t adapt all of what is implicit in the scholar garden to suburban Australia. Some rules we accepted: that GCC should be a composition of halls, that walls would be important, as would cardinality. In good antipodean tradition, some rules were deliberately inverted: insisting on grass, for example. Some rules we played with just as the Jiangnan designers did like the form lakes and mountains took and the eccentric positioning of Mt Voss. Some rules we rejected most obviously, for egalitarian Australians, a rule regarding expressing the importance of the principal Hall. Further, mere reproduction or imitation, description or analysis of Chinese examples is insufficient because: The Chinese scholar gardens themselves already synthesize too much just to describe. Reproduction only offers understanding of specific cases. It is not enough merely to be inspired by, to design after the manner of or in imitation of. These superficial strategies, aimed at making a beautiful object, are not usually products of a relatively exacting examination of the original. We wanted to find out how to do this kind of garden in new and different circumstances, to understand the underlying principles of the genre like trying to understand Chinese poems not from actual poems and their characters but from the rules on which they are based. Confidence in how to compose creatively in new circumstances arises only with practice. In designing, the design itself is the site of a dialogue between intention and product. The process of design (and/or its representation) suggests unexpected avenues of exploration.

9 A very useful record of our process is the diary of design decisions that tries to capture what actually happened (Figure 2). Apart from noting myriad abandoned or little explored alternatives and allowing preparation of analytic

10 precedence diagrams, it draws attention to the mutually catalytic oscillations in emphasis between the conceptual, site planning, detailed design and the production of representations. Designing frequently took place during chats over coffees with fountain pens, clutch pencils and the paper available. We enjoyed this conversational manner of designing and again rediscovered that selecting brush stroke, pen, saw cut, timbers, metals, stones, paper and plants is as important to designing as words, numbers and geometry. Designing is both thinking and doing, conceptual and material. The essence of the Chinese garden is not in the buildings, the rocks, the water, plants or names, but in the imaginative state that the contemplation and experience of these engenders. If architecture is an imaginative construction, any ritual, object or substance that evokes the kind of imaginative experience sought makes architecture. In GCC, the proposition that architecture rests in stone or brick but is not of stone or brick is emphasized. GCC exists in all and each of its recorded forms the poetic texts on the exhibition handbill, the timber model, the computer model, the sketches, notes and drawings, the collection of names, the music xii and so on. Two further products of our designing allow others to test our research. There is insufficient space, here, for adequate exegesis, but both aim to be testable and relatively comprehensive. xiii The Ten Steps diagram in Figure 3a assumes no knowledge of Chinese gardens and aims to be generative. Test it by designing a garden. It is a design recipe. Its derivative, Figure 3b, is more condensed, a mnemonic diagram used both to structure lectures on Chinese gardens and this paper. It supports multiple sequences of design or analysis.

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12 As a placemaking tradition, Chinese gardens aimed to provoke emotional engagement and intellectual reflection interior and personal rather than collective and social experience. We hope to offer both kinds of experience to those vicariously experiencing the hypothetical GCC, and to researchers and designers. NOTES i See, particularly, (in alphabetical order) Chen & Yu 1986, Clunas 1996, Ji c1635, Johnston 1991, Liu 1979 and, for those with adequate Chinese, Pang The best short introductions are: Wang 1998 and Fung ii The project was first exhibited at the North Melbourne Town Hall as part of the fringe Architecture Exhibition, 24 September to 3 October As exhibited, the project comprised a table-sized, 1:20 timber model of the garden together with a paper scroll of some of the literary and conceptual allusions involved (of the same size), a smaller scroll of the sketch of the water course that unifies the composition, a codex of twenty-four explanatory drawings (dismembered for reasons of exhibition pragmatics) and a stack of A4 handbills again providing conceptual and literary colouration for the project. For their invaluable and instructive assistance with this project, we also thank: Professor Catherin Bull, Warren Burt, Paul Chong, Ken Chou, Dr Guo Qinghua, Hamish Hill, Paul Katsieris, Li Zhang, Qi Wei, Andrew Simpson and Dr Zhu Jianfei. The second garden project, The Garden of Manifold Tides, is proposed for the national park at Point Nepean, on the extreme westerly tip of the Mornington Peninsula at the infamous Rip the entry to Port Philip Bay and formerly the major immigration entry to Australia through Melbourne s port. iii Jiangnan literally south of the river is that part of China on and south of the Yangzi including much of Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces and the cities that were home to the literati and their private, scholar gardens Nanjing, Hangzhou, Yangzhou, Wuxi and, especially, Suzhou after the sixteenth century. iv Feng 1998, Makeham v Yu Qiu Yuan or (Suddenly) Meet Autumn Garden. vi Its form derives from an earlier exemplar in Alex Selenitsch s 1 to 9 Exhibition, held in 1987 at the Artists Space Gallery, North Fitzroy. vii In China, plants were well understood by many green-thumbed retired scholar-officials and artists as it was thought proper that they should be interested gardeners. This is not a strong feature of the interests of either of the authors. viii Johnston 1991, 74. ix No garden should lack that feature [covered walkway] Ji c1635, 63.

13 x xi xii xiii See: Missingham 2000a, b, c and Missingham & Selenitsch Jullien Composed for the new media design teaching tool by Warren Burt. Alexander s work on hierarchic decomposition (1963) is equally testable but, should with a minimum of inspection be seen to be an inappropriate way to tackle designing any work of art. His work on cascades, though much more elaborate and apparently subsequently abandoned, looks more like our approach (Alexander et al 1968) and might provide another way fruitfully to consider the design of a Chinese garden. REFERENCES Alexander, Christopher, 1963, The Determination of the Components of an Indian Village, in J Christopher Jones & D G Thornley, eds, 1963, Conference on Design Methods, Pergamon, Oxford, pp Alexander, Christopher; Sara Ishikawa & Murray Silverstein, 1968, A Pattern Language which Generates Multi-Service Centres, Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley. Chen Lifang & Yu Sianglin, 1986, The Garden Art of China, Timber Press, Portland, Oregon. Clunas, Craig, 1996, Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China, Envisioning Asia, Reaktion Books, London. Feng Jin, 1998, The concept of scenery in texts on the traditional Chinese garden: an initial explanation, Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 18 (4), Winter, pp Fung, Stanislaus, 1996, Garden VI. East Asia, 1. CHINA, in Turner, Jane, ed, The Dictionary of Art, Macmillan Publishers, London, vol 12, pp Ji Cheng, c1635, The Craft of Gardens, trans Alison Hardie, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn, Johnston, R Stewart, 1991, Scholar Gardens of China: A study and analysis of the spatial design of the Chinese private garden, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Jullien, François, 1992, The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China, trans Janet Clark, trans, Zone Books, New York, Liu Dunzheng, 1979, Chinese Classical Gardens of Suzhou, trans Joseph C Wang, McGraw-Hill, New York, Makeham, John, 1998, The Confucian role of names in traditional Chinese gardens, in Fung & Makeham 1998, pp Missingham, Greg, 2000c, The Garden of the Cool Change: A Place Setting designed to acquire Good Habitus, in John Stephens, ed, 2000, Habitus 2000: Proceedings. (forthcoming)

14 Missingham, Greg, 2000b, Teaching Environment and Behaviour with Not Quite a Classical Chinese Garden as an Example, in Gary T Moore & Louise Trevillion, eds, 2000, AASA Architecture + Education 2000: Proceedings, University of Sydney, Sydney, pp Missingham, Greg, 2000a, Nanjing Talks 5, in Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Environment-Behaviour, Nanjing. Missingham, Greg & Alex Selenitsch, 2000, The Garden of the Cool Change: A Garden in Suburban Melbourne designed on classical Chinese garden principles, Exedra (forthcoming). Pang Yigang, 1986, Zhongguo gudian yuanlin fenxi [The Analysis of Classical Chinese Gardens], Building Industry Press, Beijing. Selenitsch, Alex, 1997, Two Rooms and twenty notes: Dante in the Southern hemisphere, in Stephen Cairns & Philip Goad, eds, 1997, Building Dwelling Drifting, The Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, pp Selenitsch, Alex, 1996, Innisfail Section, in Leon van Schaik, ed, 1996, Fin de Siècle? New Melbourne Architectures, Department of Architecture, RMIT, Melbourne, pp Wang, Joseph Cho, 1998, The Chinese Garden, Images of Asia, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong. Yang Hongxun, 1982, The Classical Gardens of China: History and Design Techniques, trans Wang Hui Min, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York. Zhao Renguan & Thomas Kvan, 1984, The Gardens of Suzhou: An Analysis of the Principles of Chinerse Garden Design, Built [published by students of the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, UCLA], 2 (1), pp 4-9. Greg Missingham & The Garden of the Cool Change 110 Alex Selenitsch