Landscape Architecture: Landscape Architecture: - School of ...

Gustafson Porter, Swiss Cottage Open Space, London, 2006
Landscape masterplan clearly showing how Gustafson Porter has woven together trees, park elements and water to
create a haven from the nearby traffic nodes that is fully accessible to pedestrians.
Their scheme included the overlaying of two conceptual
approaches: the materiality of place (that is, the regional
landscape) and a firm engagement and interaction with the
past as well as the present. They promptly hired an
archaeologist as part of the team, so setting a design agenda
that fully recognised the ancient remains that had been
excavated 5 metres (16 feet) below ground – a process that
revealed a richness of texture and content, from its medieval
foundations up through its Roman street grid and the
retaining walls of the Hellenistic period that ran along the
immovable contours of bedrock. As a result, no less than
three mosques, three cathedrals, and the Mary (Nourieh)
shrine (visited by both Muslim and Christian females in turn)
emerged, looming over the deep traces of Lebanon’s history.
This initial excavation meant that the fragile zones to the
southwest could be protected, but in other areas to the
north the past was reinterred, preserving the archaeology
and allowing for new garden layouts.
This is not a memorial garden, yet the initial, motivating
concept shared by both the clients and the designers was ‘the
idea of Lebanon’s journey from a fragile puzzle shattered by
war to a country gaining unity and peace under the will of its
people’. These ideals still hold today, and are more relevant
than ever, though badly impaired, not least of all in the
collective mind of the communities that sought to build a new
future for Lebanon. The Hadiqat As-Samah garden is thus a
source of major healing for all. No singular, prioritised view is
forced upon visitors – sectional variation is used to
manipulate light and shade creating an overwhelming
impression of serenity and even of the sublime.
In 2002, Gustafson Porter was commissioned by Solidere to
develop a concept design for the landscape of Beirut’s Old
Shoreline Walk. A year later they were invited to proceed to
design development. The underlying principles of the concept
design were retained. A dynamic, evolving, linear experience
runs along the path of the Old Shoreline Walk, leading
through a series of new open spaces (four squares: All Saints
Square, Shoreline Gardens, Zeytoune Square and Satiyeh
Garden) that evoke memories of the old city that have been
forgotten or destroyed, yet all set within the framework of a
modern city space. The old shoreline had become submerged
and lost, reducing the urban fabric and its meaning. The new
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