What is Sequential Journey?

Introduction and Synopsis
The sequential journey is the STORY you wish to tell in the landscape. The philosophy of landscape design forms the PARAGRAPHS of the composition. The principles of design composition represent GRAMMAR in the landscape design. The principles of art and design are the VOCABULARY of landscape design and the elements of landscape design are the LETTERS.

The simplistic synopsis above using literature as a metaphor to explain it, does encapsulate sequential landscape journey, and the parallel with musical composition is also equally valid. Both analogies are referencing the story (re the analogy of a book,) or the symphony (re the analogy in music,) of the human emotional journey through the landscape in time.
We can look deeper into these parallels to elucidate them, to show how they work, and why it’s so important. If it is really like the story in a book, we should also be able to learn something about landscape sequential journey from a book, and I am not referring to a landscape design text book!

There are several recognised signposts to writing a book depending on which authority you read. but we can compare the creation of a landscape and its sequential journey to some of these signposts with absolute ease….

A book may run from 60,000 to as much as 455,000 words, as in the epic Lord of the Rings. If the reader is to ever finish reading the book interest must be maintained. In a book interest is maintained by several compositional skills and tricks: strong characterisation, strong scene descriptions, and most importantly unpredictability with paragraph and chapter ‘hooks’. This is the sequence of events that keep the reader turning the pages of the journey.

We all are susceptible to these compositional tricks in literature, but may not have consciously analysed how they work. You’re tired after a long day and lying in bed reading a good book. You equate with the emotions of the lead character; the rich verbal descriptions of the scene transform to vivid images in your mind. Your eyes are closing and you have five lines left until the end of the paragraph and the end of the page, the ideal time to insert the bookmark and call it a day, but something happens in the final lines of the paragraph, and it’s referred to as a ‘hook’. Consequently, you can’t resist turning the page and starting the next paragraph and before you know it you have two pages left until the end of the chapter. You fight to keep reading to finish cleanly at the end of the chapter before giving in to the demand for sleep only to find an intense cliff-hanger, that leaves you gaging to know the outcome. Is Mr Darcy really that bad, or does he have a temperate less arrogant side?

The same compositional skills are present in epic TV series to keep you ‘hooked’. In both cases with the book or the series mystery is the key element, the catalyst to the sequential journey in effect. In Dallas who killed JR? In Michael J Strazinski’s sci-fi masterpiece Babylon 5, is Ambassador Kosh a good entity or a bad one, what does he really look like and why is he so cryptic in all his communications? Who are the Shadows and what is their real agenda besides all-out war?

Good symphony style music works in similar ways. O Fortuna for example begins faint, but starts to build a crescendo and with every passing note you know something really dynamic and powerful is coming and your emotions are soaring as you wait for this climax. Pink Floyd’s epic track Echoes does something similar, its discord builds and builds until you are emotionally in a very dark and disturbing place, then suddenly there is a fleeting faint speck of light, followed by another slightly more luminous one, and in a crescendo another and another, each one getting brighter and longer and closer together in the diminishing discord until harmony and tranquillity are beautifully restored.

A well-designed garden or landscape of any size should work in similar ways to these examples. Of course, a small residential town front garden 5 metres wide and 2 metres long cannot have any dynamic sequential journey by virtue of its size, but a garden or park of multiple acres is a very different story.

The Theory in Practice
The large classic and iconic English Picturesque garden Stourhead in Wiltshire….

As one enters the garden the focal point of the Pantheon establishes desire to go there, yet the path to it is obscured, and it is not readily accessible being on the other side of the lake. The bridge is obviously part of the journey there, but on route the element of surprise is brought into play as the Temple of Apollo initially obscured comes into view…..

The vibrant and very contemporary Parc de la Villette in Paris, France, uses the same hooks to power the sequential journey, but they are really powerful ones….

The enormous geode is a magnificent focal point establishing strong desire, but look carefully, it’s not immediately obvious – another element of surprise – a submarine, what’s that doing in a garden? The element of surprise then gives way to mystery in the submarine and one wonders what’s it like inside.…

The black colour of the submarine caused it to recede, but in contrast red is used to greatly foreshorten distance in other focal points at Parc de la Villette…

Or the enormous 4,000 hectares of steeply undulating Grizedale Sculpture Forest Park to name only three examples all rely on the landscape design version of ‘hooks’.….

All the tools are embraced in the Grizedale sequential journey: tension points, pivot points, focal points, elements of mystery, elements of surprise.

The ‘hooks’ in a book are different to those in music, and different again to those in landscape, but the same basic human emotions are behind their functionality in all cases. Chief of these emotions is mystery: where does this path lead, what lies beyond this hedge, or over this next ridge? And an emotional close second to mystery is the element of surprise. Mystery creates tension and anxiety and surprise fulfils it, but at the same time a new mystery is introduced and so the sequential journey around the landscape is driven.

Dissection of the Composition – The Individual Tools of Sequential Journey
The principle tools we use as landscape architects to compose sequential journey are: tension points, pivot points, and focal points in conjunction with passive and active spaces.

Below at Colton Fishacre in Devon, UK a well-designed linear transitional space….

In this case there is no mystery until one reaches the terminus as the rill accentuates the transition leading the eye to the focal point.

Here at the masterpiece of design by William Kent at Rousham House and Garden, the rill powers the sequential journey yet creates mystery as it does so – where is it leading and what will we find there…….

A landscape is composed of both passive and active spaces with a structural delineating mass between them. In reality there is a continuum between absolute passive spaces and absolute active spaces. A road is a very strong transitional space at the far end of the spectrum and there are few examples to compare to the magnificent Champs Elyse in Paris….

Paris is one of the most classically designed cities in Europe

Passive spaces in contrast to active spaces holds interest and incite repose…

Below is an example of a strong passive space – a secure space – designed by LandARCHConcepts at the contemporary Villa Malgaresh in the Cote d’Azur France….

The space is also a pivot and tension point in the sequential journey.

In the case of the book or music only one direction is possible in the sequential journey, however in the landscape multiple directions, ie, multiple sequential journeys are possible. Instead of just one path being revealed at the tension point there can be two, or three, four, five, six or more! Then new emotions are brought into play: interaction, desire and choice. As an aside comment all of this again illustrates another reason why landscape design is the greatest of all art forms.

Below in the schematic functional sketch diagram a strong focal point is illustrated at the centre of a static space with a secure seating sub-space (similar to the Malgaresh rendering above). The static space is however, also a pivot point in the sequential journey offering seven possible paths, that is seven different sequential journeys in the landscape. From within repose is paradoxically incited while the sequential journey out of the space is also powered by mystery.

From outside the space however, the sequential journey is driven by desire to enter…

The conceptual diagram above illustrates that from any of the given paths the seclusion which creates the element of mystery gives way to the element of desire when the focal point is glimpsed and then to the element of surprise when finally seen in completeness.

In conjunction with the impetus for movement inherent in active spaces set between static spaces with their imputes for repose, and the detailed elements used in these static and active spaces we can see how sequential journey is driven around a landscape….

Below a schematic function diagram illustrating more than one chapter in the sequential landscape journey…

Below mystery created at a tension point…

These illustrations given are so far are quite simplistic, but the composition of a landscape sequential journey in all its holistic dynamics is a complex undertaking. The interface between each active and passive and space has multiple possibilities….