Kathryn Gustafson

 In her own words, she states that "I want my work to provide a window into a different reality for people." "My hope is that my intuitive method of working manifests so that people will connect viscerally with the work in a way that makes it their own, provides a lens for their own vision.  I cannot define what that will be exactly.  Each person has an individual response." Believing that feelings carry energy, she empowers her art, charging it with her own expression, which transforms into others' direct experiences, a kind of garden alchemy." Taken from pg 9 of Sculpting The Land, 05, Publ by Spacemaker Press, 1998 (FCH Library ref no 712.092 GUS/LEV).  These lines open with the reflection that "This personal, intuitive process may seem incongruous for one who is also exceptionally open to collaboration and responsive to her clients' needs.  But Gustafson must find her own way through a project first.  Moving away from logic and control, she makes this journey in a kind of creative free fall."  This paragraph made me warm up to her as a person and as a designer.  "Intuitive" and "responsive" sounded like everyone's favourite kind of designer.  The reality being, that outside the field of Landscape Architecture the ordinary "person" in the street does not get the chance to design or use their imagination to improve surroundings, much as though many would passionately like to.  So it is a big responsibility to design landscape as well as a privilege.  To see a world as others would wish it to be and be intuitive and responsive and translate aspirations into the physical. To be a person who possesses the skills and vision to practise their art and leave a legacy.  Active listening with joint initiatives, enables healing and growth in the natural landscape and really moves communities forward.

 Sculpting The Land,  also contains pictures of the gardens that she designed for Shell Petroleum in Rueil-Malmaison, France. I really liked these gardens as well, the soft outside lighting, the water features and the planting.  These two paragraphs were striking from pg 47, "A red pocket garden, incorporating flowering cherry trees, is positioned below the administrative offices.  Its red roses are arranged in a reverse question mark - Gustafson suggestion to Shell's executives that they continually ponder whether they are asking themselves the right questions." and "Each pocket garden is framed by a trimmed evergreen hedge that creates the effect of a series of tapestries.  The entire landscape is also framed with a variety of shrubs that provide privacy for both Shell and its neighbours and a formal delineated edge to the design." Then later, "Gustafson incorporated lighting throughout the Shell garden to extend the experience of the outside into the interior of the building. Lights at the top of the spiral masts emphasize their heights, lights along the base of the walls that emerge from the rolling knolls elaborate their volume and mass, and the changing pattern nd reflections produced by lighting from within the water enliven the pools.  The entry walkway is illuminated at night with softly focused lamps, so that one's way is effectively lit, but the rest of the garden is seen though the contrasts of shadow and light."

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