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Chapter 12
BOSCHPLAN
AMSTERDAM
VERKl ARtNG
vrHl S,7 H
RljWH
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T he A msterdam Bos: Th e M odern Public Park and the
Construc tion of Collective Experience
Anita Berrizbeita
T he urban park has been traditionally understood as the place tha t mit igates the
deb ilitating effects o f congested urb an life. Th is m itigation is typically achieved
by tr an sposin g certa in characte ri stics o f th e ru ra l and n atu ra l en v ir on m en t in to
the city, estab lishing the par k from th e outset as the citys cou nterp art. In P ub
lic Parks and the En largem ent of Tow ns, Frederick Law O lmsted proposed
that extensive woods ought to surround the park, deep enough to completely
shut o ut the city from o ur landscapes and so achieve the greatest possible con
trast with the restraining and co nfining condit ions of the tow n. ' Th us, as a
place to es cape from th e ov erra tionaii za tion o f th e rou tine operations o f th e
modern metropolis, the park offers the opportunity to restore and protect theindividuals subjective and spiritual iife against the impersonal forces that sur
r o u n d t h e m .
T he ninete enth -cen tury pu blic park was largely conceived as bourgeois ter
ritory. This was a place where the individual could exercise the intellectual and
social freedom s afforded by liberal political tho ug ht. T h e very forms o f the p ark
suppo rted the pu rsuit and cult ivat ion o f individualism: its natural ist ic com posi
tion oflay ered, tran sp are nt spaces op en to a m ultiplicity of readings, its aestheti-
cized representat ion o f nature, an d i ts conceptual d istance from the city around
it. For the most part, individuals engaged in the passive, reflective contempla
t ion o f scenery, enjoying m om ents of q uiet sol i tude tha t served to restore a sense
of self. T hu s, a lthou gh a public space, the experience o f the pa rk was essentially
private , dom estic an d sec lu ded*in n a tu re . N estl ed w it h in a m etr opo lis d o m i
nated by stand ardizat ion, the public park o f the 1800s marked a disjunction
betw een ev ery day u rb an life and aesth etic prac tice s, betw een a society th a t was
ruled by mass produ ction and i ts modes o f cultural thinking inheri ted from
eighteenth-century Enl ightenm ent culture.
In w hat follows, I present a m om ent in the history of the public park wh en
this disjunction ceases to exist, when there is no longer an antithetical
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relationship between the idea of the park an d the idea of the city. T he Bos Park,
an 875-hectare forest-park built in Amsterdam between 1929 and the 1950s,
breaks w ith the traditio n of th e nin ete enth -c entu ry bo urgeo is park (Fig. 1). Its
designers, the architect Cornelis Van Eesteren and the landscape architect
Jacopa Mulder, adopted a program of productivism proposing landscape
architectural design as technique (or a set of techniques) rather th an as inspired
aesthetic creation. Moreover, they made the productive program for the park
explicitly visible in its physical form, con necting it to the processes of the ind us
trialized city aro un d it.
Recon ccptualizing the relationship between the park and the city necessar ily results in fun dam en tal aesthetic and social shifts that both recover an d tran s
form the traditions of the u rban park. It also restructures the relationship
be tween the perce iving subjec t and the park itself (the ob ject), and between the
object and its creator. Th is is a materialist interpretation of the m odern public
par k th at looks for signi ficat ion not in an aesthet ic idea! achieved th ro ugh
mimetic representation bu t in the relationships amo ng modes o f material pro
duction and evolving social and political structures.^ This view moves from an
emphasis on aesthetic experience as an isolated, abstract, and autonomousinstance in individual experience to one in which those experiences are funda
me ntally rooted in the realities of m od ern life.1
The Bos Park
In 1929, when the city council o f Am sterdam approved the be ginning of the Bos
Park project, Cornelis Van Eesteren and Jacopa M ulder had two precedents to
consider: the picturesque park, represented at that time by Olmsted and the
English examples, and the vol/(sparJ(s {peoples parks) built in Germany during
the first two decades o f this century. Van Eesteren and M uide r traveled to En g
land an d G erm any to study examples of each type. Th ey also had the recom
me ndations o f the exceptional report produced by the Boschplan Com mittee,
which included images of landscapes that were desirable models for the Bos
Park.6Thesc were a swimming facility in Hanover, Germany, a playground in
Berlin, a forest in Breda, and anoth er in the H ague. T hese pictures suggested a
rem arkab le synthesis oftw o as yet un pa ired landscape types: the athletic facility
w ith the native fo rest.1
Even before the park was finished, it was lauded as a remarkable innova
tion. Th e au thor o f an article published in theJo urna l o f the Royal Institu te o f
British Architects in 1938, seven years after construc tion be gan, openly ad m itted
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the impossibility of naming the style of the park. It is described as
ne ithe r... Beaux A rts.. .nor even the gen uine English landscape style ...and theroads, rivers and canals do not run in snaky lines, returning on themselves in
formally informal curves of tiresome and un natu ral symm etry. Th ere is also
no trace of the new G erm an form s.... " Th e a utho r goes only so far as to say that
the scale o f the meado ws rem ind him of a Repton ian landscap e and that the
landscape forms the link between the various com pon ent pa rts __All these are
pla in ly [my emphasis] Jinked tog ether by long stretches of meadow of irregular
conto ur and generally happy pro portions .'1
It is interesting tha t the critic was no t able to describe the park acco rding to
established stylistic categories. Clearly, the appearance of this new park was
qu ite different from tha t of its predecessors. Inde ed, Van Ee stere ns and M ul
de rs concep tion o f the design an d c ons truction o f the park as a process rather
than as an aesthetictzcd composition demanded that a critic understand its
value less in terms of how it looks and more in terms of how it works. It is
prec ise ly th is conceptu al sh ift from co mpos ition o f form to process of p ro duc
tion tha t negates" the traditional idea of the pub lic park and conne cts the pa rk to
the city by pre senting it as just ano ther o f the city's m ultiple productive o pera
tions. Ultimately, this shift in the con ceptua lization of landscape redefined the
psycho logica l space of the park as one th at is n ot private and subjec tive but civic
and p ublic.
Bu ilt unde r the aegis of une m ploy m ent relief, the Bos Park was constructed
entirely by men and horses, with little or no aid from machinery.'0Nevertheless,
the adop tion o f a series of rational design an d con struction tec hniqu es mea nt
that there was a high degree of instrum entahza tion o f natural processes com
m ensurate to that o f any other industrial procedure; the conceptualization of
processes, such as dra in age and p la n t g ro wth , as product ive en tities al lowed the
park to be co nceived as a site of p ro duction.
T he first operation en tailed dism antling the existing structure of orthogonal
dikes and rectilinear drainage channels (Fig- 2). These had been laid 50 meters
apart and compartmentalized the site into a series of rectangular agricultural
fields typical of the D utch polder land scape.11O ne dike was retained the park
boundary at the Sch in kelpold er in ord er to pro tect the site fro m surface
drainage from the so uthw est.12Th e elim ination o f the original grid of dikes and
channe ls was followed by sm oothing o ut the terrain. T his was necessary because
the polders th at cons titute the site were formed an d de -pe ate d1 at different
times between 1858 and 1925, meaning that their elevations varied (Fig. 3)
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Reg ularizing t he topograp hy allowed the r estoration o f a con
tiguous ground plane on the site, uninterrupted by channels
and earthen walls.
Th e second operation dealt with the man agem ent of water
on the site, wh ich averages 4,5 meters below sea level. T h e
establishment o f a forest rendered the windm ill techniq ue for
elim inatin g excess water from the site ineffective. More im po r
tantly, programming the site as a forest required a concept for
drainin g the soils that would allow for the plan ting and growth
of a new forest. Thus, a massive drainage operation involving
two separate systems was und er
taken. The first system com
pr ise d a networ k o f pipes laid
be tw ee n 1,5 and 2 meters below
grade. This system continu
ously lowers the w ater table and
thu s enables the roots o f the for
est trees to develop, The second
system comprised a series of
canals evenly dispersed across
the site. Thes e canals gradually convey the wa ter to the north east corne r of the
site, where a sluice pu m p releases it into a lake, the N ieuw e Meer. T he nu m er
ous watercourses visible on the site are nothing other than an efficient drainage
system.
T he third operation involved the ado ption of a plan ting system for the con
struction of the forest. Th e designers used a well-established practice of ind us
trial forestry tha t is entirely dep end ent o n a process of vegetational succession.
Randomly distributed in a grid, two forest types were planted; a provisional
pio neer fores t o f fas t-grow ing alders , willows, po plars, an d bi rch, an d a p erm a
ne nt forest of the slower-grow ing ash, maple, oak, and beech (Fig. 4). In add i
tion to helping further drain the site through evapotranspiration, the pioneer
forest provided the necessary shelter tor the seedlings of the p erm ane nt forest,
Fig. 2 (top). Plan of existing conditions. Source: Rapport van de Coirirmssie voor tie t Boscbplan
{Amsterdam, 1931),
Fig, 3 (bottom ). Site sect ion. Source: Rapport van de Cotnmissie voor tie t Boschplan (Amsterdam,
1931).
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The Amsterdam Bos
wh ich requ ire shade du ring their initial years. After fifteen years
ofg row th, the pio nee r forest, wit:h the exc eption o f the alder, wascut down, allowing the established permanent forest to grow.
The remaining alder was pollarded to produce a horizontal
bra nchin g habit and prov ide shade on the fores t floor to preven t
understory growth.
Finally, the landscape elements were distributed across the
site in a spatial structure that is nonhierarchical, open-ended,
and reiterative. Forest, open lawns, and water are distributed
evenly across the site in a mosaic-like pattern that is more accu
rately described as a fabric. O f the
total 2,23.5 acres, 775 are devoted to
woodlands, 625 acres to open lawns,
and 835 roads and water.'4 T ha t is,
they exist in a more or less 1:1:1 rela
tionsh ip with each other.15 Th is even
but in te rm in gle d dis tr ib ution o fl and-
scape conditions recalls the spatial dis
tribution in De Stijl paintings, which
typically give equal weight to all ele
men ts o f the p aintin g while filling the spacc of the canvas evenly all the way to
its edges.,fl Similarly, at the Bos Park, the forest, lawns, and watercourses spread
across the site all the way to its perimeter. There is no spatial differentiation
betw ee n a cente r an d an edge condit ion on th e site, reflec ting the continuity of
the ground plane (Fig. 5).
T hre e areas of the site were treated differently tha n the overall strategy
described above. Th e so uthe rn third of the B uitendijksche Buitenvc.ldersche
po lder , w hic h is adjacent to de nsely popula te d neig hborh oods, was devoted to
game courts. T he north ern edge of the site, along the Nieu we Meer, and the
southea stern co rner of the site, kno wn as the Poel, were existing wetlands that
the committee feit should not be forested. It would have been too costly to alter
the soil and drain th e water in these areas; in add ition, their ecological value, as
Fig. 4 (top). Planting diagram. Source: Alan Ruff, Holland and the Ecological Landscapes (Man
chester: Department of Town and Country Planning, University of Manchester, 1979).
Fig. 5 {bottom). Diagram showing the distribution of landscape elements. Drawn by Mitch Rasor.
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192
well as their beauty, was recognized as an aspect of the site to be preserved, espe
cially given its imm ediate vicinity to the city. T he com mittee also suggested the
pre se rv at io n o f several of th e ex is ting fa rms on th e site. Pre sently , on e o f th ese
remains nea r the ma rshland to the north, by the Nieuw e Meer. Over the fabric
of woodland, w ater, and open lawns were sup erimposed the exceptions to the
system: the rowing course, die sailing pond, and th e bobsleigh hill, formed with
the fill obtained from diggin g for the w ater bodies on the site.
T h u s , although the con struction of the park was systematic, it is evident
that existing and new conditions were overlaid upon, or embedded into, the
overall system. T his is less an indicatio n of a concer n for the geniu s of the
pla ce , which deriv es from a visual an d an ex pe rien tial in te rp re ta tion o f th e site,
and m ore of an interest in objectifying the landscape as living m atter and in
intensifying the raw m ateriality of the varying co ndition s of die site: the soft,
spong y forest floor, its cycles and scents; the irreversible w etness o f the marsh-
but not of th e fie lds; an d th e sense o f sky an d w ea th er th at is fundam enta l to
D utch landscapes.
Previous, traditional construction techniques in landscape architecture
were subsumed und er the stylistic intentions of the designer. Th e production o f a
scene that had integrity as a visual compo sition was of utm ost im portanc e. From
the sim plest technical innovatio ns, such as the ha -h a,iJ to the most elaborate
schemes of water control, the p icturesque landscape was underlaid w ith m yriad
works of engineering, silently and secretly contributing to the prod uction of an
aesthetically naturalized view. Similarly, Frederick Law Olmsted resisted the
introduction o f program and utility into his parks and, when it became
inevitable, program was folded into the internal, auton om ous necessities of his
aesthetic, picturesque agenda. P rogram, he argued, diminished the co ntem pla
tive function o f the park an d im poverish ed its spiritual value for the individ ual.!S
Conceiving landscape as program, or ascribing functional value to park
land, is the first radical break from a pictorial concep tualiza tion of landscape.
But in its inception in the G erm an volfysparfys of the first decades o f the twe ntieth
century, functionalism did not provide the freedom from established rules of
composition in landscape that, say, architectural functionalism allowed for
bui ld in gs . I n Lebe re ght M igge s an d M art in W ag ner s/ agendparkon the Pichel-
swarder peninsula in Berlin, for instance, the plan is organized in a traditional
mann er: aro und a central axis for m arching youth formations, with a symm etri
cal distribution of program on either side, such as open lawns for military exer
cises. Wagn ers radical con tributio n, thou gh, was to elimin ate the tradition al
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conceptual distance between work and leisure by incorporating both in equal
terms: as productive, fun ctional aspects of the city. For him , the he alth benefitsthat parks provide for people had an economic value akin to capital generated
by oth er p roduct ive funct ions o f the city.*0T his in te rp re ta tion o f pa rk land in the
city was later adopted by C lAM s 1928 Declaration o f La Sarrax and again in its
1933 Cha rter o f Athens.11However, wh ile reconcep tuaSizing a land scape strictly
in terms o f its function al value displaced the prevalence o f scenic approaches to
design, it had n ot yet provided new tec hniqu es o f design and construction.
Th ere were no new technologies in nature, so to speak, only new ways ofpu tting
nature to use.
in its provision of a dense program ma tic plan (rowing, canoeing, water ski-
ing, speedboating, equestrian sports, cycling, trails, winter sports, and court
games such as hockey, football, and cricket), the Bos Park is clearly the offspring
of the G erman volktspari{, but it represents a break with that tradition in its
expression o f the landscape as functio ning biological matenal. The strategy at
Bos Park concretizes the differences amo ng die elem ents in terms of the specific
contribu tion o f each to the overall ecological structure of the landscape, and
among their functions (water for drainage, for example, is expressed differently
than water for sports). Th is c onstitutes, in effect, a division o f labor, und erstood
in its widest sense to include the division of production, the differentiation of
work processes and s pe cializ atio n.D rain ag e, forest production, and the open
lawns are highly specialized operations, carrying out objectively prescribed
tasks that enable h um an use of the site: drainage for reclamation, forest lor wind
pro tect ion, and open lawns for play.
Th e d ifferentiation o f landscape types is also carried thro ugh to the pro
gram. T ho se aspects of the pro gram th at require specific dimensions, such as
game courts, are not blended into the form of the forest. On
the contrary, they are densely laid out, exten ding the organiza- ...... ,....
tion of the adjacent neighborhood into the park. Th e 2-kilo- ' ' '
meter rowing course (originally 72 meters wide, expanded to
92 meters in 1964), on the no rth o f the site, is sited perp endi
cular to the direction o f drainage flow, imm ediately distin
guishin g itself functionally from the o ther water bodies on the * ,, *
site (Fig. 6). Likew ise, park bu ildings, trad itionally rustic in ? I
Fig. 6. Bos Baan study. Cornells Van Eesteren and jacopa Mulder, 1930.
Source: Rapport van de Commissie voo rhet Bo schplan (Amsterdam, 1931).
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order to blend i n with nat ur e, are here mad e o f concrete, steel, and glass. All
elements are shown to be simply w hat is demand ed technically of them . Th eir
function resides primarily in their material properties rather than in any aes
thetic value or quality.
Perhaps the most meaningfu l break that the Bos Park makes with the picto
rial traditio n is, then, the p ropo sition th at design itself is the esta blish m ent of a
wording method, a system of operation s inform ed by scientific analysis (hyd rol
ogy, forestry, social sciences) a nd aimed toward concrete applicatio ns (reclam a
tion, shelter, recreation). W hat is significant here is tha t the workin g metho d
and the technical means themselves are unveiled and incorporated into the final
appe aranc e of the park, giving it its artistic logic and m eaning. Co m position as a
passive practice is re jected in favor o f co nst ru ct io n as an active pro cess /5 T he
pa rk is the re su lt o f the co nd itions o f its own mak ing.
Landscape as System of Production
In traditional mim esis, mea ning is generated by isolating some aspect of the
world and expressing that reality in the art object by m anipu lating the c onven
tions of the m edium . But w hen the impulse of the work is not about rep resenta
tion of outside reality b ut the articulation o f its system of production, the work
induces w hat M ichel Fou cault called a cond ition o f exteriority. By this he
mean t that the perceiving subject does not focus on discerning a hidden co ntent
manifested in the work but, instead, his or her attention is directed toward the
external conditions o f its existence. T he m eanin g o f the work, norm ally lodged
in an aestheticized, m imetic represe ntation o f a previously und erstood reality, is
now relocated to the ou tside, in the nexus of relationships that derive from the
process an d system o f pro duction.
I draw five im plications from this relocation o f m eanin g from object-as-rep-
resentation to object-as-system-of-production:
Loss o f Form. T he distribution of forest, open lawn, and water in an all-over pat
tern that fills the space o f the site results in a loss o f form tha t is, in a loss of
figuration o f the voids (open lawns) against the mass (forest).26Instead, there is a
superimposition of four systems-woodland, lawns, water, and elements that
equally contribute to and reiterate the spatial experience. No layer is subordi
nate to the others; each is coopted to have equa l presence in the landscape.
M ultip le Meanings. An other formal implication is the absence of spatial narr a
tives (as at Rous ham , for instance) and o f processional spaces tha t may cu lm i
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The Amsterdam Bos
nate in a monumental climax (such as the sequence from the Mali to the
Rambie in Central Park). Instead, the visitor moves from area to area with
the im pression of' never having quite arrived. Th e p ark is understood
throu gh the accum ulation o f reiterative experiences in time an d space. T his
spatial strategy impedes the possibility of aesthetic contemplation from a
distance and of a private, personal engag em ent with the park.
Anti-Aes thetic, As a corollary to this, the p ark does no t fall into any o f the ae s
thetic categories of landscape we know ; it is neither beautiful nor pictur
esque nor sublime {Figs. 7, 8, 9). It resiscs all attempts at aesthetic
categorization-a radical conceptual shift in itself, given the pervasive bur
den o f having to be beau tiful tha t has historically been placed on land
scape. Instead, the park asks to be understood as a transcription into form of
a program that has been determ ined according to a set of scientific and social
criteria.
Reciprocity o f Par/? and City. The park is stripped of metaphorical content
and spiritual intention. It is demystified. The emphasis on materiality and
the unveiling of the technical means of construction eliminate the transcen
dental in the p ark and inv alidate the conceptual separateness of the park
from the city. Rather than being presented as isolated and protected from
technology and capitalism and, in tur n, offering the individual shelter from
these forces, the par k is understood as one of many productive entities
within the metropolis. Like the subway system or the stock exchange, the
park is a piece of a system th at co ntr ibutes to an d str ives for m axim um p ro
ductive efficiency. In its multip licity of func tions , organ ized rationally
according to function and prod uction, the park is akin to an overlay of activ
ities of the city. It no long er stands against the w orld bu t is one wo rldly thin g
among others .27
Index. Because m eanin g does not depend on the p ark as a symbol for a refer
ent bu t on the congru ence of the system o f construction and existing stan
dards o f produ ction in society at large, the park is not a fully resolved object.
Fig. 7 (top). View of parkforest interior. Photograph by Kate Orff.
Fig. 8 (m idd le). Vsew of park meadow. Photograph by Kate Orff.
Fig. 9 (bottom ). View of park canal, Photograph by Kate Orff.
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Instead, it operates as an index. As Rosalind Krauss notes, indexes work differ
ently from symbols in th at they relate to their referent along an axis of physical
relationships. The y are the m arks or traces of a particular cause, and that cause
is the th ing to which they refer, the object they signify Into the category of index,
we would place physical traces (like footprints), medical symptoms "u As an
index, the park becomes a trace of a specific proce dure rath er than a com pleted,
static, totalized object. Thu s, the presence o f the forest points to the co ntin u
ously lowered water table, the trees themselves to ongoing succession, and the
hill, an atypical land form in this landsc ape, to the m assive digging op erations
that were necessary to cons truct the watercourses and the lake. These are regis
tration marks, records on the site of those procedures an d modes o f production
used for the pa rks cons truction.-As a result, the enga gem ent of the su bject with
the park is not predicated on the aesthetic com preh ensio n o f its forms but on
thinking through the processes that are at work beh ind those forms.
Object/Subject^
A reconce ptualiza tion of the landsc ape object is, by necessity, accomp anied by a
reco ncep tualization of the subject with which it is engaged. Mo re specifically,
the ren unciation of formal composition in favor of an em phasis on the system of
pro duct io n induc es a chan ge in the relatio ns be tw ee n the de sign er an d the w ork
and between the perceiving subject and the park.
At the core of a materialist critique of social relations un de r capitalism, the
theory of comm odity reification provides a framework for und erstan ding the
transformations in the concep tualization o f objects during modernism. Reifica
tion is a process through which human activities become diminished as a resuit
of their analysis and frag men tation into rational com pon ents, conceived solely
as a dialectic of means a nd end s. According to Fredric Jam eson, w hat is im po r
tant about reification is that its instrumentality foregrounds the organization of
the mea ns themselves over any particu lar aesthetic end .11 Seen thro ug h this
framework, the elements o fthe Bos Park landscape are not invested with qu ali
tative values in themselves b ut only insofar as they can be used.5' In other
words, the differentiation and specialization of procedures at the Bos Park
transformed each landscape element into a means to a particular end , and they
are therefore stripped o f subjective value. Th e park is thus tran sform ed into a
system o f prod uction tha t is inherently re prod ucible in any given context.
Moreover, because the system of pro duc tion prevails as the basis for design
and for achieving signification, the de signers role is transform ed into one in
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which they set in m otion the processes that will comp lete the cons truction of the
park. In the case o f th e Bos Park, Van Ees te rcn and M uld er relinquished control
of the final form to processes of succession and hydrology. As a result, the park
bears few, if any, traces o f the subjectivi ties of the designer, resisting the appea r
ance of having been m anipu lated or m ediated by a particular artistic personality.i(
T he fundam ental shifts in the conceptualization of the park explained ear
lier and, no less imp ortant, in the role of the designers, are suppo rted by changes
in the con ceptualiza tion o f the perceiving subject. Wh o is, then, the subject that
the m odern park seeks to address P
A democratic social agenda motivated the Bos Park project from its incep
tion and appeared frequently in the Bos Park Committees report, which states
that the park is intended for the proletariat in its new emancipated status.'"*
Most notably, the removal o f the dikes is explained iti ideological terms: leveling
the site releases it from the tyranny of the rectilinear dike structure , which makes
people w alk in st ra ight, confined lines. A site o f continuous ground, not d is con
nected by the dikes earthe n walls, allows the indiv idual to roam freely throu gh
out an d across the site. M ove m ent is here endowed with signification because it
represents social mobility and the em ancip ation of classes from old social and
religious bonds as a result o fth e rise of capital. Th e pairing o f this kind of loose
but system atic spat ial str uctu re with a sh ift away from mim etic repre se nta tion
suggests that m eanin g in the park is no longer conting ent on the passive con tem
pla tion ofscenery h u to n the co nstruction of open soc ial practices.
T he pam phlet published on the occasion of the opening of the park reiter
ates these shifts.15O n its cover is depicted an array o f activities offered at the park
and no sense of its physical appea rance at ail. At the bo ttom of the cover, an
assembly line of men, trees and shovels in hand, reiterate the forest as construc
tion. N ot sho wn is the introspective, m editating subject of the traditional park.
Inside the pamphlet, sketches show individuals engaged in various forms of
social exchange and physical activity. T h e park is prese nted as a place where the
indiv idual ca n sha re in collective public life.
T he re is not, however, a com plete rejection of con tem plation in the park.
T he pam phlet features several sketches, drawn by M ulder herself of what seem
to be views of the wetlands from the forest edge, suggesting the possibility of
contemplation and solitude in the park. Van Eesteren and Mulder describe the
pre dic am ent o f th e m odern subject, one w ho is fo rm ed as much by an in stinct
for cultivating individuality as by the req uisites o f the n ew collective nature of
m ode m life ^Th e Bos Park proposes the em ancipation of private individuals by
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giving them a pubiic role. It intro duc es the possibility of new forms of shared
civic life in the park , where the private in dividual exists in a dialectical rela tion
ship with the social. Here, one may reconcile his or her existence as individual
subject with the larger collective, shifting from one to the other, existing within
and yet retaining the possibility of making purposeful in terventions in society at
large. It is in ac com plishin g this shift in the status o f the land scape vis-a-vis the
subject that the Bos Park can be un derstood as a negation o f the picturesque
park tr ad it io n an d o f its associated ideas o f rep re senta tion, o f auth ori al m edia '
tion, and o f the pa rka s auratic, transcende ntal space.7
Landscape as Process
Landscape as process is one of the paradigm s o f postmod ern practice in land
scape architecture, supported by theories of phenom enology and hermeneutics,
among others. These theories, as well as the landscapes they inspire, value once
again the individu al over the collective. In landscap e, these values are expressed
thro ugh a system of op en-e nde d design t ha t is also largely based on setting up a
biolog ica l process , suc h as ero sion by w in d or water, o r p la n t succession, and let
ting the process, through time, show its effect on the site, constructing its land
scape. Desvigne and Dalnoky in France and Hargreaves Associates in the
Un ited States are two of several practices th at take on this agenda in their work.
How is the idea of landscape as process different in contemporary practice than
it was m ore than sixty years ago, at the time of the construction of the Bos Park,
wh en practitioners such as Van Eesteren an d M ulder also took a stand against
pictor ia lis m?
Th e difference can be found at the level of representation.56 Tim e an d
process , an d th eir co ro llary o f op en -e nded nes s, are take n on as th e subject m at
ter o f these practices. Yet, specifically in th e w ork of Harg reave s Associates,
process is a lign ed with an aesthe tic an d expressive ag en da th at does not ent irely
originate in the biological and the p rogram matic bu t in the formal. Hargreaves
sculpts and manipulates form until it achieves congruence with a predeter
m ined m eanin g, such as invoking aeolian forces on the land ." In its inception,
the w ork is concerned w ith form for the sake of form, at least to the extent that
this represents ecological processes. This representational agenda reintroduces
subjective values and narratives into the work and recovers the subjective, indi
vidual vision of landscape. In terms of relations betw een subject and object,
then, this work is closer to the n ineceenth-century ideal o f the urb an park than
the pro ject for the Bos Park.
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At the Bos Park, the idea of process derives its meaning specifically as it
relates to prod uction. T hu s, whereas tim e and process are often invoked as aes
thetic dimensions of landscape in con temp orary practice, they were more tech
nical and material dim ensions o f landscape a t the Bos Park. Process at Bos was
unde rstood as techniqu e, as a way of un ders tand ing and a rticulating a project in
terms of its material determinants. This emphasis on those physical aspects of
constructing urban landscape that had remained secondary in the realm of
eighteenth- and nineteenth-cen tury landscape aesthetics became, for the m od
ernis t vang uard, a strategy to expan d the polem ic beyond representation and to
focus on ques tions o f the collective reception of the work , to address a newly
constituted mass culture/9In other words, a logistical concern for process as a
way of objectifying the m aterial in landscape, stripping it of narrative and
mimesis, can be construed as a mechanism for pursuing the collective and
enh anc ing shared social relations. U nlike the aes thetid zatio n of process during
postm oder nism , invok ed to engage subjectivity, the Bos Park redi rects atten tion
beyond the indiv id ual su bjec t an d toward those processes th at underg ird m od
ern life, that generate the social conditions o f its making.
T he work of con temporary D utch designers OM A/Rem Koolhaas and West
8/Adriaan Geuze continues to engage process and materiality in landscape in
the same conceptual way that Van Eesteren and Mulder did for the Bos Park.
Their proposals are strategies specific to site and program rather than designs
tha t are the pro duc t of formal, aestheticixed visions.41 Rut, unlike b land func
tionalism, where the logistics of a project come across as habitual, unex amine d
aspects of a site, Koolhaas and G euze redirect the rational dem ands of a project
toward a creative end. Logistical issues such as zoning and program become
driving forces for innovation an d tran sform ation in design. In the ir work, land
scape emerges as a m atrix or fram ewo rk for development, as living material in
the fun ctional sense, as site o f produ ction, as structu ral tissue tha t supports
often contradictory programs, and as a territory that is indistinguishable from
the city. Signification in these works is found in the ir modes o f pro duc tion, esp e
cially those th at deal creatively w ith the ide ntities, lives, and necessities of indi
vidu als p articipa ting in collective hie.*'
Notes1 Fre der ic k La w O lms te d , Pub li c Par ks a nd t he E n la rge me nt o f T ow ns (1871),
repr inted in D onald W orker ' sAm er ican E nvir onm en ta li sm ( N e w a r k : J oh n W i le y &
Sons, 1973), 111-132.
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200
3 For a description of the private natu re of the early public park, see Rich ard Senne tt,
The Fall o fPu bl ic Man (N ew 'fork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), especially cha pter 4, Pub-
He Roles," 64-88.
4 See Um berto Barbaro, Materialism and Art, inMarxis m a nd A n : Writing s in Aesthe t
ics and Criticism, eds, Bexel Lang and Forrest Williams (New York: David McKay,
1972), 161 176. See also La ng and W illiam s introd uctio n to the book.
5 In form ulatin g this view and others in this essay, I am particularly indeb ted to K,
Michael Mays's Modernism an d the Po sth um an ist Su bje ct (Cam bridge, Mass.: M IT
Press, 1992).
6 Ra pp or t van de Co mmtssie voor he t Bosch pla n Am ste rd am (Amsterdam, 1931). The
com mittee was established in January 1929 and produced its report more than two
years later, in M ay 1931. Th e list o f consul tan ts contrib uting to the r epo rt is extensive,
and included subcommittees on hygiene, sports and relaxation, soil, and flora and
fauna, among others, and experts on bathing and swimming installations. There is
also extensive discussion in this report abo ut the significance of the parks. Th is docu men t is available from the D epa rtme nt of Public Works in Am sterdam. C laudia
Swan, P h.D., translated this doc um ent for the author.
7 Although all forests in H olland are ma n-m ade, the D utch have a tradition of forest
ma king that is at least five centuries long. By native forests I me an those tha t are com
po se d of species th a t ex ist ed in the N eth erl an ds be fo re th e waters o f th e A tlant ic rose.
See IR.T.WL Schchcma, "H olland s Man-M ade Forests, in Am er ican Forests 50
(November 1944): 540-541.
8 Th e Am sterdam Bosc hplan, inJo ur na l o f the Roy al Inst itut e o f Bri tish A rchitects 45,
scries III (May 1938):681-689. See also Anton io Cerd en a, Attre zza ture verdi di
Amsterdam, Casabella 277 (July 1963): 34-49. An exc ellentd escr iption o f the politi
cal and legal events that led to the approva l of the project is Sergio Polan o, Th e Bos
Park, Amsterdam, and Urban D evelopment in Ho lland, in The Architecture o f West
ern Cardens, eds. GeorgesTeyssot and M onique Mosser (Cam bridge, Mass.: M IT
Press, 1992): 507-509. Fo r this paper, I derived mo st of my info rma tion directly from
th e Ra pport van de Com mtss ie m a rk e t B oschpla n A m ster da m , whe rein a great deal of
site analysis and technical information appears.
9 O n negation: it is comm only held that the emergence o f new ways of conc eptualizing
objects (their role in society as well as their appearance) is prompted by a reaction
against the norm . W he n a society can no long er justify the inevitability of its artistic
prac tic es , ne w and m ore adeq uate on es ar ise from a cri tique of th e in st itutions th a t
had thu s far provided the social base for those practices. In mo dern ism, this critique is
called \hc practice o f negation. W hat the m odernist vanguard repudiated were two
fundam ental assum ptions about the institution of art that had becom e entrenche d innineteen th-cen tury bourgeois society. First was the assum ption th at there is an in di
vidual auth or w ho is the originator of meaning, w ho engages in the activity of design
intending to inscribe in its forms his or her own subjectivities. Second was the belief
that the perceiving subject enters the realm o f the wo rk seeking a space apart from life
in which the mind is free to develop its own subjectivities, free to make tts own con
nections. See T.J. Clark, More on the D ifferences Between C omra de G reenbe rg and
Ourselves, in Mod ernism and Mod er ni ty , eds. Benjam in H .D . Bochloh, Serge
Gilbaut, and David Solkin (Halifax; University ofN ova Scotia Press, 1983). Ind us tri
alized ma ss prod uction , already a fact of life by the end o f the n ine teen th ce ntury, lay
at the core of the mo dernist critique of bourgeois art. Th e m ass-produce d object,
devoid of traces of authorship, o f claim to un iquene ss, and , therefore, of aura, naked
of any repre sentational cloak that m ight hide its genesis in repetitive, standa rdized,
mec hanized production presents itself to the v anguard artist as the locus for the cri
tique o f the auratic wo rk of art. To engage in an aesthetic practice that used tech
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nique s and objects of mass produ ction was, therefore, to engage in a practice of nega
tion. Note: I use the term modernism to refer to those changes in the conceptualiza
tion of objects that occurred at the be ginn ing of the twen tieth cen tury as a result of a
skepticism tha t developed abo ut the na ture o f represen tation in art. I adapt: this defi
ni t ion f rom T ) . Cla rk, The Painting o fM odem L if e (Princeton, N.J. : Pr inceton U ni
versity Press, 1984), 10.
10 Ge rr ie Andela, T he Pub lic Park in the Netherlan ds,jo urna l o f Ga rden His to ry 1,
no. 4 (October-December 1981): 391.
1] Like the majority of land in the N ethe rland s, the site of the Bos Park lies several
meters below sea level. Historically, the Dutch have dealt with this condition by
buil d in g pold ers , ex te nsive tracts of lo w la nd th a t are re cl aim ed fr om th e se a an d
rem ain protected from it by dikes. W indm ills convey the water that collects in the
channels within the enclosed lands uphill to sea level in order to drain the polder
fields.
12 G rou nd w ater was estimated to be 60 -70 centimeters highe r southw est of the
Sehinkeipolder due to heavy rains and w inds coming from the southwest .
S3 To dep eat is to remove the diick layer of peat from the surface o f the terrain. At the
Bos Park site, this layer was abo ut 50 centim eters deep before the conv ersion o f the
site to polders. Because p eat is highly acidic and retains water, remov ing it was neces
sary to improve d rainage o f the soil and reduce its acidity in o rder to cultivate it for
agriculture. Aiso contribu ting to the irregularity of the terrain w ere peat ridges
caused by pu shin g arou nd the peat layer and leaving it piled at the edges of fields.
14 H el Amsterda mse Bos: The A m ster dam Forest Pari{(Public Parks Service Gu ide), 48.
15 See A lan Ruff,H olland a nd the E co logica l La ndscapes (Manchester , Englan d: Dep art-
m en tofT ow n and C ou ntry Planning , Universi ty of Manchester, 1979), 10.
16 Co rneiis Van Eesteren joine d De StijJ in the 1923 and collabo rated with Van Does-
burg on m any pro je cts. A lthough cl early th is is not a pla n th a t reca lls th e form o f D c
Stiji painting s or architecture, the strategy of distribu ting elemen ts in a nonh ierarchi-
cal way throu gh ou t space is one tha t Van Eesteren m ust have der ived from his work
with De Stijl.
17 A ha-ha is a physical bou ndary, such as a ditch or a retaining wall, between two p rop
erties designed in such a way that it is concealed from within, making the landscape
seem physically continuous.
18 Alexander von Ho ffman , Of Greater Lasting Con sequ ence : Frederick Law Olm
sted and the Fate ofF rank lin Park, Boston j ou r n a l o f the Society o fArc hi tectur al H is
torians 47, no. 4: 339-350.
19 Marco De M ichelis, Th e Red and the Green: P ark and City in Weimar Germ any,
Lo tu s Intern ation al30 (1981): 111.
20 Ludovica Scarpa, Qu antifying Parkland: The S tandards of Ha ppine ss in Social-
Dem ocratic Berl in,"Lo tu s Int er national30 (1981): 119-122,
21 Van Eesteren was president of C1AM from 1930 to 1947.
22 Geo rg Simm el, Th e division of labou r as the cause of the divergence of subjective
and objective culture , in The Philosophy o fM one y (1900), t.rans. Tom Bottom ore and
David Frisby (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 453-463.
23 I borrow this formulation from Ben jamin Bu chlohs descr iption of the Soviet avant-
gardes concern forjd k tu ra , the mechanical quality, the materiality, and the
anonym ity of the painter ly procedu re, in From Faktura to Factography, October:
Th e First Decade, 1976 -198 6, eds. Ann ette Michelson, el al . (Camb ridge, Mass.: M IT
Press, 1987), 81.
24 Michel Foucault, The D iscourse on Lang uage (1971); repr inted in The Archaeol
ogy o fKnow le dge (New York: Pantheon, 1972), 229.
25 Hays, Mod ernism , 154-160.
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26 Yves Alain Bois, Piet Mondr ian, 18721944 (Boston: Little, Brown , 1994). I borrowed
this term from Boiss description o fM on dria ns work.
27 Hays,Modern ism, 172.
28 Rosalind Krauss, Notes on the Index: Seventies Art in America," in October: The
First Decade, 1976-1 986, cds. An nette Michelson et al. (Cam bridge, Mass.: M IT
Press, 1987), 4.
29 Ibid.
30 Subjectrefers to individual as well as collective consciousness. The term is inherently
equivocal because the two seemingly contradictory meanings depend on each other.
Th e ind ividual s elf is always unde rstood within the context o f a larger ideological or
institutional framework. Conversely, a gene ralized conccpt ofth e subject would su p
pr es s di(Terences th at dis tinguis h an in div id ual from other s, di fferen ce s th a t consti
tute a vital aspect of social practices. Object refers to the artifacts o f cultu re, the ir
formal organization, as well as the forces that produce them. Because those forces are
manipulated by the subject , both concepts are mutually dependent and exist in a
202 dialectical relationship with each other. See Th eo do r W Ado rno, Su bject and
Object, in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, cds. Andrew Arato and Eike Geb-
hart (New York: Con tinu um , 1982), 497- 569.
31 Fredric Jameso n, Reification and U topia in Mass C uitu re/'m SocialText I (1979):
130-148.
32 Ibid.
33 Th e distance that develops between the object and its prod ucer as a result of the divi
sion ot labor is explained by Georg Simm cl: Wh eneve r our energies do not produce
som ething w hole as a reflection of the total personality, then the pro per relationship
betwee n su bj ec t and ob ject is m is s in g __Th e interna! nature of ou r achievement is
bound up w ith pa rts o f achievem en ts ac co m plished by other s w hic h are a nec essa rypart of a tota lity, but it do cs no t re fe r b ac k to its p ro d u ce r. . ..It s m ean in g is n o t de riv ed
from the m ind of the prod ucer b ut from its relationships with products o f a different
orig in.. ..Th e significance of the p rodu ct is thus to be sou ght neith er in the reflection
of a subjectivity nor in the reflex of a creative spirit, but it is to be found only in the
objective achievem ent tha t leads away from the su bjec t.. ..Th e broad ening of con
sum ption . . .is depe nde nt upo n the g rowth o f objective culture, since the more objec
tive and impersonal an object the better it is suited to more people __Such
consu m able m aterial, in order to be acceptable and enjoyable to a very large num ber
of individuals, ca nno t be designed for subjective differentiation of taste, wh ile on the
other han d on ly the m ost extreme differentiation of produ ction is able to produce the
objects cheaply and abun dan tly enou gh in order to satisfy the dem and for them . Th epattern o f co nsum ption is th us a bridge bet w ee n th e ob jecti vi ty o f c ult ure an d th e
division of labour . Excerpted from 'T h e Division of Labo ur as the Cause o fDiver-
gence Between Objective and Subjective Culture in The Philosophy o f Money,
454-455.
34 Th ere are m any references regarding the app ropriate uses ofthe p ark vis-a-vis society,
especially in part two o f the report, titled G eneral S ignificance o fthe Bosch p lan. In
addition to the need for extensive kinds o f prog ram, the com m ittee clearly stated that
for the new parks visual consumption is not enough." Ra pp ort van Co mtniss ie v oo r
het Boschplan A m sterdam , 9.
35 Bosch -Plan . Ten toom te lling (Amsterdam : Public Works Dep artm ent, 1937).
36 In Th e Metropolis and M ental Life, Geo rg Sirnmej guides us throu gh the histori
cal development o f this condit ion. Th e eighteenth-century b elief in l iberty and
equality was corollary to tha t in an in divid uals freedom o f mov emen t in social and
intellectual relationships. Another ideal arose in the nineteenth century through the
econom ic division o f labor, in which individuals liberated from historical bonds n ow
wished to distinguish themselves from one an othe r. T h e division ot labor, central to
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all capitalist production , causes, on die one han d, the dissolution o f the individua l as
free and autonom ous and, on the other, the em ergence of a kind of individual ism that
arises out of a need to assert on es uniquen ess am id the vast ma chine o f the m etropo
lis. Simmel even proposes that the metropolis ought to provide the arena where the
struggle between individualism and collectivity may be played out. See Georg Sim-
mcl, The Metropolis and Mental Life (1904); reprinted in Th e Sociology o f Georg
Simmel , trans. an d ed. K urt W olfF(N ew York: Free Press, 1964), 423.
37 Au ra is defined by W alter Ben jam in as a distance that exists between the wo rk of art
and the perceiving subject as a result o f the authen ticity value placed on the object
bec au se o f its un iq u en ess in th e w or ld . A ura is d ra in ed from th e ob ject th rou g h its
mechanical reproduction and through the processes of advertising it , displaying it ,
and fixing a price for its consum ption. Sec Walter Ben jam in, Th e W ork of Art in the
Age of M echanical R eprodu ction" (1935); repr int in Il lu m in ations , ed. H an na h
Arend t (N ew York: Schocken, 1969), 217-251. Aura in terms o f the landsc ape can
also be thou gh t of as a distance betwe en the p erceiving subject and the landscape.
Although it is possible to argue that no two landscapes can be identical (anil that
therefore all landscapes are auratic), un ique nes s may no t be a sufficient cond ition for
the definition o f an aura tic landscape. Rather, it needs be furthe r qualified in m ore
specific term s, as a function o f the landsca pes contrast w ith its context, whe ther
ph ysica l (i.e., C entr a! park ve rsus th e city aro un d it) , o r ec olog ical (an endangere d
ecosystem), or cultura l (the H ud son River Valley of the ium inist painters, w hich does
not exis t any more), which renders that landscape in some way unique and t ran scen
denta l, im bued w ith mysticism. My po int is that when processes of mass produ ction
arc applied to the ma king o f landscape a nd mad e visible in their form, they also
remove the po ssibility of aura from those landscap es and, therefore, restructu re rela
tions between the perceiving subject and the landscape.38 Re presentation is generally taken to me an the construction of a resemblance of a pre
viously existing reality in a wo rk of art. I assum e the re is repre senta tion in all forms of
aesthetic produ ction, including in mode rnism, and thus I bracket the term as mimetic
representation. By this I mean one that specifically seeks to reproduce another land
scape, such as an existing naturalistic scene.
39 SeeProcess: Ar ch ite ctur e 128:Hargreav es: Lan dsca pe Works (January, 1996).
40 In this sense, the Bos Park differentiates itself from projects o f the mo re recent ecolog
ical mo vem ent, the advocates of which focus their energies on the am elioration o f an
external environment rather than on representational and social concerns. Sec James
Corner, Ecology and Landscape as Agents of Creativity, Ec olog ical Design an d
Plan ning , eds. George Thom pson and Frederick Steiner (New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1997), 80-108.
41 For instance, the plan ting strategy of Ko olhaass proposal for the Parc de la Villetie
recalls the forest man age m en t attitude em ployed at Bos Park.
42 See Ba rt L oo tsm as essay Synth etic Re gion aliza tion in this collection.
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