Customer Reviews

Parkitecture - By: barbicandy, 19 May 2008
I have recently been thinking about that particular design & architecture that I used to see a childin the sixties & seventiesin parks. There is little of it left & that is no surprise really as it lacked taste, delicacy, subtlety or safety. Leaving aside memorial fountains & other architecture such as war memorials, quasi-zoological displays & functional sports facilities such as bowling greens, as well as most of London as this is a county town rather than metropolitan phenonenon, I would say that it was essentially characterised by excessive floribundance, ostentatious rurality & unabashed exoticism. It was as if social classes deprived of the countryside could not be expected to recognise normal horticulture, but needed to be presented with super-horticulture, far more vegetative & floral than would ever occurin nature. The reality was also a kind of superstiumulus, with toilets & tea rooms far more ruralin their reed roofs, carved gables & leaded windows than one could ever hope to seein the Cotswolds - hence the word "cottage"in gay parlance. I also recall a Guildford park where the Japanese garden (looking back now) was as overblown as willow pattern, a caricature orientalism that is quite offensive now. And how little of it survives! It did not work, was unsafe for children, was ugly, high maintenance & devoid of all authenticity. Yet when I see it relatively undisturbed (asin Grange over Sands) I regret that so little of it remains. Hazel Conway's "Public Parks" records an interesting selection & locates it historically.