ORIGIN OF LANDSCAPE

BY- ABHINAV

ORIGIN OF LANDSCAPE
During prehistoric era our knowledge about everything is primitive, especially about our surrounding. Humans have done some great artistic work during that time like paintings of Lascaux and white horse at Uffington. This all leads us to make our surrounding beautiful and pleasant which results in landscape architecture. Landscape architecture is concerned with the composition of outdoor space and sometimes indoor according to the Vitruvian objectives and using the six great compositional elements of garden and landscape design: Vegetation Landform Water Paving Structures Climate
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 It is an ancient art. The chief difference between garden design and landscape architecture is that one is concerned with private space and one with public space. The public park is an area of overlap - and the origin of the landscape profession. Now a days landscape architects work on roads, reservoirs, river reclamation, quarries, forests, housing development, industrial estates, urbanisation and many other types of project. We have a great history of landscape architecture which varies from designing murals of stone(like statues in Easter islands and standing stones in Carnac), paintings in caves(Lascaux), making altars in open space(Stonehenge) and designing horse in open ground in Uffington. All are wonderful and incomparable and a landmark in the field of architecture

LASCAUX
It is the setting of a complex of caves in south western France. These paintings are supposed to be first cave paintings in the world which is about 30,000 to 10,000 BC old. This is the first step towards the beautification of our surrounding and making the interiors of the cave pleasant. It may happen that they are not intended to do so. But these paintings are beautiful. The painting is measuring about 269 feet, and contains 2000 animal figures. The drawings are instinctive, made before geometry was known. The design is complex in time as well as space, for one animal has later been drawn over another with a respect for the past.
Considered as whole, the cave paintings are first and still the most pure of all the intuitive arts of landscape design.

CARNAC
These stones are an exceptionally dense collection of megalithic sites around the French village of Carnac. So it is the famous site of more than 3000 prehistoric stones. The stones are standing in perfect straight lines, there is belief behind this, local people believed that these stones were Roman legion turned to stone by Merlin. These stones were erected during Neolithic period which dated around 4500 BC to 2000 BC. These stones creates a harmony on a vast open land which makes this place a attraction for the tourists. Actually this place was quite famous after WWII as a tourist place.

Uffington White Horse

If we notice, then we will find that the primitive architectural designs were being inspired by GOD and ancestors. Its all about to show some respect to them. Similarly here, white horse in uffington, England is major landscape marvel of Bronze age as it is considered that it is 3000 years old. The figure is about 110 m long, formed from deep trenches filled with crushed white chalk. This geometric form is not visible at normal eye level, but it can be clearly seen from the sky so it is believed that it is made for GODs. But this piece of architecture is really impressive.

STONEHENGE
It is a prehistoric monument located in Salisbury, England. It is one of the most famous old monuments of the world. It is composed of circular setting of large stones. It is believed that is constructed around 3000 BC to 2000 BC. In this each monolith measures around 2 m in ht. , 1-1.5 m in width and 0.8 m thick. This is considered to be a prayer space for the communities living around.

STATUES OF EASTER ISLANDS

These stones were carved in 1100-1680 CE. There are total of 887 monolithic stone statues. These statues are usually have large heads, which are in the ration of around 3 to with their body size symbolizing the living faces of holy ancestors. So we can see that there is always a reason of prehistoric architectural monuments to be built. Generally they are built for the ancestors as in this case and sometimes in the respect of GOD.