Research On The Minimalist Landscape In The Western World

Since the 1960' s, a landscape design trend in the western landscape design field with the characters of non-imagery, non-theme, simple form, which called minimalist landscape, had caused wide attention in the academic and design field.The minimalist landscape has fused the classicism, early modernism and minimalism in the landscape, united the simple form and complex meaning of landscape to present lively individuality and strong modern and industrial character.It' s easy to find that the minimalist landscape' s history has the character both from western classical gardens and eastern classical culture. The eastern culture exerts an internal influence on the meaning of minimalist landscape and the western culture affects its external characters directly. The minimalism of contemporary landscape design is a continuance and development of modernism. Apparently, the minimalist landscape is a case in point in continuing and developing the tradition.Early from its birth in the 1960's in the sculpture and painting fields, minimalism had affected nearly all the artistic fields and become a universal art inclination nowadays. Actually, no matter in the ancient east or west, people had already adored the minimalism. As the time goes by, the inclination appeared repeatedly. When asked the reasons, the subliminal follow to the "low entropy" or even "negative entropy" would be the first viewpoint of the author. Because of the influence of different age backgrounds, the "minimalism tidal wave" comes up and down. Undoubtedly the minimalism is the eternal aesthetic complex of the human beings.The main ploys of minimalist landscape design in the western world may be embodied as followed: integrity, the inclination of the contracted and pure architecture space, the concern for the material and fine structure, the use of pure and abstract form, embodiment of the time and nature and so on. Further more, use the methods such aspredigesting and abstracting geometrical bodies, systematization of the landscape elements and so on to realize the pure and abstract form.The minimalist landscape has complex, adaptable and open characters in theory, which incarnates its rich meanings, strong energy and hearty life-force.Actually, as the last important genre of modernism, minimalism is also its end. Minimalist landscape continues the excellent traditions of modernism landscape such as scientific, practical, reasonable ones, and also emphasizes the status and function of the art in landscape design. Because of the excess pursuance of its strong individuality, the minimalism landscape also neglects some aspects.Although many landscape works of our country at present appear minimalism tendency, which mainly be represented on techniques. The real pure and absolute minimalist works and artists are not so many. As we know that the reasons of this situation are various. However those problems are results of particular period of our society. We can believe that with the further development, they can be improved in succession, and the minimalist landscape would have a wonderful future in our country.The creative syncretism of our traditional gardens and the western minimalist landscape is actually the conformity of idea and method. We should get away from the astriction of parochial sectionalism and nationalism, use the evolutive point to treat the traditional gardens and the communion of China and foreign countries objectively, integrate those most lively part of our traditional gardens, the most compatible part of the western minimalist landscape and our country' s actual situation nowadays and the developable space tomorrow, firmly continue and develop the traditional, learn from others with an open mind, and then construct our minimalist landscape' s today and tomorrow.