Ambiguity in the Spatial Forms of Thomas Church's Gardens

Abstract

Ambiguity of form is defined as one of the noticeable outcomes through modernism in visual arts and architecture. The objective of this research is to clarify how Thomas D. Church (1902-1978), one of the pioneers as well as the central figures among the modernists in American landscape architecture, realized this spatiality. Firstly, his twenty-seven writings have been analyzed. As a result, it has been figured out that his way of dealing with floor edges and joints enables ambiguous readings of a space by supposing virtual extension of floors. Donnell Garden (1947) has been analyzed and interpreted based on Church's intension of designing floors. It has turned out that two types of ambiguity are recognized in the pool terrace of the garden. The result also shows that the floor designs are the factors for increasing sequential changes as well as revealing chronological processes.