HALWELL ESTATE--TURTLE CREEK TEXAS
The site was around 11 acres of
sloping mixed hardwood terrain on Turtle Creek near Dallas Texas. The client
expressed a desire for
a formal or classical estate atmosphere with provisions for a sculpture garden
and lawn areas for croquet, archery, putting greens and a bocce court.
The plan below sites a 3 story brick residence with entry drive, guest parking
and extensive planting bed areas adjacent to the structure. A large lawn
area was made possible by careful regrading of the lower area near the creek
with had access via a cascading stairway design shown below
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The Zeus terrace
garden I created was a solution based on classical landscape design that
maximizes perspective manipulation (false perspective). One can, by
sensitive use of distorted perspective , significantly increase one's sense of
distance and how far objects actually are in the landscape. The 6' floodlit,
marble Zeus
sculpture at the end of my sloping 200' axis will actually appear farther
away as a result of a play of converging and diverging major mass lines in the
artificially
created landscape setting
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Zeus terrace garden
perspective
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The cascading stairway
was another popular feature of 18th century beaux arts design in European estate
development. My solution for Halwell was modeled
after one of the many applications of this historic stair design technique. Many
designers have evolved their own renditions of classical work and in this case
my reference was Fletcher Steele. Steele was a early 20th century
landscape architect who's style included recreations of many classic
designs including stairway
layout. my stairway is similar in some respects but quite different re step
configuration, paving material, etc. like much of classical work the stairway
concept is
simplicity itself. because stairways are on an incline they have a high degree
of visibility in the landscape and by concealing much of the stairway and
focusing on
a central axis of sculpture or water walls, one can give this inclined
element a lot more emphasis than if the entire stairway was exposed.
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cad-pdf details of stairs and terrace garden
terrace garden plan-section
1-10
The site slopes up to the left from
turtle creek . I took the picture during a site investigation right after a
summer rainstorm. Mixed native hardwoods
include shumard oak, american elm, hickory and dogwood
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kent mccoy landscape architect---po. box 976--eastpoint fl. 32328
ph/fax--850 927 4897--email
kentmccoy40@gmail.com