The evolution of the picturesque - Park to Site

A while back I was looking at Smithson, he was fascinated by pictures of Central Park pre-construction, the rawness of the land that would subsequently become the Olmsted vision of the picturesque.

Smithson was interested in challenging the prevalent conception of Central Park as an outdated 19th-century Picturesque aesthetic in landscape architecture that had a static relationship within the continuously evolving urban fabric of New York.

Smithson was interested in Central Park as a landscape which by the 1970s had weathered and grown as Olmsted’s creation, but was layered with new evidence of human intervention. 

While Smithson did not find “beauty” in the evidence of abuse and neglect, he did see the state of things as demonstrative of the continually transforming relationships between man and landscape. In his proposal to make process art out of the dredging of The Pond, Smithson sought to insert himself into the dynamic evolution of the park

Understanding that the urban landscape of NY was blending into the park is interesting when looking back at Parc de la Villette.  Smithson, I think,  was basically saying that the pastoral was outmoded, but this was the natural process, the park returning to the earth. Entropy in action.  Therefore we can see Tschumi's Parc de la Villette as the starting point for a new entropic experience, that will ultimate be subject to reprogramming and degradation.  What I find interesting is that both Smithson and Tschumi talk about the redefinition of the concept of 'park', through forces that are out of the designers control - natural and social forces respectively.

I keep going back to these Smithson quotes:

"A park carries the values of the final, the absolute, the sacred... finished landscape for finished art"

 "Nature does not proceed in a straight line, it is rather a sprawling development."

That is what interests me about my site.. it's raw coastal nature, mirrored against the urban grid beyond. A merging of natural and social processes is required. I need to develop a new way of seeing the site, and program it in alignment with both natural and sociological
forces.