Formal, minimalist, contemporary and powerful, the gardens and landscapes he has been making have an instantly recognisable stamp.
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Born in Spain in 1957, Fernando Caruncho is well known for his minimalist style that relates to the natural and the built enviornment. Caruncho has produced some of the most serene and evocative landscapes to emerge from Spain.
“I discovered the garden while I was studying philosophy at the University of Madrid.”
Caruncho studied philosophy at the "Autónoma University" of Madrid. Through his studies, he discovered the world of Gardens and, starting in 1978, he combined his studies of philosophy with gardening and landscape design. He received a degree in landscape design in 1979.
While in school, Caruncho was enthralled to discover that the ancient Greeks used gardens as the places to study philosophy and the nature of the world, a meeting point between the physical and spiritual. “Because of this I have changed,” says Caruncho, “my desire to become a philosopher became a desire to become a gardener". He recognized that the key to antiquity lies in the garden and he now practices philosophy through his intense involvement in the garden, with his design style focusing on providing every opportunity for meditation and reflection.
But Caruncho does not term himself a designer, still less a landscape architect. 'I am a gardener. That is the name that has been handed down from the past. Even “Capability” Brown called himself a gardener. If you change a name, you lose the connection with history, and forget you are thinking timeless thoughts and simply expressing them in a new way for a different historical period. To be original you have to know your origins.’
“I am a geometrician,” says Caruncho, “I inherit the culture of the Babylonians, the Egyptians and the Persians."
'I need absolute calm when I look at a garden,’ he said. 'When the idea comes, I sketch quickly, but before that comes days of observation and gently mulling things over in my head. Understanding a garden or a landscape is like getting to know a person. It is slow, you need time to draw out the personality.’
There are three factors that make up Fernando Caruncho’s garden design style: geometry, water, and light. While he skillfully molds and manipulates all three in order to create his philosophical garden spaces, his obsession is the control of light. In Western cultures, light is often viewed as a source of wisdom; therefore it is an element of meditation in Caruncho’s gardens. There are also three elements, vegetation, mineral, and water, that he uses in his quest to manipulate light. Each element has unique properties that create its effect on the factor of light. Water is the trigger and source of light fluctuation, spawning irreproducible patterns of light across a space. The mineral element (stone, brick, or concrete) bluntly stops and catches light and the patterns created by the water. And finally, plants absorb and diffuse the light.
“To me,” describes Caruncho, “the central idea is to control the light.”
The simplicity of the space is intentional: it is meant to be a volume for capturing light. Light is a principal element for Caruncho, from its effects on leaf colour and texture to its play across walls and water. His starting point, even when designing a small urban garden, he says, is the sky, and how vertical features might lift you up to it as if on 'a magic carpet ride’. The ochre tints of the iron oxide wash on the walls of his house themselves create a handsome patina, warmly contrasting with the shadowy evergreen planting all around, and as we walked through the copper-clad front door, an iron grille gave a glimpse of the main courtyard’s centrepiece: a large, reflective expanse of water in the form of a natural swimming-pool. In this space, the light has a physicality that is palpable.
The signature garden elements that reappear in Caruncho’s gardens—the gridded orchards, the sensuous clipped hedges, the reflective expanses of water that mirror the sky—are examples of the extraordinary lyrical gestures that are at the heart of Caruncho’s gardens. It is that lyricism that elevates his work; the shapes are nothing new, though no contemporary designer has executed them better or made them matter more. Their familiar romance is part of their power: the fields of golden wheat hold the Catalan sky; the orchards of olives and grapes recall the landscapes of Greece and Rome; the sculpted, sinuous hedges echo the spirit of Kyoto’s great gardens. We know these forms: these shapes are fragments of the Ur-landscapes of our ancestors, the building blocks of ancient civilizations.
What is new is the renewed meaning Caruncho has brought to his gardens. While a thousand contemporary designers recycle formal garden styles for suburban landscapes—little theme parks for clients with expendable incomes—only Caruncho reconnects modern man with the meaning of these ancient forms. For Caruncho, using traditional garden forms is not about repackaging a style that conveys “taste” or wealth; instead, it is a way we can connect to the universal. “Garden and gardener,” writes Caruncho, “ these are words that belong to a source language and have been asleep, silenced by terror and the uncivil past century, but that today flourish and offer us comfort.”
"The garden is the only living art work that men can do and in which the walker enters an experience that transforms him by returning to his own origins"
Projects
Nordberg, New
Jersey. USA.
Amastuola, Puglia.
Italy.
Flynn Garden,
Florida. USA.
Spanish
Embassy in Tokyo. Japan.
Deusto
University, Bilbao. Spain.
La
Faisanderie, Biarritz. France.
Garden at Valldemossa,
Mallorca. Spain.
Mas de les Voltes, Catalan Ampurdá. Spain. 1997
Project at
Botanical Garden, Madrid. Spain.
Caruncho
Garden. Madrid. 1989.
Mas Floris. 1986. Masos de Pals, Madrid
Marroquin. 1987. Ollauri, La Rioja
Pazo Pegullal. Salceda de Caselas, Vigo.
S’agaro. Costa Brava, Catalonia. 1989.
PGR Al Maaden. Marrakech. Morocco.
La Casa del Agua. Porto Heli. Greece.
Soto de Mozanaque Garden. Madrid.
Spain.
Olive grove
and vineyard. Montalcino. Italy.
L'Amastuola. Puglia. Italia.
Sheibani
Garden. Costwolds. England.
Staples
Stewart Garden. Kohimarama Beach. New Zealand.
Palatchi
Garden. Menorca Island. Spain.
Baldesberger
Garden. Lugano. Switzerland.
Publications
Paradise
Transformed. Ed. The Monacelli Press. 1997
Gärten des
Orients. Paradiese auf Erden. Ed. Dumont. 1999
Mirrors of
Paradise. Ed. The Monacelli Press. 2000
The Story of
Gardening. Ed. DK. 2002
Gardens by
the Sea. Ed. Thames & Hudson.
2002
Jardins de la méditerranée. Ed. Blume.
2002
Mediterrane
gärten. Ed. Dumont Monte. 2003
Jardines Secretos de España. Ed. Blume. 2005
The New
Garden Paradise. Ed. Thames & Hudson. 2005
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Caruncho
http://www.fernhilllandscapes.com/blog/2012/6/16/influential-designers-fernando-caruncho.html
