The Ipswich Stations: a landscape way of the cross
Date
2017-07-09
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
A translation of the Jerusalem pilgrimage site of the
Via Dolorosa (the path followed by Christ over the
course of his Passion), the Stations of the Cross is
a vitally important practice, a frequent subject of
art and design, and a prevailing landscape type
of the Roman Catholic Church. While individual
sets of Stations have been written about from the
perspective of art and architectural history, virtually
no critical attention has been paid to the subject
from a landscape architecture perspective. This
lacuna is at odds with the nature of the Stations as
a religious rite: a translation of the Via Dolorosa from
one place to another, the Stations are a discrete
landscape phenomenon—a consistent configuration
of elements in space intended to replicate a specific
landscape experience. Historically, the fundamental
structure of this sacred landscape has been entirely
linear: a series of fourteen focal points separated
by paths. The aesthetic interpretation of those
points constitutes the chief stylistic innovation of
the Stations over the centuries, but the underlying
conception of space has not been recognized. The
advent of Modernism in landscape architecture
radically upended designers’ understanding of
landscape space, while modernist revolutions in
sacred art, architecture, and American Catholicism
similarly reframed expectations demanded of
designed sacred spaces. After outlining a set of
principals defining a modernist conception of the
Stations of the Cross, this project uses a researchthrough-
designing process to create a proposal for
a Stations of the Cross garden at the Notre Dame
Spirituality Center in Ipswich, MA. The end products,
a site-scaled design and a thorough documentation
of the design process, speak to the potential of
research-through-designing strategies as a means
of translating abstract interdisciplinary concepts into
the on-the-ground language of landscape.
Description
96 pages. Examining committee chair: Mark Eischeid