Mosstika: As It Started, Budapest, 2004

Nature calls to us.  All the more so in urban settings.  This is evident in the long history of elaborate parks and gardens in major cities, dating back to Frederick Law Olmstead,  André Le Nôtre and beyond.  Olmstead’s designs were meant to emulate the Savana landscape that strikes so strong a chord in people around the world, whereas Le Nôtre helped define that famously manipulated symmetry of the classic French garden.

Both respond to what we now refer to as biophilia, the magnetic draw that nature has on each of us.  The question we have to ask ourselves is which one is “Art”.  Not an easy task, to be sure. Perhaps the solution is to say “both” and leave it at that. Continue reading →