building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

hazy bubble or a cloud, which has descended on the Southern landscape. The
horizontal progression of the project, less evident at first sight but highlighted by
both the balustrade of the first‐storey gallery and by the enormous trabeation to
close the giant order of façades, creates a strong spatial tension, notwithstanding
the independent, autonomous shapes used [Figure 26].
The significance of the landscape at Oak Alley House is well commented by Henry
Plummer:
While the house emanates in all directions through a permeable
structure, the main axis of the site has been directionally shaped into an
explosive shaft of energy. Tracing out the radius of a tight curve in the
Mississippi, which has made an arc around the front of the property, this
line runs first from the river under a dramatic tunnel of oak trees, then
right through the main doors and hallway of the house, as well as the
upper veranda's balcony on the river world, out rear doors and through
a less insistent alley of trees, and then onward for over three miles along
a farm road, under open skies and past neatly arrayed plots of sugar
cane at either side, to finally dissipate in an impassable Louisiana
swamp. 47
On top of the roof at treetop height is a terrace, acting as a belvedere and as an
ideal watchtower, from which to contemplate nature and the surrounding fields.
Oak Alley is the symbol of an aristocratic isolation from the city, the allegory of a
rich landowning class, which was spending its final days with the impassive elegance
of those who know they are moving towards an inexorable decline.
The significance of this large scale landscape in the vastness of the Mississippi Valley
and of the lands of the Deep South highlights the complex intertwining of the
impulses of society, technology and politics of a specific, historical period.
Other recognizable elements of the landscape were the peculiar fencing, called
warm‐fences or snake‐fences [Figure 42‐44]. Built with wooden poles or boards,
they edged the perimeter of the properties or the animal pens with their typical
zigzag pattern. Particularly complex to make and requiring continual maintenance
over the years, these fences were constructed by taking advantage of the grooves
and the superimposition of the poles to balance them in an only apparently
unstable way. Running for thousands of kilometres, they were nearly completely
47 Ibid. p. 48
30