Edges, objects, and boundaries: forming landscape taste in the middle-class front yard

Abstract

Scholars investigating the middle-class front yard revealed that landscape taste is a major influence of this domestic space’s character. Taste is a process by which people judge the aesthetic values of design. Membership and social status are important middle-class ideals bestowed by taste. However, the formation of middle-class taste has changed and front yards resulted in arrangements of edges, objects, and boundaries. This thesis investigates how edges, objects, and boundaries, e.g., edge of sidewalk and lawn, a flagpole, or a fence, observed in the middle-class front yard reflect a particular landscape taste that influences the space’s character. Its purpose is to gain knowledge about what qualities are important to homeowners, how they change through time, and what affects the construction of taste in the residential landscape.

Recent research in the fields of cultural geography and landscape architecture found differences between how middle-class homeowners and professional designers define the front yard. These differences contribute to a general theory establishing a foundation for this study; the middle-class front yard has acquired a common place role in the American suburb. It was hypothesized that edges, objects, and boundaries indicate changes in landscape taste and reflect the front yards’ character. Forty middle-class front yards in Glen Cove, New York were randomly selected as study sites. Data collection consisted of the multiple layer drawings of the edges, objects, and boundaries revealed to the researcher through on-site observation and photographs. Drawing is regarded as a process of seeing; a process of communicating ideas and intention to reveal underlying changes in landscape taste.

Three levels of results--neighborhood characterizations, individual changes of landscape taste, and group changes in landscape taste were revealed. Two themes, spatial definition reflects a reduction from detailed mature spaces to simple younger organizations and the location and function of edges, objects, and boundaries associated with the automobile exhibit noticeable change in younger front yards compared to older front yards were revealed.