Visionary Landscapes. Kendall H. Brown
of positive physical responses to Japanese gardens is born out in studies by Eijirō Fujii and his students on the psycho-physiological effects of Japanese gardens. Using electroencephalograms and infrared spectroscopy to measure brain activity as well as eye movement analysis, Fujii charted reactions to tree arrangements and pruning styles, finding responses to Japanese garden forms more calming that those in symmetrical gardens. The research of his students Seiko Gotō and Minkai Sun shows that Japanese gardens have palliative and perhaps healing effects among patients with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia by, at the very least, reducing stress.14
The positive psycho-physiological response to Japanese gardens suggests that they constitute the kind of optimal environment innately preferred by humans because they facilitate physical and mental wellbeing. Rachel and Stephen Kaplan famously posited that humans prefer open yet spatially rich places that include water, diverse plants and discrete signs of human habitation. Structurally, such places feature moderate complexity, with visual coherence at a glance, legibility if one imagines action there, and mystery—the promise that one could learn more. This last quality is best realized in compositions where the foreground is seen but “part of the landscape known to be present is nevertheless concealed.”15
The Kaplans proposed that such landscapes induce involuntary attention that is restorative. Restorative environments are predicated on the sense of “being away,” inhabiting a place where one integrates with something different from the norm. This environment must be a “whole other world,” with a scope and connectedness as well as coherence that makes even small spaces seem large conceptually. Critical is fascination, the pleasurable stimulus to reflective engagement found in dramatic things like waterfalls but more often in the soft fascination of the play of light and shadow or the texture of leaves. Last is a sense of belonging based on accord between environmental patterns and the human actions required to navigate them. In sum, restorative spaces produce the satisfaction of union with something older and greater than oneself that William James described as “the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.”16
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