Indeterminacy, the I Ching, and John Cage: A New Design Method for Landscape Architecture

Abstract

The creative use of indeterminacy (i.e. "chance") is an often overlooked design opportunity despite the universality of chance in art, nature, science and life. How can "chance", a seemingly capricious phenomenon be made to work for someone? One controlled use of chance is through the Chinese I Ching "chance operations" method of composer and artist John Cage (1912-1992). This thesis addresses the questions of how one might approach using this method in landscape architectural design, what would be the outcome of such an indeterminate design and whether or not it could lead to a constructed landscape. In addition, this thesis will answer the question: what is the relationship between the I Ching, John Cage and the constructed landscape, anyway? The final product of this thesis will be a new redesign of an existing plaza using Cage's techniques and a comparative evaluation among the new indeterminate concept and two preexisting designs using the original plaza program objectives as a guide against which the three designs can be judged for effectiveness.