608 South Kent Street U of Virginia Landscape Architecture Project

608 South Kent Street UVa Landscape Architecture Project

University of Virginia, School of Architecture
Department of Landscape Architecture
LA 702 Design IV
Instructor: Amy Ransom Arnold
Spring 2002: second half of the semester, MWF 2 p.m. - 6 p.m.

Patsy Cline: Revisited

The second semester class of graduate students in landscape architecture spent the last half of their spring semester, 2002, looking at the proposed Patsy Cline Museum site at 608 South Kent Street in Winchester, VA. The students were asked to look at the site in the context of its use as a museum, proximity to the proposed "Green Circle" plan and the parking site for the Discovery Museum at the Moose Lodge. They were also asked to explore the potential for including a Patsy Cline interpretive garden on site. The student response to the project was widely varied and strong, illustrating the potential for 608 South Kent Street to not only express the years that Patsy Cline spent in Winchester, but to play an important role in connecting the site to the context of the neighboring community.

The students began by researching Patsy's life, her music, the history of Winchester and the South Kent Street neighborhood. With the help of "Celebrating Patsy Cline, Inc.", the students made a visit to the site, dividing into teams to document the driving tour, neighborhood character, and the details of the house and yard at 608 South Kent Street.

During the process of developing the project, three basic approaches to the site emerged in the students work. These three approaches existed to a greater or lesser degree in each of the students work, providing a richness in project form and content that only begins to illuminate the potential of the Patsy Cline Museum site at 608 South Kent Street.

The Yard and House as Artifacts

Many of the students grappled with the demands of keeping the house and yard as they are, while providing the necessary infrastructure to support the use of the house as a museum. Seeing the house and yard as cultural artifacts meant balancing the existing physical form of the yard and house with accommodating the needs of visitors. Limiting the nature and number of interventions into the site, making those interventions meaningful, while simultaneously addressing the demands of a heavily visited site was the challenge.

Several students succeeded in meeting the challenge of heavy visitor use while heightening awareness of the inherent character of this special place. A path, sunken into the ground just enough to separate the visitor from the site was one of the more successful proposals.

Other gestures, such as a clothes line of cloth scrims placed in the yard, and a new stair installed parallel to the old limestone stair, allowing the visitor to pass close to but only observe the original stair were included in the projects. This attitude of using minimal interventions to heighten the inherent character of the place balances needs of the visitor with making as little disturbance as possible to the house and yard.

The Site as a Connection to Neighborhood and to History

The opportunity for the visitor to learn about the cultural, physical, and historic context of the site was present in the projects. The inclusion of elements expressing planted culture, interpretations of vernacular approaches to building, and strengthening the physical connections of the site to its context were integral in the projects. These projects included an apple orchard of disappearing cultivars, metal bridges spanning Town Run, and proposals for converting lots and easements along South Kent Street to neighborhood path connections to the "Green Circle". One student's project deliberately featured the sound and movement of the passing train and the sound of moving water in "Town Run" as a way to tie visitor experience to the larger context of the site.

The Interpretation of the Early Life of Patsy Cline

One of the most difficult tasks the students faced was the interpreting and expressing the life of Patsy cline on the site. The students included ways to use color, form and additional program to begin to express the preferences, life struggles and generous spirit of Patsy Cline. Integrating plants with red fall color, installing red glass panels to mark the site and driving tour, planting a long red rose hedge, and placing small, carefully chosen red surfaces throughout the project were included in the projects as ways to feature Patsy's favorite color.

The use of physical thresholds in the visitor travel sequence, marking the contrast of one character of space with another was used to represent over coming the cultural and emotional barriers present in her life. Her generous spirit was represented most powerfully in the proposal from a student suggesting the house be used, not as a museum, but as an artist in residence program for young emerging musicians. The house would provide a place for the artist to write music, give informal performances and interact directly with neighbors. Part of the proposal included establishing a music production label featuring performances by the artists in residence with the proceeds providing supporting fund for the house site and programs.

The potential of the Patsy Cline site at 608 South Kent Street has only begun to be explored in these students work. The synthesis of local culture, history and interpretation present in each of the students work, provides a glimpse into the richness possible in form and content that could be the Patsy Cline Museum site. The work illustrates that the citizens of Winchester have a unique and wonderful opportunity to create a place where the community meets, celebrates and shares with neighbors, the region and with music history through the memory and continuing generous spirit of Patsy Cline.

Memory, Interpretation and Built Form: The Making of Meaning - A Driving Tour, Museum and Interpretative Garden

"...meanings are the product of a complex social interaction among image, viewers, and context. Dominant meanings - the meanings that tend to predominate within a given culture - emerge out of this complex social interaction." Practices of Looking: an Introduction to Visual Culture, Sturken and Cartwright

"Music isn't a commodity to be purchased but a community sound that defines values and regional identity." 300 Years of Virginia Music, 64 magazine, January - February 2001

Vernacular form is expressed in built detail through material choice, material use and local approaches to structuring space, often in response to conditions of geography, topography, climactic conditions and local availability of materials. In addition, regional identity can also be understood as a collection of visual and spatial symbols, encoding a place in time, cultural and social identity, class, race, gender, age, religious and political beliefs.

In the context of this project we will explore and identify the existing sets of physical and cultural clues that currently represent the town of Winchester and its relationship with the memory of native daughter, Patsy Cline. This collective memory of Patsy is a culturally negotiated common ground, were the community meets, celebrates and shares with the region and with music history.

In the process of our exploration we will look not only at how we might construct and define a place that interprets or restates these cultural and built clues, but we will work to define how we ultimately reflect and contribute to cultural conversations through built form. As sense of place, defined as regional identity, becomes increasingly precious, it's preservation falls to disciplines that have the potential to determine how we, as a collective culture, will assign meaning and value to our rich and wonderfully quirky range of regional variations.

Resources: Winchester

Required Reading:

1) Winchester Virginia: Streets, Churches, Schools, by Garland R. Quarles (copy in studio)

2) "The Green Circle: Phase One, Old Town Winchester and Town Run Linear Park, Conceptual Master Plan", November 2001,
prepared by EcoLogic Design, Stephenson, Virginia (copy in studio)

3) Old Southern Apples, by Creighton Lee Calhoun, Jr. (provided excerpts)

4) Biggle Orchard Book, by Jacob Biggle, 1906 (provided excerpts)

5) Irrigation for the Farm Garden and Orchard, by Henry Stewart, 1902 (provided excerpts)

6) "The Apple Industry and Winchester" speech, Kiwanis Club Winchester, Virginia, November 27, 1974, C. Purcell McCue, Jr. (copy in studio)

7) "The Virginia Apple Industry", compiled by John F. Watson, updated by C. Purcell McCue, Jr. (copy in studio)

8) Geology and Virginia, by Richard Dietrich (copy in studio)

Resources: Patsy Cline

Required Reading:

1) Singing Girl from the Shenandoah Valley, by Stuart E. Brown and Lorraine F. Meyers, 1996 (copy in studio)

2) The Patsy Cline Collection, boxed set booklet, MCA Records (copy in studio)

3) Patsy: The Life and Times of Patsy Cline, by Margaret Jones, 1994: Forward and Introduction (copy in the studio)

4) 64 magazine, January/February 2001, 300 Years of Virginia Music, (copy in studio)