James C. Rose - Designs and Influences

Designs and Influences

One of Rose’s first major works while employed at Tuttle, Seelye, Place and Raymond was to design a staging area to house 30,000 men at Camp Keller in New Jersey. After this experience, Rose turned his focus to working on private gardens that created an intimate relationship between human beings, nature, and architecture. His designs also created a fusion of indoor and outdoor space. Most of Rose’s later works were greatly influenced by the Japanese garden style; he even adopted the religion of Zen Buddhism. The time Rose spent in Okinawa during World War II and his many subsequent visits to Japan, nurtured his fondness for Japanese gardens. Except for his home in Ridgewood not much of Rose’s later works were documented because of his spontaneous design method. His designs were always open to improvisations; they were never finished and continuously transforming form one stage to another. His designs, like his home in Ridgewood, were works in progress. Rose applied a common theory to his designs and described them as “neither landscape nor architecture, but both; neither indoors, nor outdoors, but both.” Ridgewood is Rose's most documented design and is a clear example of his theories and how he applied them to his designs.