【正文】 g mountains. The red slabs are the ruined roots of those ancient mountain peaks, remnants of rock layers that once arched high over the Rockies we know today. As the eye follows the angle of their thrust and pletes that arc, one is transported millions of years into the past. This is the context of Denver, a context in space and time created by the enduring rhythm of nature39。s processes and recorded in patterns in the land. The amphitheater affords not only a view of the city, but also a prospect for reflecting upon time, change, and the place of man and city in nature. When we neglect natural processes in city design, we not only risk the intensification of natural hazards and the degradation of natural resources, but also forfeit a sense of connection to a larger whole beyond ourselves. In contrast, places such as Red Rocks Amphitheater provoke a vivid experience of natural processes that permits us to extend our imagination beyond the limits of human memory into the reaches of geological and astronomical time and to traverse space from the microscopic to the cosmic. However permanent rock may seem, it is ultimately worn smooth by water and reduced finally to dust. The power of a raindrop, multiplied by the trillions over thousands into plains. The pattern of lines etched by the water in the sand of a beach echos the pattern engraved on the earth by rivers over time. These are the patterns that connect. They connect us to scales of space and time beyond our grasp。 they connect our bodies and minds to the pulse of the natural world outside our skin. The branching riverbed cut by flowing water and the branching tree within which the sap rises are patterns that mirror the branching arteries and veins through which our blood courses. Patterns formed by nature39。s processes and their symmetry across scales have long been appreciated by close observers of the natural world. Recent developments in science afford new insights into the geometry of form generated by dynamic processes, be they natural or cultural, and point to new directions for design. The forms of mountain ranges, riverbanks, sand dunes, trees, and snow crystals, are poised, jelled, at a moment in time, the physical embodiment of dynamic processes. Their beauty consists of a peculiar bination of order and disorder, harmoniously arranged, and the fact that their forms are at equilibrium, at any given moment, with the processes that produced them. Such forms and the phenomenon of their symmetry across scales of time and space, have recently been described by a new geometry,fractal geometry, which one of its originators, Benoit Mandelbrot calls the geometry of nature— pimply,pocky,tortuous, and intertwined. A sensibility steeped in classical geometry perceivers these forms as too plex to descibe. However, as fractals, such patterns can be described with simplicity, the result of repetitive processes, such as bifurcation and development. The variety of forms that stem from the same process os the result of response to differing conditions of context, of to the interaction with other processes. Strange and wonderful forms, mirroring those of nature, have been created by repeating a single puter program. Early in the process, the resulting form, as seen on the puter screen appears chaotic。 gradually an order unfolds. Such experiments are the subject of a new field,coined Chaos by its pioneers, who feel that they are defining a new paradigm. Their subjects are diverse, their objective is to identify the underlying order in seemingly random fluctuations. Many of those working in field have expressed their aesthetic attraction to the mathematics of fractal geometry in contrast to what they term the Euclidean sensibility. This is a geometry foreign to that of Euclid, with its lines and planes, circles and spheres, triangles and cones. Euclidean geometry is an abstraction of reality。 its beauty lies in smooth, clean, ideal shapes. It is a geometry based on the belief that rest, not motion, is the natural state。 it describes threedimensional space but neglects time. That does not mean that we should avoid using Euclidean geometry in the design of landscapes. Indeed, such use may heighten our perception of the natural forms of rivers and trees and the processes that produce them, especially when it is employed as a visual counterpoint that both expresses and contrasts with those forms. In Dinan, France, a monumental are of poplars takes its inspiration from the sweeping out the irregularities of the river bank. The are represents the idea of that sweep. Through the abstraction and echo of the horizontal form in the vertical dimension, in what is clearly a line inscribed by humans on the landscape, the experience of the river39。s meander is intensified. Though set in a tight,evenlyspaced row along the banks of the river, the individual trees assert their own quirky growth, which is seen more clearly in contrast to the regularity of their placement. The interplay of different processes is also a subject of current research on chaos. Computer drawings illustrate the patterns that result when several rhythms, such as radio frequencies or plaary orbits, e together. Perhaps this is the contemporary version of the music of the spheres. They resemble a topographic contour map,prompting the realization that land form results from a similar interplay among multiple forces and processes, including gravity, water flow, and weather. Cultural processes also engage natural processes on the land。 the rhythms of food production and transportation, for example, interact with the flow of wind and water to mold a landscape. The patterns that result vary in response to the specific context of natural environment, culture, and the idiosyncrasies of individuals. It is nature and culture together, as interacting processes, th