Cochran was born and raised here in the northeastern part of the United States. She attended Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and graduated in 1979. After graduating, she began an internship of sorts with architect Jose Luis Sert (1). She traveled across Europe and the east coast briefly and decided she wanted to move to California. There is a massive difference in climate, plant life, and landscape in California compared to what she was used to, so she forced herself to adapt to the changes. She worked with a couple different partnerships in California for around ten years, which really opened her eyes to the new surrounding environment and landscape. She started her own Landscape Architecture firm in 1998 called Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture (ACLA) and the firm is still thriving today.
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Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture
Cochran’s firm in California consists of fifteen different people, not including herself, and they design public and commercial sites as well as residential and private sites (1). Her mission statement as well as her thinking process for her designs is as follows “The work of Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture sculpts and navigates space through a seamless integration of landscape, art and architecture. Our work draws boundaries with a controlled palette of materials, creating permeable edges that blur the line between the natural and built environment. Spare geometry applied to vibrant plant life results in sharp compositional order. This exercise in restraint heightens a sense of the elements—texture, light and movement” (1). One key factor in this statement is that she expresses the importance of integrating the landscape design with the existing architecture. All of her designs blend the existing architecture with the landscape design as if it were already there. One of her projects, the Perry Residence, exemplifies her liking of a smooth transition from the existing architecture into the landscape and it blends the two together quite nicely. It also shows how clean and organized her designs are which is quite pleasing to the eye.
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The Design Process
The design process of Andrea Cochran is quite unique, but extremely effective and it shows that in her designs. Her process consists of visiting the site and recording her initial response to it, she also takes into consideration whatever the client wants and lastly whatever makes the space functional and inviting. Next she starts to incorporate art into the process, which makes her designs so beautiful and elegant. She pays attention to the light in the space, surrounding plants, plants she may use and also materials that she may use for the design. After this she begins to actually select some of the materials that she will be using in the design, which she handpicks herself for each and every design. Materials that she’s taken an interest to include; Cor-ten steel, aluminum, gravel, stone, concrete, glass, plants and acrylic. Her favorite material to use is Cor-ten steel because she says, “ It can provide grade changes, but with the thinnest of edges, so for me it’s more like being able to draw on the land rather than having this big concrete or heavy stone wall” (2). The Children’s Garden project that she did shows her love for Cor-ten steel and how well she is at designing with it. Cochran makes frequent trips from the studio to the site and sketches the space and her impressions of it. She uses a multitude of different ways to create the drawings for her designs including; hand sketching, physical models that she makes and computer software such as AutoCAD (3). The firm also creates full-scale mockups to view the project in its entirety and enhance some of the details that you can’t see in smaller scale drawings or models (3).
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Buhl Community Park
Buhl Community Park is one of her most recent projects, which took first place in a national competition. In the 1960’s era this site was destroyed during “urban renewal” and the ACLA firm was asked to bring it back to life. Some of the important features of the project are a bioswale and native planting which gives people insight about sustainability. There is also an interactive art piece on the site, which was collaboratively designed for the site by Ned Kahn (4). It contains 64 stainless steel poles, which release fog into the air to cool the area on hot days. This piece brings in many children from the nearby Children’s Museum and makes for a very inviting and friendly space.
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The Energy Biosciences Building is another recent project of ACLA, and like Buhl Park, this project is also a park of sorts. The idea was to create a park like setting on a one-acre lot located in downtown Berkeley, California at the Energy Biosciences Building. It provides significant open space and is a phenomenal start to the city’s goal for downtown renewal (4). There is a very aesthetically pleasing system of zig zag pathways sculpted into a hill in front of the building made from Cochran’s favorite material Cor-ten steel. The steel has random holes cut into it which glow at night and are meant to represent the chemical structure of molecules used in the Energy Biosciences Building.
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1. Cochran, Andrea. Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture. Web. 14 Nov. 2015. <http://acochran.com/>.
2. "Dwell Design Leader: Andrea Cochran." YouTube. YouTube, 7 Jan. 2008. Web. 18 Nov. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3ITjdHGooA>.
3. Myers, Mary. "Andrea Cochran : Princeton Architectural Press." Andrea Cochran : Princeton Architectural Press. Web. 14 Nov. 2015. <https://www.papress.com/html/book.details.page.tpl?isbn=9781568988122>.
4. "The National Design Awards Gallery." The National Design Awards Gallery. Web. 14 Nov. 2015. <http://ndagallery.cooperhewitt.org/search?q=Andrea Cochran>.
2. "Dwell Design Leader: Andrea Cochran." YouTube. YouTube, 7 Jan. 2008. Web. 18 Nov. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3ITjdHGooA>.
3. Myers, Mary. "Andrea Cochran : Princeton Architectural Press." Andrea Cochran : Princeton Architectural Press. Web. 14 Nov. 2015. <https://www.papress.com/html/book.details.page.tpl?isbn=9781568988122>.
4. "The National Design Awards Gallery." The National Design Awards Gallery. Web. 14 Nov. 2015. <http://ndagallery.cooperhewitt.org/search?q=Andrea Cochran>.