Early Life and influences
The American landscape architect and designer, Lawrence Halprin, is one of the most important landscape architects in the modern era. Born on July 1st, 1916, Halprin lived until he was 93 years old and died on October 25, 2009. He grew up in Brooklyn, NY, although spent many years traveling around the world and eventually settled in San Francisco, CA. Halprin’s studies began at Cornell University where he studied plant science. At this school he had dreams of one day being a professional basketball player. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree and moved on to his masters at the University of Wisconsin studying horticultural science (Source 5). It was in Wisconsin where not only did he find his wife, but he found his love for landscape design. He specifically enjoyed his visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s home estate, the Taliesin, located in Jones Valley, Wisconsin. Halprin’s wife, Anna Schuman, played a large role in his design process. She influenced him with her Avant-Garde dance movements and choreography to see how people move through open space. These experiments are described in his book RSVP Cycles and are a great influence for design and creativity (Source 1).
Lawrence Halprin further continued studies for his new passion in the landscape architecture program at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1942. He studied with Christopher Tunnard and was heavily influenced by his approach to landscape architecture. Other inspirations to Halprin included professors Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer and the Hungarian artist and Bauhaus educator Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Like many students, Halprin took a hiatus from his studies and enlisted in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He was stationed in the Pacific on the destroyer USS Morris until it was later struck by a kamikaze attack. After he was discharged from the military he returned to San Francisco and he joined Thomas Church’s landscape architecture firm where he worked for four years (Source 5). During this time he collaborated with architect George Rockrise on the well-known Dewey Donnell garden in Sonoma, California. At this firm, Lawrence learned about transforming gardens into spaces that unify people, allowing them to come together to a common place.
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Lawrence Halprin and AssociatesLawrence Halprin opened his own firm in 1949 called Lawrence Halprin Associates located in San Francisco. His firm started with only a few people but after a few years it grew to 60 employees and became very successful. The beginning years his firm worked mostly on small scale, residential suburban garden projects. This continued for two years until he worked on the master planning for the Seattle World Fair, gaining him a lot of publicity. After 1962 Halprin’s firm began to work on large scale urban space design which is what he is mostly known for. He worked on several campus master plans in addition to suburban shopping centers and much more. Other projects he designed and built were Ghirardelli Square (1972- 1968) and Embarcadero Plaza (1962- 1972) in San Francisco; Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis (1962-1967); Park Central Square, Springfield, Missouri (1969-70); four of Portland’s public spaces: Lovejoy Plaza, Pettigrove Park, Auditorium Forecourt, and the Transit Mall (1965-1978); and Freeway Park, Seattle (1970-1974). Halprin’s individual philosophy focuses on the movement of natural elements through a natural landscape. He did his best not to recreate natural landscapes but to combine aspects of man and nature into one.
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Projects
LoveJoy Fountain ParkA well-known project of Halprin’s is the LoveJoy Fountain Park in Portland, Oregon. This is one of the first projects under Lawrence’s “Urban Renewal Area” design; to take urban spaces and transform them into plazas that can hold events and activities throughout the space (Source 3). This park, that is seen from nearby buildings has “stepped terraces of board-formed concrete planes, recalls the barren High Sierra landscape that Halprin found inspirational. Vegetation is kept at the park’s perimeter, while within the plaza active fountains mimic the natural waterfalls and rushing streams of the nearby Cascade Range, culminating in quiet pools that invite visitors not just to look, but also to participate in the water feature itself” (Source 4). Once again Lawrence Halprin focuses on the sound of water as a natural element to enhance the experience of one’s visit to this park.
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Nicollet MallAnother major project of Lawrence Halprin’s was the Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis. In the early 1960’s, the city had already declared its city-wide redevelopment program. A major part of this required turning the mall into not only an economical figure but social as well. Since Halprin was not only an urban designer but a socially progressive thinker, he was hired in 1962 to bring back life to the pedestrian mall. He combatted what he called “urban undesirables” such as traffic, noise, over-crowding and racial tension by cleaning up the streets and focusing on the people and how they utilized the mall and surrounding areas. He used a lot of the studies of his wife’s choreography-called motation- in his design. Different sections of the mall were used to create a different effect. Kiosks, bus shelters, light fixtures, planters and benches were all used to stimulate people’s visual, auditory, olfactory and tactile senses (Source 2).
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial
Lastly, one of Lawrence Halprin’s greatest achievements in Landscape Architecture was his design of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, which took twenty-three years to complete. Located in Washington D.C., the 8 acre design cost $50 million to create, making it the most expensive memorial in history. His design was a sequence of four galleries, or garden rooms, to create a narrative story line of the U.S. during the four terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency. The process of this design included extensive sketching, workshops, models, mock-ups, sampling, and much more. The memorial’s rooms and water features, built primarily of red South Dakota granite, use stone to express the fracture and upheaval of the times. The cascading water is a “metaphorical component of the palette, with the volume and complexity escalating as the narrative progresses” (Source 5). Incorporated into the design are also 10 bronze sculptures and 21 carved inscriptions, quotations from FDR’s speeches and fireside chats. It is the nation’s first wheelchair and handicapped accessible memorial including ramps and braille writing (Source 5). This project was stated as Halprin’s favorite project in the New York Times and is mine as well. I thoroughly enjoyed how this design allowed people to move through the memorial as they pleased and chose what they could learn and see. Halprin studies the choreography of movement through this space carefully to see how visitors will travel through the design. It is amazing how he uses the natural element of water to trigger different emotions through the gradual crescendo of the sound of crashing waves.
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My Takeaway
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed researching Lawrence Halprin and all of his designs. His ideas are modern and well thought out. Every detail is important to him and it is reflected in his work. I admire that most, if not all, of his designs are meant to engage human activity in them and all are interactive. Working with natural elements such as water is impressive; it amazes me how he learns how to trigger different emotions through them. Combining these human qualities with nature is an important aspect that he fuses together in such a balanced manner.
Citations |
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figure 1. https://placesjournal.org/assets/legacy/media/images/330_halprin.jpg
figure 2. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Seattle_Freeway_Park_24.jpg
figure 3. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PvtGfYEh7wk/T96rLhliM3I/AAAAAAAAAaQ/lnuOUYfBjkI/s1600/keller+fntn.tiff
figure 4. https://publicuseofprivatespace.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/ft5k4006v5_00121.gif
figure 5. https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4123/4861476850_2ee087444a_b.jpg
figure 6. http://www.columbia.edu/itc/ architecture/wright/6769_2002 /images/week9/ix14.jpg
figure 7. http://www.pvnworks.com/blog/nicollet_mall_part_4_the_original_nicollet_mall_design/4text.jpg
figure 8. http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/107017670.jpg
figure 9. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/10/28/arts/28halprin_CA0/articleLarge.jpg
figure 10. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Franklin_Roosevelt_Memorial_waterfall.jpg
figure 11. http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/1ds2-5/fdr-memorial.jpg
figure 12. http://www.landscapeonline.com/research/lasn/2010/09/img/I&A/I&A-6.jpg
figure 13. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/images/fdr/halprin.jpg
figure 2. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Seattle_Freeway_Park_24.jpg
figure 3. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PvtGfYEh7wk/T96rLhliM3I/AAAAAAAAAaQ/lnuOUYfBjkI/s1600/keller+fntn.tiff
figure 4. https://publicuseofprivatespace.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/ft5k4006v5_00121.gif
figure 5. https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4123/4861476850_2ee087444a_b.jpg
figure 6. http://www.columbia.edu/itc/ architecture/wright/6769_2002 /images/week9/ix14.jpg
figure 7. http://www.pvnworks.com/blog/nicollet_mall_part_4_the_original_nicollet_mall_design/4text.jpg
figure 8. http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/107017670.jpg
figure 9. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/10/28/arts/28halprin_CA0/articleLarge.jpg
figure 10. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Franklin_Roosevelt_Memorial_waterfall.jpg
figure 11. http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/1ds2-5/fdr-memorial.jpg
figure 12. http://www.landscapeonline.com/research/lasn/2010/09/img/I&A/I&A-6.jpg
figure 13. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/images/fdr/halprin.jpg