Join Charles Birnbaum in Palm Springs, where he will deliver the lecture "Preserving Modern Landscape Architecture & Making Post War Designs Visible," which will look at how - from America’s first vest pocket park in New York City to the nation’s first Modernist roof garden in Oakland, CA - we must have a commitment to Modernist designed landscapes from the recent past.
It was during the period immediately following WWII that one great surge of collective energies – the modern movement, which redefined traditional values, beliefs, and artistic forms that evolved over centuries of the Western world - took hold in the landscape architecture and urban design professions. Unfortunately, reasoned criticism did not follow, and until recently, Modernist landscapes slipped beyond even the peripheral vision of art historians, and worse, had been neglected or razed. To date, preservationists, landscape architects, historians, and the general public have rarely come together to protect this often “invisible” collection of public and private places that collectively represent a significant chapter in our nation’s evolution.
Examples will draw heavily on Southern California projects and in particular the work of Lawrence Halprin, Garrett Eckbo, and Ruth Shellhorn among others.
For more information and to buy tickets ($15), please visit: http://www.modernismweek.com/event/details/249271/
