Lawrence Halprin, Related Landscapes
Completed in 1987 with architects Pei Cobb Freed Partners and developer Robert Maguire, this grand stairway and water garden was designed by Halprin to link downtown Los Angeles to the newly developed Bunker Hill section of the city. Postmodern in style and reminiscent of Rome’s Spanish Steps, the steps are choreographed as an urban experience similar to a city street, complete with terraced landings, retail shops, and outdoor cafes with a range of activities for relaxing, dining, or shopping. The terraces can be accessed by stairs or escalator.
Designed by Lawrence Halprin & Associates in the mid 1970s to revitalize the downtown community, the Charlottesville Mall is significant not only for its subtle and innovative design solutions, but also for its incorporation of community workshops with all of the city’s citizens into the design process. Opening in 1976, the project is located along the city’s historic Main Street and just two blocks from its 1780s Courthouse square. This eight block long by 60-foot wide street has become Charlottesville’s public living room.
Landscape architect Thomas Church, with Lawrence Halprin and architect George Rockrise, designed the Donnell Garden in Sonoma for the family of Dewey and Jean Donnell; today the garden is a Modernist icon and one of the best preserved examples of its time. The family chose as a location a favorite place on their cattle ranch for picnicking, a hillside overlooking the northern extensions of San Francisco Bay. Completed in 1948, the garden was soon famous for its unusual, abstracted forms.
In 1974 Lawrence Halprin was selected by the FDR Memorial Commission to design the 7.5 acre site adjacent to the Cherry Tree Walk on the western edge of the Tidal Basin. Halprin created a new sort of memorial, a sequence of four galleries or garden rooms, crafted in a narrative sequence to tell the story of the U.S. during the four terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency. 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.
Executed by Lawrence Halprin & Associates under the design direction of Angela Danadjieva, the first phase of this 5.5-acre park opened in 1976 and remains one of the most compelling treatises on post-War landscape architecture.
A product of urban renewal, this massive land clearing project was realized with $12 million in federal funds targeted for the South Auditorium District.
Named for Asa Lawrence Lovejoy, a Portland pioneer, this one-acre plaza serves as a counterpoint to the quiet Pettygrove Park, just 300 yards away. It was conceived in the 1960s by Lawrence Halprin + Associates, Satoru Nishita, partner-in-charge, as part of the Portland Open Space Sequence. Often viewed from nearby buildings, the stepped terraces of board-formed concrete planes recall the barren High Sierra landscape that Halprin found inspirational.
In 1969, the Downtown Springfield Association set out to find a design firm to improve a barren, paved vehicular area that had recently been given park status as a memorial to the Dorsey Heer family. The square is different from traditional squares: the streets enter it at the center of each side of the square rather than from its corners. The Association hired Lawrence Halprin and Associates, and this became the firm’s second Missouri project, following their Kansas City Civic Center Master Plan.
Named for Francis W. Pettygrove, one of the early owners and developers of the Portland “townsite,” Pettygrove Park is part of the Portland Open Space Sequence, designed by Lawrence Halprin + Associates, Satoru Nishita, partner-in-charge, in the 1960s. The most park-like space in the sequence, the landscape is composed of earth mounds, expanses of lawn, trees, native stone walls and steps, simple asphalt walks, wooden benches, and original globe lighting.
In the 1960s, Portland, as many other American cities, was engaged in recreating and energizing the public realm with new parks, office buildings, shops and housing. This eight-block sequence of parks and plazas was designed to attract middle-class residents to the central city. It proved to be one of the most successful redevelopment projects of that era.
A residential community located on the coast of California about 100 miles north of San Francisco was developed by Oceanic Properties, a subsidiary of the Hawaiian development company Castle and Cook, between 1962-1965, when they purchased 4000 acres of coastal timber and grazing land. They engaged San Francisco landscape architect, Lawrence Halprin, to develop a master plan of the site. Halprin’s Sea Ranch plan marks a shift away from the conventional California residential development.