by Max Conrad
February 2010
Dr. Robert S. Reich, founder of the LSU School of Landscape Architecture advised me to take my first sabbatical leave in 1972 and spend time in the office of Lawrence Halprin. At that time, the office had become famous nationally as the designers of the Portland Fountain and other projects such as Ghirardelli Square. It did not take much convincing for me to try to obtain an invitation to spend time in the office. My request was quickly granted and for the spring semester I had the wonderful experience not only of living in San Francisco, but in observing the work in progress in the Halprin office on a daily basis.
Mr. Halprin was very hospitable and made it possible for me to roam the office, talk with the staff and observe the work in progress. It was fascinating to see how they approached the design process. I also had access to Mr. Halprin’s complete library of “Notebooks” which was quite extensive. Randomly I chose various books to see what they contained. Most striking were the notes about his first site visits. It because apparent that Mr. Halprin had a great talent to quickly identify the important aspects that had to be addressed by the design and those qualities that were to became the basis of his design concepts.
He would then assign the project to one or more designers and give crits as they developed the designs. They were allowed to pursue the ideas until they satisfied what Mr. Halprin had in mind.
I also was surprised to observe that designs were developed in models prior to drawings. The Portland Fountain and Seattle Freeway Park are examples of this approach to design. The Portland Fountain model was carved in clay and measurements of the model were used to develop the construction drawings. When Angela Danadjieva was developing the design for the Seattle Freeway Park, I helped her by building a part of that model in an attempt to learn how she went about the design process. She explained that she imagined movement through the spaces and saw them somewhat as the camera view of a movie set. She had designed sets for the Bulgarian movie industry prior to working at the Halprin office.
For the many years after my experience in the office, I brought LSU students to visit. Mr. Halprin always welcomed the students into his studio, and had very interesting sessions with them. There was only one rule; the students had to ask questions in order to initiate the discussions.
Photo: Max Conrad (Photo courtesy Max Conrad)