By the mid-1950s, Halprin was designing small-scale subdivisions, apartment complexes, campus landscapes, and shopping centers. His practice became more multi-disciplinary, growing beyond a core group of landscape architects, architects, engineers, and planners to include ecologists, sociologists, artists, biologists, geologists, photographers, and others.

He responded to programmatic challenges with progressive yet economically viable design solutions. At San Francisco’s former Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory, for example, Halprin recycled and transformed the disused complex into a thriving hive of commercial activity, melding historic preservation with Modernist design. A coastal complex at The Sea Ranch, California, delicately incorporated residential and commercial development along ten miles of oceanfront, while limiting encroachment on the native environment. The approach garnered widespread media attention. A 1966 Sports Illustrated article called Halprin “a new breed of landscape architect, an environmental planner.”