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“Toward creating, through intelligent planning and design improved living and working conditions for every resident of the Bay Area”

- Telesis, an independent organization of city and country planners, architects and designers in the San Francisco Bay Area, formed in 1938

The third in a series of national symposia will place a critical spotlight on a revolutionary era of practice at the perfect venue: the University of California at Berkeley. It was this campus that served as a fertile laboratory for many of the designers that will be investigated – it is here that they were educated (e.g. Garrett Eckbo), built projects (e.g. Lawrence Halprin),  and in many cases, later taught (e.g. Robert Royston).

Unlike the first two symposia planned for New York City and Nashville, which have been conceived as regional surveys encompassing a century of design, Landscapes for Living will place a focus on the unique Post War legacy of public and private landscapes in Northern California through actual participants who played an active role during what is now thought to be an unprecedented, optimistic time of innovation and experimentation.  Speakers will provide rare insight and will include critical participants of the era, in addition to present-day practitioners and historians.

The symposium will look back ahead, in an effort to honor the Telesis’ generation’s quest for intelligent planning and design.

Outdoor space in the office of Lawrence Halprin,
Downtown San Francisco, ca. 1950s.