Lawrence Halprin

From Archiplanet

Jump to: navigation, search
Lawrence Halprin
Born July 01, 1916; New York, N.Y.
Died October 25, 2009; United States
Firms Lawrence Halprin & Associates, San Francisco, California
Notes One of the leading U.S. landscape architects of the 20th century.
At Great Buildings http://www.GreatBuildings.com/architects/Lawrence_Halprin.html

Contents



[edit] Works

[edit] Discussion

(b. New York, N.Y. 1916)

Lawrence Halprin was born in New York City in 1916. He attended Cornell University, the University of Wisconsin, and Harvard University from which he graduated in 1942 with a Bachelors in Landscape Architecture. Following an apprenticeship with Thomas Church during which he helped develop the contemporary California garden concept, Halprin opened his own office in 1949. Since 1976 he has been a partner with Sue Yung Li Ikeda.

Halprin worked at a series of scales from sculptural fountains to urban renewal schemes to regional planning. He created landscapes available to all segments of society and generated on the basis of final user needs.

Halprin considered the design process as important as the end result. He analyzed user needs to create diagrams and designs. He developed a design methodology involving client and user in which their desires were synthesized into a final design statement. The organic, free flowing, romantic people spaces that Halprin created owe everything to the lessons of nature and the needs of the twentieth century user.

[edit] Awards

  • 1964 AIA Medal for Allied professionals
  • 1969 Elected fellow in the ASLA
  • 1970 Elected honorary fellow of the Institute of Interior Design
  • 1979 Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture
  • 1979 Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement awarded by the AIA
  • 2002 National Medal of Arts by The President of the United States
  • 2002 Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell Golden Ring
  • 2003 ASLA Design Medal
  • 2005 Michaelangelo Award

[edit] General Discussion at Wikipedia

Lawrence Halprin

Lawrence Halprin (July 1, 1916 - October 25, 2009) was an American landscape architect, designer and teacher.King, John. "Architect Lawrence Halprin dies," San Francisco Chronicle. October 26, 2009. His point-of-view and practice are summarized in his definition of modernism:

"To be properly understood, Modernism is not just a matter of cubist space but of a whole appreciation of environmental design as a holistic approach to the matter of making spaces for people to live.... Modernism, as I define it and practice it, includes and is based ont he vital archetypal needs of human being as individuals as well as social groups."Walker, Peter et al. (1994). Invisible Gardens: the Search for Modernism in the American Landscape, p. 9.

In his best work, he construed landscape architecture as narrative.Rainey, Reuben M. (2001). [ http://books.google.com/books?id=cvMNFOqVs3YC&pg=PA377&dq= "The Garden as Narrative: Lawrence Halprin's Frankllin Delano Roosevelt Memorial," in Places of Commemoration : Search for Identity and Landscape Design, pp. 377-413.]

Early life

Halprin grew up in Brooklyn, New York; and as a schoolboy, he earned acclaim playing sandlot baseball. He also invested three of his teenage years in Palestine on a kibbutz near what is today the Israeli port city of Haifa.Sullivan, Patricia. "Lawrence Halprin, 93; Urban projects won wide acclaim for American landscape architect," The Washington Post. October 28, 2009.

He earned a B.A. at Cornell University; and he was granted a M.A. at the University of Wisconsin. Then he earned a second bachelor’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where his professors included architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer.Martin, Douglas. "Lawrence Halprin, Landscape Architect, Dies at 93," The New York Times October 28, 2003. His Harvard classmates included Philip Johnson and I.M. Pei. A visit to Taliesin East, Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio in Wisconsin, had sparked Halprin’s initial interest in being a designer; and his formal training began in classes with Christopher Tunnard.

In 1944, Halprin was commissioned in the United States Navy as a Lieutenant (junior grade). He was assigned to the destroyer USS Morris in the Pacific which was struck by a kamikaze attack. After surviving the destruction of the Morris, Halprin was sent to San Francisco on leave. It was there he would stay following his discharge.

Career

After discharge from military service, he joined the firm of San Francisco landscape architect Thomas Dolliver Church. The projects he worked on in this period included the Dewey Donnell Garden (El Novillero) in Sonoma County.

Halprin opened his own office in 1949, becoming one of Church's professional heirs and competitors.Wallace, p. 116.

Since 1976 he has been a partner with Sue Yung Li Ikeda.

Halprin's wife, accomplished avant-garde dancer Anna Halprin, is a long-time collaborator, with whom he explored the common areas between choreography and the way users move through a public space. They are the parents of Daria Halprin, an American psychologist, author, dancer, and actress.

Halprin's work is marked by his attention to human scale, user experience, and the social impact of his designs, in the egalitarian tradition of Frederick Law Olmsted. Halprin was the creative force behind the interactive, 'playable' civic fountains most common in the 1970s, an amenity which continues to greatly contribute to the pedestrian social experience in Portland Oregon, where "Ira's Fountain" is loved and well-used, and which has been a chronic failure at the transient-ridden United Nations Plaza in San Francisco.

Recently many of Halprin's works have become the source of some controversy. Some have fallen victim to neglect, and are in states of disrepair. Critics argue his pieces have become dated and no longer reflect the direction their cities want to take. Budgetary constraints and the urge to "revitalize" threaten some of his projects. In response foundations have been set up to improve care for some of the sites and to try to preserve them in their original state.

He was the co-creator with his his wife, the dancer Ann Halprin, of the "RSVP Cycle", a creative methodology that can be applied broadly across all disciplines.Worth, Libby et al. (2004). Anna Halprin, p. 68.

Projects

Halprin's range of projects demonstrate his vision of the garden or open space as a stage.Walker, p. 153. Halperin recognized that "the garden in your own immediate neighborhood, preferably at your own doorstep, is the most significant garden;" and as part of a seamless whole, he valued "wilderness areas where we can be truly alone with ourselves and where nature can be sensed as the primeval source of life."Walker, pp. 153-154. The interplay of perspectives informed projects which encompassed urban parks, plazas, commercial and cultural centers and other places of congregation:Walker, p. 154.

Awards

  • 1964 AIA Medal for Allied professionals
  • 1969 Elected fellow in the American Society of Landscape Architects
  • 1970 Elected honorary fellow of the Institute of Interior Design
  • 1979 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture
  • 1979 Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement awarded by the AIA
  • 2002 National Medal of Arts
  • 2002 Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell Golden Ring
  • 2003 ASLA Design Medal
  • 2005 Michaelangelo Award

Publications

Notes

References

External links






fa:لاورنس هالپرین fr:Lawrence Halprin nl:Lawrence Halprin ja:ローレンス・ハルプリン

Above content from Wikipedia available under GFDL retrieved Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:25:07 -0800


[edit] References

[edit] External Links

Retrieved from "http://www.archiplanet.org/wiki/Lawrence_Halprin"
Personal tools