CRM Journal / Winter 2006

Preserving Modern Landscape Architecture II:
Making Postwar Landscapes Visible

Edited by Charles A. Birnbaum, with Jane Brown Gillette and Nancy Slade. Washington, DC:
Spacemaker Press, 2004; 128 pp., photographs, drawings, plans, notes; paper $24.95.

There is little doubt that the modernist design canon has fallen on hard times in America. Here at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, for example, a recently completed campus master plan calls for the demolition of several structures, including the Humanities Building, designed in the 1960s byHarryWeese, an important modernist architect. Although Humanities serves as one of the best examples of architectural Brutalism in Wisconsin, local critics refer to it as “the building everyone loves to hate.”

If this and better-known examples of architectural modernism are scorned, then what is the situation regarding modern landscape architecture? While preservationists are often able to rally public support for threatened buildings designed by such 20th-century master architects as Eero Saarinen, Louis Kahn, Philip Johnson, and Frank Lloyd Wright, the works of landscape architecture’s modernist luminaries—Tommy Church, Hideo Sasaki, Garrett Eckbo, Dan Kiley, John O. Simonds, Lawrence Halprin, M. Paul Friedburg, and others—fail to generate the same attention and passion.

Landscape architect Charles Birnbaum wants to change this. In 1995 Birnbaum organized a New York City conference that addressed the theme, “Preserving Modern Landscape Architecture.”1 That conclave, more than anything else, demonstrated the vulnerability of many modernist landscapes throughout America. In 2002, the indefatigable Birnbaum put together a second conference that highlighted a few recent successes in landscape preservation, even though most of the discussion bemoaned the continued lack of recognition and concern given to the modern era.

The proceedings of the second assembly, the subject of this review, were published in 2004. The volume begins with an introduction by Birnbaum, who notes the apparent lack of interest in preservation exhibited by contemporary landscape architects: only 200 of the American Society of Landscape Architects’ 13,000 members belong to its historic preservation professional interest group. Following the introduction are 17 brief essays by practicing landscape architects, critics, and academics; 14 feature the United States, while 3 are devoted to Canadian, British, and Portuguese subjects.

Most of the articles written by or about landscape architects address projects and places that have been destroyed, modified drastically, or are under threat. The authors overwhelmingly decry the situation, noting that several of the projects were launched with much fanfare some decades ago. Mark Johnson’s entire essay, for example, is devoted to Denver’s Skyline Park, originally designed by Halprin, but under siege at the time of the conference. While these essays include no scholarly documentation or references, they do provide extremely meaningful information about places that the authors deeply understand and appreciate.

Each writer, either directly or indirectly, asks two interrelated questions: Why do people fail to appreciate modernist landscapes, and why are these sites constantly in danger? “The average person feels very little love for modern design generally,” answers Paul Bennett in his survey of Friedberg’s work; “this antipathy,” he continues, “runs deepest in terms of landscape.” Halprin notes that fine arts icons emerge only after a considerable period of time has elapsed, whereas various issues, usually commercial, often threaten landscape architecture with little more than short notice. “It is, therefore, important to formalize a process for preservation that can react as quickly as the attack,” Halprin recommends.

Marc Treib and Richard Longstreth provide the most nuanced and scholarly interpretations of the modernist era. Treib writes about the urban work of Church, Eckbo, and Halprin from 1948 to 1968, a period when California landscape architects made the transition from residential gardens to the urban scene. The pedestrianized street or mall evolved during this period, with Halprin’s designs for San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square and the Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis representing the optimistic idea that landscape design “can sufficiently counter, if not totally vanquish, the forces of economics and demographics.” The fact that the designs implemented for such highly urban places as Ghirardelli Square and Nicollet Mall were subsequently modified and later totally discarded is a complex issue that, as Treib suggests, might be linked to their genesis in the garden and suburb.

Longstreth’s concluding essay is appropriately entitled “The Last Landscape.” He argues that no greater preservation challenge exists today than the one of protecting modern landscapes. “The last landscape frequently is cast as one of errors, functional and esthetic, before it has had the time to acquire a substantial past of its own,” he writes. Included among Longstreth’s examples are private gardens, museum gardens, public parks, urban malls and plazas, and even urban renewal projects. Greatest attention, however, is given to those places that reflect the significant landscape changes caused by post-war development practices in the United States—regional shopping malls, suburban corporate headquarters, and residential areas. Longstreth is the only author who mentions vernacular examples, specifically community gardens and motel landscapes. The preservation of modern environments, he asserts, can only be accomplished by adopting an integrative approach that relies heavily on the skills and approaches of landscape architects and historians of landscape architecture.

Calls for immediate attention and action regarding modernist landscape architecture are timelier than ever, given the changes that have occurred since this book appeared. Death claimed landscape architects Dan Kiley in 2004 and John Simonds in 2005; and in Denver, a redesigned and reconfigured Skyline Park that reveals little of Halprin’s initial design was dedicated in 2004.

Other than the lack of an index, this is a well-conceived and well-executed volume that will appeal to a wide range of readers. Those who already belong to the “preservation chorus” will acquire considerably more knowledge about familiar lost landscapes, whereas others who are just being introduced to landscape preservation may be motivated to join the movement.