The Cultural Landscape Foundation
Conference: Second Wave of Modernism in Landscape Architecture in America (November 13-15, 2008 in Chicago)

Friday, November 14

 

Panel 1: Social Agenda

In the U.S.,  landscape architecture as a 20th century modernist idea carried with it implications of fresh ways to live, to entertain, to organize domestic, corporate and cultural realms. With each decade, shifts in professional practice echoed political and demographic trends. From Thomas Church’s call for outdoor living to James Rose, Garrett Eckbo and Dan Kiley’s design manifesto (1940), to Eckbo’s Landscape for Living (1950), Halprin’s RSVP Cycles and Take Part Process and Friedberg’s re-imagining of how children play, first-wave modernists created determinately forward-looking landscapes for a forward-moving society.

 

Topic

Speaker

Lifestyle

Walter Hood

Total Design Environment     

Mark Rios

Popularization for the Masses

Martha Schwartz
   

 

 

Chess Park, Glendale, CA; Rios Clementi Hale Studios, landscape architects.
(Photo: Courtesy Rios Clementi Hale Studios)

Chess Park

Framework

Conference curators Jane Amidon and Charles Birnbaum will provide an overview and present the structure for the day.

Friday’s program will consist of three panels, each with three panelists who will each give thirty-minute written presentations in their subject area. Panelists have been invited to speak about particular topics because of potential resonances between their work and the first generation of modernists. Importantly, the presentations are not intended to be an overview of the panelist’s work, but instead, a well considered response to a specific topic. It is expected that panelists will use examples from their own practice to substantiate their points; inclusion of specific precedents or influences from first-wave modernism is encouraged.