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Designing the company Arcadia

Helena Chance

in The Factory in a Garden: A History of Corporate Landscapes from the Industrial to the Digital Age

Rowheath Park at Bournville (from 1921) and the Hills and Dales Park, the Old Barn Club and Old River Park, made for NCR employees between 1906 and 1939, are highly significant to the history of ... More

Rowheath Park at Bournville (from 1921) and the Hills and Dales Park, the Old Barn Club and Old River Park, made for NCR employees between 1906 and 1939, are highly significant to the history of corporate landscapes in terms of their scale and the sophistication of their designs in a factory context. A comparison of these parks, designed by landscape architects Cheals of Crawley, and the Olmsted Brothers respectively, reveal differences in the cultural, symbolic and stylistic approaches to landscape design in the two nations, including what it was possible to achieve in the suburban landscapes of Britain and the United States and in the beliefs, desires and expectations of the factory worker and his patriarch in what the landscape could provide for them. In context of corporate recreation, the scale and sophistication of these gardens and parks were astonishing and unprecedented. Their landscape architects succeeded in projecting local and national landscape identities through design, thus creating spaces that heightened employees’ sense of belonging to the region and to the corporate community.Less

The Creative Origins of Larry and Anna Halprin

Alison Bick Hirsch

in City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America

Chapter One presents a selective biography of Halprin, critically assessing early life and career experiences that influenced the development of his creative process.

Landscaping and Individual Lots

Mark E. Hostetler

in The Green Leap: A Primer for Conserving Biodiversity in Subdivision Development

This chapter discusses the importance of creating and maintaining more natural landscapes within individual lots. A historical perspective of people's fascination with mowed lawns and the ways in ... More

This chapter discusses the importance of creating and maintaining more natural landscapes within individual lots. A historical perspective of people's fascination with mowed lawns and the ways in which highly maintained lawns contribute to environmental degradation are summarized. Strategies are listed for how residents can create a more natural landscape. For developers, examples of more native landscape designs and management plans are listed. For policy makers, incentive-based and regulatory policies that encourage sustainable landscape designs and management strategies are discussed.Less

Nature, Parks, and Emersonian Modernism

Mark R. Stoll

in Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism

As the causes of conservation and parks were growing into national movements, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Transcendentalist belief in the spiritual in nature deeply influenced the generation that came of ... More

As the causes of conservation and parks were growing into national movements, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Transcendentalist belief in the spiritual in nature deeply influenced the generation that came of age in the late nineteenth and the turn of the twentieth centuries. The Modernist movement in American art was deeply affected, especially among those with New England roots. The art of Ansel Adams, Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove, John Marin, and Marsden Hartley expressed the spiritual in their landscapes. They helped popularize a spiritualized preference for natural beauty without people. Architects, too, took Emerson’s dictums to heart. Frank Lloyd Wright, Bernard Maybeck, and others designed in harmony with nature, with great influence on architecture of the new national parks system.Less

Building the Moral Society: Farms, Forests, and Parks

Mark R. Stoll

in Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism

In the nineteenth century, the ideal New England town with its Congregational church attained its classic form. It served for several generations of New Englanders as a model for the rapidly ... More

In the nineteenth century, the ideal New England town with its Congregational church attained its classic form. It served for several generations of New Englanders as a model for the rapidly expanding nation. They promoted and designed the first parks in cities, states, and the nation (Yosemite and Yellowstone). Tutored by Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church painted landscapes that honored the Reformed science of Alexander von Humboldt and reflected the Reformed aesthetics of John Ruskin, and led to his emergence as spokesman and activist for parks. Pioneering landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted patterned parks, suburbs, and urban design after New England towns. However, the towns were already declining, prompting activism on behalf of agricultural improvement. Also discussed are George Perkins Marsh’s landmark 1864 work Man and Nature and Katharine Lee Bates’s “America the Beautiful,” which expressed the Congregational vision of beautiful, just cities amidst natural beauty and agricultural abundance.Less

Designing with Nature As “Archetypal Precedent”: Portland Open Space Sequence, Seattle Freeway Park, Manhattan Square Park

Alison Bick Hirsch

in City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America

Chapter Three presents Halprin’s reliance on the “archetypal precedent of natural processes” to reorient people to their environment and reduce the barriers between humans and the natural world. The ... More

Chapter Three presents Halprin’s reliance on the “archetypal precedent of natural processes” to reorient people to their environment and reduce the barriers between humans and the natural world. The pioneering open space sequence in Portland, Oregon is the primary case study in this chapter, as it represents one of the best examples of his choreographic approach. Seattle Freeway Park serves as a comparative study of a later attempt to fulfill similar ideals.Less

Scoring the Participatory City

Alison Bick Hirsch

in City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America

The Introduction presents the argument and situates the Halprins within the social, environmental and artistic context of the 1960s and 1970s.

Framing Civic Rituals: Market Street, Nicollet Mall, Heritage Park Plaza

Alison Bick Hirsch

in City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America

Chapter Two introduces Anna’s investigation of ritual, setting it in contrast to experiments in chance performed by Merce Cunningham and John Cage, and then discusses Larry’s book Cities (1963) as a ... More

Chapter Two introduces Anna’s investigation of ritual, setting it in contrast to experiments in chance performed by Merce Cunningham and John Cage, and then discusses Larry’s book Cities (1963) as a catalog of elements that create the framework for everyday and ceremonial urban rituals. This assessment of Cities is situated in relationship to his built work intended to facilitate and choreograph such rituals, including shopping malls and main streets. “Main Street” as infrastructure for ceremonial procession transitions into an analysis of the design for Heritage Park (Fort Worth) as a processional space that informs Halprin’s proposal for the FDR Memorial in Washington, D.C.Less

Choreography and the Contemporary City

Alison Bick Hirsch

in City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America

The Conclusion summarizes the broad arguments of the book and projects them forward. The concluding analysis demonstrates, in particular, how Halprin’s open choreographic method (in ideal ... More

The Conclusion summarizes the broad arguments of the book and projects them forward. The concluding analysis demonstrates, in particular, how Halprin’s open choreographic method (in ideal application) anticipated the theories that currently drive the practice of landscape architecture and how those aspects of his process that have been long overlooked might enrich a contemporary approach to designing the city. With the powerful forces of urbanization continuing to shape globalizing cities throughout the world, reflecting on a process that attempts to mitigate some of the disorienting effects and reinstate a robust public life of stimulating places and opportunities to act as part of a larger collective, becomes especially urgent.Less

NPS Roads on Hawai‘i: Lying Lightly on the Land

Dawn E. Duensing

in Hawaii's Scenic Roads: Paving the Way for Tourism in the Islands

In the mid 1800s Hawai`i's government and private entrepreneurs began building roads to Kīlauea Volcano in order to facilitate tourism. In 1916 Congress established Hawaiʻi National Park, thereafter ... More

In the mid 1800s Hawai`i's government and private entrepreneurs began building roads to Kīlauea Volcano in order to facilitate tourism. In 1916 Congress established Hawaiʻi National Park, thereafter the National Park Service assumed the lead role in developing byways that not only provided access to volcanic attractions, but presented landscapes that had been admired by foreigners since the early 1800s. Crater Rim Road, Chain of Craters Road, and the Mauna Loa Truck Trail integrated the park service's landscape preservation ethic with the Bureau of Public Road’s technical standards, resulting in modern roads that blended with the natural environment. Some roads were built using relief funds during the Great Depression. The Civilian Conservation Corps also worked on several projects. These byways reflected general trends found throughout the national park system but were also subject to Hawai‘i’s unique geological and climatic conditions, which continually challenged park service officials.Less

The Other Side of the “Free” way: Planning for “Separate But Equal” in the Wake of Massive Resistance

K. Ian Grandison

in Race and Real Estate

This chapter conveys the continuing intertwining of racial hierarchy and real estate in America. Focusing on the case of one historically black college/university (HBCU), Virginia Union University, ... More

This chapter conveys the continuing intertwining of racial hierarchy and real estate in America. Focusing on the case of one historically black college/university (HBCU), Virginia Union University, the chapter shows how Richmond, VA, planned its I-95/I-64 corridor in the 1950s to reposition the institution inside a racial reservation. That estrangement, effected, ironically, in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, aimed to dampen the university’s mission to facilitate equal access to citizenship through higher education. City planners forced the campus onto the “wrong” side of the “free” way, deliberately transforming the campus’s immediate and wider setting—the legendary black neighborhood of Jackson Ward—into a landscape of demolition, divestment, industrial blight, and declining equity. This Richmond case study illustrates how racial segregation and inequality continue to be enforced through urban and regional planning, architecture, and landscape architecture—especially connected with highway infrastructure and urban “revitalization”—all over the United States. The chapter reveals that real estate is racially contingent, rigged to protect and enhance the value and inheritance of some institutions and communities while purposively exposing and diminishing the marketable value of others.Less

Presbyterians and the Environmental Movement

Mark R. Stoll

in Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism

Lapsed Presbyterian prophets and preachers gave the American environmental movement its moral urgency and political power. David Brower’s leadership made the Sierra Club a national power and stopped ... More

Lapsed Presbyterian prophets and preachers gave the American environmental movement its moral urgency and political power. David Brower’s leadership made the Sierra Club a national power and stopped massive development projects that endangered natural beauty. Robinson Jeffers and Edward Abbey provided literary reinforcement. Leading landscape architects like Ian McHarg proselytized for “designing with nature.” Carrying out their denomination’s charge to be useful, three Presbyterian women broadened environmentalism’s concentration on issues related to parks and conservation: Alice Hamilton pioneered health and safety in homes and workplaces, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring woke the nation to the human and environmental perils of the careless overuse of toxic chemicals, and Jane Jacobs advocated livable cities that favored people over cars. These figures made environmentalism a powerful force in postwar society and politics.Less

Haleakalā Highway: Bringing the World to Maui

Dawn E. Duensing

in Hawaii's Scenic Roads: Paving the Way for Tourism in the Islands

Haleakalā Highway within Haleakalā National Park was built with federal relief funding in 1935 to provide automobile access to Haleakalā Crater and “bring the world to Maui.” The debate that led to ... More

Haleakalā Highway within Haleakalā National Park was built with federal relief funding in 1935 to provide automobile access to Haleakalā Crater and “bring the world to Maui.” The debate that led to its construction demonstrates that Hawai‘i’s leaders publicly and aggressively advocated for scenic roads as commercial enterprises necessary to promote tourism. Maui businessmen, primarily through the Chamber of Commerce, spearheaded the drive for the road and effectively facilitated cooperation between various institutions and individuals at the local, territorial, and national levels. Haleakalā Highway combined the National Park Service’s landscape preservation ethic with the Bureau of Public Road’s highest technical standards to produce a modern road that traversed stark, almost treeless country, yet seamlessly blended with its natural environment. Developing Haleakalā Highway was also part of a spirited competition between the islands of Hawai‘i and Maui that saw both islands in a race to attract tourists.Less

Looking to the Past, Designing and Demonstrating Alternative Methods Today to Address Urban Stormwater Challenges

Jason Hale

in Water in Kentucky: Natural History, Communities, and Conservation

This chapter focuses on a variety of projects that have implemented low impact development principles and construction materials. The featured projects have been designed to manage urban storm water ... More

This chapter focuses on a variety of projects that have implemented low impact development principles and construction materials. The featured projects have been designed to manage urban storm water runoff by either storing and reducing runoff volumes, or treating the water so cleaner water is returned to streams and waterways. A particular emphasis is placed on alternative material used in contrast to traditional material usage and approaches, as well as the challenges, associated with changing traditional mindsets.Less

Trails, Sidewalks, and Common Areas

Mark E. Hostetler

in The Green Leap: A Primer for Conserving Biodiversity in Subdivision Development

This chapter discusses the importance of creating and maintaining a walkable neighborhood with common areas for people to gather. Strategies are listed for how residents can maintain and use private ... More

This chapter discusses the importance of creating and maintaining a walkable neighborhood with common areas for people to gather. Strategies are listed for how residents can maintain and use private trails and common areas so that they do not negatively impact biodiversity. For developers, strategies are discussed for building a trail, sidewalk, and shared open space system that promotes community interaction but has minimal impacts on biodiversity. For policy makers, incentive-based and regulatory policies that encourage walkable communities are discussed.Less

Long-Term Ecological Research on the Urban Frontier: Benefiting from Baltimore

Steward T. A. Pickett

in Long-Term Ecological Research: Changing the Nature of Scientists

The Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program has made me a more effective scientist because I have had to learn about disciplines that are very distant ... More

The Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program has made me a more effective scientist because I have had to learn about disciplines that are very distant from my own, and it has helped me see the relevance of my own interests in the context of rapidly changing systems in which human agency is inescapable. Being a part of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) site has extended my educational activities to primary and secondary school situations. It has been both an eye opener and personally very rewarding to interact in city classrooms and after-school programs. I have found myself in demand as a public speaker as a result of serving as leader of one of the two urban LTER programs. My communication skills and strategies have been greatly improved as a result. Collaboration has taught me to listen more effectively and to emphasize dialogue rather than exposition. Multidisciplinary urban field trips are powerful tools for joint research and for communication with people in the community. My role in the LTER network has been as principal investigator of the BES site from its inception in 1997. Before involvement in the LTER program, I conducted urban ecological research in metropolitan New York. My interests beyond urban studies include vegetation dynamics, natural disturbance, and landscape ecology. At the time that my involvement in the LTER program began, I became part of a multidisciplinary and international team conducting a 10-year study of the linkages between rivers and upland savannas in Kruger National Park, South Africa. In the LTER network, I have been a member of the committee on scientific initiatives and the Science Council. I have also contributed to cross-site integration through workshops at the LTER network’s triennial All Scientists Meetings and to cross-site activities such as comparison of disturbance across the network (Peters et al. 2011). I hold a BS and a PhD in botany, specializing in plant ecology. I am currently Distinguished Senior Scientist at the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, a flexible position that has allowed me to explore the cross-disciplinary and synthetic approaches required to lead an urban LTER program. Less

The take part process: Lawrence Halprin& Associates in Participatory Design

Alison Bick Hirsch

in City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America

Chapter Four places the Take Part Process in the context of other participatory planning methods, both government-sanctioned and grassroots. In addition, it situates the workshop process in the ... More

Chapter Four places the Take Part Process in the context of other participatory planning methods, both government-sanctioned and grassroots. In addition, it situates the workshop process in the trajectory of Halprin’s work by examining those fundamental projects that led to the ultimate formulation of Taking Part. These include the collaborative workshops Larry and Anna called “Experiments in Environment” (1966 and 1968), as well as the firm’s 1968 report titled New York, New York: A Study of the Quality, Character, and Meaning of Open Space in Urban Design, which stresses citizen participation and begins to develop a methodology.Less

Facilitation and/Or Manipulation: The Challenges of Taking Part in Fort Worth, Everett, Charlottesville, and Cleveland

Alison Bick Hirsch

in City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America

Chapter Five considers Taking Part in Everett (Washington), Charlottesville (Virginia), and Cleveland (Ohio). Despite claims that the process was open-ended, Halprin and his firm clearly had ... More

Chapter Five considers Taking Part in Everett (Washington), Charlottesville (Virginia), and Cleveland (Ohio). Despite claims that the process was open-ended, Halprin and his firm clearly had preconceived objectives, yet guided the participants to reach these conclusions themselves. While this might seem counter to the principles of participation, the firm often succeeded in reshaping shortsighted attitudes toward the city that diminished its quality of experience. The chapter ends with an assessment of what might be learned from this tension between facilitation and manipulation, particularly as it relates to widespread debates on participatory planning ongoing today.Less