Landscape Architect Vol. 2

Governors Island Competition
Residential Complex Design Competition for MAC Korea
Chennai International Airport Domestic Terminal Competition
Adamstown Parks Competition
Sherwood Forest Competition
Discovery Green

2008

Mission Rock Seawall Lot 337 : Pier 48 Competition
Shelby Farms Park Competition
Magok Waterfront International Competition
Acuario Xochimilco

Recommendation Letter: Rediscovering the Landscape

Jeong Hann Pae, Professor of Landscape Architecture, Seoul National University

In the early 1990s, the innovative works of young George Hargreaves were a powerful motivation that enlightened me on potential of landscape theory and criticism. His poetic landscapes and visual language have opened up a new horizon for many young landscape architects including me, surpassing the contradiction of Olmstedian pastoral landscape. George Hargreaves took the lead in changing the landscape paradigm between the late 1980s and the early 1990s and provided a ground where the history of modern landscape design was rewritten and its meaning reevaluated. He also declared the rebirth of landscape design that works in harmony with contemporary art through emphasizing the form and meaning, which have been tarnished by the McHargian scientific approach to ecological design.

This book features the impressive work of Hargreaves Associates. The works include complex sites such as waterfronts, landfills, brown fields, campuses and Olympic complexes after his early experimental projects such as Byxbee Park and Candlestick Point Cultural Park. This, however, is not a mere collection of 10 years work, but a faithful mirror of the path, where he challenged the contemporary culture and landscape, as well as the design solution. Proposing a new direction that rediscovers the landscape, his projects challenge contemporary landscape.

By encouraging interaction between nature and culture, and between the environment and art, the works by Hargreaves oppose structure of landscape today, which is split into scientific analysis and artistic expression. Physicality and narrative of the site, the core of his design philosophy, speak closely to each other using landscape as the mediator. His defiance of traditional picturesque scenery leads to the rediscovery of landscape process and topography. Based on the strategy of site-specificity and open-ended composition, he incorporates the ecological and temporal process of landscape. By integrating the ecological process with aesthetic and poetic language, he resists the dichotomy of ecological approach versus artistic goal. Therefore, it can be said the sculptural topographic design of Hargreaves is not a sensational visual gesture; it is rather a practical design strategy to rediscover the landscape beyond landscape.

‘Process: Architecture vol. 128′, the monograph of George Hargreaves published in 1996, stirred great excitement and created sensation among me and many of my colleagues. It was a guide that showed us our direction and a sure evidence of overcoming the impossible. Now, looking at his new monograph published in Korea 12 years later since the first book, I think about my trip in 2002, when I set off to San Francisco just to see his works with my bare eyes and experience them synaesthetically. Hargreaves’ landscape projects featured this volume of year 2008 will be yet another challenge to us.

CEO's Message

George Hargreaves

In the early days of our practice, the field of landscape architecture was designing largely according to the rigid, formal, plan-driven tenents of modernism. Our early projects broke with those strategies by organizing our designs around themes of ecological process, cultural/historical context, and environmental phenomena and landform. I chose to focus this book on our last decade of work because these later projects show how our early principles advanced through more complex and integral projects opportunities.

The beginning of the time period of the book – 1998 – marked the initiation of a few major projects that were significantly more mature than our earlier, more formative projects. These projects were larger, not necessarily in scale, but had greater importance in the public realm. They also had larger budgets, which allowed us to develop our conceptual ideas more completely. These projects – Louisville Waterfront, Crissy Field and the 2000 Sydney Olympics – marked the start of a new era of work that further explored and clarified the landscape ideas that we launched with our early projects.

The continuation of work dealing with ecological processes is further refined in smaller parts of our larger park projects through habitat restoration. The ecological goal of these designed habitats is to have them function with minimal maintenance within larger ecological systems. We recreated the riparian edge at Louisville, and we developed a saltwater marsh at Crissy Field. These habitats also act to enrich the cultural value for the visitors to the park by introducing new kinds of experience to our notions of what belongs in a park.

The advancement of our ideas of process-oriented landscape architecture can be seen in the Orange County Great Parks proposal. On the site of a former airstrip, this is a very large park that required a phasing plan of some kind. Typically, phasing plans are pre-determined sequences that lead to a specific result. Our plan was designed to be adaptive to the changing needs of the park without being a completely unrestrained open system. The form of the project would develop over time, within designed parameters. The design is open to both environmental processes, creating a robust park that continually fulfills the needs of the community.

Sustainability naturally works in tandem with an engagement of the ecological processes of a site. A key concept for us in the early days, we have developed our expertise in integrating sustainable systems into our projects. The Sydney Olympics project was the first project that systemically engaged sustainability with solar power collection, structural soils, and a comprehensive plan to capture and treat stormwater. Now, sustainability pervades all of our projects. We always ask what can we do to make a project more energy efficient, more sustainable, including economic sustainability. In our plan for Shelby Farms we designed an energy collection system where at seven different program nodes a parking canopy reflects unto a tower. The towers collect the solar energy, providing off-the-grid-energy for the project. In addition, we created a system of lakes that, while providing recreation, also clean the water before letting it re-enter the larger water networks.

Several of our early projects, including Candlestick Park and Byxbee Park, involved artist collaborations. This has become a standard way that we work, as in the SF MoMA Markings exhibition where we collaborated with a Native American poet, and the Chattanooga 21st Century Waterfront which features a passage that commemorates Cherokee Native Americans designed with artists, as well as light masts on a pier designed by James Carpenter. In our projects we have been able to work directly with artists and facilitate their ideas, incorporating art into cohesive public space.

While the last decade shows a theoretical trajectory of the firm, working through issues of environmental process, historical context and program, it also shows project trajectory. Early work was often at the edges of cities, brownfields sites, or dump sites. In the 1990’s we began getting more and more projects in the centers of cities, with larger construction budgets. The firm designed many other downtown waterfront parks after Louisville and Crissy Field that are featured in this volume including the Clinton Presidential Library and Chattanooga 21st Century Waterfront Park. Following the work on the Sydney Olympics, we are currently working on the London 2012 Olympic Games. Looking at the projects over a decade also allows us to look at the gradual unfolding of some of the longer-term projects. In the case of the University of Cincinnati, the Master Plan was completed in the early 90’s, but the built work did not begin until the late 90’s, culminating in 2005 with Main Street, the showpiece of the project.

A key development for the firm during the last ten years that corresponds to the trajectory of more significant projects has been the integration of programmatic elements into our designs. This change came about largely through shifts in scale and audience, with projects more centrally located with many groups of stakeholders and end users of the parks. Beginning with Louisville Waterfront and Crissy Field, and continuing in such examples as Chattanooga, Houston Discovery Green, we began to explore marrying program with landscape typologies. We would then juxtapose those program/typologies together. We found this to be an effective way to manage multiple, complex programs on one site without an overly determined plan. The most explicit example of this program-oriented strategy can be seen in our competition entry for Governors Island, which creates a program rich destination for a diverse group of New Yorkers.

Also presented in this volume are series of smaller projects that we completed along side these larger-scale projects. This work is less process-oriented and has less inherent ecological significance, due mostly to its smaller scale. These projects tend to focus on design – the clear organization of space and more elaborate detail design. The mission of The Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Japan is reflected in our design for the grounds – the union of Asian culture with the culture of scientific discovery. Market Center, the Shaw Center, and 2200 M Street show an exuberance of form, pattern and plant material. At ResMed, we developed a highly detailed planting plan that played a large role in the design structure of the project. SF MoMA Markings reinforces the notion that simple moves can elicit the most poignant reactions. These smaller projects give the firm the opportunity to work at a variety of scales, and prevent us from being typecast as a designer of large waterfront parks.

We have also presented many of our recent competitions in this volume. The LA State Historic Park competition was an opportunity for us to design a park that integrated the cultural and historical richness of the site with its natural systems (the LA River), incorporating many of the early design principles of the firm. We won this competition and it is now in the schematic design phase. Our competition work acts as our laboratory for new ideas. Often the subjects of competitions are for ambitions or unusual sites, and this opens up an opportunity to work in ways that are not accessible when working under more pragmatic site conditions. The competitions allow us to push ideas that have been suggested by earlier projects. And, ideas that are generated by competitions often see their way to built work.

The projects of the last decade show a firm that always seeks a diversity of professional experience. This diversity allows our ideas to deepen and intensify, leading us in new, always demanding, and sometimes ground-breaking, directions. It is not the size or budget of the project that we are interested in, it is the challenge it offers.

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