Modernism and Contemporary Themes

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Figure 4.9 A: Broadacre; B: New Town development in the UK; C: Planned community, Orange County, California; D: Smart Growth neighborhood.

favoring instead individual automobile transport. The streets followed a non-grid, more serpentine, curvilinear layout featuring cul-de-sacs. Limited access into a neighborhood often included gated access, thus restricting connectivity to other neighborhoods and town centers. Each neighborhood, if large enough, included schools and parks. The higher-end (real estate price range) developments might feature a golf course and recreation center accessible primarily to the individual community. With the rise in energy costs, the rising demand of urban citizens for healthier living options, and the growing popularity and need for more responsible uses and conservation of natural resources (air, water, and land), land planning shifted emphasis. This shift in thinking on how cities should develop (or even be re-imagined) saw the emergence of Smart Growth, and similar land development theories such as New Urbanism and Sustainable Development emerged late in the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. Smart Growth and New Urbanism (Figure 4.9D) were a late twentieth-century approach to land planning that concentrated urban and suburban growth to achieve public transit-oriented, compact, walkable, and mixed-use communities. Proponents of Smart Growth planning understood urban growth would continue but should be accommodated in a comprehensive way with a more healthy and sustainable approach as opposed to unchecked, urban sprawl.

Modernism was a movement that permeated the full spectrum of the arts in the twentieth century. In general, proponents of the

modern movement felt that traditional forms of art had become outdated in the new economic, political, and social environment, in what had become an industrialized world that was rapidly proliferating. Followers of Modernism in architecture, art, literature, or music reacted to the past, deeming past design sensibilities outmoded to fulfilling the needs of modern life. The past was discarded in favor of the exploration of more meaningful expression in the arts that addressed current experiences and trends. The idea in architecture and landscape architecture was to “make new” and to create new forms of expression such as was occurring in the studio arts, beginning with Impressionism followed by the experiments of Cubism, Dadaism, and other forms of non-representational expression. In America, Modernism came to landscape architecture during the mid1930s with Garrett Eckbo, Dan Kiley and their classmates at Harvard. They, in essence, rebelled against the formalism of the Beaux Arts as taught in landscape programs at the time. They looked to what was happening in art (painting and sculpture) with the work of Picasso, Braque, Duchamp, Hans-Hoffman, Miró, and others, believing the work of these artists was much more relevant to society and the times. Figure 4.10 presents three examples of the Modernist expression in landscape architecture. Landscape architects explored new forms of expression (essentially finding new ways to organize and create landscape spaces without relying on the bilateral symmetry and the formalism of Beaux Arts that had been prevalent in the past). The landscape Modernists sought to employ new materials to better

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Figure 4.10 Work by Modernist landscape architects: A: Garrett Eckbo; B: Thomas Church; C: Robert Zion.

realize their built projects. The Modernist movement in landscape architecture found a welcome home in California, coinciding with the return of Eckbo to his home state. Firms of landscape architecture and the hiring of landscape architects in government also grew, particularly as urban growth and expansion of cities in the suburbs occurred throughout America in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to Garrett Eckbo, other practitioners established robust practices including Thomas Church, Robert Zion, Robert Royston, Ruth Shellhorn, and many others.

The Modernist movement evolved with the next generation of landscape architects exploring new approaches that, in essence, gave greater emphasis to interpreting sense of place design issues and emerging environmental awareness concerns. To some extent, this exploration into new design forms and materials paralleled the environmental movement that emerged and gained influence not only in the form of governmental policy but also the arts. Lawrence Halprin’s work such as Ira’s Fountain (Figure 4.11), a public plaza in Portland, Oregon, Seattle’s Freeway Park, and Richard Haag’s Gasworks Park, also in Seattle, are examples of the new aesthetic in landscape architecture. Also at this time, use of native plant species was becoming popular as landscape design theorists wrestled with concepts of authenticity, regional expression, and sense of place.

In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon signed into law the Environmental Protection Act and with that Act the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency. Coincidentally, at around the same time, Professor Ian McHarg, Chair of the landscape architecture program at Pennsylvania University published his influential book: Design with Nature. The basic tenet of this work argues that planning and design of new projects should consider matching land use with appropriate land resources suitable to accommodate the uses, within a

Figure 4.11 Ira’s Fountain, Portland, Oregon, by Lawrence Halprin.