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INTRODUCTION

GEORGE HARGREAVES AND OTHERS WHO WERE EDUCATED IN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE IN THE 1970S ARE SITUATED AT AN INTERESTING CROSSROADS FOR THE DISCIPLINE. CHARACTERISTIC OF THE TIME WERE IAN MCHARG’S SEMINAL MANIFESTO,

Design with Nature (1969), along with Charles Jencks’s famous declaration that modernism ended at 3:32 P.M. on July 15, 1972 (referring to the destruction of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis).¹ The period was marked by a call for an end to totalizing narratives of linear advancement while simultaneously offering the earth-ecosystem as a new totality. In response to this challenge, which landscape scholar Elizabeth Meyer has aptly named the “post–earth day conundrum,” designers sought to move beyond modernist doctrines of progress in recognition of planetary limits.² This critique went beyond environmentalism and landscape architecture to involve challenges to hegemony—singularity, authority, hierarchy—in any form. Though the critique originated from within many disciplines across the arts and humanities, they shared a common goal of undermining what had become categorical impasses within their respective fields, such as medium specificity (art), singular authorship (literature, planning), and typology (architecture). In response to the array of emerging changes that typify this period, Hargreaves helped forge an approach within landscape architecture that expressed this broader shift in sensibility taking place.³

As Hargreaves was venturing into practice in the early 1980s, critiques of modernist master planning and urban renewal were in full force. Critics such as Jane Jacobs (The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961) had ushered in an era of community activism, which changed the relationship between designers and the community for whom they design, and challenged the divide between “public” and “expert.” Both grassroots environmentalism and federal regulation of pollution had taken a foothold, spurred on by publications such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). This increased awareness eventually led to legislation pertaining to soil and water quality and thus affected the construction of landscapes, especially with regard to cleaning up the large swaths of toxic land in or adjacent to city centers and waterfronts. These sites—the so-called postindustrial landscape—still form the basis of much work that is happening in landscape architecture today and constitute the type of locales where Hargreaves Associates created its first important projects.

The 1970s–1980s was a period when the importance of history as a resource to be mined for design inspiration was reinvigorated as an idea. For some practices, history was invoked in the name of pluralism or populism, drawing on conventional icons or themes so that work could be “accessible” to a broad audience. This was especially visible in architecture, where historical references, represented in allegedly familiar signs and symbols, were celebrated (see the pleas by Charles Jencks, Robert Venturi, and Denise Scott Brown). In landscape architecture, history was invoked as a means to create specificity and uniqueness, especially on postindustrial sites, an early example being Seattle’s Gas Works Park (1971–88) by Richard Haag, where the relics of a gasification plant were preserved. By drawing on the past uses and materials of a particular place, landscape was conceptually understood as a cultural palimpsest—as one layer among many—rather than a tabula rasa, as had been the case during industrialization. Even on sites where all previous material traces (both natural and cultural) had been erased, history became a way to engage place as designers took inspiration from a site’s past (such as previous geometries or materials) to inform their designs. In this period the term “site specificity,” often used to describe Hargreaves Associates’ work, became a central concept. Rather than impose a unified or singular order, landscape architects engaged and produced complexity and variety by understanding sites in terms of processes occurring in time.

The impact of structuralism and poststructuralism infiltrated many disciplines at this moment and further expanded notions of context specificity. Structuralism, coming largely from the study of linguistics, sought to identify the underlying structures and codes that gave rise to the meaning of a work (such as how a novel is understood within a particular genre, and the history of the genre itself) in order to understand the full context of how a work signifies (rather than simply focusing on the particulars of a single work, such as the plot or narrative). Given that language itself was understood as a system apart from the physical world that it described, language was seen not as a reflection of the world, but as a construction of it. Poststructuralism furthered this argument by claiming that attempts to identify underlying structures would be no more likely to reveal the truer meaning of a work, because the means by which such structures are defined would themselves have embedded biases; therefore, there was no “deeper” understanding to be found. Rather, every work was produced, or reproduced, indefinitely, leading to the so-called decentering of knowledge. The dismantling of authoritative or truthful readings of texts brought about the “death of the author” and the birth of the “open work.”⁴ These developments challenged the notion that meaning is dependent on an author’s intent, arguing instead that meaning is based on the subjective interpretation of the reader, bringing to the fore questions about content (whether it can be embedded or inherent in a work), communication (what an audience can decipher about a work), and representation (who is speaking for whom).

The most direct influence of these methods on landscape architecture came by way of art criticism, in particular that of Rosalind Krauss. Krauss’s method of criticism opened up new ways of reading works, challenging what had been presumed to be key traits for understanding a work of art (originality, biography, genre, medium specificity, and so on). Her essay explicating the “expanded field” of sculpture utilized the work of many “earthworks” artists, and was structured around a set of terms that included “landscape” and “architecture.”⁵ This essay, as well as the artists she cited, was extremely influential in reinvigorating the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of the idea of “landscape”—the terms, methods, and representations around which site is constructed. As Hargreaves notes, the work of these artists appeared to him as “beacons on the parched field of designed landscapes,” influencing both his thinking and his formal language.⁶ All of this is to say that the redefinition and expansion of what constitutes context—cultural, historical, material, and disciplinary—became central in the production and evaluation of work.

Last, ecology began to be understood in an expansive, multipronged way. No longer referring only to the large-scale goals of resource conservation and regional planning, ecology was appealed to as a holistic theory of the environment, an enterprise that included human experience. Some critics and practitioners who sought to expand beyond the limits of positivist (McHargian) thinking placed emphasis on how an inclusive understanding of ecology could give rise to a new aesthetic for landscape and urban form. Many of these critics drew on the burgeoning field of environmental aesthetics and the work of social scientists such as Gregory Bateson (Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 1972) and philosophers such as Arnold Berleant.⁷ At this point in time (the late 1970s to the mid-1990s), questions of how new understandings of ecology could give rise to new landscapes were inseparable from questions of experience and aesthetics.

It is from within this rich constellation of ideas—transforming notions of public, site, context, and ecology—that Hargreaves ventured into practice. Hargreaves Associates’ early work, among that of several other practices at this time, marks an important moment in landscape architecture: one that bridged the divide that had dominated the discipline in the 1960s and 1970s, when the emphasis on large-scale planning led to a disregard for the qualitative and experiential aspects of landscape’s material and form.⁸

So it is disappointing that we should again find ourselves with a recent but dominant trend focused on the pragmatic and operational aspects of landscape and dismissive of, or at least skeptical about, the more subjective and perceptual aspects of landscape. This trend has gained traction as systems theory (a way of looking at the web of interactions that constitute any organization, which cannot be understood by looking at the behavior of any one of its parts) and its associated terminology (self-organization, emergence, and complexity) has become a pervasive theoretical umbrella for design. One of the chief theorists of systems thinking, Fritjof Capra, argues that the theory of self-organizing systems is the broadest scientific formulation of the ecological paradigm.⁹ He describes the systems approach through five key shifts, which hold for natural and social sciences and the humanities: the shift from part to whole, from structure to process, from objective to “epistemic” science, from “building” to “network” as a metaphor for knowledge, and from truth to approximate descriptions. Though systems theory has been widespread in philosophy and science since the middle of the twentieth century, the paradigm shift from viewing ecosystems as closed systems (balance, stasis) to understanding them as open to constant fluctuation (emergence, disturbance) did not occur until the 1980s, further contributing to our understanding of ecology as a metaphor for the mutability of all things, and marking a philosophical shift from being to becoming.

The ecological turn has influenced design in a multitude of ways, making it difficult to untangle the divergent ideologies at play when one evokes design in the name of “ecology.” For some, ecology maintains its conventional meaning and is used in design to refer to ecosystem health; its applicability is to planning large sites for habitat creation and protection. For others, it is used to generate novel form.¹⁰ The latter, often abetted by digital technology and software, has led to wide-ranging expressions, such as biomorphology (formal resemblance between human-made structures and natural structures), topology (spatial continuity achieved using parametric software), emergent form (using algorithmic software to “grow” formal variations out of fixed parameters), and emergent material (also known as ecological succession, where changes in the composition of the landscape occur in somewhat predictable ways; an approach most prominent in landscape architecture). In all cases, the ecological influence in design can be broadly viewed through the lens of process, where processes are the forces that shape form.

An emphasis on process (formation) over product (form) was already broadly espoused in art practices in the 1970s and was issued as a challenge to the autonomy of the art object and conventional pictorial codes. Because Hargreaves took inspiration from “process” artists, such as Robert Smithson and Richard Serra, his work has been described as process driven and, as a result, could be seen as an antecedent to the widespread interest in emergence outlined above. This is no doubt because Hargreaves himself said that he was approaching “landscape as more open-ended, allowing the natural processes to somehow complete the project.”¹¹ Since he made this statement two decades ago, there has been a further conflation of landscape and process, along with references to the emancipating or liberating effects of landscape as a metaphor for change. As already noted, emergence not only pertains to our understanding of ecosystems but includes the notion that social systems and places, like natural systems, evolve in unforeseen ways and consequently thwart our ability to plan them with any definitive ends in mind. In this view, ecology (nature) is the preeminent open work.

The fact that sites and systems are fundamentally open to change—their uses, meanings, and materials continually evolving—has led to a deemphasis on form (seen as too fixed) and experience (seen as too subjective) and, in some cases, resulted in dubious correlations among nature, landscape, and liberty.¹² The presumption is that landscapes will naturally evolve to be more complex and more diverse, both physically and culturally, than at their inception. The systems view and its affiliated terminology of self-organization and emergence has been interpreted in such a way as to equate lack of “product” with open-endedness, the belief being that “by avoiding intricate compositional designs and precise planting arrangements [projects can] respond to future programmatic and political changes.”¹³ This notion has become increasingly widespread and has even been used in reference to Hargreaves Associates’ work. For example, landscape architect Martha Schwartz describes process-driven landscape design as catering to a “new naturalism,” and uses a project by Hargreaves Associates to illustrate this point.¹⁴ While she is right to criticize this sentiment, Hargreaves Associates’ work does not fit this description. Though Hargreaves may have inadvertently ushered in the emphasis on process over “product,” it was to inspire new formal, spatial, and experiential effects, not to eschew them.

Accordingly, this introduction seeks to distance Hargreaves Associates’ work from characterizations that equate process with lack of specificity in order to place questions of form and intent within the design of public space itself, rather than to displace them as the inevitable outcome of ongoing cultural and natural transformation, which is inherent in any project. In contrast to Hargreaves’s early statement that emphasized process, he has more recently said that he is “more interested in the geologic than the biologic,” since the organic is reminiscent of conventional ideas about nature.¹⁵ This recalls a sentiment expressed by Robert Smithson: “I do have a stronger tendency towards the inorganic than to the organic. The organic is closer to the idea of nature: I’m more interested in denaturalization or in artifice than I am in any kind of naturalism.”¹⁶ This distinction between the geologic and the biologic-ecologic provides a useful framework for discussing Hargreaves Associates’ work. This is not meant to neglect the importance of the health of natural systems (what we can learn from the science of ecology), but rather to consider the ways in which different scientific analogues, such as emergence and complexity, influence design methodology and expression. As part of such consideration, the characterization of Hargreaves Associates’ work outlined below interprets the firm’s work through a geological analogue in order to emphasize several things. First, the site in a geologic approach foregrounds the subsurface in terms of history, traces, and excavation. Second, the material of this approach emphasizes striation, as opposed to smoothness. In other words, the work is heterogeneous, characterized by distinct adjacencies or fissures between and among various forms and materials rather than subtle, even, or gradual transitions. And third, the form of a geologic approach utilizes prominent earthwork as a fundamental characteristic.

GEOLOGIC UNDERPINNINGS

HARGREAVES WAS NOT ALONE IN ADVANCING a geological approach. Lawrence Halprin has been noted as a key predecessor to Hargreaves.¹⁷ Halprin’s interest in geomorphologic processes inspired some of his best known urban plazas, where water spilling over faceted slabs of concrete into pools evokes waterfalls and cliff faces. This approach can be seen in Hargreaves Associates’ small plazas, such as Charleston Place and Prospect Green, where stone and water appear to be undergoing a transfomation or erupting with force out of the ground. Other practitioners literally excavate the ground to create a spatial sequence moving from surface to subsurface; examples include Alexandre Chemetoff’s Bamboo Garden in Parc de la Villette (1986–89), which is cut below the surface of the park, exposing remnant concrete pipes and creating an immersive microclimate—damp, confined, and packed full of bamboo—as a foil to the flat expanse of the park’s surface. Or Carme Pinós and Enric Miralles’s Igualada Cemetery (1986–90), made primarily of rock and concrete; its burial chambers are incised into the ground, and the visitor’s movement descends into the crevice of this former quarry.

FIGURE 1. A cut in the site makes it appear as if the ground has opened, exposing the subsurface clay and water. Fountain mock-up at Charleston Place, Mountain View, California (early 1990s).

But perhaps the most prevalent method of the geological approach is not an actual, physical cut in the ground but the idea of palimpsest or trace derived from mapping and the superimposition of distinct layers. This approach became prevalent in a wide array of practices in the 1980s as a means to question the presumed biases inherent in the act of mapping itself.¹⁸ The notion that maps are representations that construct and delimit our reading of site, rather than being an “accurate” depiction of it, dominated critiques at this time and is something taken for granted today. Even so, mapping topography, soil conditions, bathymetry, and so on, remain essential components of landscape architectural practice, as this information is used to understand the opportunities and constraints of a site’s physical characteristics. Thus, the notion of “site-specific” or “site-generated” work, terms that both Hargreaves and others have used to describe their work, is not straightforward as it refers to information that is considered both material and conceptual or abstract.¹⁹

FIGURE 2. Molded landforms with redwood trees and misters recall fog emerging from a valley. Prospect Green, sacramento, California (1990–93).

In order to clarify this point, discussion of two radically dissimilar practitioners representing radically different interpretations is useful to underscore the efficacy of a “geologic” approach to design: landscape architect Ian McHarg (1920–2001) and architect Peter Eisenman (b. 1932). McHarg and Eisenman, through their writing, design practices, and spirited personae, as well as their canonization by critics and theorists, emblematize a defining moment in their respective disciplines. Despite the limiting, and some would say incapacitating, effects of their design methods, their work continues to provide a baseline for subsequent reformulations of their respective disciplines.²⁰ Both used working methods that utilize mapping to mine the substrate for clues. These clues are physical accretions that are brought to the “surface” (represented in their drawings) to materially and culturally ground their work. And though they were certainly not the first to use such methods, they popularized them by making their process legible and, therefore, usable and teachable, which is why each became so influential in his respective field.

When McHarg published his seminal book Design with Nature (1969), Eisenman had just finished the first of his series of “cardboard houses” (House I, 1968). Although they were ideologically at opposite ends of the spectrum, both claimed to remove the subjectivities of the designer via their methodology, which relates their work directly to the language of emergence and process used today (in which natural processes, or computer processes, “complete” the work). Furthermore, their opposing definitions of what constitutes “site” illustrate the impossibility of maintaining the claim that a design method can be authorless or value-free. A site’s value—what gets privileged and what gets suppressed—is itself a product of the author’s agenda and cannot sit outside it, even though the resultant work will be open to multiple interpretations, experiences, and transformations.

GEOMORPHIC MAPPINGS

MCHARG WORKED ON regional planning scales and was deeply committed to environmental health. He also recognized that any landscape is a value-laden territory, which is why he thought an objective method itself was value-free enough to “prove” how development should occur. For McHarg, understanding the existing natural and cultural patterns was essential to producing work considered in the best interest of the largest number of people. He believed the “given form” of the site provided the constraints for the work and that, subsequent to analysis of its natural and cultural patterns, there was an optimal answer to any problem: “There will be a form of fitting which is most fitting.”²¹ In order to derive the areas most fit for a particular type of development, he used a mapping method comprising a series of transparent overlays. This now well-known method, a precursor to digital geographic information systems, used each layer to represent a different value, indicating a limitation imposed on the site beginning with, for example, underlying bedrock, soil characteristics, hydrology, and places of cultural significance. He mapped each value independently as a tone or color. When the layers were superimposed, the gradient on the composite map “revealed” the area most suited for a particular type of development. In other words, the area with little or no tone had the fewest restrictions on it.²² McHarg saw these maps as an accurate depiction of the present condition of the site. He believed that a precise definition of context was possible and considered his methodology reproducible by anyone using the same procedure.

GEOMETRIC MAPPINGS

To privilege “the site” as the context is to repress other possible contexts, is to become fixated on the presences of “the site,” is to believe that “the site” exists as a permanent, knowable whole.²³

—PETER EISENMAN

In contrast to the given form of the site, Eisenman refers to the imminent in every site. He is resolutely against the kind of positivism that characterized McHarg’s work. Thus, while McHarg looked for the most suitable fit, Eisenman is interested in misfits. Whether working typologically by dismantling platonic cubes (House Series, 1967–80) as a means to challenge such oversimplified notions as “form follows function,” or working contextually by overlaying multiple actual and fictional maps (Cities of Artificial Excavation, 1978–88), Eisenman wishes to destabilize the notion of a valued origin. He has described three fallacious “isms”: modernism’s nostalgia for the future, postmodernism’s nostalgia for the past, and contextualism’s nostalgia for the present.²⁴ In the Cities work, Eisenman traced multiple urban grids that existed at various points in history, unbuilt designs by other architects slated for that particular site, and mappings of invisible characteristics such as noise patterns. He then arbitrarily scaled these geometric abstractions to various sizes and superimposed them in order to create the grounds for his designs. Because these new grounds cannot be traced back to any particular origin, they give no more or less credence to any one time; thus, artificial excavations focus on the elusiveness of the “real” site.

FIGURE 3. McHarg’s mapping of physiographic obstructions in order to determine road alignment. Reprinted from McHarg’s Design with Nature (New York: John Wiley & sons, 1992). Reprinted with permission of John Wiley & sons.

FIGURE 4. A site plan showing various layers superimposed. image by the office of Eisenman/robertson architects for Long Beach: university art Museum of the California state university at Long Beach, 1986. From Cities of Artificial Excavation: The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1976–1988 (Montreal: Canadian Centre for architecture and Rizzoli international Publication, 1994). reprinted with permission of the Canadian Centre for architecture. Peter eisenman Fonds, Collection Centre Canadien d’Architecture/ Canadian Centre for architecture, Montreal.

While McHarg used mapping as a means to an end, a strategy of avoidance in order to determine where not to build, Eisenman’s mappings focus on the design process as endless means, a strategy of “voidance,” where, at least theoretically speaking, there is no identifiable beginning or end to the work.²⁵ Though both extrapolate from the past, McHarg’s work operates primarily through tracing and cataloguing, a procedure based on what he believed to be the predictability and repeatability of the “real.” The importance of his work is the implication of every site in relation to its larger physiographic region. Eisenman, on the other hand, eschews any belief in mapping as a manifestation of any fact or truth. The artificial excavations are not seen as descriptions of that which exists, but rather are seen as a series of fragments that do not add up to a more basic or underlying condition. In other words, any combination of map layers is an equally “truthful” account of the context. The usefulness of his practice is that it focuses on the techniques and conventions by which architecture gets made, foregrounding the fact that the “theoretical assumptions of functionalism are in fact cultural rather than universal.”²⁶ Even though they are ideologically opposed (McHarg would be characterized as a positivist, and Eisenman a poststructuralist), both discount subjective experience. McHarg did so in favor of quantifiable criteria about which there is presumed agreement, whereas Eisenman claims to ignore sensual or programmatic opportunities, believing both to be rooted in a humanism that he rejects. So in the end, the design proposals that result from their respective methodologies are described primarily as a snapshot of process.

SITE

The means are important, but only as to the end they lead to. I have not abandoned process, but rather learned where it belongs through the act of building.²⁷

—GEORGE HARGREAVES

Although Hargreaves helped usher in the process-driven approach, equating open-endedness with the unfinished work, he later criticized this approach, as is evident in the above quotation. In other words, Hargreaves does not utilize an unyielding design methodology (where the process is valued over the result) but shares in the ambitions of a “geological” approach that integrates diverse physical and temporal layers. Others have noted Hargreaves’s affiliation with Halprin because of Halprin’s references to geomorphology. In terms of design method, however, Hargreaves Associates’ use of drawing layers gives rise to organization in a way more closely aligned with Eisenman’s Cities work than with Halprin’s notational drawings. The former are plan-based drawings that overlay multiple layers taken from past points in time; whereas the latter represents temporal processes with a series of marks that capture fleeting or anticipated movement (as in a dance performance).²⁸ And though Hargreaves was not directly influenced by the processes engaged in by either McHarg or Eisenman, the combination of the two distinct ways of using information—material constraints and formal innovation—characterizes Hargreaves Associates’ work. This combination of approaches results in a fundamentally different type of practice than either method employed on its own.²⁹

FIGURE 5. A grading plan for Renaissance Park, Chattanooga. Hargreaves Associates’ design can be seen with respect to the underlying survey conditions.

In his first published writing, “Post-Modernism Looks beyond Itself” (1983), Hargreaves argues that postmodernism should turn its attention to the physical external reality represented in the map rather than the internalized autonomous space of the grid.³⁰ As the comparison of McHarg and Eisenman clearly illustrates, maps do not represent reality, they represent a particular reading of it; likewise, Hargreaves’s evocation of the map is meant to reference more than the underlying material conditions of a site. He notes the importance of mapping in the form of data collection in McHarg’s work, but argues that this resulted in “imitative naturalism” when applied to individual sites.³¹ Later, and more in the spirit of Eisenman, Hargreaves describes the firm’s approach as a multiscalar “abstract archeology.”³² In other words, the information unearthed from site research is used to give form to the already “given form” of the site, such as when a former artifact or material condition inspires a new organization. This approach accepts that certain material aspects inherent in the site must be considered relative to fitness (such as appropriateness to subsurface conditions, such as soil or saturation levels that will support certain types of vegetation but not others) but that the misfits—formal innovations that cannot be tied to existing conditions—open opportunities for producing new grounds and, subsequently, new experiences and patterns of use. Hargreaves Associates’ work thus engages a site’s material and cultural histories without using them to reproduce an existing order.

As I emphasize in the next chapter, this approach is utilized as a means to recover “place” in the spaces that economic processes have literally and figuratively leveled. This is not to be misconstrued as an essentialist “genius loci,” but rather to foreground that landscapes are temporally and materially multilayered, having gone through continual transformation, especially, and radically, during industrialization. Thus reading a site is not a distillation of its “essence” but rather a projection of possibilities. Transforming the types of sites that landscape architects face today means engaging in an immense amount of research and strategic planning due to a myriad of factors: extant infrastructure and buildings; phasing requirements due to incremental funding; local, state, and federal laws pertaining to contaminated sites; and the multiple and conflicting interests that arise when adapting a site for public use. These physical, financial, and regulatory constraints provide limitations on, and opportunities for, how and where to act. Accordingly, mapping multiple layers of information remains a necessary process for sites of this complexity. However, this alone will not create a unique or memorable environment. Many of these sites are devoid of the natural features that gave character, spatial interest, and temporal depth to the parks of the nineteenth century. Because of this condition, the grounds for the project must be largely manufactured, and this requires great facility in working the ground.

FORM

HARGREAVES PLACES considerable emphasis on complexly graded topography, where the conspicuous articulation of the ground organizes movement, orientation, and different zones of use. In many of the firm’s projects, the earthwork is predominant. Some landforms are characterized by geometrically nameable forms, such as cones or spirals, some are inspired by natural formations, some from past uses on the site, and others have no referent at all; however, in all cases, such forms are clearly humanmade. Landscape historian John Dixon Hunt notes that in our current intellectual milieu, which includes an increased awareness and concern for humans’ impact on the environment, we witness a return to the prominence of geomorphological representations in landscape architecture. Hunt warns that we should be careful not to mask the “fictions” of our creations because “it is precisely in that modern, ecological instance that we confront once again what may be called the Brownian fallacy. By insisting on naturalistic design, landscape architects run the risk of effacing themselves and their art.”³³ Likewise, even though Hargreaves Associates’ work utilizes earth, water, and vegetation as the primary structuring elements (in conjunction with all the unseen physical supports that make these landscapes possible, such as retaining and utilities), the firm’s approach to molding the ground reflects an effort to resist naturalization.

This tendency is supported by a working method: the firm relies heavily on physical models made from clay. Working with such material enables the designer to bypass the limits of drawing and develop a facility for working the ground in complex ways. Clay models are not images in the way that drawings or diagrams are. The clay is not notational or pictorial; rather, it is a transformable, malleable, and homogenous substance. Rather than representing movement through notational drawings, or representing temporality through indexing past traces, the clay enables the designer to focus on the form of the ground and the importance of sectional change for guiding movement—of people and water—and creating spaces. Though Hargreaves Associates designs are now also developed through computer modeling, the firm continues to use clay, especially early in a project’s formation. When Hargreaves was chair of the landscape architecture department at Harvard, the clay landform workshop was a mandatory part of the curriculum, and involved molding the ground into precise, measured forms. Students were asked to utilize multiple forms in configurations where they would abut, intersect, and overlap so as to compel the student to understand the complex intersections of different slopes and shapes. As noted by Kirt Rieder, an associate at Hargreaves Associates who ran the workshop for eight years, “the emphasis on distinct forms and pronounced intersections between these surfaces runs counter to the prevailing attitude in landscape architecture to ‘soften’ or blend grading into the existing conditions to make new interventions appear seamless or solely as background scenery.”³⁴ This working method resists an imitative naturalism by creating unique and prominent topography. Though this aspect of the work has been described as “mimetic” because some of the earthwork resembles forms produced by natural processes, or “decorative” because it represents such processes without always engaging them directly, neither adequately explains the effect of the topography in terms of the relationships set up by the ground’s organization, a topic further explored in the third chapter (“Effects”).³⁵

FIGURE 6. Various study models made of malleable materials. Candlestick Point Park was designed collaboratively with the architect and artist using a sandbox model (opposite, top). Parque do Tejo eTrancao in Lisbon, Portugal (opposite, bottom), and saint-Michel Environmental Complex in Montreal, Quebec (above), are clay models.

MATERIAL: REGISTRATION AND RESISTANCE

GIVEN THE CHARACTERIZATION of Hargreaves Associates’ early work, and Hargreaves’s own statements about process, what role does this notion play in the firm’s work in terms of its detailing and construction? The ability to see processes registered on site has as much to do with fixed form as it does with the changing aspects of a landscape; therefore, it is as much concerned with ends as with means. “Resistance” involves the material, construction, and maintenance procedures that uphold the landscape’s structure and appearance over time, whereas “registration” refers to the ability to see change within or against this structure. Both are necessary and they function together. The recognizable figures and compositions in Hargreaves Associates’ work are designed and built to resist the erosive power of water or large crowds, their edges constructed with gabions (rock-filled cages) or concrete or reinforced with geotextiles (subsurface fabrics) or ground-cover planting. In terms of natural processes, Hargreaves Associates’ approach favors addressing a cyclical time frame of daily tides, seasonal color, or seasonal flooding, for example, rather than a linear time frame of succession and growth. These are obviously not exclusive of each other (cyclical events gradually transform the landscape); however, they offer distinct approaches when used as the basis for design. For example, Hargreaves believes that in garnering support from clients and public, complete construction of distinct portions of a project is more effective than treating an entire site evenly or proposing successional landscapes that are presumed to grow in. He acknowledges that some areas have to be “let go,” but only so that the limited financial resources can be focused on other aspects of a project.³⁶ Thus, in most of the work, phasing and zoning assure that a uniformly distributed character does not evolve across the site. There are areas where material processes are highlighted, for example, the break in the river wall in Louisville Waterfront Park, where the registration of water flow is visible because of the debris that collects in the inlets and the gradient of vegetation that results. But it also remains visible because one side of the cut is reinforced to maintain a distinct edge. Even in areas that are not subject to flooding or large volumes of water, many of the earthworks in Hargreaves Associates’ projects are reinforced with geotextiles in order to maintain their distinct forms and resist gradual processes of erosion.

There are early projects that invoke succession, and it is worth looking at these to see how they have fared in comparison to the later projects that utilize more distinct zones and with higher maintenance budgets. The power of projects such as Candlestick Point Park and Byxbee Park, both of which involved collaborations with artists, derives from the subtle differences between the constructed site and the surrounding landscape of sky and sea, arising from the use of simple incisions that register water levels, or markers that orient the view outward. These parks were restrained by design, but they were also constrained by budget and maintenance, installed for between one and two dollars per square foot. Their locations are peripheral to their city centers (San Francisco and Palo Alto, Calif., respectively) in areas with previous industrial or landfill uses. The site conditions are similar to those that have formed the basis of more recent and well-publicized projects. The questions frequently asked in recent publications are: How much design is enough? How can a master plan be avoided? How do maintenance concerns bear on design? Do investing less up front and being less specific about design result in greater flexibility for future use? It has been over twenty years since Candlestick Point and Byxbee Parks were constructed; therefore, Hargreaves Associates’ work offers interesting case studies to consider these questions.

Candlestick Point Park is 18 acres of land within the 170-acre Candlestick Point State Recreational Area. Hargreaves Associates’ original intent was a heightened contrast between the irrigated grasses that form the central lawn and the adjacent meadow left to its own cycles of growth and a lack of irrigation.³⁷ The distinction between the two zones is less visible now, as nature has been allowed to take its course because of infrequent maintenance. Though still occasionally mown, the formerly pristine central lawn is dotted with shrubs. The maintenance crews who mow this area maneuver around the shrubs, allowing additional species to colonize the untouched pockets, further eroding the distinction between the lawn and the adjacent ground. Activities originally envisioned for the site have not taken place because the associated building was never funded. The site is sparsely populated, and there are graffiti on the concrete outcroppings by the water’s edge. Part of its appeal, at least to a one-time visitor, is its rough appearance and deserted feeling, which makes the presence of the bay that much more commanding. Located a half-mile walk from the nearest neighborhood, it is surrounded by a sea of asphalt that is the 49ers’ stadium parking lot.

FIGURE 9. Candlestick Point Park, showing one of the tidal inlets in the foreground soon after construction. The stepped gabion walls that retain the central mown grass figure can be seen.

FIGURE 10. Candlestick Point Park showing the same inlet in 2004. Photograph by the author.

FIGURE 11. Aerial view of Candlestick Point Park from 2008 showing the vegetation encroaching on the central figure and the tidal inlets filled with sediment and vegetation. Image courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.

There is no question that Candlestick Point Park is a critical project for the discipline of landscape architecture, as it eschewed a verdant nature to which the field had become accustomed; however, the lack of funding and minimal program development are not within the control of the designer, so why would these aspects be celebrated as a desirable or inevitable state of landscape design today, as is evident in the winning scheme for Downs-view Park Toronto by OMA/Bruce Mau?³⁸ Though the proposal appeared to be a brilliant polemic, it is an emergent scheme because design specifics were suppressed in favor of managerial organizations that would eventually evolve the project. Not surprisingly, the plan that inevitably resulted from this process is a very banal and uninspired landscape.

Designed just after Candlestick Point Park, and located thirty miles south and east of it, is Byxbee Park. Also planted with native grasses, the covered sanitary landfill contrasts seasonally to the marsh below, “swapping” colors during the seasons: when one is green in winter and spring, the other is golden, with the inverse true in the summer. The original species selection was a choice made by Hargreaves Associates based on its survivability without irrigation and the desired visual effects; however, the grasses must be maintained through the removal of colonizing species that would otherwise likely overtake them, even though the colonizing plants are obviously well adapted to the site’s harsh conditions.³⁹ In fact, there has been little success with removal of these plants.⁴⁰ Nor did the processes that were presumably set in motion transpire; for example, where concrete curbs were placed parallel to the ground’s contours to presumably collect water on their upward side and prompt growth of more water-loving vegetation. So while landscape is often called the art of time, it is also aptly described as the art of maintenance.

The widespread emphasis on process that was prevalent after Hargreaves Associates finished these first projects acknowledges that sites are inevitably open to change, but using this knowledge requires understanding the existing conditions that are likely to enable particular changes to occur, changes that also imply particular forms of maintenance. The next chapter (regarding Crissy Field) further addresses this topic, as does Chapter 2, “Techniques.” The topic brings to the fore the often conflicting notions of sustainability: the acknowledgment that landscapes are inherently open to change, coupled with the desire to “sustain” a particular type of landscape in response to specific social and programmatic demands.

CONCLUSION

RECENT DISCUSSIONS in landscape architecture have tended to emphasize two dominant, yet contradictory, aspects of landscape: its changing and unpredictable nature and its known and “performative” functions (“performative” is a term often used to describe what a project “does”—the effects that it sets in motion—rather than what it “is”—its physical form, materials, appearance). The fact that these are at odds remains unacknowledged, for example, when successional models of growth are used to show how biodiversity builds over time. Even though disturbances, such as floods and fires, are recognized, projects are still presumed to move toward a more complex state ecologically. Likewise, the social equivalent to emergence presumes that if we design less, it automatically leaves more room for users to change or appropriate a space. How does Hargreaves Associates’ work fit these two characterizations?

FIGURES 12. Byxbee Park in Palo Alto, California, showing the seasonal color “swap” of the marsh and park grasses.

FIGURES 13. Byxbee Park in Palo Alto, California, showing the seasonal color “swap” of the marsh and park grasses.

The dynamism of natural processes’ effects on design intentions is most visible in a project like Candlestick Point Park described above; however, the lack of initial funding and minimal design did not allow it to “evolve” into a more complex landscape. Now, with plans to demolish the 49ers stadium and the area slated for large development, a larger and more generic park, designed by AE-COM, will replace Hargreaves Associates’ design. Other projects will not share its fate anytime soon, as the nature of the projects Hargreaves Associates has undertaken has changed.⁴¹ Rather than having construction budgets of one dollar per square foot, projects such as Louisville Waterfront Park or Chattanooga Waterfront Park are investing twenty to twenty-five times that amount per acre of park development, with construction phased anywhere from five to twenty years, and per-acre maintenance budgets exceeding that of New York’s Central Park.⁴² Hargreaves Associates is involved not only with the planning of the landscape but also with the plans that financially underwrite the landscape development, including helping clients create the 501c organizations that will help fund and maintain their projects. These projects require immense investments from both public and private sources, and the “open space” commonly associated with the public realm is reciprocally tied to the funding mechanism for private development. In several of Hargreaves Associates’ projects, the private investment catalyzed by the park development was from two to four and a half times greater than the funds for the initial public infrastructure.⁴³ So there is no question that these projects “perform” economically by enticing development and raising property values.

FIGURE 14. The twelve-acre Discovery Green in Houston, Texas, is an example of a densely programmed site, funded largely with private money for its land, construction, and maintenance. Previously a sparsely populated site comprising mainly parking and lawn, it has become a destination that has enlivened the downtown area and attracted new development.

In addition to the event-based programs, such as concerts, that these landscapes support, many comprise complex infrastructures. Their projects are designed such that flood control and stormwater treatment systems are interwoven with cultural and recreational events. The environmental criteria are measured, whereas the firm’s multifunctional design tactic enables other program elements—terraces, large event spaces, theatrical displays of water, or small seating areas—to exist in tandem with the more utilitarian ones. In this sense, combining the measurable function of landscape, such as water control, with recreation is a strategic way to make public space because more total funds are allocated to the project and more area is made publicly accessible. Many projects are funded not only through a city’s open-space allocations, or the eventual return from private development and tourist taxes, but through state and federal funding.⁴⁴

FIGURE 15. Louisville Waterfront Park during a large event, April 21, 2007. image courtesy of Michael Schnuerle.

Finally, the public process by which land is transformed into public space is often where the debate over site use and management happens because many people need to buy into these projects, emotionally, intellectually, and financially. One tactic is to leave the design so open that it will be created by committee or by managers, such as at Downsview Park. Fortunately, Hargreaves does not confuse lack of specificity with flexibility. To claim that formal or material indeterminacy is any more liberating or communal than what modernists claimed about space, or postmodernists about surface, is to fall prey to the same fallacy—that there is a direct cause and effect between a designer’s intent and a project’s reception, eventual use, and control.⁴⁵ Funding, maintenance, ownership, and restriction of uses have little to do with a particular form or aesthetic. However, designers do propose surfaces, materials, and forms that can enable or preclude particular uses.

For example, a large swath of lawn, irrespective of whether it is embedded in Olmsted’s nineteenth-century picturesque Central Park or Hargreaves Associates’ late twentieth-century Louisville Waterfront Park, provides a place for large gatherings, protests, temporary memorials, games, and so on; therefore, its use is open, but its form is precise, its material is uniform and soft, and its size is pertinent to supporting a range of activities (Central Park’s Great Lawn is fifteen acres; the lawn at Louisville Waterfront Park is twelve acres). The fact that protestors were not allowed to use Central Park’s Great Lawn for demonstrations in 2004 lest it ruin the grass is a problem of ownership and permitting, rather than of form or material.⁴⁶ Had the entire site been designed as a rocky ramble of intimate, winding paths, which would have precluded large gatherings, it would have been a problem of form and material. In other words, design determines “openness” in very specific ways. The language of emergence as applied to landscape architecture risks valuing change for change’s sake. Perhaps this sentiment should not be surprising, as it is an outgrowth of concerns and critiques that began four decades ago when the slippery relationships among authorship, representation, and reception became widely problematized. However, the notion that less design, or more open-endedness, affords greater flexibility should be seen as a critique of the role of designers and planners (and the social assumptions underlying their designs) rather than an empowerment of those who would presumably take over such undesigned spaces.

The point of this introduction to Hargreaves Associates’ work is not to simply suggest replacing ecology with geology as a metaphor for design method; however, if we are to adopt a “complexity theory” for landscapes, it should not be a complexity theory of self-organizing systems (such as nature), or one that positions design as the inevitable outcome of forces beyond the designer’s control, which is already part and parcel of any built project. Hargreaves Associates’ work makes a compelling case that facility in dealing with given conditions does not equate to a conservative replication of those conditions, nor do given conditions alone suffice to define the work. They do, however, provide the foundation, as well as inspiration, for the expressive, programmatic, and aesthetic agendas layered onto a site’s given form and material.