“Gardens, parks, landscapes – these diverse scales and intensities of cultured nature all play important roles in our lives. This small collection is a provocative visual reminder of the enduring design potential of landscape space as public space,” writes Julia Czerniak, ASLA, professor of architecture at Syracuse University, in the introduction to Hargreaves Associates‘ Landscapes & Gardens, a small but rich landscape architecture monograph on the work of Hargreaves Associates.
Hargreaves Associates, which won the 2016 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for landscape architecture, has worked in the U.S. and abroad for decades. Their principals — George Hargreaves, FASLA, Mary Margaret Jones, FASLA, and Gavin McMillan, International ASLA — have put together a compelling case for well-designed public landscapes wherever they may fit, like the recently-constructed Crescent Park in New Orleans or the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, both of which emerged from degraded brownfields.
As Czerniak contends, “Design matters. The design premises the projects employ offer glimpses into many of the larger themes that have consistently produced the firm’s successful work; a firm with an international reputation for its advanced design, technical expertise, public engagement, and the ability to get projects built in the context of complex politics and tough economics.”
The book is a mostly-photographic argument for increasing public investment in landscapes, parks, and gardens in the era of the public-private partnership in which parks are expected to raise lots of money to cover their own operating expenses and maintenance. But Hargreaves himself also writes eloquently about the subject:
“A successful park has loyal followers—people who identify a park with their culture, their region, their city, and their daily lives. This identification may be due to a particular activity in the park, but more often it is due to the gestalt of the overall park experience—said another way, the look and feel of the park. Landscapes can inspire through their visual qualities, tactile qualities, and contrasting or unifying qualities. They can inspire through their sustainability or their habitat creation, and they can inspire by providing human interaction with plants and wildlife. Through time it is the landscape that is remembered and privileged much more than income-producing programming. If we can produce landscapes for public space that embody these inspirational qualities, it will not matter when the programmed activities evolve, disappear (such as the 2012 Olympic games), or increase. History has shown us that, if it is done richly and robustly, a landscape can last for hundreds of years.”
The book is organized by landscape design features, with brief chapters on striations, walls, islands, ribbons, along with underlying, core elements of landscape architecture, such as native plants, rain, and background / foreground.
Landscapes & Gardens clearly demonstrates that Hargreaves Associates can create memorable and immersive experiences in their “quiet, green spaces.” For example, anyone walking through Crissy Field in San Francisco is likely to remember the sense of tranquility that remarkable place engenders.
For Hargreaves, the challenge has always been how to balance “richness and robustness” in his firms’ public spaces, and within them, the quieter gardens. He says public spaces must both be designed to hold up to crowds but also offer moments for introspection, for enjoying the plants:
“Embedded within the public’s desire for green parks is a desire for gardens. Public gardens cannot be fragile in their design or placement. Like the landscapes they inhabit, public gardens must be robust. They will not receive personalized maintenance, nor can they be subject to the overrunning pedestrian flows of large events or major gatherings. In addition to the selection of hardy plants and protection by slight grade separations or low barriers, the design of these gardens should be bold and somewhat simple, while retaining the very qualities that we enjoy so much—constant and changing colors, differing plant structures, and textures that change with the seasons or that carry the garden through winter. Gardens can inspire, provide refreshment, incite joy, or simply provide a provocative landscape context; as John Dixon Hunt wrote in regard to the landscape, ‘The garden is the highest aspiration of our culture.'”
The book, however, doesn’t go into any details on how the firm has consistently overcome political, financial, and ecological obstacles to achieve those well-designed public spaces. A few brief case studies or interviews with clients could have given a glimpse into how Hargreaves has successfully navigated institutional and financial challenges. Still, Landscapes & Gardens is a thoughtful effort from one of the few truly global landscape architecture firms.