A brief history of landscape architecture, from Birnbaum to Walter to Coen.
We asked Charles Birnbaum to point us to five unique landscapes that we can still take a peek at. He explains: “I’ve chosen places that are either at risk or lesser known. They don’t resemble anything you’ve ever seen, and once viewed they’re unlikely to be forgotten.”
An amorphous profession, landscape architecture embraces everything from civic plazas, highways, and landfill reclamations to the front lawn. Here we profile two practitioners, Walter Hood and Shane Coen, who shape the space in which we play in very different ways. Based in Oakland, California, Hood is at home in the public realm, while in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Coen is one of a growing number of landscape architects who are involved with what surrounds a house before it’s even built.
“Mother Nature is too powerful to try and mimic,” says Shane Coen, whose firm is known for its minimalist approach to the residential landscape.
dwell.com is your online home in the modern world. Join us as we follow our team around the globe on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. Want more? Never miss another word of Dwell with our free iTunes app.
Celebrate the anniversary of Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius' birthday and the ninetieth anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus at the Gropius House on Sunday, May 17, with half-price admission. The Bauhaus School was renowned for is exuberant parties, like the 1929 Metallisches Fest, or Metal Party, for which the artists made fantastic creations out of metal. Walter Gropius brought this playful tradition with him to his post at the Harvard Graduate School of Design when each May, his students and colleagues celebrated his birthday in Harvard Yard. A year after his death, friends, family, and members of The Architects Collaborative, hosted more than fifteen hundred friends and colleagues at a Metallisches Fest as a final memorial to him. In the same spirit, on May 17, Gropius House offers half-price admission to visitors wearing anything metal. On this day, a metal crown Ise Gropius, Walter's widow, wore to the final tribute, along with several birthday cards made for him by artist friends, will be on view.
Add comment