Lawrence Halprin Oral History Project

For those without immediate access to Halprin's work a new resource hit the web this month, and is worth the time of anyone interested in landscape design. The Cultural Landscape Foundation has been running a series of oral histories of important American designers. The entry on Halprin went up earlier this month. A trove of interviews with the man, photos, and commentary, Halprin's oral history is most notable for how strongly his voice is heard.

Whether it's the man himself on Levi's Plaza (right), describing how he chose granite outcroppings to suggest what the gold panners who sported the company's early dungarees would have sat on, or Halprin talking about the sketches he made of the destroyer on which he served during World War II, his grace, humility, and great reverence for design come through.

There are also wonderful galleries of photos of Halprin's most important projects such as Sea Ranch, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, and Freeway Park.

By all means, take a tour through the variety of videos and images dedicated to remembering Halprin's work, but don't pass up the CLF's three other oral history projects on Carol R. Johnson, Edward L. Daugherty, and M. Paul Friedberg.