The concept of preserving historic cultural landscapes has grown significantly over the past decade. Preserving high style landscape architecture, like the work of the Olmsteds, has a tremendous amount of local support, especially in the centennial year of the Olmsteds' plan for Seattle. The preservation of Modernism, however, is relatively new, and the preservation of modern landscape architecture has even fewer supporters outside of the design communities whose inspiration has stemmed from outstanding work of landscape artists working in the last half century.

Lack of awareness for modern landscape design has led to the significant alteration (and oftentimes the paving over) of significant modern landscape elements, such as the landscaped entry area of Richard Haag's office on Eastlake Avenue in the Eastlake neighborhood. What was once an elegant threshold to one of Seattle's foremost landscape architects (Gas Works Park is perhaps his best known work), which employed distinctive black Mondo grass.

Modern design often embraces the relationship between indoors and outdoors, which makes modern landscapes integral to contemporary understanding of original design intent. Landscapes are more fragile and susceptible to insensitive alterations due in part to popular sentiments. Simply stated, gardens and landscaping are much easier to change, and more often than not, reflect the evolving tastes and green thumb of the property owner.

Although the National Register of Historic Places' Criteria for Evaluation states that properties must be at least fifty years old to be considered significant, guideline language provides for the recognition of historic places that have achieved significance in the last fifty years under Criteria Consideration G. However, a property must be of "exceptional importance" at the national, state or local level for eligibility. In the last three decades, numerous properties have been eligible under this criterion. Gas Works Park in Seattle is one such place.

Rich Haag distinguishes his work and the work of other landscape architects not specifically allied with the early Modern Movement as being 'modern' because they worked during the so-called modern period. Even modern designers have trouble with the terminology, which makes acknowledgement, and by extension preservation, more difficult.

Modern versus Modernism

What are modern landscapes anyway?

In the introduction to their text, Invisible Gardens: The Search for Modernism in the Landscape, Peter Walker and Melanie Simo state that the definitions for modern and modernism have yet to be clearly understood in the field of landscape architecture.

The seeds of the Modern Movement, after having taken form in Europe at the turn-of-the century, were planted in the United States just prior to World War II. These ideas gave rise to a flowering of modernist design in architecture and landscape architecture during the rapid development that took place in the United States, especially on the West Coast, immediately after the war.

The International Style is the form most associated with the Modern Movement. Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe introduced the style in the United States early in the last century. At the foundation of modernist principles, in all of the design arts, was the rejection of traditional styles and ornamentation.

A modern approach to landscape design in the United States first evolved in residential landscapes on the West Coast in the 1930's. Thomas Church, whose practice was based in California, experimented with new spatial forms to extend the livable areas of the house into the landscape.

Landscape architects immediately following in Church's footsteps, such as Garrett Eckbo, continued to experiment with non-traditional spatial designs and new materials, and in doing so, creating places that were not only livable but were also works of art allied with the aesthetic principles of modernism.

The next generation of landscape architects such as Hideo Sasaki, Lawrence Halprin and Rich Haag, explored the most appropriate responses to a site specifics such as form, function, geographic location and human relationships to the site. At the time, these designers struggled to define their profession and distinguish their work from that of building architects.

To establish their distinct view of landscape design, these landscape architects moved away from strong associations with styles and towards a unique approach that embraced the inherent qualities of the environment. Landscape architects and their design colleagues of the post-war era shaped the modern environment in small garden design, large-scale environmental design projects such as residential communities, corporate and college campuses and urban parks and civic spaces.<./p>

Even as early pioneers in modern landscape design began to reject the aesthetics associated with modernism, they maintained their focus on the relationship between humans and the environment, as well as ecological planning and environmental health concerns. Halprin declared that modernism was "not just a matter of cubist space but of a whole appreciation of environmental design as a holistic approach to the matter of making places for people to live." (Walker and Simo, p.9) This still echoes the sentiments expressed by the writings of Thomas Church and Garrett Eckbo, who authored Gardens are for People and Landscapes for Living, respectively.

Modern Landscapes in the Puget Sound

Thomas Church was involved in the design of a few modern gardens in the Puget Sound area, including the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island. The property had originally been built as a large estate at the turn-of-the-century, but came under new ownership at mid-century. Naturally the changing times and the needs and desires of the new owners called for a new design.

Prentice Bloedel was a visionary man with a strong desire to create a unique landscape. He not only wanted to provide habitat for native flora and fauna of the area, but also wanted to celebrate the art of creating gardens in a way that recognized the possibilities of the human design of the land. Church guided the overall design of the nearly seventy acres of developed landscape from the 1950's through the 1970's. He also designed some individual features within this unique landscape.

At the Bloedel Reserve, the influence of the Japanese style on Northwest modern design in both architecture and garden design is readily apparent. The Reserve includes a Northwest Japanese style garden by Seattle designer Fujitaro Kubota, which provides a setting for a guest house designed by the renowned Seattle architect Paul Kirk. Kirk once described his design as a fusion of Japanese and Native American design. Both were designed and built in the early 1960's.

In the 1980's, Seattle landscape architect Rich Haag created a series of gardens at Bloedel that have been described as a landmark of 20th century landscape architecture. These include the Garden of Planes, the Anteroom -- or moss garden -- the Reflection Garden and the Bird Sanctuary. The first and last of these gardens have been altered, but their original designs represent abstracted landscape forms to heighten one's sense of connection to nature.

Modern Public Landscapes

The campus of the 1962 Century 21 Expo, designed by architect Paul Thiry and landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, was one of the area's earlier modern landscape projects. Beginning in 1964, Rich Haag re-designed the grounds, adding a series of urban parks throughout, to create a cultural civic center.

Recently, the Seattle City Council rejected the Landmark Board's recommendation to retain the 1962 Seattle Center monorail's support pylons as part of designation of the historic monorail as a city landmark. This decision paves the way for determining the route of the new Seattle monorail through the Seattle Center. The exact route won't be determined until December (2003).

The Seattle Monorail Project's preferred route would cut through the central lawn and pass near the central fountain (original design by Matsushita and Shimizo/re-designed by Nakano Assoc.). This would irreversibly change the physical design of the space and the public's experience of open green space and festival grounds. At a public meeting in March 2003, Haag likened the significance of the 74-acre park to New York's Central Park.

Reuniting a Fractured Landscape and Other Modern Landscapes of Note

Seattle's 5.2 acre Freeway Park serves as a lid over Interstate 5 that connects First Hill and downtown near the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. The two neighborhoods, effectively cut off from one another by the construction of the Freeway in the late 1950's, were reunited by the completion of this park in 1976. The design of the linear series of spaces, with their concrete walls and waterfalls, is inspired by the natural rock and water formations of the Northwest. It was designed by Angela Davidja of Lawrence Halprin Associates.

Other modern landscape designs in the Seattle area worthy of consideration include Sasaki Associates' Waterfall Park in Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood, the same firm's design for the Weyerhauser corporate offices near Tacoma, and Rich Haag's design for the corporate campus of Battelle Research Center campus near the Laurelhurst neighborhood.

Preservation Issues

In Portland, a public private partnership has yielded a plan to fund and manage the restoration of Lovejoy Plaza and its connected urban parks. Designed by Lawrence Halprin in the early 1960's, the series of parks and fountains illustrate Halprin's philosophy that sculptural and landscape forms recognize nature and natural processes as a "driving force," but that design does not "imitate nature."

In 2003, Seattle is celebrating the centennial of the Olmsted Brothers design of the city's parks system. While the lasting impact of this historic event has stood the test of time to make its significance obvious, the importance of more recently designed landscapes may be harder to assess. This issue is becoming more and more important as the rapid pace of development in urban areas threatens urban designed landscapes before time proves their merit as masterworks of American design.

For more information

Guidelines for Evaluating and Nominating Properties that Have Achieved Significance in the past 50 years (National Register of Historic Places bulletin #22)

The Bloedel Reserve

The Lawrence Halprin Landscapes Conservancy, Portland

Peter Walker and Melanie Simo. Invisible Gardens: The Search for Modernism in the American Landscape. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1998.

Charles Birnbaum, editor. Preserving Modern Landscape Architecture: Proceedings from the Wave Hill Conference. Berkeley: Spacemaker Press, 1999.

Preserving Modern Landscapes is a collection of essays from the proceedings of a conference that took place at Wave Hill in April of 1995. The 1999 publication edited by Charles Birnbaum, director of the National Parks Service Historic Landscapes Initiative, was the first publication to explore these issues.

View last month's Preservation & Environment article

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