Programs

The terms “modern” and “minimal” are casually applied to public landscapes and gardens today without any deep understanding of what makes them Modern. If the first wave of Modernism in landscape architecture began in 1929 with the design of Fletcher Steele’s revolutionary application of a bent axis at the Camden Amphitheatre in Maine, and quietly ended on the Bicentennial (July 4, 1976) with the ribbon-cutting of such projects as Lawrence Halprin’s Freeway Park in Seattle; Hideo Sasaki’s Waterfront Park in Boston; and Bob Zion’s Waterfront Park in Cincinnati; what happened in landscape architecture after that? Unlike architecture, which experienced a two-decade romance with Post Modernism, the same did not transpire within the landscape architecture profession.

This conference will explore this question by showcasing the works of leading landscape architecture and garden design professionals today to see what makes their work Modern and how it is influenced by this earlier movement. Speakers include many of the nation’s leading design voices today working within a Modernist framework: Tom Oslund (Minneapolis); Mark Rios (Los Angeles); Doug Reed (Cambridge); Martha Schwartz (Cambridge); Ken Smith (New York City); Michael Van Valkenburgh (New York); and Thomas Woltz (Charlottesville).