From "Open Space" to "Public Space": Activist Landscape Architects of the 1960s

Abstract

This paper examines the unique contributions of Lawrence Halprin, M. Paul Friedberg, and Karl Linn to major American cities during the transformative 1960s—a decade when most landscape architects continued to focus on the burgeoning suburbs. Landscape architects have been largely left out of the urban history of the 1960s’ “resistance” to typical urban renewal development, which neutralized familiar patterns of occupation and inserted “open space” as an anemic substitute for public space. The following article presents the urban scene that incited reactionary efforts to achieve social continuity, then demonstrates how Halprin, Friedberg, and Linn contributed to these efforts through participatory methodologies that reinstated the public life of the city. The paper both distinguishes their variant strategies and identifies common ground between them. While each strategy might be embedded in their time and place, the combination of human engagement, place understanding, and bold design proposals provides useful precedents for current landscape architects striving to marry socially-oriented design with Design as a spatial and material art.