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INTRODUCTION: SCORING THE PARTICIPATORY CITY
- University of Minnesota Press
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1 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT LAWRENCE HALPRIN’S nearly sixty-five-year career reflects the story of postwar American urban development—from his residential work in the booming Pacific coast suburbs, to his designs for regional shopping malls as substitutes for downtown public life, to his counterattempts to restore the social life of the city after disorienting change, primarily caused by federal policies such as Title I of the Housing Act of 1949 and the Highway Act of 1956. After vast swaths of central cities were razed, severing deep roots that had grounded communities in their physical environment , new and unfamiliar landscapes rapidly appeared that altered the skyline and the way people occupied and inhabited urban space. Halprin’s most noteworthy contribution responded to the nation’s densely settled metropolitan areas during this time of urban “crisis” and “renewal.” Paralleling and reacting to a broader public demand for social and political participation in the 1960s, Halprin formulated a creative process he called the “RSVP Cycles” to stimulate a participatory environmental experience. He did not work alone, however. introduction scoring the participatory city 2 introduction His success depended on collaboration, particularly the artistic symbiosis that existed between him and his wife, the avant-garde dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin (née Ann Schuman). During the 1960s, a progressive liberation of the spectator from observer to active participant occurred in the visual and performing arts, which were reciprocally informed by participatory forms of social protest and performance, such as marches, sit-ins, and riots. Anna, with her San Francisco Dancers’ Workshop, was directly involved in these developments, and their experiments soon infiltrated her husband’s work. Like “Happenings ,” emerging from the teachings of musician John Cage in New York, Anna organized interactive events in which environmental situations and loose action guidelines were proposed or “scored,” but the ultimate performance was left open ended and typically involved the audience.1 From these new art forms, the “open score” became the major tool for stimulating action and involving the public. Lawrence (Larry) Halprin applied these emerging performance theories to his work first by designing public spaces as “scores” intended to stimulate open-ended kinesthetic response, and second by adopting the temporal-situational guidelines of performance events to structure public participation workshops, which he called the “Take Part Process.” Part 1 of this book, “Built Work,” and part 2, “Community Workshops,” respectively trace these two applications of choreographic scores that Halprin used to reactivate public life in the city. In addition, they each projectively consider how such a reflection on his work might enrich contemporary approaches to shaping the city. This study began as an exploration of Halprin’s bold formal gestures in designs for public spaces, which offered stimulating counterpoints to their often bleak urban contexts , and also as an investigation of why so many of these public spaces were being removed and replaced by “safer” and more passive redesigns. Yet studying his work from the preservation perspective revealed that not only are his designed forms striking but that his creative process was groundbreaking. The process represents an overlooked antecedent to today’s approach to landscape and urban design, which emphasizes infrastructural networks, ecological processes, multidisciplinary collaboration, and public [54.211.203.45] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:06 GMT) introduction 3 participation. And yet, Halprin’s work is consistently considered dated, a relic of 1960s social circumstances, and therefore worthy of redesign. In this book I trace the degree to which his theories and projects have continued relevance or if they are too enmeshed in the immediacy of the times to have lasting social value today. My ultimate objective is to demonstrate that Halprin’s work represents a lot more than “brutalist” concrete forms and obsolete mechanical systems. With this overarching agenda in mind, my intentions are really threefold. First and foremost, I attempt to demonstrate that Halprin’s most consequential legacy is not the built work he left behind but the creative process he developed and deployed. Most evaluations of Halprin consider his built products and undervalue the theory that drives their development. These evaluations either myopically criticize his heavy-handed designs or blindly celebrate the work simply because it was authored by the heroic Lawrence Halprin. Though many such evaluations mention his collaborative relationship with his choreographer wife, none comprehensively address how Anna’s work informed Larry’s creative process. This book assesses his writing on the RSVP Cycles and places it in the context of his built work, thereby revealing contrasts...