Editor’s Introduction

About This Issue

In the early 1960s Lawrence Halprin jumped the garden wall and found nature and the city. From that time until the closure of his office in 2009, Halprin reinvented the scope, expanded the scale, and redefined the practice of landscape architecture.

Having received manuscript submissions exploring various dimensions of Halprin’s work and practice shortly after his passing in 2009, the editors decided to devote a special double issue of Landscape Journal to the influence of Halprin on landscape architecture. The issue examines not only the Halprin office’s built projects, but also the influence of his writings and contributions to the processes by which landscape architecture has been practiced from the 1960s forward.

To guide the conceptualization and production of the issue, we asked John Beardsley and Judith Wasserman to serve as guest editors. Beardsley, Adjunct Professor in the Harvard Graduate School of Design Department of Landscape Architecture and Director of Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, is a scholar of the contemporary landscape and author of several important books on art and landscape. Wasserman is Associate Professor in the College of Environment and Design at the University of Georgia and a scholar of Anna Halprin’s work and of her influence on her husband’s design approach and practice.

The publication was facilitated by a one-day colloquium at Dumbarton Oaks in December 2010 organized by John Beardsley and the Dumbarton Oaks staff. Over the course of a day authors presented their work-in-progress to each other and to a group of invited guests, and received substantial commentary from the group and from the issue’s editors.

Acknowledgments

Several institutions contributed essential resources to the special issue, including:

• Lawrence Halprin Collection, The Architectural Archives at the University of Pennsylvania

• The Environmental Design Archives at the University of California, Berkeley

• Anna Halprin Archives, Museum of Performance and Design Archives, San Francisco

• The National Archives

• Wright Water Engineers Archive

• Princeton Architectural Press

• MIT Press

• George Braziller, Inc.

In addition, many individuals contributed invaluable material to the issue’s production, including Anna Halprin for her personal photographs; John Kokoska Photography, and authors Marc Treib, Shlomo Aronson, Judith Wasserman, Iain M. Robertson, Reuben M. Rainey, Laurie Olin, Kenneth I. Helphand for sharing personal photographs, documents, and drawings.

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