Landscape Architect The Subject Of Six & Twenty Club Meeting

Frederick Law Olmstead was the subject of Kathleen Blake's program for the Six & Twenty Club on Friday, May 26. She hosted the meeting at Charlie's Place adjacent to The Murphy Theatre.

Due to an eye ailment, Olmstead had to drop out of Yale in 1837, and for the next two decades, devoted himself to a wide array of endeavors, working as a farmer, as an editor and publisher, an abolitionist, and correspondent who documented conditions throughout the south for the New York Daily Times, and as an apprentice seaman sailing to China and back. The urbanization he witnessed on the road along with his interest in rural issues and visits to England's Birkenhead Park proved influential in his career path.

Olmstead's design for Central Park was one of 33 submissions considered and was notable for both its formed and naturalistic settings with architectural flourishes and ornate bridges that circulated traffic through the park. It brought the country into the city, and was a triumph of invention and design, construction, social philosophy, and landscape art. Olmstead was a visionary who helped shape American progress. He believed fresh air and nature, trees, water, greens and sky, were health-giving and that a park could contribute enormously to the well-being of the working class. Olmstead was appointed Chief Architect and Superintendent of Construction in 1857. His design initiated the field of landscape architecture, with Olmsted as its father, and inspired the invention and construction of parks across North America.

At President Lincoln's request, Olmstead served as the executive secretary of the US Sanitary Commission, a precursor of the Red Cross. By the Battle of Gettysburg, the Sanitary Commission emerged as the largest charity ever created in the United States. He also served as general manager of The Mariposa Company, a mining operation in northern California during California's Gold Rush. Seeing Yosemite, its rock formations and giant Sequoias in person resembled nothing he had ever viewed.

At the urging of Olmstead and others, a California US Senator presented a draft bill calling for the protection of the Yosemite Valley. That bill passed both the Houses of Congress and President Lincoln affixed his signature. California's governor immediately formed a board of six men with Olmstead at its head. For the ensuing 11 months, Olmstead prepared a scheme of management for Yosemite which he wrote to his father "is by far the noblest public park or pleasure ground in the world." Olmstead's work had a profound and national impact, providing the foundation for the National Parks movement.

In 1865, Olmstead and family sailed back to New York via Panama. The 43-year-old Olmstead finally devoted himself to his career as a Landscape Architect. He designed Brooklyn's Prospect Park, and dozens of others but none were as revolutionary as Central Park. He struggled for years to protect Niagara Falls and its surroundings. In 1874, Olmstead was commissioned to oversee and design the original 58-acre US Capitol Grounds. He also designed diverse recreation areas, college campuses such as Amherst, Vassar and Cornell, urban and suburban areas, planned communities, cemeteries, railroad depots, Pittsburgh's Andrew Carnegie Library and specialized landscape for arboretums and expositions. He is responsible for the design of The Biltmore Hotel's landscape in Ashville NC.

With son Frederick Jr., Olmstead not only mentored new college graduates but created the courses needed for landscape architecture degrees and helped birth the new profession of city planner as towns and cities across the US developed comprehensive plans.

The afternoon concluded with coffee, tea and raspberry lemonade and New York's famed black and white cookies with assorted macarons.

Latest Winners Announced For A' Design Awards & Competition

Latest Winners Announced for A' Design Awards & Competition

Tic Art Exhibition Center / Ann Yu. Image: Ann Yu, 2022. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Share

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As a designer, it can be difficult to find one's way through the many awards and competitions that currently exist. One award, however, offers a one-stop solution to honor designers, architects and design-oriented companies, anywhere in the world, and with global recognition and publicity. The A' Design Award is an international, juried design competition that spans over 100 categories, from Furniture Design, Architecture, Building and Structure Design, to Landscape Planning and Garden Design, and Bathroom Furniture and Sanitary Ware Design.

The process includes careful evaluation by a panel of influential juries including scholars, members of the press, design professionals and entrepreneurs. With five levels of awards (Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron A' Design Award), the hundreds of winners from around the world are exceptional examples of good design practices and principles. The latest round of winners include everything from chairs and tables, to packaging and fashion.

Registrations to the A' Design Award are now open. It is free to register, and winners receive a number of prizes, including an invitation to the annual award ceremony, publication of the designs, inclusion in the winners' exhibition, and more.

Below, a selection of winning projects from the 2022-2023 period, chosen from the categories "Architecture, Building and Structure Design", "Interior Space and Exhibition Design" and "Furniture, Decorative Items and Homeware Design".

Mountain Impression Power Plant by United Units Architects

Backed by undulating karst mountains, this factory building draws its design language from the natural context. The pattern of the mountain range is derived from the combination of four sets of trigonometric function curves through parametric design.

Mountain Impression Power Plant / United Units Architects. Image: Lian He. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Chongqing Gaoke Group Ltd Office and Commercial by Aedas

Inspired by the dancing aurora, the designer introduced an impressive façade design through bottom-to-top connections between northern and eastern sides. The 'dance of light' is characterized by the juxtaposition of rectilinear forms and tower façades with double curves.

Chongqing Gaoke Group Ltd Office and Commercial / Aedas. Image: Arch-Exist Photography. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Cuiwan Zhongcheng Demonstration Zone by Arch Age Design

The project is located at the junction of two plots, unfolding towards the city and showing future architecture, future traffic, future neighborhood and many other life scenes in future community. From the perspective of the city, the project introduces the concept "Ring of Infinity - Mobius", and fuses the infinite four-dimensional form into the three-dimensional space in an abstract manner, hence creating a continuous, multi-dimensional, open, free, and art park-like venue where citizens can freely communicate with each other.

Cuiwan Zhongcheng Demonstration Zone / Arch Age Design. Image: Schranimage. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Ripple Multifunctional Architecture by Takatoku Nishi

The architecture was heavily influenced by the architecture of Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, in particular the atmosphere of the Bruder-Klaus-Kapelle . On sunny days, when the sun shines and a certain amount of wind blows, light is guided into the space from the pipes in the ceiling, creating a phenomenon of light that resembles drops falling onto the surface of water.

Ripple Multifunctional Architecture / Takatoku Nishi. Image: Takatoku Nishi, 2022. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Guangzhou Julong Bay Exhibition Center by Ann Yu

Located on the west bank of the Pearl River, the original site with four separated brick warehouses that built in the 1950s was a significant granary of Guangzhou. As the first stage of the city government's renewal master plan in the area, the key objectives of the adaptive reuse project was to remain its industrial past as a reminder of the history, while build a city-planning exhibition hall and civic center that act as a beacon to investors, developers and citizens, to encourage a massive participation in the rebirth of the old district.

Guangzhou Julong Bay Exhibition Center / Ann Yu. Image: Ann Yu, 2022. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Ideareve Ikegami Music Hall by Ryuichi Sasaki and Takayuki Yagi

The mandate was to design a facility where residents can gather and study music in a variety of hybrid spaces. The reinforced concrete structure was designed to accommodate a music hall, practice rooms, soundproofed residential rental units, and a penthouse.

Ideareve Ikegami Music Hall / Ryuichi Sasaki and Takayuki Yagi. Image: Takumi Ota Photography. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Dalian 37 Xiang Cultural and Creative Park by United Units Architects

Transformed from an abandoned factory, Dalian 37 Xiang is located halfway up the mountain side with a main aspect towards the harbor in the north of the city. The design is inspired by the geographical features of Dalian's iconic mountains and adjacent seas, creating a new architectural image that echoes the spirit of the city, establishing a contrast between the old and the new through delicate and light interventions. 

Dalian 37 Xiang Cultural and Creative Park / United Units Architects. Image: Weiqi Jin, Sails, 2022. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award The Kaleidoscope Office and Residence by Inrestudio

The Kaleidoscope is a living and working building located at a factory site in central Vietnam. The surrounding region is well known for its severe climate: a hot wind blows in the dry season and typhoons and floods during the rainy season. The building is placed between the hill and the sea, and frames a series of diverse (kaleidoscopic) views in directions and times. The project aims at creating a protected space from the harsh tropical climate, and enhancing the user's contact with nature.

The Kaleidoscope Office and Residence / Inrestudio. Image: Hiroyuki Oki, 2022. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Tic Art Exhibition Center by Ann Yu

From north to south in China, the color of clay bricks used in folk houses gene rally changes from dark to light. From the traditional use of humus to make clay bricks, which resulted in great losses of arable land and woods, to today's large-scale industrialized production of clay and terracotta bricks, the genes of 'brick' and 'masonry' in Chinese folk architecture continue to be passed on.TIC Art Center is a public urban landmark project.The overall design scope of covered landscape, architecture, interior, and products, bringing together the innovation of structure , aiming to provide a comprehensive yet rhythmic spatial experience. 

Tic Art Exhibition Center / Ann Yu. Image: Ann Yu, 2022. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Windy Pavilion Hall by Zhubo Design

This is a container for viewing, a continuous space, providing shelter for people's body, spirit and vision. Compared with building a traditional landmark building, the architects payed more attention to how to build a place that integrates with nature.

Windy Pavilion Hall / Zhubo Design. Image: Kang Yu. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Flowing Cloud Township Villa Hospitality by More Design Office

Flowing Cloud Township Villa is located in Qinglongwu, a centennial village in Tonglu County,Hangzhou, whic h is composed of 4 ancestral houses of different ages and 2 new buildings. MDO will created a new rural retreat which celebrates local culture and tradition through the sensitive renovation of the old structures, using local techniques, materials and craftsmen.

Flowing Cloud Township Villa Hospitality /More Design Office. Image: More Design Office Co., Ltd. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Norm Air Hotel by Hayato Ishii

The private hotel norm. Air, based on the concept of chill and art, was designed to provide a luxurious chill experience. Overlooking the sky, forests, and lakes, the hotel offers a visual experience of floating in the sky, just as the word air implies. Designed for inclement weather, guests can enjoy the art on display at the hotel and the luxury chill experience even on rainy or cold days.

Norm Air Hotel / Hayato Ishii. Image: Hayato Ishii, 2022. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award F House Residential Building by Keisuke Fukui and Keisuke Morikawa

This is an architect's home and office, attempting to foster community connections by making the office and café on the first floor where people from the town can casually drop by. Since there is a network in this area to increase and share plants, they wanted to visualize this network through architecture and establish it as a part of the local culture.

F House Residential Building / Keisuke Fukui and Keisuke Morikawa. Image: TOREAL Koji Fujii. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Yantai Experience Sales Centre and Exhibition by More Design Office

Yantai is a coastal city defined by its hilly topography, its incredible fresh sea food and its winter snow. MDO were commissioned to create a landmark at the corner of the central axis of a new development area, south of the Tashan Scenic Area. The surrounding building fabric is typified by tall blocks of office and residences. MDO imagined the new building as a contrast to the homogeneity of the new development, through form, materiality and relationship with the landscape.

Yantai Experience Sales Centre and Exhibition / More Design Office. Image: More Design Office Co., Ltd. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award The Bloom Architecture by Jung-Te Lin

With the evolution of technology, as a recyclable and environmental-friend ly building material, tile application exceeds traditional impression. Technology breakthrough creates diverse possibilities in size, shape, texture, thus rich opportunities to add value to buildings.

The Bloom Architecture / Jung-Te Lin. Image: Yuchen Chao. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Qinglong Ting Landscape Pavilion by Xiaomao Cao

Qionglong Ting Landscape Pavilion is situated within a bucolic village in Dangyang, Hubei. The innovative undertaking endeavours to repurpose the private enclave of the waterworks factory into a public sphere, thereby reconceptualising the function of water infrastructure. This transformation serves as an impetus for suburban revitalization and the enhancement of living standards in agrarian communities.

Qinglong Ting Landscape Pavilion / Xiaomao Cao. Image: Liu Xinghao INSPACE, Roof View, 2022. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Stodolove Residential Architecture by Anna Maria Sokolowska

The project consisted of the conversion of an existing farm building dating from 1940. The farm building with a living room was located on a plot surrounded by greenery and old fruit trees in Rumia, in the Szmelta district, which is a remnant of a former village.The planning of the interior layout on the ground floor started rather unusually, with the front window, with a seating area that was to be the central hub of the entire living space.

Stodolove Residential Architecture / Anna Maria Sokolowska. Image: fotomohito.Eu and Anna Maria Sokolowska. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Plump Modular Seating by Elena Prokhorova

This versatile seating solution that allows users to combine modules and create comfortable compositions for any task. Both large and small spaces can be easily organized with this collection, leaving ample room for creativity.

Plump Modular Seating / Elena Prokhorova. Image: Elena Prokhorova, 2022. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Tai Side Table by Sunriu Design

The exterior lines are inspired from IM Pei's The Luce Chapel. Using the discarded substation metal sheets, only laser cutting and bending are required to complete the side table. Just like many unique Taiwanese appliances, it features processing and assembling with existing materials. 

Tai Side Table / Sunriu Design. Image: Jing Cyuan Tang, 2022. Image Courtesy of A' Design Award Light Exhibition Hall by Changching Chien

The design attaches importance to the functional structure organization, and reduces the stacking of materials as much as possible, which make the vision more focused on the overall image, and hopes to create a non-typical retail display space with purity and artistry.

Light Exhibition Hall / Changching Chien. Image: Changle WU . Image Courtesy of A' Design Award

Complements In Landscape Beauty: Art And Place In The Gros Ventre And Beyond

After writing about a nameless ridge in the foothills of the Gros Ventre Range, which I christened "Magic Ridge," I realized I had been there only once, nearly a year ago. So I decided to pay it another visit, approaching from the opposite direction than the way I went before.

More magic awaited. A gnarled limber pine snag marked the former "end" of the ridge, but now I saw that it was more like a midpoint, a monument standing between the ridge and an elevated plateau that gently dipped northward into a forest of Douglas-fir. On the south side ran a broken and tilting tablet of sandstone, rather like the crust of a deflated pie.

More terrain to explore: not only snags clinging to bare bedrock, but south-facing slopes sporting balsamroot, larkspur and intensely red paintbrush—the three primary colors in their most saturated hues. I fell in love with the place all over again.

When I moved from the northwest coast to attend graduate school in Utah, the landscape of the Intermountain West seemed impoverished. The trees were short and widely spaced, scraping by on too little water. The mountains, without glaciers or permanent snowfields, looked not only dry but bare. Summer nights didn't cool below 80 degrees.

Eventually I found plenty to love about the Bear River Range: blue skies and actual powder snow in winter, rather than rain on "Cascade concrete"; bigtooth maple and aspen adorning the hillsides with fall color. Still, tall coniferous forests at the feet of snow-capped peaks remained imprinted in my mind as an ideal vision of natural beauty. Friends who grew up in Utah and returned after living near the coast for a time considered my ideal to be a dark, dreary, dripping place; claustrophobia-inducing, even depressing. Like pronghorns, they were used to being able to see.

Whether a coastal forest with the song of a varied thrush echoing through the old growth, or an arid steppe with the smell of sage after a rain, each place has its own brand of beauty. All such places share this in common: we love and identify with them. To each of us, a special place is beautiful in a very personal way.

According to one definition, beauty is a combination of qualities that "pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight." But beauty carries far more weight than what we can see. More than simple scenery, beauty is a spiritual concept, a gateway through which people may encounter the numinous. It includes natural sounds and silences, winds and stillness, scents and a sense of the eternal. Ask a blind person who loves the outdoors; you don't need eyesight to experience beauty.

I've been questioning why many of us are kind of snobbish about the place we came from, to which we unfavorably compare other places. And I want to explore what Americans in general mean by beauty in a landscape. Who decides? Can beauty be quantified? And how do the words we use to describe the natural world reveal our relationship to it?

In the mid-19th century, most Americans (that is, the non-indigenous and non-enslaved) had their roots in Europe. The educated and influential among them set the standards for cultural norms, including those relating to art and aesthetics. Their expectations of what a lovely landscape ought to look like included a pleasing mix of forest, openings and farms, maybe a few sheep scattered in a pasture. They fondly recalled—or imagined—how landscapes of northern Europe translated well to the climate of upstate New York, where the Hudson River School of painting took hold.

Through the influence of the school's well-known artists, an ideal American landscape formed in the minds of citizens: the pastoral. Pastoral scenes were characterized by their realistic, detailed and romantic depictions of nature, into which people and their settlements harmoniously nestled. The Hudson River school—a style, not an institution—remained dominant in American landscape painting for most of the 19th century.

The Oxbow: This 1826 painting by Hudson River school luminary Thomas Cole in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City depicts the view from Mount Holyoke in Northampton, Massachusetts, after a thunderstorm. Public Domain

Some of the Hudson River school painters began to venture westward in the 1850s, and their paintbrushes left the gentle rolling hills of Mount Holyoke and the Catskills behind. Among those artists were Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt. 

They painted grand—often grandiose—scenes, many of them set in the Rocky Mountains. While these renderings were not always representational, they expressed the awe stirred in the artists by the magnificence of a new and untamed land. They painted with purpose, surely out of their personal reactions to the scenes, but also to impress others. Thomas Moran's monumental painting, "The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone," had a significant influence on Congress as it deliberated over creating our first national park: Yellowstone.

Several large pieces by Moran and Bierstadt still hang in the U.S. Capitol and the Smithsonian Institution, symbols of this nation's heritage of wild beauty and one that we still hold in our hearts and minds, even as the national parks and monuments themselves are strained by the sheer numbers of us.

Ask a blind person who loves the outdoors; you don't need eyesight to experience beauty.

While painters of the Hudson River school influenced public perceptions of land-based beauty, another form of creative work dovetailed with their two-dimensional art. In 1850, Frederick Law Olmsted took a walking tour of Europe and the British Isles, during which he saw numerous parks and private estates, as well as the scenic countryside.

Moved by his experience, Olmsted and collaborator Calvert Vaux won the design competition for a new public park in New York City. After Central Park was completed, the two landscape architects turned their attention to what would become Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

English-American artist Thomas Moran painted this famous piece, "The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone," in 1872. It is largely credited with expanding conservation efforts in America and hangs in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Gift of George D. Pratt. Public Domain

These urban parks, and many others—these two being prolific—were designed to improve the quality of life in America by providing open green space where citizens could relax away from the noise and stress of the growing city. The foreground scenery in those parks could have been, and might have been, featured in Hudson River school paintings.

The painters passed down to us images of bucolic beauty that we can see in museums or as screen savers, while the landscape architects gave us ways to physically enter those scenes a few blocks from our apartment buildings. As more Americans followed the survey parties westward to settle the plains and arid spaces farther afield, they installed public and private outdoor spaces that resembled the parks of the east.

Whether a coastal forest with the song of a varied thrush echoing through the old growth, or an arid steppe with the smell of sage after a rain, each place has its own brand of beauty.

Our generation of westerners has inherited a well-developed system of parks and squares, golf courses and greenways. Some feature wide expanses of Kentucky bluegrass, large shade trees and often a pool or fountain, all of which require plenty of water. Xeriscaping is becoming more popular, and increasingly required through ordinances, but aridity still challenges our culturally ingrained ideas of beauty.

New York City's Central Park from the air.. Landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed the park, and it first opened to the public in 1858. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith

While urban parks filled one need, larger regional and national parks would fill another. And in the Greater Yellowstone region we are especially fortunate, for Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks aren't the only places that draw people for scenery, rest and recreation. BLM lands and the national forests comprise millions of acres of public land, some of it protected, some of it not so much. A few places like Hyalite Canyon near Bozeman and Cache Creek near Jackson are nearly as crowded as the parks, but much of this public land is not.

The scattered settlements and farmlands depicted in Hudson River school paintings have long been replaced by growing cities, suburbs, exurbs and highways that connect them. But Central Park and the Greater Yellowstone region still offer spiritual respite and balm for all of the senses, thanks to those who had the vision to create and save such places for us all.

Yet nearly every effort to preserve a place for its wild beauty has been opposed, often vehemently, by those who consider saving undeveloped land as a waste, a missed opportunity, and entirely unnecessary. I am aware that "Magic Ridge" remains as it is because there is no merchantable timber on its slopes, no gold under its

Cushion Draba and Hood's phlox along the sandstone rim of "Magic Ridge." Photo by Susan Marsh

feet, no roads or trails that lead directly to it. So far, its lack of notoriety protects it. When I go again, I will do my best to leave my footprints light, so the next adventurer to stumble upon it may find a personal place of magic.

In the meanwhile, Magic Ridge joins many images of beauty tattooed in my brain, images of places offering mental rest, emotional peace and respite from a growing daily angst over what this region—and every region—is becoming.

Yesterday afternoon, well before the dreaded "rush hour," I tried to run an errand in Jackson, Wyoming. The traffic on the main drag was backed up from the north end of town to Wilson, at the base of Teton Pass (about eight miles). I put my errand list on hold and retreated to the backyard, where, with earplugs against the noise of construction and lawn-care equipment nearby, I sat back and watched a breeze lifting the leaves of an aspen. I watched a pair of mountain chickadees bring caterpillars to their nest in a box my husband made several years ago.

I thought about Magic Ridge. Whether or not I go there again, as long as memory survives, it will bring me a sense of peace and knowledge that some places are still as they should be. Kind of like a painting of Yellowstone's Lower Falls brings back the memory of cool moist air rising from the river far below, rainbow prisms in the sunlight, and the rush of azure water carving through the multicolored grand canyon at the heart of our first national park, as it has done for millennia before my time.

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