What can and should be done to nurture an informed public debate about the legacy of modernist landscapes and reverse the trend of demolition?

As the stewards of a 10,000 year old landscape in New York State, we are lucky to have such a vast timeline of stories about mankind’s imprint on the land and the land’s imprint on humans, from Paleo-Indian times through the colonial era to today. In fact with a chronology that rich, it is sometimes challenging to know where to start. But even a site as venerable as ours – further imprinted with the pedigree of a Founding Father and resonant with the stories of African American slaves who ultimately received their freedom there – even our site was threatened repeatedly with erasure spurred by ignorance and apathy. Our property was located on the oldest road in the nation, the King’s Highway; it was publicly accessible and literally millions of people passed by it on foot, by bike or by car. Yet a deliberate campaign of disinformation and neglect nearly made centuries of thoughtful design and cultural heritage vanish. How could this happen?

I would argue that the demolition trend is not unique to modernist landscapes and comes from devaluing our “outdoor classrooms” and not truly understanding the potential of “what’s out there” in our own backyards. Passionate advocacy stopped the bulldozers for us but it is by no means a cure-all; landscapes of all stature whether they are 50 or 5000 years old will continue to face eradication without education and most critically, curated visitation. What do I mean by this? Nothing can compare with the experience of seeing a landscape with someone who knows and loves it whether it’s a heritage site director or a national park ranger or simply a volunteer. This is where The Cultural Landscape Foundation truly shines. With “What’s Out There Weekends” public spaces and parks are paired with exceptional landscape architects, designers and academics who put our cultural heritage in proper context.

On October 6 and 7, TCLF will host What’s Out There Weekend NYC, the fifth in a series of FREE tours led by expert guides at 25 publicly accessible sites throughout New York City. http://tclf.org/event/wotw-nyc
I am planning to go and bring friends as there are at least 2 Modernist spaces on the list that I want to learn more about. This the best way I know how to nurture debate and constructive dialogues. By building a shared vocabulary of visceral experiences and visits to all types of landscapes I love (and better, the ones I don’t know yet) and encouraging others to join me. Thankfully organizations like TCLF, the NTHP and smaller non-profits like my own are partnering to make that happen.

Suzanne Clary, Jay Heritage Center, Rye, NY http://www.jaycenter.org

Monday, June 11 at 9:04pm

Suzanne — Thanks for your kind words about TCLF and sharing your experience at the Jay Heritage Center — You have encapsulated the challenge beautifully — How do we teach people how to SEE and how to VALUE all heritage — from Historic Sites associated with a person or event (such as the Jay Property)to Modernist landscapes and structures by the two “Pauls” (Rudolph and Friedberg).

If the American soap opera Dallas can be revived after 34 years (with the original actors in the roles of J.R.,Sue Ellen and Bobby Ewing) certainly the landscapes and structures of this period can be revisited and renewed with their character defining features in tact, newly transformed.

Tuesday, June 12 at 11:45am

The simple answer to this question is that we need more learning, better research, stronger advocacy, and clearer arguments for why things should stick around or why and how they should change. Where does one start?

There is often great urgency around these situations. For me the urgent cases, which tend to arouse unequal doses of reason and emotion, come down to debatable issues of cultural stewardship. In our practice, we advocate for an approach to site history as a form of knowledge rooted in subjectivity and experience. History is not a narrative of truth, but an evidential telling of events and transformations through a motivated point of view. Simple proof: the urgent cases often evidence competing histories. Hotter, harder, and better funded often wins.

I have always been taken with these words of Catherine Howett’s in a memorable paper on preservation issues from twenty-five years ago:

“Historic landscapes, unlike works of art, have to function as contemporary environments — we have literally to enter and become involved with them.”
Catherine Howett, 1987, Landscape Architecture Magazine

Howett’s words strike me as powerful in two ways. First is that value in heritage sites becomes real, and culturally relevant, through its embodiment in the present—-through experience. And we know experience changes over time in landscapes. The second is that in order to curate, or protect, or adequately guide change in a landscape so that it retains its legacy and something of its original design intentions (as interpreted), we need involvement. Immersion and inquisitiveness. Digging. Time. Discovery. Debate. In the end, my relativist core has made me believe that it’s the well-founded, carefully-plied and thickened argument for change that counts as the most assured means toward continuity, because landscapes implicitly must change. We sometimes describe our projects as a work upon a work, since we never begin from scratch, and we are often dealing with earlier design intentions that simply can’t hold up on their own—-or shouldn’t—-or can’t remain relevant, or cannot survive as they once did without real action.

None of this excuses nor solves the all too frequent cultural vandalism underlying the question Charles has raised. We obviously need mechanisms for rescue and recovery—and sometimes a place of great legacy just falls into the wrong hands, or falls prey to the wrong argument, and there needs to be some kind of recourse. But for me, the long term issue for landscape architecture lies in more informed and more rigorous practices, everywhere you work.

Charles, thanks for raising the provocation in this forum, and I trust this partial answer will feel familiar to you from our many many years of conversation.

Big shout out to TCLF.

Gary Hilderbrand, Principal, Reed Hilderbrand http://www.reedhilderbrand.com

Tuesday, June 12 at 2:28pm

I think one of the big issues in Landscape Architecture is that there is a need for more consistent care. Landscapes are like children, they need to be nurtured and guided in their development. In maturity successful parks and open spaces become a critical component of surrounding communities enriching the lives of occasional and regular visitors alike.

Perhaps we need to consider long term stewardship of landscapes in our planning. Under Adrian Benepe’s tenure as Parks Commissioner New York City just completed one of the most ambitious park expansion initiatives since the time of Robert Moses. Some of those new parks- which I suspect will be the best maintained over time, have structures in place to finance for their long term care and management. In many cases funding streams tie closely with the real estate development community. This not a new reality, it is just more transparent than it in the 19th Century. I am not advocating for this relationship but rather the overall structure.

Perhaps as we enter the 21st Century new structures can be developed that include long term stewardship endowments in project planning budgets. These trusts for ongoing care of important landscapes could help prevent the very real crisis of preservation that Charles raises through his question.

Tuesday, June 12 at 2:51pm

One of the arguments that has been used against preserving Peavey Plaza is that the space is both under-used, and misused. The City asserts that the plaza is not a convenient or conducive environment for events and performances, and that it attracts vagrants, the homeless, and others who exploit its nooks and crannies for nefarious purposes. The City tends to ignore the dozens of downtown workers who eat their lunches there on lovely summer days, despite the visible lack of maintenance and the fact that there is nothing else to draw them there other than the plaza’s inherent character and ambience.

From my perspective, as someone who has far more experience addressing the preservation of buildings than landscapes, a continued, viable use is critical. It is much easier for us to position preservation as the adaptive reuse of a warehouse or factory or abandoned school, and nearly impossible for us to make the argument for preservation on the architectural or historical merits of the building itself.

Where we have failed to gain traction in promoting the preservation of Peavey Plaza is in challenging this either-or scenario that the City has presented–either we have a viable, actively programmed public space, or we have a plaza that retains its historic character. Not surprisingly, the city power brokers and the potential funders have landed on the viable, programmed space side of the argument–as one of the previous posters pointed out, they are considering the long-term economic sustainability of the plaza, and they rightly should. I ardently disagree that a new design is needed for effective programming, though, and I wish we could turn back the clock to make preservation and programming equal parts of the same discussion from the start.

We need to develop more examples of landscapes that are both preserved and effectively programmed–or do a better job of promoting these examples where they already exist. Until we can demonstrate that preservation is viable and relevant and won’t impede effective, sustainable programming, the other side of the argument will always win.

Wednesday, June 13 at 12:32pm

I would add historians of architecture and landscape to you list of fields. In all cases, people working in these arenas need to be advocates and take a pro-active position on threatened works of clear historical value. Electronic media have made this effort much easier. Preservation is always a matter of education. The significance of such properties needs to be delineated in a way that is clear and compelling, ideally to a broad audience. Many people still do not realize how important landscape was in the development of Modern architecture during the 20c. Every work has a story, and telling that story can be a good way to start. Then there is the matter of conservation and of the waste if the discard buildings and spaces that can continue to serve people for generations to come. Practical arguments can be at least as important as historical and artistic ones.

Friday, June 15 at 9:36am

As someone who has been involved with the care and restoration of landscapes from many eras, I have learned that there is no one “right” answer for preservation, especially of landscapes. Among the parks of New York City, there are landscapes going back hundreds of years, from those that surround Dutch farm houses of the 17th century, to formal squares of the early 19th century, to the famous landscapes of Olmsted and Vaux, through the City Beautiful movement, the WPA, and the modernist landscapes that were created in the 1960s and 70s primarily for plazas and playgrounds. As is the case with the Jay Heritage Center landscape cited by Suzanne Clary, some parks, such as Prospect Park, have all of the above!

For a time, there was a strong preservationist approach to try to return historic landscapes to some halcyon moment of perfection, and freeze it that way. That approach might work in some very narrow set of circumstances, for example in a formal garden of a certain specific design. But in more complex landscapes, such as Central Park, where there are many overlays of both design and the evolution of nature, it is almost impossible. A purist approach to landscape preservation might want to strip away the formal sports fields that were overlayed on the the pastoral, informal meadow “play grounds” in the 1930s, or cut down all the self-seeded trees that grew over the years of little maintenance in the Ramble and North Woods. But those approaches would fly in the face of both current uses and the ecological role the overgrown areas now play as amazing bird habitat.

Similarly, while other purist fans of modernist architecture want to save adventure playgrounds by Richard Dattner and Paul Friedberg as built, they no longer meet current playground safety guidelines. Happily, the “tear it out and start over” impulse has been replaced by a much more subtle approach of building in the necessary safeguards and saving the basic structure and design of the playgrounds.

A more difficult issue is that of the park experience. Brutalist landscape architecture is rarely comfortable or pleasing to the eye of the many park visitors who, not unreasonably in a dense, hard city, want some trees and greenery in their parks. Formal landscapes with lots of concrete or asphalt, stunted trees in planter boxes, and uncomfortable seat walls, rarely feel inviting. Accepting the notion of some evolution of the design while retaining the basic structures may be necessary to save the whole in some cases.

I agree with Charles Birnbaum and Suzannah Drake that the key to the preservation of all landscapes in cities, Victorian or Modernist, designed or natural, formal or wild, is ongoing maintenance. In NYC, in addition to the what the City can provide, there are more than a dozen significant non-profit partnership groups that annually raise more than $160 million to restore, preserve, maintain and program some of our most important parks. Combined with an unprecedented level of public investment in the capital restoration of many parks, that has left most of the NYC park system in relatively good shape.

But the City funding is cyclical, and we have seen many decades of boom and bust. As Susannah Drake alludes to, part of the solution to that can be seen in the new funding mechanisms created for Hudson River Park and Brooklyn Bridge Park, and which can also be found in Bryant Park. In those parks, nodes were set aside for commercial development, where income producing structures, including restaurants, sports facilities, even hotel and residential construction, are creating revenue streams that will guarantee a healthy level of maintenance for decades to come. And Charles correctly notes the high level of maintenance of the landscape at Battery Park City, which is the direct result of assessments on the residential properties that provide a generous baseline of funding for park maintenance.

So as with restoration approaches, it is also likely that there is no one right answer for long-term maintenance, but that we have an obligation to explore all the possibilities if we are to preserve these landscapes for our children’s children’s children.

Sunday, June 17 at 1:46am

Hello All,

Trying to add to Charles’ work in this area is like trying to improve on the perfect martini. However, I would like to comment on his latest blog published in the Huffington Post: “The Real High Line Effect—A Transformational Triumph of Preservation and Design”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-a-birnbaum/the-real-high-line-effect_b_1604217.html

As the veteran of many preservation battles, I thought that saving the High Line was impossible when I first heard of the plans to re-use it. Though entirely supportive of the effort, I could only imagine the politics and the public campaign—not to mention the funding– that would need to be successfully negotiated to undertake such a project.

Now, of course, the numbers support this extraordinary preservation win: about $200 million was raised for the restoration effort, generating more than $2 billion in investment in the area, along with 12,000 jobs and 29 development projects since 2009. (New York City Real Estate News).

In 2010, nearly 2 million people visited the park.
Wonderful? Yes. A one-of-a-kind transformation? Probably. But as Charles mentions in his blog, this type of project can be replicated, perhaps not on the same scale, but in the same spirit. Rather than working against each other “like sumo wrestlers,” preservationists and investors/developers along the High Line began to speak each other’s language, benefitting both the public and the private sector.

Learning to appreciate and understand modern landscapes is not intuitive for the public. I know because I couldn’t quite figure out why these places were special. I understood the historic significance and the arguments for preservation, but the spaces didn’t speak to me until I conscripted many of my “landscape friends,” including Charles, to lead me on personal tours through various sites across the country. I realized that even the smallest parks are intended to provide respite for the visitor, to act as peaceful retreats from urban life for a few moments or for an afternoon.

One critical issue might be, perhaps, that people stop “seeing” the designed landscape as an artistic contribution to the community and never pause long enough to enjoy the surroundings that are planned and provided for this purpose.

Chris Madrid French
http://www.madridfrench.com
Twitter: @ArchMod

Wednesday, June 20 at 9:25am

It is only recently that there has been broader recognition for concept of historic landscapes and that the context for a place may be equally or more important than a building. Heritage inventories from most parts of the world consist largely of historic buildings although more recent efforts have begun to shift towards a more holistic approach. The City of Liverpool in the UK is currently threatened with removal from the world heritage list as a result of the proposed development and the potential impact on the significance of the historic urban landscape. This will certainly draw attention to one aspect of this issue in a high profile way.
There was much resistance to the idea that the early 19th century agrarian colonial landscapes on the outlying city of Sydney in Australia should be afforded heritage protection. Whilst many supported the designation of the historic homesteads in their gardens they were strongly opposed to the designation of the wider pastoral landscape that would recognize the siting of the farms in the landscape in relation to natural features and other properties. Much of this was driven by development interests, however the concept of protecting a wider landscape was difficult conceptually. One of the barriers to this has been the difficult for regulators to identify mechanisms for protection and be more objective as to how change should be managed at such as scale. So I would argue this issue is not confined to modern landscapes, but they have certainly been left behind in what has been identified and protected so far from the modern era.

It is time that the full range of values that contribute to a place’s cultural heritage significance are recognized and our understanding of what contribute’s to the modern era’s heritage is broadened. In many places gap analysis has identified the need to undertake studies that identify the most important landscape places from the modern era along with other under-recognized heritage types. This is often a good starting point and can be used to raise public awareness and provide credible information for authorities undertaking designation.

For many modern buildings, their relationship with the landscape is integral to their significance as exemplified at the Glass House property. Until I went there I never understood this; the focus in the architectural literature has generally been on the house. This was also the case at the Eames house, despite the fact that for Ray and Charles Eames, and the family that has continued to manage the house, the setting is fundamental. This importance has in fact driven the approach to the site’s conservation which is framed as a 250 year plan based on the life span of the eucalypts that grace the site.

So we need more discussion, case studies and promotion of these concepts to shift opinion further. A targeted approach to studies that identify important landscapes and help explain why they are important and concerted efforts to protect these places before they are threatened is also essential. Discussions such as this are also important. Thanks for posing these questions Charles and for the interesting responses.

Thursday, June 21 at 8:21pm