Skip to Main Content

City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America

Online ISBN:
9781452948201
Print ISBN:
9780816679782
Publisher:
University of Minnesota Press
Book

City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America

Alison Bick Hirsch
Alison Bick Hirsch
Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Southern California
Find on
Published:
15 April 2014
Online ISBN:
9781452948201
Print ISBN:
9780816679782
Publisher:
University of Minnesota Press

Abstract

Lawrence Halprin (1916-2009) was one of the most influential landscape architects of the 20th-century. Though he is most widely known for the FDR Memorial in Washington DC and the Sea Ranch in California, his creative process – derived in the 1960s from experiments in choreographic scoring – represents an overlooked antecedent to today’s approach to landscape and urban design, which emphasizes infrastructural networks, ecological processes, multidisciplinary collaboration, as well as public participation. Emerging from exhaustive study of his vast archive of drawings and documents (housed at the University of Pennsylvania’s Architectural Archives), the book critically interprets Halprin’s participatory design process and argues for the applicability of aspects of that process in city-shaping today. As an urban pioneer, Halprin’s most noteworthy frontier became the nation’s densely settled metropolitan areas during a time of urban “crisis” and “renewal.” Paralleling and responding to a broader public demand for social and political participation in the 1960s, he formulated this creative process, which he called “The RSVP Cycles,” to stimulate a participatory environmental experience. He did not work alone, however. His success depended on collaboration, and particularly the artistic symbiosis that existed between him and his wife, the avant-garde dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close