Preface
Through over fifty years of practice, writing, and teaching, Garrett Eckbo has been one of the most influential landscape architects of this century, fitting design to the needs and desires of contemporary life. His contribution is distinct for addressing in equal measure society, the natural landscape, art, and technique. While so many modern American landscape architects focused on the private garden—and later the corporate landscape—Eckbo designed also in the public sphere, at times, for the lowest stratum of society. For him, landscape design was also an art, but a social art.
This book accompanies the exhibition Garrett Eckbo: Modern Landscapes for Living , which opens at the University Art Museum in Berkeley in January 1997. It is neither a catalog for the exhibition nor a definitive biography of the landscape architect (an impossible task given stringent time restrictions). Our simple intention has been to reintroduce ideas and landscapes by Garrett Eckbo to a new professional and general audience, examining the social, artistic, and professional contexts in which his work was situated.
The first essay outlines the events in Eckbo's life and the course of his development as a landscape architect. His vision of landscape design differed from many contemporaries in its philosophical grounding in the social as well as artistic matrices of the era. In the late 1930s, having barely completed his graduate studies, he coauthored a series of articles (with James Rose and Dan Kiley) calling for a comprehensive view of landscape design that acknowledged the interrelated realms of the primeval (wilderness), rural, and urban (developed) environments. His aesthetic contributions first centered in the urban or suburban arenas—particularly regarding community and residential landscape design—and in later years his practice
executed an increased number of commissions for broad-scale planning and ecological management. Such active involvement with greater environmental issues led to his firm's preparation of studies as diverse as the open-space master plan for all of California and a management plan for Niagara Falls.
In part the constraints of time and space, in part the diffuse responsibility for large collaborative projects, have caused us to center our inquiry on the years 1935 through 1955, to focus on design proper, rather than landscape study and management. This decision resulted also from expedience. Since the College of Environmental Design Documents Collection at the University of California at Berkeley now holds most of the Eckbo papers from the early years, it became our source for all graphic materials other than photographs. The compressed schedule for producing the exhibition and book—under a year—demanded such pragmatic considerations.
The period under inquiry covers Eckbo's education and emergence as an internationally recognized professional, one segment of a career that would extend over three additional decades. Eckbo's writings, for example, warrant more discussion than presented here; his role as an educator at the University of Southern California and his alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley, require further examination. Certainly, more research and study are needed, not only to set out the full range of Garrett Eckbo's accomplishment, but also to understand a significant part of the profession and discipline of landscape architecture in the twentieth century.
Within our chronological span of 1935 through 1955—between Eckbo's university education and the expansion of his office into fully
corporate practice—we try to outline the broad scope of his ideas and designs at any given moment. Unusually, even in his student years at Harvard (1936-38), Eckbo's vision—prompted by the social vision of Walter Gropius, who headed architectural studies there—always transcended the individual house and garden. A neighborhood, a community, symbolized the American democracy, balancing the will of the individual with that of the collective body. While an individual expressed personal freedom in the garden—and Eckbo helped realize that expression—he or she bore a responsibility toward the community as a body and toward all natural systems as a whole. Eckbo's ideas remain equally poignant today, his proclamations equally viable.
A number of people have contributed significantly to our work. First, we need to thank Garrett Eckbo himself for providing memories and information, drawings, photographs, and considerable amounts of good cheer—and for composing a suitable afterword.
To Arline Williams Eckbo, our thanks for her encouragement, hospitality, collective memory, numerous clarifications where documentation failed, insights, vignettes—and her presence in Garrett's life all these years. He is, no doubt, a better person for it.
We also thank Michael Laurie, Reuben Rainey, and Robert Riley for their continued support and critical reading of earlier versions of our manuscript. Lisa Howard provided valuable research assistance. At the Documents Collection, Paul Burgin was ever-pleasant, always willing to locate materials and arrange their photography; Stephen Tobriner helped make the drawings available for both the exhibition and the book. University Art Museum curator of collections, James Steward, with the museum director, Jacquelyn Baas, shared our enthusiasm for the project from the very start and did everything possible to make the path toward its realization a smooth one. Nina Zurier also warrants our thanks for her professional design expertise and consultation on mounting the exhibition. We warmly appreciate all their efforts.
The stunning photographs by Julius Shulman were a critical addition to the record and beauty of both the exhibition and this publication. He graciously shared his images and an afternoon of his time, providing drinks and tasty pastry, facts and anecdotes, and a wealth
of documentation on architecture and landscape architecture in California. To him, and to the other lenders, we offer our gratitude.
With the University of California Press we have had a nearly ideal collaboration. Valeurie Friedman and Sheila Levine saw the merit in the project and swiftly dealt with all potential problems with efficiency and good humor. Edith Gladstone whipped the manuscript into shape under very tight deadlines, keeping our linguistic color while rendering it, if not grammatically perfect, at least grammatically acceptable. Jenny Tomlin undertook the proofreading. At the production end, Mark Schwettmann aided enormously in preparing and honing the electronic versions of the design; Sam Rosenthal at the University of California Press saw the project through printing. We offer our thanks to one and all.
Although his efforts were not ready for photography at the time of publication, and thus could not be used as illustrations for this book, we want to thank Jason Brody for producing for the exhibition some fine models of a selection of Eckbo projects. Similarly, there are bound to be friends and colleagues who will help realize the exhibition long after the book has gone to press. Let us here offer our apologies for not mentioning them by name; the gratitude is there nonetheless.
A note: dating gardens is a rather slippery process that eludes precision. When is a garden ever done? When should one assign a date: at the time of design, the time of completion, or when the vegetation has matured? What if only a part of the garden was constructed by a certain date? We settle on the date of occupancy, a reasonable practice common in architectural history, as the date assigned the landscape design. For unrealized projects we use the date of design. We acknowledge, however, that this process is less than perfect and is certainly open to challenge.
And a final note: all designs are principally by Garrett Eckbo, unless otherwise noted. All sites mentioned are in California, unless otherwise qualified.
MARC TREIB
DOROTHÉE IMBERT
BERKELEY
JUNE 1996
Taft Defense Housing. San Joaquin Valley, 1941. Farm Security Administration.
[Documents Collection ]