Lawrence Halprin Retrospective, through April 4
Kroiz Gallery, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania
It's time to plan a trip to Philadelphia for this first-ever exhibition of the works of Lawrence Halprin, one of America's most celebrated landscape architects and environmental designers.
The U-PENN exhibition draws from the Archives' collection of Halprin's work, and features more than 60 design sketches, landscape plans, photographs, and other items that illustrate Halprin's lasting impact on the post-World War II landscape.
The show, "The Choreography of Gardens," explores the relationship between "movement" and Halprin's designs. Married to a noted avant-garde dancer (Anna Halprin), Halprin himself has often called his designs "choreography," writing in 1949 that a garden is like "the fine sense of a dance." He's long studied how people "move" in public spaces, and he coined the word "motation" (motion and notation) to describe his system of plotting movement through space with a notation system that some say look like hieroglyphs or even a kind of music.
Halprin was born in Brooklyn and attended Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin before going on the Harvard for a degree in landscape architecture. Halprin then moved to California and joined the San Francisco firm of Thomas Church, a leader in bold new approaches to landscape design. After forming his own firm in 1949, Halprin embarked on a career that has encompassed urban renewal and public parks, private residences and rojects that focused on environmental planning. Some of his mosts celebrated works include The Sea Ranch, a residential development on the California coast; Ghirardelli Square and Market Street in San Francisco; Seattle's Freeway Park; and the FDR Memorial in Washington DC.
Kroiz Gallery, 220 South 34th Street, Philadelphia (215) 898-8323
There is a gallery talk and tour with curator Alison Hirsh on Friday January 25th at 6PM
(images: The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania)
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