LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS ALL ABOUT PLACE-MAKING
Designing how building meets ground takes art and engineering
When Bruce Hinckley, of Seattle landscape architecture and design firm Alchemie, introduces himself as a landscape architect, people often ask for advice on their rhododendrons.
But landscape architects, the somewhat unsung heroes of the design community, are responsible for much more than where the shrubs and water features go. Indeed, says Hinckley, asking them about plants is akin to asking writers about the pen or computer they use, or an architect about wallpaper. Though he really does care about rhododendrons, Hinckley says planting is certainly not the main act in his profession.
So what exactly is landscape architecture?
“It’s really a combination of architecture and engineering and ecology, and truly about placemaking,” Hinckley says. “We deal with how buildings meet the ground. Micro climates and soil, and all kinds of technical issues of grading and drainage.”
If landscape architects are brought in early on projects (which they rarely are, because landscaping is the first thing to be cut from a tight budget and there’s still a lack of understanding of what they do even within the design community, Hinckley says) the effect they have is much greater, he says.
“If they’d brought me in at the beginning, I would say, perhaps, ‘Let’s not put the door on the north side; let’s put the door on the sunny south side, east or west side,’ right from the beginning, talking about how a place really lives: what one is going to see from a certain part of the building, how to connect the indoors and outdoors. And if a project goes on too long without the active participation of someone like myself, it’s often too late to change that.”
The gentle, calm, minimalist esthetic of Hinckley’s residential and commercial work reflects something of Japanese design, which he says has been pointed out to him quite often.
“I don’t particularly try and channel Japanese design,” he says, “But I think that what people pick up is the sense of doing as little as possible to accomplish as much as possible — learning that balance point. I really believe in creating slow places. Places that need to be experienced over time, during the course of the day or the seasons, with different kinds of weather and lighting.”
The places that most inspire Hinckley’s work are found in the natural world — a love that was fostered by his parents, whom he describes as “avid outdoor people,” through road trips to place such as America’s southwestern des- erts, the Rocky Mountains, Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia and Desolation Sound.
“All powerfully evocative,” says Hinckley. “And it’s not a matter of trying to replicate any of those things in a man-made landscape, but being able to be humbled and inspired, and thinking about, ‘Why do those landscapes affect us as human beings?’ And maybe take a tiny bit of that poetry and create a magnificent place.”
Greg Smallenberg and Jeffrey Staates of Vancouver’s PFS Studio, which specializes in planning, urban design and landscape architecture, are recognized for creating some pretty magnificent places. The largest landscape architecture firm in Western Canada, if not the country, PFS works with the federal government on a variety of projects such as the current land use plans for Parliament Hill. The two were involved in the redesign of Confederation Square some years ago; they were part of the restoration team for the Vimy memorial in France; they did the master planning for the Canadian Embassy in Rome; and they have worked in Haiti and Islamabad for the Canadian government.
Last month, they were awarded the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects Jury’s Award of Excellence for Lansdowne Park in Ottawa and a National Award of Excellence for designing Toronto’s West Don Lands.
Landscape architecture, says Smallenberg, is one of the main reasons Vancouver is known as such a livable city.
“All of the waterfronts you see in Vancouver, all of the plaza spaces, all of the streets, the things that the public holds dear and is in the civic imagination of people when they think of Vancouver, guess what — that’s all landscape architecture,” he says.
Vancouver as a city has been blessed with its water’s edge, he says, but there is still a lot that can be done here.
“Vancouver has relied an awful lot of what it was given in terms of its setting, and it’s done a pretty good job of maintaining views of the mountains and having this perimeter of seawalls,” he says. “But because Vancouver wants to be seen as one of the leading cities in the world, if it actually wants to play in the same sandbox as Melbourne and Toronto and all sorts of cities all over the world, it needs to step up its game in terms of urban open spaces.”