Halprin was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1916. "As a hobby, I was a painter, which has been part of my being ever since I was a little kid," he said. Though, as a young adult, his interests came to encompass botany, which he studied at Cornell University. The artist within him remained and came to play an important part in his career years later.
After he graduated, Halprin proceeded to the University of Wisconsin to pursue a doctorate in botany. But once there, his life changed direction. "In Wisconsin, I did two things: I met my wife [Anna Halprin] and I became a landscape architect," he said.
Letterman Digital Center, Stone Belvedere with view of Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco
At his wife's suggestion, the pair went to see Frank Lloyd Wright's home in Spring Green, Wis. At the time, although Halprin knew nothing of Wright — or architecture and landscape architecture for that matter — he found a new calling. "As I walked up to the house, there was a little sign over the front door that said, ÔWhatever a man does, that is who he is.' And that is the first thing that got to me," he recalled.
Halprin became fascinated by Frank Lloyd Wright. He went to a library to learn more about him, where he found books about architecture, landscape architecture and finally a book by Christopher Tunnard. The next day, Halprin went to a professor with his discovery, "and I told him, ÔYou know, I've discovered there is this fascinating thing called landscape architecture. Do you know anything about it?'" While the professor did not, he referred Halprin to one who did. After several classes, Halprin impressed the professor to such a degree that he sent him with a scholarship to study the subject further at Harvard University, where, it turned out, Christopher Tunnard was a professor. Once in Boston, "I became so enamored with what I was doing, I didn't want to stop," Halprin said. "I was 24 years old when I got started."
Haas Promenade, Jerusalem, Israel
After two years at Harvard and then a stint as a naval officer overseas during World War II, Halprin headed to Berkeley, Calif., where he began an apprenticeship with Thomas Church. Over the years, Halprin learned all aspects of landscape architecture, including the plant/gardening aspects, and site and street planning. "But I was mostly interested in community planning and all of the things that went along with that," Halprin said. "The design, making places of all kinds." So, he decided to branch out on his own.
Sea Ranch
Shortly thereafter, Halprin began his career and a succession of projects that would have a major impact on landscape design and how it would be perceived. "Most importantly, I wanted to shift the idea of landscape architecture from just gardens over to communities."
Halprin's first project encompassing this new perspective of landscape architecture was the Sea Ranch, an environmentally sensitive housing community along the Sonoma/Mendocino coast of California. The idea was to create a community that would have a minimal impact on the natural landscape. To this end, Halprin incorporated into the community's design a local granite stone found on surrounding ranches and at the cliff edges.
Yosemite Falls Shuttle Stop, Yosemite National Park
He said, "I wanted to create a place of living together on the land in a way that is not a suburb or a city, but as a town, as a community of people of a like mind who wanted to live together, expanding the idea of what a place can be like."
This idea Halprin has of community stems in large part from his experience working on a kibbutz in Israel. Though he was only just out of prep school at the time, his involvement in that type of communal living and working became a huge influence on the work he would do much later, some of the most prominent in Jerusalem itself.
Ben Yehuda, Jerusalem
While it was during his work on the kibbutz that Halprin's community-oriented ideologies on landscape architecture began to take hold, it was later, as an assistant to the mayor of Jerusalem on several landscape projects, that he developed a true understanding of the significance of stone in designing for these communities.
"I learned a lot about stone there," Halprin said. "I learned it is something that people use to make actual places out of — quite different from the decorative way we use it here, in the United States." He continued, "Jerusalem has this intense quality, and the city itself is almost like a sculpture."
Goldman Promenade, Jerusalem, Israel
Haas Promenade, Jerusalem, Israel
One of Halprin's most prominent Jerusalem projects was the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall in the heart of the city. Here, he primarily utilized Jerusalem Limestone, a very hard, pink stone used in many of the local buildings, to create a marketplace thoroughfare for the community.
Halprin views stone as a culturally and historically significant material. "A lot of what we do is to convince people that these [stones] are not decoration. They are the essence of a life of people."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial
In the case of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C., Halprin used stone to tell the story of the former president's 12 years in office. The memorial is constructed primarily of Carnellian Granite, a dark red granite out of South Dakota that exemplifies the strength and optimism of the man it honors.
FDR Memorial, Room Three, War Wall with Fountain, Washington, D.C.
The memorial consists of four outdoor galleries, representing each of FDR's terms in office. "We integrated the quotations from FDR's speeches [etched into the granite], and included sculpture and water." While the granite and the sculpture define the "rooms" themselves, water takes the forms of pools and gentle cascades.
"We wanted to make it a place people could walk around and understand what the New Deal was meant to be," Halprin said.
San Francisco
Recently, Halprin has completed projects in San Francisco — the Sigmund Stern Grove renovation and the Letterman Digital Arts Center project for Lucasfilm. Like the FDR memorial, both projects were developed with the idea that they should be spaces of maximum use and enjoyment for the community at large.
Prior to Halprin's work, Stern Grove was an area made up primarily of groves of trees and a meadow that, due to decades of use as a popular summer concert venue, was falling victim to mass erosion.
Halprin's designs incorporated a great deal of Gabbro, a granite he used in a variety of forms, including bleacher-type seating, boulders, walls, paving and entry pillars among large grassy areas. "We wanted the stone to be tough, because people were going to be sitting on it," Halprin said. "We didn't want it to get carved out by all the use."
Letterman Digital Center, Creek with View of Palace of Fine Arts,
San Francisco
With the Letterman project, Halprin set out to create a space in which, although the buildings are occupied by Lucasfilm Ltd. for its Industrial Light & Magic and LucasArts divisions, the rest of the area could be put to public use and enjoyment. Located in the Presidio, a former military base that had been turned into a national park, Halprin's designs once again included the use of large amounts of hard sandstone, specifically fieldstones out of Redding, Calif.
And once again, water played a prominent role for Halprin. A 500-foot-long natural creek that runs through the site and empties into a lagoon — all of which was landscaped in stone — was modeled after a stream in Mount Tamalpais State Park in northern California.
More than 2,200 tons of stone went into the project. Mostly, the stones took the form of, as Halprin puts it, "wonderful big boulders."
Letterman Digital Center, Seating Area, San Francisco
"I wanted a kind of stone in very big pieces that had a quality of spirit and color," Halprin said of his choice material, which had lichen running through it.
"We make careful decisions about what kind of stone we use based on the feelings that are true to the project."
Matera, Italy
Currently, Halprin is working on a project in Italy involving the conversion of factories into communities.
Halprin is predominantly working with Tufa stone, which has been used in the area for centuries. "There is a community called Matera, which has wonderful quarries, where a lot of the stonework is used to make buildings, as well as other things," Halprin said. He described the stone as similar to Jerusalem stone, only fairly soft. He was asked specifically to build this community out of the Matera quarry, which has been turned over for that use.
Though Halprin treasures working internationally, he is very selective about working abroad. "I find it very important before I take on a project that I understand not only the land and the people with whom we are going to be working, but also the ethnic qualities of the community life."
Sigmund Stern Grove, Concert Meadow Seating, San Francisco
For Halprin, landscape architecture is more than just a job. It is a breathing art that fosters his understanding and practice of living and working in and as a community. Stone takes on the role of oxygen, carrying life into Halprin's designs, and creating a firm foundation from which people all over the world can benefit.
"The foremost thing is to understand how people's cultural life affects the invisible life and how to fit the two together," he said. "That is what really gets my attention."
And quite deservedly, Halprin, along with his rock-solid legacy, now has ours.
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