Lawrence Halprin (b. 1916) Landscape Architect and TheoristBy Elizabeth K. Meyer
Born on July 1, 1916, Lawrence Halprin was raised in Brooklyn, New York. After graduation from high school, he lived for several years in Israel on a kibbutz. In 1935, he began his studies in Plant Sciences at Cornell University where he also played varsity baseball with hopes of playing professionally. After graduation, Halprin pursued advanced studies at the University of Wisconsin receiving a Master of Science in horticulture in 1941. During this time, Halprin married Anna Schuman, a dance student whose work played a significant role in Halprin’s ideas about landscape movement as well as his developing new graphic techniques to represent landscape experience.
While living in Wisconsin, Halprin has recounted visiting Taliesin East, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home-studio and deciding to study architecture focusing on landscape. He entered the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1942, studying with landscape architect Christopher Tunnard whose book Gardens in the Modern Landscape (1938) Halprin credited with confirming his interest in landscape design. During his studies at Harvard, Halprin was also inspired by professors Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, and was “vitally influenced” by the writings of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, a Hungarian artist and Bauhaus educator who immigrated to the United States in 1937. This particular influence is readily discerned in Halprin’s articles and books about process, space-time, and motion from the early 1960s through the late 1990s.
Sea Ranch...Diary of an Idea
, by Lawrence Halprin
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