BIOGRAPHY

• Born, July 1, 1916, in New York City and raised in

Brooklyn.
• He invested three of his teenage years in Israel on a
kibbutz (communal settlement or farm) near what is today
the Israeli port city of Haifa
• He earned a B.A. at Cornell University; and he was
granted a M.A. at the University of Wisconsin.
• He then earned a second bachelor’s degree from the
Harvard Graduate School of Design, where his professors
included architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer.
• A visit to Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio in Wisconsin,
had sparked Halprin’s initial interest in being a designer.
• In 1944, Halprin was commissioned in the United States
Navy as a Lieutenant (junior grade).
• He was assigned to the destroyer USS Morris in the Pacific
which was struck by a kamikaze attack.
• After surviving the destruction of the Morris, Halprin was
sent to San Francisco on leave.
• Beginning his career in the San Francisco Bay Area,
California, in 1949, Halprin often collaborated with a local
circle of modernist architects on relatively modest projects.
L A W R E N C E H A L P R I N Ira Keller fountain.
 BIOGRAPHY
• Halprin first came to national attention with his work at
the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, the Ghirardelli Square
adaptive-reuse project in San Francisco, and the landmark
pedestrian street / transit mall Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis.

• Halprin's career proved influential to an entire generation

in his specific design solutions, his emphasis on user
experience to develop those solutions, and his
collaborative design process. Halprin's point of view and
practice are summarized in his definition of modernism:
“To be properly understood, Modernism is not just a matter
of cubist space but of a whole appreciation of
environmental design as a holistic approach to the matter
of making spaces for people to live.... Modernism, as I
define it and practice it, includes and is based on the vital
archetypal needs of human being as individuals as well as
social groups.”

• Lawrence Halprin, the Bay Area landscape architect,

who pushed the design of America's urban spaces in new
directions over a career that spanned 60 years, died in
25th October, 2009 of natural causes. He was 93.
Ghirardelli square serpentine transitway, Nicollet mall.
 • After discharge from military service, he joined the
firm of San Francisco landscape architect Thomas
Dolliver Church.
• Halprin opened his own office in 1949, becoming one

C of Church's professional heirs and competitors.

• Halprin's wife, accomplished avant-garde dancer
Anna Halprin, is a long-time collaborator, with whom he

A
explored the common areas between choreography
and the way users move through a public space.
• Halprin's work is marked by his attention to human

R
scale, user experience, and the social impact of his
designs, in the egalitarian tradition of Frederick Law
Olmsted.
• Halprin was the creative force behind the interactive,

E 'playable' civic fountains most common in the 1970s,

an amenity which continues to greatly contribute to the
pedestrian social experience in Portland Oregon.

E • Budgetary constraints and the urge to "revitalize"

threaten some of his projects. In response, foundations
have been set up to improve care for some of the sites

R and to try to preserve them in their original state.

• He was the co-creator with his wife, the dancer Anna
Halprin, of the "RSVP Cycles", a creative methodology
that can be applied broadly across all disciplines.
heritage park plaza united nation plaza
 • 1964 AIA Medal for Allied professionals

• 1969 Elected fellow in the American Society

of Landscape Architects

A • 1970 Elected honorary fellow of the Institute

of Interior Design

W • 1976 American Society of Landscape

Architects Medal

A • 1979 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in

Architecture

R • 1979 Gold Medal for Distinguished

Achievement awarded by the AIA

D • 1987 Elected into the National Academy of

Design

S • 2002 National Medal of Arts

• 2003 ASLA Design Medal

• 2005 Michaelangelo Award

IRA KELLER FOUNTAIN
• A product of urban renewal, this massive
land clearing project was realized with $12
million in federal funds targeted for the
South Auditorium District.

• This park in Portland’s “city within a city”

was not originally part of the Open-Space
Sequence planned by Lawrence Halprin
and Associates.

• •Working with Angela Danadjieva, Halprin

designed a park that solved the site’s
complex grades with a powerful urban
waterfall. Collectively, the Forecourt along
with the Source Fountain, Lovejoy
Fountain Plaza, and Pettygrove Park were
meant to evoke a metaphorical watershed.
• Halprin saw these plaza spaces as
theatre sets for choreographing
human movement –and unlike being
fountains solely for viewing, these
were designed for interaction.

• The Portland Open Space Sequence

was listed in the National Register of
Historic Places in March 2013.

• The central feature of the park is the

concrete water fountain. Keller
Fountain is often noted as a
memorable feature of the public
landscape in downtown Portland, and
in1999was awarded a medallion from
the American Society of Landscape
Architects.
• The park, which is
known for its
accessibility for
allowing visitors to
stand at the top of the
waterfall, is designed
according to
construction code to
prevent children or
adults from falling
down the waterfall;
the top of the falls are
actually 36 inches
pockets of water,
acting as a safety wall.
Manhattan Square Park.
•This five-acre site in the East End district of downtown Manhattan when the city cleared 60
acres for urban renewal. Designed by Lawrence Halprin in 1971-1972, an open space
surrounded by largely unrealized high-density development.
•One of Halprin’s most multi-purpose facilities, the park opened in 1974, a reprieve from
congested urban living.

•Vehicular and pedestrian traffic were separated via Park Drive (now Manhattan Square) and
a sky-lit underpass below Chestnut Street.
•Halprin’s spatial organization alludes to the historic city street grid, 45 degrees off the current
city layout.

•The park was divided into six zones, including a children’s play area with a wading pool, a
hockey rink that converted to tennis and basketball courts, a large meadow for athletic
events, a bermed garden shaded by a grove of trees, and a wide, tree-shaded promenade.
•The focal point is a sunken,
concrete plaza containing a 2,000-
seat amphitheatre with a
restaurant, and a waterfall
fountain.
•A steel scaffold-like frame with
viewing platforms and an
observation tower allows visitors to
experience the plaza from a
different perspective.

•The park’s complex, multi-level

spaces were realized through
concrete steps and retaining walls
arranged in angular patterns.
•Today the amphitheatre plaza with
its steel frame, garden and
promenade remain largely intact.
The children’s play area was
updated in the 1990s