The Cultural Landscape Foundation has been engaging the community in Springfield, MO to try to preserve Park Central Square, a Lawrence Halprin designed park. As part of that effort, they posted their first video to YouTube of one of the Halprin Associates, project manager George McLaughlin, recalling the story of the design. Check it out!
It is very interesting in that it talks about the authenticity of a Halprin design. McLaughlin notes that while he was the project designer, it was very much in the formal vocabulary and following the philosophy of Halprin’s design language that had been developed over the preceeding 15-20 years.
The other thing that strikes me is that how similar some of the issues and the framing of those issues is analogous to the story that I co-wrote for the April Landscape Architecture magazine about Seattle’s Occidental Park. The context and connections seem almost more important than the design itself.
