Source Books in Landscape Architecture
4
Grant Jones / Jones & Jones ILARIS: The Puget Sound Plan Jane Amidon, Series Editor
Source Books in Architecture: Morphosis/Diamond Ranch High School The Light Construction Reader Bernard Tschumi/Zénith de Rouen UN Studio/Erasmus Bridge Steven Holl/Simmons Hall Mack Scogin Merrill Elam/Knowlton Hall Zaha Hadid/BMW Central Building
Source Books in Landscape Architecture: Michael Van Valkenburgh/Allegheny Riverfront Park Ken Smith Landscape Architect/Urban Projects Peter Walker and Partners/Nasher Sculpture Center Garden Grant Jones/Jones & Jones/ILARIS: The Puget Sound Plan
Published by
Special thanks to: Nettie Aljian, Sara Bader, Dorothy
Princeton Architectural Press
Ball, Janet Behning, Becca Casbon, Penny (Yuen Pik)
37 East Seventh Street
Chu, Russell Fernandez, Pete Fitzpatrick, Clare Jacobson,
New York, New York 10003
John King, Nancy Eklund Later, Linda Lee, Katharine Myers, Lauren Nelson Packard, Scott Tennent, Jennifer
For a free catalog of books, call 1.800.722.6657.
Thompson, and Joseph Weston of Princeton Architectural
Visit our website at www.papress.com.
Press —Kevin C. Lippert, publisher
© 2007 Princeton Architectural Press All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Printed and bound in China
Grant Jones/Jones & Jones : ILARIS : the Puget Sound
10 09 08 07 5 4 3 2 1 First edition
plan. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Source books in landscape architecture ; 4)
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
Includes bibliographical references.
manner without written permission from the publisher,
ISBN-13: 978-1-56898-604-3 (alk. paper)
except in the context of reviews.
ISBN-10: 1-56898-604-1 (alk. paper) 1. Landscape—Computer simulation. 2. ILARIS.
Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify
3. Landscape protection—Washington (State)—Puget
owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected
Sound Region. 4. Jones, Grant R.—Interviews. 5.
in subsequent editions.
Landscape architects—United States—Interviews. 6. Jones & Jones.
Editing: Nicola Bednarek
QH75.G685 2007
Typesetting/Layout: Paul Wagner
712.09164’32—dc22 2006037146
Contents
Acknowledgments
4
Foreword,
7
Bill Miller
Data and Chronology
10
Conversations with Grant Jones
13
3 Influences
13
3 A
55
Context and a Catalyst
3 Building 3 Puget
a Model
59
Sound
3 Relevance
69
and Critique
85
Gallery Asking the Animals for Advice,
95
Frederick Steiner
121
Credits
126
Bibliography
126
Biographies
128
Conversations with Grant Jones Compiled and edited by Jane Amidon
Influences
a schoolboy to describe a horse. His reply paints a picture of a free-running creature,
Jane Amidon (JA): Grant, in 1978 your essay
flowing mane, glistening flanks over contoured
“Landscape Assessment . . . Where Logic and
muscles. But he is chided, and the teacher turns
Feelings Meet” was published in Landscape
to the next student for the correct reply: “A
Architecture magazine. In it you outline Jones &
horse is a large, solid-hoofed quadruped,
Jones’s early approach to visual resource
family Equidae…” Both viewpoints are valid.
management and describe the importance of three visual qualities in the landscape: vividness,
What are the sources of this fusion of logic and
intactness, and unity. You provide a hand-drawn
emotion that distinguish Jones & Jones’s approach
flow chart of visual resource management for
to landscape assessment? As you point out in
highways that is clearly a precursor to ILARIS. Also
Landscape Journal (2001), blurring the bounds
included are examples of your poetry that offer a
between perception of place (the subjective) and
very different manner of describing intrinsic
analytical site assessment (the objective) to create
landscape qualities. You conclude that the essay
“a scholarship of a different kind” is a technique
leads in two seemingly disparate directions:
not shared by many design and planning practices.
toward a poetic and highly individualized view on one hand, yet toward a technical, objective
Grant Jones (GJ): I grew up in Seattle in a household
view on the other. This brings to mind the
overflowing with the cultivation of plants and ideas.
Dickens episode where the strict teacher orders
My family lived on a small farm above the tidal flats 13
Previous: Jones & Jones’s flow chart of visual resource management for highways as published in Landscape Architecture magazine, 1978 Left: Grant Jones on the tideflats beneath the sea bluffs of Admiralty Inlet on Whidbey Island Right: The tidal flats in Richmond Beach
in Richmond Beach, about ten miles north of
Hanna; and Ilze Grinbergs, who I was married to for
downtown. From our house you could see the flats
fifteen years. She is the other founding partner of
and, at low tide, the sand bars. There was a swamp
Jones & Jones and has been the firm’s president for
nearby, trapped by the railroad tracks, and I loved
the past twenty years. Our design training was a
going out exploring with my rowboat, bottom fishing,
collision between the beaux arts and the modern
observing the rhythm of the tides. Growing up, I was
movement. We were inspired by both the old way
surrounded by these three worlds: an upland farm, a
and the new way, but we were definitely modernists
swamp, and the saltwater flats. Living in such close
at heart.
contact with nature, I learned to appreciate the visual
between the beaux arts, the moderns, and the
place. This early interest would later lead me to study
beatniks, I searched for leaders to give voice to what
regional aesthetics while in architecture school.
had become most important to me—bioregionalism. I
Since my grandfather was a builder and my father
14
After being exposed at school to the culture clash
gestalt of the fundamental elements and patterns of a
was particularly fascinated by the writings of Aldo
an architect, architecture loomed over my childhood,
Leopold, who described land as a community versus a
and while that influenced my career choice, in many
commodity. I studied the nineteenth-century Jesuit
ways I also revolted against it to become what I am. I
poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who wrote about the
entered the College of Architecture and Urban
“inscape” as the essence of a place that creates an
Planning at the University of Washington in 1958
energy that actualizes visual perceptions in the eye
and graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture in
and mind—what Yi-Fu Tuan, the great scholar of
1961. In school I met people who have been friends
landscape aesthetics and perception, has called the
and colleagues ever since, including Laurie Olin; Bob
“resonance of an image.” I found W. G. Hoskins’s
C o n v e r s at i o n s
A sketch by Jones illustrating intrinsic environmental qualities of Richmond Beach
book The Making of the English Landscape, which
where we would work on urban design projects,
describes various types of regional landscapes and
trying to capture the spaces and the aesthetics of the
helped me understand that our environments are
market life. After studying the kinesthetic experience
made up of intrinsic geologies, hydrologies, and
of the market, we built a machine to replicate it. It
cultural processes. Thus I began to see the regional
consisted of long scrolls of paper with different
landscape for what it literally was—a series of
textures, which were mounted on a large drumlike
physiographic puzzle pieces—and learned that by
structure that was connected to a long pole with a
mapping and naming the pieces, I could create a
bicycle wheel in the center. We hung the scroll, put
bioregional analog to structural linguistics. In 1961 I
members of the faculty inside the machine, and then
decided to foster my interest in poetry and started
spun it. Patterns started to flow, mimicking the
studying under the American poet Theodore Roethke.
experience of driving a car when scenes start blurring
I was one of his poets for three years until he died. At
together. The machine thus captured all the motion
the same time I was also working for the landscape
and rhythms of the market. The faculty members
architect Richard Haag, a great friend and mentor.
were totally perplexed, but we learned lessons about
At school Haag had been a tremendously influential faculty member. He was one of Hideo
how to record and communicate perceptions of place. After college Haag convinced me to go to Harvard
Sasaki’s best friends during the fifties and had worked
for a graduate degree in landscape architecture. One
for Lawrence Halprin in San Francisco before moving
of my first teachers besides Hideo Sasaki and Norman
up to Seattle to join the landscape architecture
Newton was Charles Eliot III, grandson of Charles
department at the University of Washington. Haag
Eliot, who had worked with the Olmsted brothers.
often took us on field trips to the Pike Place Market,
Eliot gave us a wonderful interdisciplinary project, an Influences
15
Pike Place kin-aesthetics analysis by Grant Jones, Ilze Jones, and Mark Kabush, students of Richard Haag, University of Washington, 1960
16
C o n v e r s at i o n s
Regional analysis of proposed recreational open space in Massachusetts by Jones, under the instruction of Charles Eliot III, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1964
evaluation of the state of Massachusetts that
Philip Lewis from the University of Wisconsin, and
combined landscape architecture, regional planning,
Angus Hills from the Ontario Department of Lands
and urban design. In my proposal I outlined a
and Forests. All three had developed prototypes for
recreational open space network that would
hierarchical land evaluations. Lewis was the first to
strengthen the economy of Massachusetts by
map intrinsic landscape features, particularly along
focusing on the scenery and the aesthetic quality of
rivers, while McHarg worked with a more holistic
the state. Another Harvard professor that greatly
system of transparent overlays to determine best
influenced me was Peter Hornbeck, a naturalist who
placement for development versus environmental
seemed to know everything about every plant, flower,
protection. These three regionalists who created
herb, grass, snake, or insect. He helped me objectify
models to categorize inherent characteristics of the
how close one can get to nature.
land deeply impacted me.
The year I graduated, 1966, I won the Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship. I was the first design
JA: In the mid-1960s, at the threshold between
student to receive the fellowship since Tommy
academia and practice, the Sheldon Fellowship
Church had won it in 1939. Before I left for my trip,
offered the first opportunity for you to establish a
two classmates (Ray Belknap and John Furtado) and I
critical voice in the profession. Did you achieve
worked on a research project with Hornbeck. We had
this? You later wrote in your 1975 manifesto
helped secure $20,000 from the Conservation
“Design as Ecogram” that “the poet whose
Foundation to study three landscape scholars who
responsibility was to discover and give meaning to
were dealing with the regional landscape at that time:
life has been replaced by the ecologist,” but at the
Ian McHarg from the University of Pennsylvania,
same time, you quoted Wystan Auden to say, “the Influences
17
18
C o n v e r s at i o n s
Opposite: On the Galapagos Islands Jones researched cultural adaptations to different bioclimatic zones.
machine through a sort of general technoic
from specifics of place. My proposal to the Sheldon
anesthesia has replaced our interdependence with
committee was to travel to South America, where I
nature.” These words seem to question human
would search for cultural adaptations to the different
capacity to hear and respond to what Jones &
bioclimatic zones that stack skyward from sea level up
Jones calls the voice of the landscape.
through the Andes. The Sheldon trip took me to the Galapagos
GJ: My Sheldon Fellowship proposal promulgated the
Islands, where I learned firsthand from Darwin’s
need to catalog city forms, regional architectures, and
finches. Darwin noticed that as finches moved to
material cultures that had evolved adaptively to real
outer islands, they developed evolutionary adaptive
places and real ecologies, and to use these adaptations
mutations to new contextual conditions. The
as models for shaping a better fit for sprawling
fundamental structure of Jones & Jones’s design
modern communities. The idea of environmental
practice works in a similar fashion—we’ve always
determinism, a phrase that was first used by cultural
tried to adjust our design approach to the specific
anthropologists in the 1930s, had acquired slight
context of each project. As a design practice, we are
disrepute because it seemed to indicate that people
constantly responding to changing pressures in the
are a product of their environment. This distrust of
environment and evolving to develop innovative
Social Darwinism had developed partially because it
approaches to new problems. Our practice is reactive
had been used by the Nazis to prove that Aryans were
and contingent, it’s methodologically consistent in
superior. It was my belief that misappropriations of
its adaptivity but not stylistically consistent.
the idea really wrecked the perfectly wonderful notion that people, plants, and animals all evolved
Because of a military junta Ilze and I ended up getting stuck on the island for nearly six weeks, Influences
19
Sketch by Jones of cultural adaptations to the bioregional conditions of Finca-Cauquillo in the Cauca Valley region of Colombia, 1967
20
C o n v e r s at i o n s
subsisting at the Charles Darwin Research Station. We
depict a multi-discipline, multi-partnered
couldn’t even contact our parents to let them know
operation that aggressively avoids stylistic
where we were. It was tough at the time but in
categorization. Describe the structure of your
retrospect, it was a wonderful retreat. We went out
practice and some of your early projects.
every week with different scientists to study birds, reptiles, and insects. In a philosophical way, the
GJ: I established Jones & Jones in 1969 with Ilze. As I
Sheldon Fellowship shaped the future of our practice.
mentioned earlier, we came of age in the Beat
My travels confirmed to me that ecology and poetry
Generation and were greatly influenced by Beat
are equally valid ways of describing the world we
writers, but also by scientists who advocated
experience. As cultural expressions, they are closely
bioregionalism.
aligned, as are intrinsic landscapes and community
Our first job was an urban plaza called Occidental
values. I certainly hope that realization has been a
Square, near our newly opened offices in the old
critical contribution to the profession.
Globe Hotel in the Pioneer Square section of Seattle. We wanted to create the first European cobblestone
JA: In a recent interview firm cofounder Ilze Jones
square in the West and connect it outward with a
said that the intentions of Jones & Jones have
tree-lined open space system. On the working
remained consistent from the beginning: to
drawings we wrote that paving materials would be
promote the objective integration of cultural and
provided free of charge by the owner since our budget
natural values and connectivity at all scales. This
was limited to only $60,000. When asked where those
efficient description of nearly forty years of
materials would come from, we replied that they were
practice somehow is broad enough to accurately
already on the streets, covered with asphalt. We Influences
21
Ilze Jones and Arthur Skolnik, the Pioneer Square District manager, sorting street cobbles for Occidental Square, Seattle, 1970
22
C o n v e r s at i o n s
Pioneer Square District master plan, Jones & Jones, 1970. Occidental Square occupies the open space at the district’s center.
Influences
23