Groundbreakers 1

G R O U N D B R E A K E R S WOMEN IN

LANDSCAPE

ARCHITECTURE,

AND THE SPACES

THEY MADE. ISSUE 1

Front cover: Martha Schwartz’s Sowwah Square.

Keep your eye out for issue 2 featuring more of her work.

A SLAB publication

by Shanley Price

LOTA DE MERCADO SOARES

3

MARION MAHONEY GRIFFIN

7

GERTRUDE JEKYLL

11

CORNELIA HAHN OBERLINER

13

READING LIST

17

Lota De Mercado Soares A Brazilian architect born to a prominant political family. A contemporary of Burle Marx, her planting design celebrates local Brazilian indigeneity and Brazilian Modernism.

Other work by Soares includes Flamengo Park in Rio, a prominant public park used for recreation and sporting events. It played a key role in the 2016 Rio Olympics. Her house and garden were used to film Reaching for the Moon.

opposite: images of Soares house and garden this page: Flamengo Park

Marion Mahoney Griffin

spread: Fishwick House

Mahoney, one of the first registered architects in the world, graduated from MIT in 1894. Notably, worked for Frank Lloyd Wrights office, producing many of their landscape renderings, of course largely uncredited. She later married Walter Burley Griffin, known for their winning design of Canberra. Her watercolour renderings were instrumental in securing first place. She has a broad legacy of landscapes in America as well as New South Wales, many residential gardens, alongside many of her peers within the Prairie School of Architecture.

this page: various residential renderings opposite: Canberra renderings

Gertrude Jekyll A keen horticulturalist and prolific writer, she is a key figure in English garden design. Her work utilises many classic landscape design features, with a bold celebration of planting and colour. She would test every new plant in her personasl garden before recommending or using them in a design. She wrote over 1,000 articles for various magazines of the time.

Her meticulous approach produced over 100 gardens which combined site-specific constraints, with her aesthetic driver of herbacious and chromatic beauty. Her work is highly regarded and can be enjoyed through several public gardens in the UK.

Cornelia Hahn Oberliner Having immigrated from Germany, she graduated from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1947.

She quickly became interested in public housing and landscape projects, before moving to Vancouver where she started her own firm. She became known for her collaborative, socially responsible and environmentally thoughtful work- well before it was commonplace.

This mophed into frequently designing playgrounds.

Her seminal work siplayed at the 1967 Montreal Expo let to her involvemnt in producing the national guidelines for playground design.

Other works: New York Times Atrium, & various public parks throughout Canada.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs

Destination Art – Amy Dempsey

Although not a designer, Jane was an activist who organised against Robert Moses’ pursuit for a car-centric NYC. Her work was foundational in the denial or a highway through Manhattan Island. Her seminal text explores urban civic life, and how different types of movement contribute to the the urban fabric of a city.

The only illustrated guide to modern and contemporary art sites outside the confines of museums and galleries. Revised and updated in paperback, the book profiles more than 200 of the most important contemporary art sites around the world, including four new sites in Tennessee, Norway, China and Scotland. From massive land and environmental works to extensive sculpture parks, some of the most crucial and popular international artists are profiled, from Henri Matisse, Anoni Gaudi and Constantin Brancusi to James Turrell, Antony Gormley and Olafur Eliasson

Other titles: Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Dark Age Ahead.

The Language of Landscape – Anne Spirn

Storming the Gates of Paradise - Rebecca Solnit

This book combines various forms of writing to generate an anthology of non-visual landscape communication. Can’t quite explain what you want to in your project description? Have a critique of a precedent but can’t quite verbalise it? Anne has you covered with her writing collection. She argues LA has its own syntax grammar and metaphors, which she helps you to understand in this publication.

Solnit, a prolific writer sits somewhere between witty social commentary of Susan Sontag and political writing of Naomi Klein. This is the anthology of her best essays from this Century. As an environmental and political activist, as well as a public intellectual, she combines an understanding of political systems, as well as their manifestation in contemporary life. It’s a combination of the American landscape: not just their vast deserts and skies, but their social and democratic landscape.

Endlessly relevant to the Australian context, any of her writing will contextualise and explain the vast reach of politics and how they are relevant to us as landscape architects.

Other titles: The Eye is a Door: Landscape, Photography and the Art of Discovery.

Other titles: Men explain things to me, A Paradise Built in Hell.

STUDENT LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE BODY