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Reed Hilderbrand signs on for a $22 million sculpture park at Louisville's Speed Art Museum

2023-08-15T17:54:00-04:00

A new three-acre sculpture park design for Louisville, Kentucky’s Speed Art Museum has been unveiled by Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture in a preview of the project, which is expected to host some 500,000 visitors a year after it opens in 2025.

The firm’s $22 million Speed Outdoors makeover will recreate an area surrounding the museum with native flora, a water management system, and 150 new trees in coordination with the adjacent University of Louisville and with a 13-artwork bequest from local collectors.

Image courtesy of Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture

The Museum’s Director, Raphaela Platow, said it will also instill Frederick Law Olmsted’s "dream of a Louisville connected by public parklands" while serving as a "welcoming forum for the whole community to connect with art, nature, and each other for generations to come."

Image courtesy of Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture

The sculptural work of Zaha H...

The state of Frederick Law Olmsted's most at-risk landscapes is examined in new TCLF Landslide 2022 report

2022-10-26T10:00:00-04:00

A new report and exhibition inspecting the state of some of the most at-risk designs by Fredrick Law Olmsted and his successor firms have been released by The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) in honor of the storied landscape architect’s 200th birthday.

This year’s Landslide report has identified twelve Olmsted projects in nine states and Canada that are under threat of a range of challenges including climate change, maintenance delays, and the overall lack of funding.

Washington Park in Milwaukee, WI. Image: Eddee Daniel, courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation

“Landslide 2022 shows us that while the appreciation and value for Olmsted-designed landscapes in general continues to increase, some landscapes have been less fortunate. Our intent with this report is to foster greater awareness and curiosity about this exceptional legacy, and to encourage a stronger shared responsibility for its future,” said Charles A. Birnbaum, the TCLF’s president and CEO, in a preview.

Olmsted...

The TCLF will honor Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of landscape architecture, with a new digital guide ahead of his 200th birthday

2022-04-14T15:20:00-04:00

In honor of the 200th birthday of perhaps the most revered figure in the history of American landscape architecture, The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) has produced a wonderfully illustrated digital guide to more than 300 of Frederick Law Olmsted’s landscape designs.

Featuring landscapes from Maine, Massachusetts, Illinois, Canada, his home state of Connecticut, and 26 others, the guide offers a mapping system and database with important biographical information about his myriad employees and even more detail about the outsized impacts of his successor firms.

A daguerreotype of Olmsted writing in winter 1858 at Brookline, MA. Olmsted was an accomplished literary journalist during the Antebellum period before turning to landscape design full-time. Image courtesy National Parks Service.

The 20th in the TCLF’s series of “What’s Out There” guides, this edition gives equal weight to the 30 National Historic Sites and hundreds of other lesser-known designs associated with Olmsted, ...

Obama Presidential Center construction continues after Supreme Court ruling

2021-08-23T12:52:00-04:00

Construction of the Obama Presidential Center is set to continue at Chicago’s Jackson Park following a ruling by Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The project, designed by Tod Williams & Billie Tsien Architects in collaboration with Interactive Design Architects (IDEA), was subjected to a legal challenge which argued that the project would negatively impact the park’s historic setting.

Opponents of the center filed an emergency motion asking for a writ of injunction to be issued to block any additional groundbreaking of the center. One of the applicants, a nonprofit organization called Protect Our Parks, opposed the project on its current site, arguing the scheme should be built “on Chicago’s South Side outside of a dedicated public park.” A U.S. District Court Judge previously dismissed a suit by the organization in 2019.

Image: Obama Foundation

The motion cited concerns over the cutting down of trees in Jackson Park which are critical to migratory birds, as well as noise ...

Northern end of Central Park to receive $110 million makeover

2019-09-19T14:30:00-04:00

The nonprofit group that manages Central Park is planning the largest project it has undertaken in its nearly 40 years: a $110 million investment in the mostly forgotten northern corner, which may not be on many tourists’ itineraries but which is a vital backyard to surrounding blocks where green space is scarce.

The renovation plan, according to The New York Times, has "resurrected questions about 'park equity' and long-running criticism from advocates who say that as money continues to pour into New York’s signature parks, smaller and out-of-the-way green spaces in modest neighborhoods remain neglected."

According to the Central Park official website, the new design is being undertaken by the Conservancy’s design office, which is led by Chief Landscape Architect Christopher J. Nolan, who will be supported by the architectural team of Susan T. Rodriguez Architecture|Design in collaboration with Mitchell Giurgola.

Exhibition examines the social concerns underpinning the works of Frederick Law Olmsted

2019-07-01T17:25:00-04:00

Big Plans: Picturing Social Reform, an exhibition currently on view at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, examines how landscape architects and photographers concretized contemporary social critiques through their work in American cities during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Plan of Existing and Proposed Parks and Boulevard drawn by Daniel Burnham. Image courtesy of Harvard Libraries.

The exhibition highlights city plans, maps, photographs, and other archival materials to showcase how seminal urban design efforts by Frederick Law Olmsted, Calvert Vaux, Charles Eliot, and Daniel Burnham were inspired and shaped by the photographic works of Lewis Wickes Hine and by the cultural concerns of social reformer Isabella Stewart Gardner.

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine showing children playing in a tenemenet alleyway. Image courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago.

Included in the exhibition are Olmsted and Vaux's plans for New York City's Central Park, Boston's Emerald Necklace, and Ch...

Artificial nature: Frederick Law Olmsted and the invention of landscape architecture

2016-08-30T12:52:00-04:00

An unmistakable irony creeps vinelike through Olmsted’s landscape theory: It takes a lot of artifice to create convincing “natural” scenery. Everything in Central Park is man-made; the same is true of most of Olmsted’s designs. They are not imitations of nature so much as idealizations, like the landscape paintings of the Hudson River School. Each Olmsted creation was the product of painstaking sleight of hand, requiring enormous amounts of labor and expense.

For more on Olmsted and his parks today, check out some past articles: