Transcending History

A reflection first published at the start of 2019 in The Journal of the Landscape Institute's International Issue. They asked what was on my mind. And, to be honest, this is still front and center.

Twenty years ago, my official study of landscape architecture at Harvard University largely focused on the designers of the day. I am only now, in practice, coming to know the work of some of the earliest American landscape architects and planners, and John Nolen most recently and most directly.

I bumped into Mr. Nolen’s work first in Sarasota, Florida, where we are working in collaboration with Sasaki on a plan for 53-acres of waterfront called The Bay. The Nolen Plan of 1925 is an enduring planning framework for Sarasota - as his planning is for many communities around Florida - that has since been further built upon by many accomplished planners and designers. The Bay Master Plan has been a deeply-engaged community process. The result is a roadmap for transforming a largely paved site into an ecologically-regenerated public park and 21st century cultural campus.

Phase One of The Bay, Sarasota

My relationship with him deepened when we started the design process for a renovation of Independence Park in Charlotte, North Carolina. The inaugural commission of in an illustrious career, Independence Park is one of a number of great places in Charlotte shaped, in part, by Nolen’s hand. There, we are studying the site’s rich layers of ecological, culture and recreation, looking to guide investment in the park’s renovation consistent with both community need and cultural history.

The Queen City's First Park - Independence Park

The uncanny sense that Nolen’s legacy is intertwined with mine was confirmed when a Charlotte-based historian noted that our office in Harvard Square is in the same building -– on the same floor, in fact - as Nolen’s once was. My meeting with him was just one-hundred years delayed. But I digress…

The Office We Shared with Nolen

A legacy somewhat overlooked, Nolen and the Transcendentalists he learned from brought together ideas of religion, civic-mindedness and nature. Transcendentalist thinking – that people’s spirits are enlarged when touched by nature – emerged in the early 1800’s as a uniquely American philosophy and blossomed in mid-century in the works of Emerson, Thoreau and others. 

The influence of this thinking on the American city is as profound as the philosophy itself, having set the stage for a period of urban growth that is still regarded as a heyday. And, particularly in Nolen’s case, a Transcendentalist-influenced practice also often acknowledged (albeit subtly) issues of gender, race and public space more directly than many other movements of the day (and, it could be argued, some early 21st-century urban movements, like new urbanism and landscape urbanism, as well). This design intersectionality - landscape, planning and urbanism - faith, community and nature - seems to be a refreshing (if not entirely new) way forward today.

?Nolen's Legacy at Balboa Park, San Diego

Reflecting on our work now that builds on Nolen’s legacy, it is clear that the Transcendentalists were on to something powerful. In an era of increasing technological alienation, social disruption, surging re-urbanization and environmental degradation, Transcendentalism may in fact be poised for a comeback. As people around the globe are moving to cities in record numbers, maybe the need for connection to the inspiration of the wild can be a mechanism for re-connecting us to shared sense of purpose and beauty. Perhaps it is time for urbanists to pick up the end of that philosophical thread and weave it into our work once again.