George Hargreaves and 'The Braid'

George Hargreaves, one of our leading landscape architects today, works the earth to reveal underlying natural processes.

He often takes urban sites that are abandoned, and restores them to the public realm. His award-winning projects include Candlestick Cultural Park and Crissy Field in San Francisco, Pittsburgh Riverfront Master Plan and the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Hargreaves Associates also designed rhe 12 acre urban Discovery Green park in downtown Houston.  It features an interactive fountain, pond and water gardens, playground and two acres of botanical gardens.

Discovery Green from Waymarking website

Mr. Hargreaves was an artist in residence at the American Academy of Rome in 2009. He taught at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University for 20 years. He is the co-editor and author of “Large Parks,” a book that explores large urban parks in depth.

He is quite the consummate landscape architect of our time!

What I like about Hargreaves the most is that he is not afraid to throw around words like 'alchemy' or 'force field'...he is making these concepts respectable and for that, I thank him sincerely. 

You can see the result of this sentivity in 'The Braid' within his Main Street on the campus of the University of Cincinnati, Ohio.

the runnel is next to the walk

...here is what their website says of this space

from UC website

 

"Running through the space are paths that follow the "force-field lines" that Hargreaves Associates discovered on the campus: routes that people have chosen for themselves between important sites. These geometric paths are intersected by a more organic, braided walkways, which runs more or less diagonally through Campus Green. This braid follows the route of a stream that once ran through this part of the campus. Alongside it, Hargreaves Associates has built a stone runnel, which will gather the water that drains off the quad, re-creating the stream and allowing the walkway to flow with both people and water."

What I like most about this approach is that he works with nature - rather than imposing a strict geometry, he follows the course of the stream. ...

He looks to what the land tells us and makes that into a grand and enchanting campus walk....Bravo, Mr Hargreaves!

 For those who know pychology:  Hargreaves is Jung to Ken Smith's Freud.

here is a great book on Hargreaves: