14 Facts About Lawrence Halprin

Lawrence Halprin was an American landscape architect, designer and teacher.

Lawrence Halprin's career proved influential to an entire generation in his specific design solutions, his emphasis on user experience to develop those solutions, and his collaborative design process.

Lawrence Halprin credited his parents with introducing him to art and supporting his artistic inclinations.

Lawrence Halprin earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1939 at Cornell University, studying horticulture with Professor Lee Gand; he continued his studies at the University of Wisconsin, where he earned a Master of Science.

In 1944, Lawrence Halprin was commissioned in the United States Navy as a Lieutenant.

Lawrence Halprin was assigned to the destroyer USS Morris in the Pacific which was struck by a kamikaze attack.

Lawrence Halprin had become close to the Wursters during their year at Harvard, and Bill Wurster asked him to stop by if he was ever in California.

Lawrence Halprin opened his own office in 1949, becoming one of Church's professional heirs and competitors.

Lawrence Halprin's first commission was for Anna's parents, who had recently moved from Chicago; that project was a collaboration with Wurster, who was responsible for the house's architecture.

Lawrence Halprin's work is marked by his attention to human scale, user experience, and the social impact of his designs, in the egalitarian tradition of Frederick Law Olmsted.

Lawrence Halprin was the creative force behind the interactive, 'playable' civic fountains most common in the 1970s, an amenity which continues to greatly contribute to the pedestrian social experience in Portland, Oregon, where "Ira's Fountain" is loved and well-used, and the United Nations Plaza in San Francisco.

Park Central Square was the first of his works to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, in 2010, followed by the Heritage Park Plaza in Fort Worth, Texas, designed by Lawrence Halprin and built in 1980, featured by NRHP as its featured listing of the week, on May 21,2010.

Several of Lawrence Halprin's works have been threatened by redevelopment as they have aged.

Anna and Lawrence Halprin co-created the "RSVP Cycles", a creative methodology that can be applied broadly across all disciplines.