Kathryn Gustafson

Spotlight on Design Lecture summaryNational Building MuseumMay 26, 2005

Kathryn Gustafson, ASLA, has worked internationally on distinguished landscapes for over twenty-five years. Her award-winning landscapes can be found throughout Europe, North America, and the Middle East. The diverse span of these prominent landscapes, ranging from one to 500 acres in size, are known as ground-breaking, contempo-rary designs that intuitively incorporate the sculptural and sensual qualities that are fundamental to the human expe-rience of the landscape. Two partner offices, Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd. (GGN) in Seattle and Gustafson Porter (GP) in London, continue to evolve the design approach of Gustafson's work into new contexts of time, culture, and nature. Kathryn Gustafson is an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architecture and a medalist of the French Academy of Architecture. She was the 2001 recipient of The Chrysler Design Award and of London's Jane Drew Prize. Her work is widely published.

"What I have prepared tonight is not in depth on any specific project, but more of an overview to show the many scales of landscapes." All of her projects are approached with extensive site analysis and research into the land's history, naturally and culturally, investigating the past, the "core rock," as well as the future aspirations of the site. Gustafson maintains that "a good design emerges from the site, it doesn't get put on the site."

Les Jardins de L'imaginaire (Gardens of the Imagination, 1995) is a park of contemporary landscape features set in a natural setting to explain the evolution of gardens throughout history. The park is on a site overlook-ing the historic village of Terrasson la Villedieu in the Perigord region of France. The region hosts up to two million tourists a year visiting the caves located outside of the village. "The town wasn't getting any of (those tour-ists)," Gustafson said. "The mayor wanted Terrasson to become a tourist destination, someplace for tourists to stop on their way to the caves. [He] wanted the gardens of the world, he wanted a little Italy, he wanted a little Versailles, a little Japan, and very Disney-esque. And not at all the honorable, historical approach that France is known for. We came into the competition saying you cannot buy history. But one thing you can do is explain history," she continued.

Les Jardins de L’maginaire, the chaddar, Terrason, France, 1995. Kathryn Gustafson

© 2005, National Building Museum

Kathryn Gustafson, ASLA. Charles Hopkins

Gustafson says, "the site plays host to a series of elements which evoke the history of the Garden across the ages and continents. These elements present a selection of the grow-ing volume of information about gardens: historic, modern, and vernacular. The park serves to heighten the visitor's interest and curiosity about the original gardens, without reducing the need to visit the gardens themselves. The park is also very much a contemporary space which complements these informative aspects."

Part of Millennium Park in Chicago is the Lurie Garden (2004), a 320-acre site just north of the Chicago Art Institute. Here, GGN designed a dense intimate area of gardens. "We wanted our part of the park to counter (the) open feeling of Frank Gehry's band shell, north of the Lurie Garden, and offer visitors a closed and intimate space," Gustafson explained.

In describing the design inspiration for the Lurie Garden, Gustafson reflects on the history of Chicago and the site itself. "One of the things we looked at was the history of Chicago, what does it mean to be in Chicago? What is the Midwest? Development in the Midwest, the breadbasket of the U.S., is confident and encom-passes a kind of 'rolling motion'. What is the force of Chicago? Well before the famous Chicago fire they were, basically, in marshland and they were all walking on plateaus. And everything burned down. They lifted that city up 9 feet. And if that is not heroic, nothing is."

Gustafson explained that GGN wanted to represent this force and optimism in the park's design. "This is called the dark plate," and represents "where Chicago was before the fire. It's that marshy environment. It's not that it's wet but it's leaky, it's enveloping." There is also a light plate, which represents the plains, the future, monumental movement.

Lurie Garden, Chicago, 2004. Scott McDonald/Hedrich Blessing

Lurie Garden. Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, Ltd.

© 2005, National Building Museum

Les Jardins de L’maginaire, the Amphitheater, Terrason, France, 1995. Kathryn Gustafson

The Seattle Civic Center (2005) encompasses three city blocks (4.9 acres) on a steep slope in downtown Seattle. To Gustafson, "a civic center is about a city, not a state, not a country."

Her design inspirations for this project were the ever-present views of water and stone. "One of the things that amazed me is that everywhere you drive in Seattle, you always have views of this bay (Puget Sound); that the grid of the city actually comes around so you always see the water. It's this won-derful color. You take ferry boats and there is all this water movement.”

“You're always looking at the city that's stepping up the hill like an Italian tower and the color that's most predominant is a sort of limestone color. So the first theory we put together, conceptually, said that in Seattle when you look down you see water, and when you look up you see limestone," she explained.

There is eighty feet of elevation change, occurring from one end of the (Civic Center) campus to the other, between busy streets. This elevation change creates view corridors to the waterfront at the base of the hill. The design makes use of this geography with a variety of plaza types and varying scales that are carved into the Seattle hillside. These ter-races are visually connected by water, stone, glass, and light. The terraces are finished to show ocean-like colors and textures from above, when one looks toward the water beyond.

Seattle Civic Center, west facade. Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, Ltd.

© 2005, National Building Museum

Seattle Civic Center, fountain detail. Gustafson, Guthrie, Nichol, Ltd.

Seattle Civic Center, fountain detail. Gustafson, Guthrie, Nichol, Ltd.

Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain (2004) is in Hyde Park, London. Gustafson described the park as beautiful with historical interest, and cautioned, "the last thing I wanted to do was put a contemporary piece in the middle of this historical view." Gustafson, along with London office part-ners Neil Porter and Mary Bowman, chose a site nestled into a glen to place the 85-yard by 45-yard fountain.

Part of the concept behind the foun-tain is reaching out. Gustafson explained that "Diana was loved because she was perceived to be accessible and she also was very giving. She reached out and helped people tremendously." The other part (of the design) derives from the character of her life; “she let people in. She had a very public and tur-bulent life and went through a lot of things that we all go through. But her (life) happened to be on the front

page. She was under a lot of pressure, and, despite everything that happened to her, she stayed whole, she always stayed who she was."

Part of the concept behind the fountain is reaching out. Gustafson explained that "Diana was loved because she was perceived to be acces-sible and she also was very giving. She reached out and helped people tremendously." The other part (of the design) derives from the character of her life; “she let people in. She had a very public and turbulent life and went through a lot of things that we all go through. But her (life) happened to be on the front page. She was under a lot of pressure, and, despite everything that happened to her, she stayed whole, she always stayed who she was."

The fountain is in the shape of an oval. To Gustafson, it "represents her solidness, it also invites people in, it's also maternal (and) feminine. Because the fountain changes grade from top to bottom, the water starts at the top and then goes through a number of different features that depict, a bit, the path all of our lives can take - whether it's something very calm, and has bubbles in it - like cham-pagne - to a turbulent brook or to being turned upside down." At the base, all the water comes together in a calm pool.

-Prepared by Kirin Makker

Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain, London, 2004. Peter Guenzel

Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain, detail. Gustafson Porter

Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountai, detail. Gustafson Porter