George Hargreaves
Encyclopedia
George Hargreaves is a landscape architect
Landscape architect
A landscape architect is a person involved in the planning, design and sometimes direction of a landscape, garden, or distinct space. The professional practice is known as landscape architecture....

. He has many awards to his name for his contributions to the profession. Hargreaves and his firm designed numerous sites including the master plan for the Sydney 2000 Olympics
2000 Summer Olympics
The Sydney 2000 Summer Olympic Games or the Millennium Games/Games of the New Millennium, officially known as the Games of the XXVII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated between 15 September and 1 October 2000 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...

, The Brightwater Waste Water Treatment Facility in Seattle, Washington, and University of Cincinnati Master Plan.

Education

According to Ken Gwertz's article "Landscape Alchemist," George Hargreaves' interest in Landscape Architecture was partially due to a summer trip that he went on when he was 18 years old. During the trip to the Rocky Mountains
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the southwestern United States...

, George Hargreaves climbed Flat Top Mountain where he experienced a life changing scene. Hargreaves describes the sense, "It wasn't just the mountains or the trees or any of the individual elements. It was something about the sense of space itself. When I got back home I tried to explain this to my uncle...and he said, 'Have you ever thought about going into landscape architecture?'" In 1973, George Hargreaves attended the School of Environment and Design
University of Georgia College of Environment & Design
The University of Georgia College of Environment & Design is a college within the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, United States.-History:...

 at the University of Georgia
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...

. Four years later, he graduated second in his class, magna cum laude, with a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture. Soon after getting his bachelor’s degree, George went to Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Harvard Graduate School of Design
The Harvard Graduate School of Design is a graduate school at Harvard University offering degrees in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning and Design.-History:...

. He graduated with distinction and received a Masters in Landscape Architecture.

Professional experience

In 1983, George Hargreaves started his own firm, Hargreaves Associates. George and Hargreaves Associates have worked on many well known designs over the years. George Hargreaves is an important part of every design. He works on the designs from conception all the way to the construction.

Hargreaves Associates is a world known Landscape Design firm with offices in San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. Hargreaves Associates do projects that range from large river edges to small residential sites. George Hargreaves and Mary Margaret Jones oversee a team of talented designers but have the final control over the outcome of each design, maintaining a consistency throughout. According to Hargreaves, "Convention is easy to slip into, to keep making the same pictures. What I try to find are those magic moments of clarity when you hear what the site is whispering to you." Landscape Alchemist

In the Introduction of the 2009 publication on his practice, Landscape Alchemy, Hargreaves cites that the firm seldom encounters project sites that are a greenfield or “natural” but are more likely to be brownfields, often flat, devoid of any significant vegetation or other natural features, yet close to city centers. Mostly late 20th century and early 21st century sites, they differ greatly from the majority of the sites for the great parks realized from the 17th to early 20th century that had much more obvious character where glacial terrain with remnant countryside provided what Hargreaves likes to call “good bones”. Additionally, he points out that “our design strategies is a continuing search for the way to conceptually enter the site and create bones where there are none”, and that while each Hargreaves project integrates sustainability, phenomena and process, site histories, adjacencies and overlays, “none should operate singularly - they all interact on the same site as we strive to put bones in our projects that will give them life for decades or centuries to come”.

At his presentation to the Forum for Urban Design Spring Conference 2009: the 21st Century Park & Contemporary City held at the Modern Museum of Art, Hargreaves emphasized that "distressed sites, whether abandoned, polluted, neglected, or all three, are the dross from which 21st Century dreams are woven".

Academic experience

George Hargreaves started his academic career shortly after he started Hargreaves Associates. He first taught at universities such as Cal Poly
California Polytechnic State University
California Polytechnic State University, or Cal Poly, is a public university located in San Luis Obispo, California, United States. The university is one of two polytechnic campuses in the 23-member California State University system....

, University of Illinois Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...

, and University of Virginia Charlottesville
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

. In 1986, George began to teach at Harvard University Graduate School of Design where he became a tenured professor and continued teaching there for over twenty years. He was also the Chairman for the Department of Landscape Architecture from 1996 through 2003. Prior to resigning from his position at Harvard to focus on his practice, he was the Peter Louis Hornbeck Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture and taught advanced and theoretical design classes and core studios.

An important piece of his academic work is the book he co-wrote with Julia Czerniak. The book is Large Parks. Large Parks is compilation of eight essays on large urban parks. These essays talk about the complexity of the parks and how they part of society. Large Parks is only the latest in a long line of publications that he has written and was awarded the J. B. Jackson Book Prize by the Foundation for Landscape Studies for having contributed significantly to the understanding of landscape studies.

Projects


See also

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