The Leading with Landscape II: The Houston Transformation conference explored how ambitious, large-scale landscape-architectural projects are taking the lead in shaping the nation’s 4th largest city. Held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Brown Auditorium on March 11, 2016, the conference brought together some of the leading thinkers and landscape architects who presented nationally significant projects. To learn more about the conference: http://tclf.org/sites/default/files/microsites/houston2016/index.html
Panelists, Chapter One: The Foundations
Matthew Urbanski, Principal, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc.
Jack Ohly, Senior Project Manager, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc.
New Landscape Plans for The Menil Collection and Hermann Park
Our talk will be about the evolution of Houston’s public realm as seen through the lens of two recent MVVA projects in Houston: a new Master Plan for Hermann Park, which is in its early stages and a Landscape Plan for the Menil Collection, which is in the process of being executed. The panelists will discuss the way that Houston’s evolving landscape ambitions have laid the groundwork for existing public spaces to move into an exciting new expression of landscape materiality and program. In the case of the Menil Collection, that ambition can be characterized as an effort to bring the quality of design and spirit of exploration at the heart of institution out into to a landscape that has evolved primarily through erasure and preservation of a neighborhood. A respect for found qualities and unexpected juxtapositions informs both revisions to the existing campus as well as the new landscape of the Menil’s expansion to the south. Hermann Park is one of Houston’s flagship public parks, an oasis of green that has been artfully curated to frame civic life. In a new master plan for the park that is currently under development, MVVA is drawing inspiration from Hermann Park’s history and Houston’s unique environment and ecology to help infuse the formal frame of the park with a diversified landscape experience.
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