Innovation happens, but slowly. Landscape architecture is the tortoise. Furniture design and interior architecture are, by comparison, hares.
Change can be swift, and recognition loud, in the two fields that have already been highlighted in this three-part series on Chicago-area designers to watch in 1998. But landscape architecture is another story.
Why? Pick a reason–pick two, if you like. A good landscape design takes years to grow into itself, so bright new ideas have to march in place a while before they catch on. Or, landscape architecture is too often considered an afterthought, an accessory to a building’s aesthetic. Or, Chicago’s unforgiving climate and short growing season discourage the use of inventive landscapes. Or, the usual career path that starts in a big design-build firm relegates young hot shots to assisting older, more conservative professionals rather than letting them break out early.
Or El Nino did it.
The three landscape architects introduced here are all managing to nudge all these factors aside and break new ground. They are forward-thinking builders of outdoor landscapes whose work around the metropolitan area surely will come to influence their colleagues, not to mention garden designers and home gardeners, in the next few years.
FRANK HAAS
Watchword: Integration. One client is a collector of folk art and also wanted a koi pond in the back yard. For an entry gate, Haas designed a top panel made of funky wooden fish, integrating both interests. Elsewhere, when clients want to go natural with the front yard, Haas carefully knits the wild look in with the more traditional neighboring landscapes.
Notable recent project: At a home in Highland Park, Haas transformed a barren lot scraped clean to the dirt into a naturalistic garden that appears to rise out of virgin prairie. Structurally, the back yard resembles many of the neighboring cookie-cutter landscapes: patio, pergola, big lawn edged by ornamental borders. But these borders mimic nature, progressing from the big woody plants of a natural woodland edge to prairie perennials and grasses before giving way to lawn.
And that lawn looks as if it wanders off endlessly toward the west, though it actually disappears behind landscaping of the common area. It’s a “path to the setting sun,” a device originated by the great Jens Jensen.
Every garden an eco-lab: “No matter what kind of garden my clients want, I try to help them consider the impact of what they are doing. It doesn’t have to be a natural area restoration, it might be a perennial border or a formal rose garden. I want them to give some thought to how they can minimize the negative impact, either with shrub roses, which need less spraying than hybrid teas, or by providing in a traditional formal landscape, plants that will feed the birds.”
Biography: He turns 38 today. Grew up in New Jersey, got a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., in 1981. Came to Chicago and spent a decade doing design-build work for a Palatine nursery and a Libertyville landscape architecture firm.
“There aren’t many commercial jobs where you can do unusual and challenging things, but each residential client wants something new and different, so it’s less limiting of your creativity.”
In 1991, Haas started his own one-person firm, which he operates from his house in Lake Forest. (His front yard, with contrasting formal and informal plantings, is shown on the cover.)
Call: 847-295-6373
NANCY LYONS HANNICK
Watchword: Interactive. She wants her landscapes to get used, so she pays inordinate attention to the client’s lifestyle.
A man who bought a house in Winnetka called Hannick to figure out his failing rose garden. She detected he wasn’t satisfied with much about his lavish yard. The main problem: He’s big on entertaining, but the route to the back yard was blocked by a hot tub and too-narrow decking around the pool.
She replaced the hot tub with an inviting fountain court (shown on the cover), enlarged the pool decking, and traded some lawn for drifts of perennials. Now it’s a party yard–with a successful rose garden.
She also enjoys watching time interact with a landscape. Planting evergreen trees that will eventually spread to 15 feet but are only 6 feet wide now, she’ll put “interim” shrubs in the gaps, to be moved later.
Notable current project: A Winnetka home where Hannick has turned an ordinary terrace into three distinct areas extending the master bedroom, living room and dining room outdoors. Now she’s moving around to the front of the house.
“The main thing out front was getting rid of tons of paving that did nothing. My pet peeve is circular drives. I get rid of them whenever possible. Cars parked in front of a house make me ill.”
Her crystal ball tells her: “With this whole perennial craze that’s going on, people haven’t realized yet how much maintenance work perennials can take. There might be a backlash in the next couple of years. People will say, `Give me just five perennials that will do the trick and don’t take a lot of work.’ ” They’ll be mixed in with shrubs, which are tougher.”
Biography: With a bachelor of arts degree in art history from Smith College in Northampton, Mass., and a master’s degree in landscape architecture from Harvard University, the East Coast-bred Hannick arrived in Chicago in 1983 and worked for American Hospital Supply as a staff landscape architect.
She took time out to have her first baby, went back to work for a commercial landscape architecture firm, took time out to have another baby, then set up her own shop, NLH Landscape Architects, a one-person operation in her Highland Park home.
She’s 43.
Call: 847-432-7183.
VALLARI TALAPATRA
Watchword: Surprise. In a residential landscape that is mostly subtle native plants, she’ll plant pockets of vibrant, colorful perennials as focal points. Or she might tuck a “fire circle,” like something out of a state-park campsite, into a woodland garden. “I like to make the garden an experiential thing, where it reveals its complexity to you as you walk through. You can’t see it all from the driveway, you have to have a series of experiences.”
Notable recent project: In front of the Corn Products International Plant in Summit, Talapatra was commissioned to make a landscape that softened the harsh transition from industrial site to city streets.
She went farther than expected, using a series of berms and big dollops of ornamental grasses, evergreen trees and prairie plants to create an oasis that feels completely natural even surrounded by concrete and traffic.
Out of many, one: Although she likes to plant surprises along the way, Talapatra also stresses unity in her landscapes. At a home in West Chicago (shown on the cover), she blurs the line between house and garden with naturalistic prairie plantings that march up the driveway, right up to the residence.
In other projects, she might use a series of boulders, an organizing pathway, masses of similar plantings, or some other device.
Book she believes every garden lover should read: “Second Nature,” by Michael Pollan (Atlantic Monthly Press, $12.95). “It’s a great book that explains why the best way to design is with nature, rather than against (it). Take hints from the earth and go with them.”
Biography: Thirty years old and a native of New Delhi, India, Talapatra has a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi. She came to the United States in 1992 on a fellowship to study landscape architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She worked at the U.S. Army Construction and Engineering Research Lab for two years, then moved to the Chicago area to head Eco-Logic, the environmental consulting arm of The Natural Garden nursery in St. Charles.
Call: 630-580-0332.
ARCHITECTS, DESIGNERS: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
All three designers in this article are landscape architects, as opposed to garden designers. What’s the difference?
It varies from state to state, but in Illinois, landscape architects are licensed, by dint of their performance on the Landscape Architects Registration Exam.
The test covers principles of planting design, landscape construction, site grading and other aspects of the job, according to Lori Lyman, an Elmhurst landscape architect who is also president of the Illinois chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
To take the LARE exam, a person must have a degree in landscape architecture from a credentialed academic institution.
Garden designers, by contrast, are not licensed, although they may have degrees in horticulture, landscape design or a related field. Some have no degree, only work experience.
Landscape architects and garden designers can do all the same things for their clients, Lyman says, but landscape architects have the added value of being licensed.
