Lawrence Halprin

Halprin opened his first
office in San Francisco in March, 1949.
Most of his early commissions were for
well-to-do private clients with small-scale
gardens or backyards. The first project to
include both site planning and architecture
was for the parents of his wife, Anna, in
Woodside, California. Completed in 1950,
it was also his first of many collaborations
with architect William Wurster. Four years
later, Halprin’s own home in Kentfield,
California (another collaboration with
Wurster), was completed and became
well-known and widely published. Halprin
said it was “a choreographed sequence
of penetrations leading from the house,
through the woods, down flights of steps to
the Dance Deck below.”
Laurie Olin, a landscape architect,
educator, and author, has described this
period as “one of enormous personal,
intellectual, artistic, and professional
growth” for Halprin.
Early Residential
Gardens
10 The Cultural Landscape Foundation
Sketch by Lawrence Halprin of his and Anna's first
backyard in Marin County, CA
(Courtesy the Architectural Archives of the University
of Pennsylvania, by the gift of Lawrence Halprin) www.tclf.org 11