Unearthed. Karen M'Closkey

      THE PRINCIPLE of acknowledgment is central to Hargreaves Associates’ design approach.¹³ Acknowledgment is not a tactic concerned with known symbols or typologies that relies on public engagement through a presumably shared system of signification. Although an early statement by George Hargreaves—“Pluralism is appropriate. The expression of symbolism, mysticism, and humanism will become a preoccupation”—might suggest such an approach, the way his work engages these concerns is more complex than resorting to eclecticism by pillaging and collaging symbols in an attempt to construct a seemingly congruent lineage for a place (for example themed environments such as nautical motifs along a waterfront).¹⁴ This question of how to “ground” the site is of particular concern given the conditions where landscape architects work today. Hargreaves notes that the parks of past centuries had inherent complexity given their extant physical features and that “not much more is needed to establish a great place in the hearts and minds of the public.”¹⁵ Though what is naturally occurring is not always considered desirable (it took ninety-five miles of piping to transform Central Park from marshes and bogs to lakes and meadows), today’s sites have been largely stripped of all such features; therefore, the challenge, according to Hargreaves, is how to “create [good] bones where there are none.”¹⁶

      One way the firm achieves this is by acknowledging a site’s past condition in a diversity of ways: in scale, by creating forms modeled on those previously on or near the site but rescaled to different sizes; temporally, by conserving select artifacts or commemorating events; materially, by reestablishing the presence of hydrological systems, without restoring their previous forms. Using all of these approaches, Hargreaves Associates challenges the notion of landscape design as the creation of places of respite and remove. Instead, it seeks to reintegrate dilapidated sites with the dynamics of their physical surroundings by horizontal extension (physical connectivity, such as extending the existing urban grid into the park so as to create a seamless connection rather than a distinction) as well as by vertical extension (conceptual connectivity; also known as the palimpsest of the geologic approach that draws on the past as a way to build a context for the project).

      This latter approach has been particularly fruitful for Hargreaves Associates; conceptual excavations help sponsor heterogeneous conditions that cannot be obtained by defining context based only on what is physically visible (as with contextualism’s nostalgia for the present). For example, the early noteworthy projects Candlestick Point Park (1985–91) and Byxbee Park (1988–91) were, respectively, a rubble heap and a sanitary landfill when the firm was commissioned to design them.¹⁷ These sites did not fit the conception of Kevin Lynch’s “imageable” or Jane Jacobs’s walkable places. Hargreaves Associates took inspiration from the accretion of layers in order to build the ground for the projects. This included not only reconfiguring physical material but also making references to a site’s condition at another time, such as the landforms inspired by Indian shell middens at Byxbee Park.¹⁸ Similarly, dune morphology motivated the creation of sheltered areas at Candlestick Point Park and, later, at Crissy Field, both of which are windswept sites that had naturally occurring dunes prior to industrialization and militarization. Fluvial inspired forms are used in Guadalupe River Park, Louisville Waterfront Park, and the University of Cincinnati. If a designed landform is motivated by a natural formation, it is unrecognizable as such because its surface is materially distinct from its source and it is scaled to the human body, rather than to its naturally occurring size. An obvious example can be seen when the abstracted topography is adjacent to its natural counterpart, such as the river channel at Guadalupe River Park. The two forms share no visible characteristics at the experiential level. And, notably, no matter what the reference or source of inspiration, none of the constructed landforms appear as natural outgrowths of the site.

      Though the forms themselves are conspicuous, the various sources that inspire them are not as decipherable as Hargreaves’s early statements about the narrative nature of the firm’s work suggest.¹⁹ The references are lost in translation because of the dissimilarity between the original formal inspiration and its scaled application to the site, as seen in Guadalupe River Park. This process of transformation denies their status as mere symbolic representations (a stand-in or sign of the past), rendering them grounds without clear prescriptions for use. In other words, though the sources of these forms are likely to remain unknown to the park’s users, taking inspiration from the site’s previous layers provides the basis for new formal and spatial configurations, producing unique and peculiar experiences within each site. This is what makes the work both specific to its place (it is meaningful to those involved in making the park who understand the references) but also open because the forms are scaled to provide other spatial, experiential, and programmatic opportunities.