An extraordinary life in landscape architecture: M. Paul Friedberg

The passing of pioneering American landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg, who died at age 93 on 15 February in Manhattan, New York - without ever retiring - has been well honoured by The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) and beyond.

The New York Times (NYT) this week testified to Friedberg's transformational approach to the design of playful public spaces, in an obituary that carried the epitaph of 'M. Paul Friedberg - Landscape Architect Who Celebrated the City' as its headline.

The NYT's Penelope Green called attention to the mark made on New York City by Friedberg - a friend of sociologist William H. Whyte - as a designer of experimental playgrounds. "And then (he) used the same ideas to reinvent urban parks across the country," she added.

Green writes that Friedberg "fell into landscape architecture almost by accident" in the 1950s, but subsequently rose to the early ranks of activist landscape architects (you can find more to read on this in the ‘Further References’ section below)..

Writing at length about Friedberg, architectural historian Chad Randl has contributed a useful set of insights from this era:

"In 1958, after two years outfitting city parks with stock features in standard configurations, (Friedberg) established his own practice, M. Paul Friedberg and Associates. A small group of pioneers including Lawrence Halprin, Robert Zion, Garrett Eckbo, and Dan Kiley were opening landscape design to modern ideas and exploring new forms of public spaces.  

"It was clear that urban open spaces needed help. Cast aside by postwar suburbanization, the urban environment was increasingly considered threatening, dehumanizing, and in hopeless decline. Public parks and playgrounds were regarded as escapes from the malevolent city, but their designs were often unresponsive to the users' needs, if not hostile and coercive.

"Bound by convention and bureaucracy, Friedberg's early work was unexceptional. Yet he was increasingly aware of the disconnect between public spaces and public needs and was increasingly frustrated by the waste, thoughtless inertia, and condescension that seemed to characterise the process of public landscape design".

He held the belief that public spaces were successful only if people used them, and that they should be as inviting and flexible as possible.

By the late '60s Friedberg had been asked by the American Society of Landscape Architects to develop an academic programme in urban landscape design - "an unheard of focus in those days" - and did so at the City College of New York in 1970. In 1972, the New York Times was typifying Friedberg as one of the “New Left of playground designers” for his radical breaks with tradition.

By 1979 Friedberg was made a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects. The following year, the American Institute of Architects recognised his efforts to integrate the design work of various disciplines and presented him with the AIA Medal for an allied professional.  

Charles A. Birnbaum, president and CEO of The Cultural Landscape Foundation worked as an intern at Friedberg's company, now known as MPFP, in 1982. He is a staunch champion of Friedberg's legacy and calls him a "towering and influential figure who turbocharged the discipline of landscape architecture and the need to broaden the profession".

A personal remembrance piece Birnbaum has written begins with three epithets to describe Friedberg: "Maverick, innovator, fearless".

Birnbaum: "Friedberg would push the envelope on what a landscape architect was (e.g. the lead planner – think big), what they did (e.g. reclaim the city), and what they looked like (e.g. actively courting and employing women and minorities in his practice and at the City College program)". 

A Bloomberg City Lab column by Zach Mortice talks of work by Friedberg that "pushed the transition of landscape architecture from drawing inspiration from the picturesque to finding direction in the prosaic".

Modernist plazas and playgrounds abandoned the European garden tradition in favour of the sculptural logic of the urban environment.

Mortice notes that "Friedberg was not the only midcentury landscape architect to introduce the discipline to urbanism, but he was the only one to do so in America’s design capital, New York City".

Mortice also acknowledges that "with their nods toward stark Brutalist massing and materials, these works can look dated now, especially when they’re not properly maintained. This time-out-of-placeness is accentuated by their isolation. What were intended to be elements of a contiguous carpet of inherently urban landscape became stranded, as this muscular and strident assertion of the public realm fell out of favour for more subtle and materially diffuse applications of urban landscape design".

Although powerfully influential, many works are no longer intact. On the topic of protecting sites it's interesting to note that Freiberg, as late as 2014, wrote "I am not a preservationist by nature".

Friedberg: "What I do desire is that decisions to alter my work and the designs of others in the field, be reviewed and sanctioned by knowledgeable people. That the decision to maintain, alter or demolish be supported by intelligent criteria and a jury of my peers - and at a minimum, for those landscapes that are significant that are razed, that they be documented".

Paul Friedberg in his office in his residence in The Springs, East Hampton, N.Y. (Photo by Charles A. Birnbaum, 2017 - TCLF)

To close this summation of the life of Paul Friedberg (the M. is for Marvin), here are three other resonant statements he made:

  • I'm one of the few who accepted the city as a viable place to work, and to enjoy the diversity and the places that are created for people to come together, understand each other, through the joy of sharing. If there's anything, it's that. It's enjoying the city, removing the landscape architecture bias of the past, the preconceived notion that the city is a hostile place. And, to me the city is where we are, the salvation. If you're going to preserve the larger landscape, the city is the only way. Density is the only way. That's it. (Source: TCLF Oral History).

  • Design is a personal journey. The fact that I have the power to alter the appearance and content of a site merely by placing ideas on a piece of paper or a screen, is an ongoing adventure and exploration into the unknown about how space and form can direct human response. It is about the discovery of myself, my aesthetic preference and social values at a given point in time. I create three-dimensionally what the writer accomplishes with words. It is not without anxiety, as the ideas haven't a reality until cast in a space and experienced. (Upon reception of his 2015 ASLA medal, the organisation's highest honour).

  • Designing the landscape is an abstraction, as is the creation of music. Its function is a search for beauty. The musician achieves it by arranging sound. The landscape architect arranges space to be experienced by inhabiting it, not a bad way to start a day or spend a life. (From the opening address of the TCLF 2008 conference 'Second Wave of Modernism in Landscape Architecture')

One of his favourite materials was water, plants less so (although their appeal grew on him). Apparently he was bullish on ledges and steps and liked to say "a wall is an obstruction, and a ledge is a place to sit".

M. Paul Friedberg was also well-known for 'looking the part' too, with his NYT obituary giving a special mention to the "dashing figure" he cut in a "signature uniform". According to a biography note this combined the standard designer fit (black turtleneck, black pants) with a bit of counter-cultural swag in the form of a black leather jacket.

Penelope Green, NYT: "For decades Mr Friedberg rode a motorcycle to job sites and meetings, terrifying colleagues who had to ride with him". Apparently he would also roar into his office on a motorcycle and park it in the vestibule, dropping off a handful of napkin sketches the moment after he put the kickstand down.

Friedberg's wife Dorit Shahar is also a prominent landscape architect and a supporter of the TCLF's 100 Women Campaign.

FURTHER REFERENCES

A book list:

  • Friedberg, M. Paul and Ellen Perry Berkeley. Play and Interplay: A Manifesto for New Design in Urban Recreational Environment. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1970. (Contains practical design solutions for all age groups from children to the elderly. Many Friedberg design projects are richly illustrated with extensive black and white photography).

  • Friedberg, M. Paul. Process 82. M. Paul Friedberg: Landscape Design. Process Architecture Publishing Company, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, 1989. (Includes probing essays by Jonathan Barnett and William H. Whyte. A chronological survey of critical projects begins with Riis Park Plaza in 1965 through the 1980s).

  • Bennett, Paul. M. Paul Friedberg: Social Force, Projects 1988-2000. LandForum 08, Spacemaker Press, Palace Press International, 1999. (A chronological survey of late work that includes an introductory essay that places this work in context. Richly illustrated).

Additional reading and links to tributes:

References contributed by Jennifer Nitzky, FASLA:

International, People, Playgrounds, Parks, UrbanStephen Olsen