Marin General Hospital, 250 Bon Air Road, Green Brae, Marin County, CA

2nd Place Winner - 2015 HALS Challenge: Documenting Modernist Landscapes
Significance: Lawrence Halprin's 1951 design for the grounds around the Marin General Hospital is significant as his first commission to design a public garden space after he established his own practice in 1949. It represents a transitional point in Halprin's career when he began to address larger and more complex site issues and to incorporate the needs of multiple users -rather than simply addressing the needs of a single family within a private garden -into his design process. His design incorporated walkways, gardens, sculpture, and activity areas that were appropriate for ambulatory patients. The landscape south of the Central Wing (the original hospital building) contains the remaining portions of this design. Here Halprin addressed the original entrance sequence into the hospital and its related parking needs and created two separate garden areas, which he identified on his 1951 plan as the "Ambulatory Terrace" and the "Bar-B-Que Terrace." These remaining elements of the design illustrate Halprin's interpretation, at this early point in his career, of Modernist landscape design aesthetics within the public landscape realm.

Halprin (1916-2009), who was one of the preeminent landscape architects of the twentieth century, had a profound influence on landscape architecture through his work as a designer, an author, a filmmaker, and a workshop facilitator. He was probably best known for designing public spaces -including The Source Fountain, Lovejoy Fountain Plaza, Pettygrove Park, and Ira Keller Forecourt Fountain that comprise the Portland Open Space Sequence, the Seattle Freeway Park, and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial -that promoted interactions between the physical space and the user. His designs were based on his lifelong observations of how people moved in and used outdoor spaces and in the creative processes found in nature. Halprin was recognized for his work in landscape architecture, urban planning, and environmental design through numerous awards including the ALSA Medal, the highest honor that the American Society of Landscape Architects bestows on an individual (1978), the American Institute of Architects' Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture (1979), and the National Medal of Arts (2002), the highest award given to an artist by the United States government. He practiced from 1945 until his death in 2009.
Survey number: HALS CA-118
Building/structure dates: ca. 1951 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: ca. 1961 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: ca. 1967 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: ca. 1986 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: ca. 2015 Subsequent Work