About the Piece

Nature walk April 26 1:00-2:30pm
The nature walk evolved as a way to point away from the structure and out towards the landscape. I wanted an action that would begin to reach towards the notion of the landscape if even a short distance. The architectural tours tended to focus on the structure and visitors would often stay within the same walking perimeter of my first visit.

As part of the process, Anthony, Adam and and I met with Robert Sweeney, who shared how the landscaping of the Schindler House had taken form and how the plan had been interpreted in order to get as close to an authentic representation of Schindler intentions with the landscaping structure I also meet with Omar Velazquez who shared with me how he cares for the landscaping and how he maintains it.

The nature walk focused on the relationship between Shindler’s original plan for the landscaping and the conservation efforts to recreate it based on his original plan. The landscape plan was published after the house was already built for an architectural/ landscaping magazine some years later. The interpretation of that plan and the search for authenticity brought with it many stories about plants being removed, planted and exchanged, all in search of the original intention. The narratives and the histories that contributed to the way the landscaping currently exists today were the topic of conversation during the nature walk. The translation and interpretation through conservation efforts of words on the plan such as “color” or “ground-cover” showed how interpretive the process can be and how such process begins to build its own history through memory. During the tour, we did not enter the structure itself, focusing instead on the demarcation of space through the planning of the landscape.