Landscape architect's community focus honored at U of Oregon

Daily Journal of Commerce (Portland, OR), Jun 15, 2004 by Justin Stranzl

Architect Christopher Alexander's Oregon Experiment permanently altered the Eugene landscape. Thirty years later, the University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts honored an alumnus who has championed Alexander's planning process ever since earning a bachelor's degree from the school in 1974.

New York landscape architect Peter Rothschild accepted the school's highest alumni honor, the 2004 Ellis F. Lawrence Medal, at its Saturday commencement.

Lawrence, who valued user participation, oversaw UO's campus planning and expansion until his death in 1949. Subsequent planners abandoned his vision and encouraged a rigid planning process; their cookie-cutter buildings fostered a disconnect between campus and student.

To reshape the campus and bridge the divide, the university in the early 1970s hired Alexander, who sought a place to try out his new ideas on community-minded architecture. Alexander thought master- design plans should be flexible and that incorporating community input should be a designer's first priority. His 1974 campus redesign, now known as the Oregon Experiment, would be the first major application of his pattern language, a non-technical design vocabulary that allowed community members to more easily offer their input to the building planners and designers. Rothschild, a UO student at the time, found pattern language easy to understand.

Alexander's campus plan was all done with community input and it was a defining input for me, Rothschild said. I understood how to involve people in the public process of design, and I've applied it to my projects ever since. I think when people participate in making things, they care about them much more.

Rothschild, who grew up on the East Coast, earned a 1974 bachelor's degree and a 1975 master's degree from UO and headed to New York upon graduation. He then co-founded Quennell Rothschild and Partners, and set about using Alexander's concepts in a more urban setting.

We've lost a sense of community that we had in earlier times, Rothschild said. It's hard to make a commodity or a mercantile piece of real estate into a place that's sacred for generations. Public spaces reestablish that sense of community. It's a little more complicated when you do it on a scale with inhabitants in the millions, but there are ways to do it. Look at Central Park.

Rothschild's firm has had some impact on Central Park - it led a design team that created the Manhattan park's Tisch Children's Zoo. The designers focused on giving children an opportunity to learn about animals in recreations of their natural habitats, and worked with the Wildlife Conservation Society to accomplish their goals.

Public parks have been Rothschild's calling card since starting his firm; Quennell Rothschild created the master plan for the Hartford, Conn., Riverfront Recapture, a major redevelopment of a 10- mile-long park on each side of the Connecticut River. Rothschild also designed the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, the centerpiece of the Twin Cities' famed Walker Arts Center. Each of Rothschild's parks is in communication with the people who use it, said Robert Melnick, dean of UO's School of Architecture and Allied Arts, who considers Rothschild both a great landscape architect and a cherished friend of UO.

His work has been really geared toward helping to improve the quality of life, Melnick said. Places mean a great deal to people, and Peter's work across the country has really been geared toward that goal of joining people and place. At our school we ask, 'How do we help students recognize they need to give back to our community?' Peter exemplifies that giving in every way.

Along with his work's focus on community, Melnick said Rothschild is a credit to UO for hiring its graduates - Quennell Rothschild partners Andrew Moore and Mark Bunnell studied at the university - and for doing pro bono work that really speaks to what landscape architecture is about and what we teach in our school.

Although he no longer resides in Oregon, Rothschild was thrilled to be back in Eugene for the commencement ceremonies.

It's always terrific, he said. It's green, it's clear and clean and, as always, I feel embraced by the people who are here.