Instagram Live: NDA Winners OJB Landscape Architecture

Hey everyone! Hello, hello. So it looks like we are live. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I can see you all joining me. Hi, Mike. Hi, David. It’s so nice to see you all joining for our Instagram Live and I’m so glad you’re all here. I wish I could see all of your faces, too. So, I’ll go ahead and introduce myself. I’m Rebecca Armstrong. I’m an educator here at Cooper Hewitt and I’ll be joined shortly by OJB Landscape Architecture, the 2020 National Design Award winner for landscape architecture for a special garden visit and conversation with them. So you know I, I can’t tell you how excited I am to speak with them and to celebrate their work and their achievement this year. So, yeah, so stay tuned, we’re just so excited for them to hop on, and you’ll also get to see a little bit of a sneak peek and tour of their incredibly beautiful project Sunnyland Center and Garden all the way from sunny, sunny California. So a quick note as well, that this is actually the very last program of National Design Month at Cooper Hewitt so we’re closing out the month of October with you.

So thank you so much for being here 01:30 - and, you know, all month long we’ve been offering virtual programs to all all kinds of audiences all over, featuring our incredible National Design Award winners across all categories and you know thank you very much to everybody who has joined us throughout the month we’re so happy that you’re able to to be with us, and and so much gratitude as well to Target for making the month of programming possible for us. So we’ll be joined very shortly by OJB Landscape Architect Jim Burnett and partner Dillon Diers, as well as the director of Sunnylands, Janice Lyle, so let’s give them just a moment or two to log in here. Alright, alright, yes, hey Janice! It’s nice to see you! JANICE: Good morning. REBECCA: Good afternoon! It’s morning over on the west coast, where you’re joining from. So thank you so much for being here. If you just tuned in to the audience, welcome, my name is Rebecca, I’m an educator here at Cooper Hewitt and I’m here with OJB Landscape Architecture, winner of the 2020 National Design Award in landscape architecture, of course.

So before we speak with Jim and Dillon of 03:11 - OJB, I’d love to introduce first our lovely guest Janice Lyle, director of Sunnyland Center and Garden, designed by OJB, so that’s where everyone is joining us from. And we, you know, can’t wait to visit the gardens in person someday someday soon, but Janice, perhaps you can kick us off by telling us a little bit about the mission of Sunnylands. JANICE: Sure, well we’re sitting– we’re seated at the public access part of Sunnylands. And Sunnylands is the name given by Walter and Leonor Annenberg to their winter home that they built in the 1960s here in the California desert. Their home is acknowledged now as a mid-century modern architectural landmark, and it sits on 200 acres of parkland in the middle of the desert.

During the Annenberg’s lifetime they hosted seven U.S. presidents, they welcomed British royalty like the Queen of England, and they engaged with Hollywood celebrities like Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra, and that created a slice of American life and provides us with an opportunity to talk about the history of America in the 20th century. At the end of their lifetimes, the Annenberg’s set up a trust for the purpose of preserving Sunnylands as a high level retreat center that, that hopes to foster international agreement, and as a place where people can come and visit and learn about the significance of this very special place. So, in 2006, this project, this public part of our project began, and it sits adjacent to the historic estate. It has a visitor center that was designed by architects Fred Fisher and partners, and that building references the mid-century modern house on a historic estate.

05:29 - That the visitor center is placed in a nine-acre garden and the garden designed by OJB what was inspired by the annenberg’s Impressionist and Post- Impressionist paintings collection. It is incredibly beautiful. More than 700,000 people have visited since we opened in 2012, and they have been exposed to and the delightful recipients of a space that is serene and encourages solitude and contemplation, but at the same time they’ve been engaged in public programs, thousands of them that allow them to to be in a community together within this beautiful space so I think the best person to talk about this incredible garden is Jim Burnett, so I welcome Jim here on my left. Thank you. REBECCA: Thank you, Janice. Hello! JIM: Hi Rebecca, how are you? REBECCA: I’m great. Thank you, Janice, I appreciate that introduction, and it’s amazing morning here at Sunnylands. It’s about 60 degrees and the weather is just perfect.

I’m here with Dillon Diers, my partner, and Dillon’s first day at OJB was, 06:54 - his first assignment, first day on the job, was to work at Sunnylands and he had a big role in the execution of this garden and kind of seeing it through during the whole process. And in celebration of National Design Month, we want to thank Cooper Hewitt for being a National Design Award winner. It’s a tremendous honor, and we’re happy to be here today, and to kind of reflect on what design means to us as landscape architects,I want to just add that it’s, as in this assignment, that we took on over 10 years ago, it’s more than just problem solving. That’s just one of the important issues of kind of trying to create this setting for retreat This project was really about, kind of getting people away from the everyday life and putting them in a setting that would be conducive to sharing ideas, and I think design is is the sciences. It’s kind of layering in the agronomy, the botanical aspects, the soils issues, the geology, all the climate issues, but it also is kind of layering in the kind of artist’s touch, the the design that makes it so beautiful to be here.

08:19 - Landscape architecture has grown tremendously in the last 20 years with pressures that have been put on, you know, with climate change, and all the the kind of pressures of, kind of maintaining what we have and taking care of it. And I think during the pandemic it’s been really important to realize that one of the only safe places that we can go and take our mask off is actually out in the landscape. And lastly, I think nature, as we find here today and on a lot of projects that that we’ve been fortunate to work on, nature is really the great healer. It helps to restore us It changes the cells in our body. It gives us promise, and kind of the the ability to kind of change our mood, it makes us happier getting out of doors, is something that’s extremely important for the psyche, and as we’ve all found out, just taking a walk outside during this last seven months, has been really critical to mental and physical health. REBECCA: Certainly. Thank you so much, Jim.

I mean, it’s calming just to like look at the screen and see 09:38 - what’s behind you. It’s so sunny and so green and spacious, so I mean, it’s just beautiful i know exactly what you mean about the tranquility of being outside, and I feel like it’s so necessary right now in such stressful times. You know, and it’s so clear with projects like Sunnylands, as well as, you know, I think of like, Klyde Warren Park in Dallas, which literally reconnects different parts of the city, that, you know, your work also focuses so much on this need for community. So I’m wondering if you can tell us a little more about the inspiration of Sunnylands and some of the key design elements that you use there to sort of foster those connections between people and an outdoor space. JIM: Well, I think when we began the project it was interesting that it was meant to be a kind of a launching place or a setting for people to come here understand the legacy of the Annenbergs and then move to the historic estate, but I think as we started to develop the design and we had Mrs.

Annenberg’s input, she really felt that this could be 10:55 - as significant or as important as the estate and it could be a place where people would come and walk the grounds, that they would come and have yoga class, they would come to art exhibitions, that this could be a community center and so I think it was really Mrs. Annenberg’s inspiration that this be a really important community, cultural asset. I think the design in particular, we followed her lead and that she wanted to have a landscape that was beautiful but not spare and not sparse. She wanted it to be – she described it as being lush, and I think we were able to look at things she loved, which were the Impressionist paintings, and create this large swaths of painterly masses of desert botanical plants. I think, you know, if you look at the mid-century inspiration and working with Fred Fisher, he was phenomenal and his interpretation of the Quincy Jones historic estate, and bringing that to a kind of current approach to the pavilion here.

12:12 - We created an entry that is is a bit of a surprise. You kind of come in through the trees and then you open up, you see the center, and then you see the San Jacinto mountains behind. But, you know, I think what a lot of people really enjoy is this idea that you can leave the outer world behind just like Walter and Leonore Annenberg envisioned. The historic estate, that when world leaders and their friends would come here and talk about critical issues facing the country, facing the world, with education, and kind of international challenges, everything could be left at the gate. And when you come here, you really do take a deep breath.

When you walk the grounds, your heart rate goes down. The crush of gravel under your foot registers completely different with you and helps to kind of slow the pace, and really does a great job of kind of recharging you at the same time. REBECCA: Yeah, that word “lush” is also the first one that came to my mind. So I was anticipating you using that, and then I was like, oh right that makes so much sense, because it’s also how i would describe so many like, you know, beautiful impressionist paintings of the outdoors, of gardens, and looking at light and water, and the air quality, and all these things together to make, just like an encompassing space for people to be in that’s really beautiful. So I can’t wait to see a little more of the garden in just a bit, but I also wanted to maybe ask Dillon to tell us more specifically about the aspect of the gardens that, it responds very directly to the climate crisis, in addition to being of course very beautiful and historic, I know there’s a lot of research that’s that’s done there at the center. So maybe you can touch a bit on that.

14:18 - DILLON: Yeah, well, the center and gardens here in the Coachella Valley coming off of really the hottest recorded summer in history is very much parallel to your comment there, and what a lot of the global environmental story that we’re all living through. Five months extreme heat–the desert really pronounces that more than any other climate in the world. Part of of what this garden really has done is embarked in the story of a living laboratory, meaning a way that the trust and the foundation and the team and the crew that really nurtures and loves this garden day after days is, it’s trying to understand the ecology and really create a sense of a place here, but when we moved forward with the design, we brought on a renowned horticulturist, Mary Irish, and we really embarked in a journey of finding the plant species that would work well and adapt so that the garden here is both native and adaptive arid desert plant material that really has thrived to this location. But when we went through, we actually, the collection here of plant material was about a 53,000 plants, and that was no small feat. We worked with nursery and growers across the southwest region really to make this all happen at once.

So that’s a little bit of a back story 16:10 - to the purpose and ecology, and how the gardens came to fruition REBECCA: Very cool. I’d love to know a little about the plants that I see behind you, too. There’s like a mirrored pond. Can you just maybe zoom in a bit on what’s behind you there? DILLON: Yeah, so here, really flanking right next to the terrace here, we’re on the west side of the building, and this is a significant array of the golden barrel cactus beneath a grove of palo verde, so you have a really serene and dappled light provided. As Jim alluded to the comfort and sense of respite within the desert, a lot of what was studied was, you know, the shade and the canopy and how we brought the visitors to the outdoor environment here. The water features were designed in a way that you could turn the the water actually on or off.

Right now for good audio, the water’s 17:22 - calmed down and it’s just weld but there’s a cascade reservoir beneath us so normally you have a really nice tranquil moving serine quality of movement to the water features here. There’s two basins that flank the terrace on the south and the north. REBECCA: Very cool. Well it’s stunning and it’s so cool to see those cacti behind you. I imagine also the water is a bit of a barrier for like, little kids trying to go over and hug a cactus. Yeah. Well, that’s amazing, so I wonder if we can just take, maybe Zach, our lovely camera person, behind the scenes over at OJB can do like a 360 panoramic view of what’s around you, or maybe in a moment we can take a little stroll around the gardens? right JIM: Great. DILLON: Yeah.

Do you want to do the stroll? 18:13 - JIM: I think she’s still talking, I can’t hear her. DILLON: Oh, it’s a delay. You want to do a stroll? Do you have any further questions, or you want to take a quick little walk and pick up the camera? REBECCA: Yeah, you can take us out and maybe pick up the conversation as we’re walking okay DILLON: Ok, great. REBECCA: Wow! JIM: So this is the cactus garden, and over at the historic estate, there’s a cactus garden right outside of Mrs. Annenberg’s bedroom, and we thought it was appropriate to bring in some specimen, cactuses that would could be kind of, the one spot in the garden where we’re really showing off individual species. And there’s two of these panels here and then on the other side um there’s both the north and south side of these sister water features, we have the cactus.

19:37 - REBECCA: It’s really cool to see the juxtaposition of those very very tall cacti on the left of the screen and then the little round ones on the right IN those rows. There’s just, it’s amazing to see how many different varieties there are. DILLON: Yeah, and we’re moving toward the Great Lawn here, which is the one spot at the center where we actually have used some water, I mean used water enough to sustain a lawn and it’s become kind of the community heart. So, this is the place where um you know big events happen. There’s an art exhibition happening here today.

Then we’re about to walk um 20:33 - [audio freezes] DILLON: And, Rebecca, you mentioned the kind of variety of species. There’s 70 or so varieties of species on the 15 acre project– really it’s a 9 acre garden REBECCA: Wow! DILLON: That has about two miles of walking trails. So what you see here is really the main event lawn, and as Jim described, the circle starts to lead outward to trails and walking gardens. On the left is the labyrinth and um there’s a small event long panel to the right, where you see a few guests and visitors walking right now. REBECCA: Thank you so much for this view. Seeing the mountains behind too, well first they’re stunning, and also it gives a really cool context into sort of the environment of the area. They’re very arid looking.

I imagine that lawn is a hot commodity for 21:57 - events and weddings and whatnot too. JIM: It is a hot commodity. It’s used quite often. And this part of the landscape, the West Terrace and West Lawn and gardens is held together by this double row of palo verdes, and then we keep them, or the foundation keeps them, pruned to a point where you still get the view to the mountains above. Unfortunately we can’t walk into the gardens because we’re losing our service, but as you move into the gardens things loosen up quite a bit. It becomes a lot more informal and the larger trays of landscape kind of follow you through the gardens but there’s places to get lost in those spaces beyond the alley of palo verdes. REBECCA: That sounds amazing. Yeah we certainly don’t want to lose you and drop off the conversation but I guess that just means we’ll all have to visit in person eventually when it’s safe to travel again.

I really look forward to being able to walk through those 23:12 - through those trees and those trails someday soon. So cool. So, we talked a little bit about your sense of community and looking at the lawn and Jim, what you mentioned about that being a sort of a key gathering place of of the gardens i wanted to ask you also you know through the covid 19 crisis, people have more increasingly looked to outdoor spaces, especially [audio freezes] some of the philosophies of your design style change or grow as people more and more look to being outside during this time so that they can connect? JIM: We missed a little bit of that. Can you repeat the question? I’m sorry, it was breaking up, Rebecca. REBECCA: Yeah of course, no problem. Yeah it’s so nice to be virtual and have all these amazing platforms for like virtual programming and virtual conversations but there’s always there’s always some technical difficulties so, you know, I was just asking about this current time that we’re in with covid 19, and that’s sort of prompting people to really look to like the outdoors as a place to gather more somewhat more safely, especially with masks on, and be able to connect with each other rather than staying inside um and who knows what the Fall will bring, hopefully for you, people can still gather outside, being in the California environment, but i’m curious to know how this moment in time has sort of, maybe made you rethink or strengthen some of the philosophies of your of your practice and your design JIM: Great, great question. I think strengthening the principles and the beliefs in our practices is a good way of putting it.

Again, I think people really feel safe in the outdoors. The parks have been set up in a lot of cities as the kind of hub for distributing water and food, for testing, for voter registration, for protests, and free speech, and so I think we’re– It’s an important time for our public open space because it really is critical in taking care of our community and providing access in a healthy way for our community. There are a lot of initiatives going on right now that have been pushing this idea, national, the trust for public land has been pushing this concept of every city having, or every resident in a city, being within a 10-minute walk of public open space, and we strongly subscribe to that idea. REBECCA: Yeah. JIM: Can you hear me okay? REBECCA: Yeah, sorry, I was just responding to you. I agree. JIM: I just didn’t know if you lost you. Okay, Dillon, do you want to, DILLON: Yeah, well, I think one of the things that we’re talking a lot in the studio and with many clients and cities across the country, is really this notion of kind of reclaiming what was so prominent for vehicles, meaning, in particular LA and so many cities across the country have, you know, in order to keep restaurant and businesses alive, have moved outdoors and spilled into traffic lanes, and roads have been closed, and there’s this great notion of really rethinking our systems and our infrastructure if you’re looking at you know roads maybe compromising really, say 30% of our public lands, can we reorient that back to our communities.

Can we maybe adjust our way of life 27:50 - as we have really the last nine months to make these infrastructure elements actually serve the community and be part of an open source. REBECCA: That’s so interesting, because I think you know, it’s one thing to imagine landscape architecture. And your field is so vital for creating public spaces and and you know natural areas for people to enjoy, and you really do have to think in terms of the whole system because if people can’t get to those parks and it’s not sort of like incorporated into the ecosystem of like an urban area, especially with LA, I know the traffic is crazy– then you know, you really have to think systemically, so Dillon, that’s fascinating. Thank you for bringing that up. Speaking of looking at your field, I know that with the change in climate, the landscape architecture field is really forced to adapt and change quickly to respond, maybe more so than than other design fields, in terms of climate change, so knowing that it’s an increasingly interdisciplinary field that works closely with ecologists and architects scientists and vintners and artists as well, just to name a few, how do you see the the field changing? I’d love to– [audio freezes] Are you all there? JIM: It broke up just a little bit, but I understand the question. I think landscape architects are taking up a much greater leadership role and and kind of pulling together teams of people and looking at global issues, looking at how climate change affects our cities, how sea rise affects our cities, leading master plan efforts for entire cities, and that’s very exciting because I’ve always felt that landscape architecture was more than than trees and grass and garden design, that it could be, our profession could take a bigger role.

And again, I think we’re trained 30:23 - in planning, engineering, civil engineering, some transportation planning, architecture, so I think we do kind of bridge a lot of different categories and the ecology is such an important role in kind of taking care of cities and taking care of our environment i think understanding that is an overlay. I will say that our teams are getting bigger each year too, so we’re bringing in one more specialist so we don’t we don’t profess to be experts in all of the different disciplines that deal with the sciences but it is really exciting to see landscape architects be the point on some really large commissions that are that are game-changing, that are changing policy, in the way that we interact with our environments REBECCA: Certainly. Dillonk anything to add there? DILLON: Yeah, I was speaking to one of my college professors, is the department chair at Cal Poly yesterday and he was talking about curriculum and and I think one of the important things to do this field is really the way in which we look at global issues and addressing very complicated and complex issues. You know, Jim mentioned some of what we’re seeing through the environment, and you know there’s in an urban fabric, we have a lot to deal with as sea level rise projects 70, 80+ inches in certain cities, we’re not designed for for that right now, and how do we look at these broad scale challenges and come together as a team, and you know uniquely innovate solutions, and come forward with that critical problem solving. So, that’s something I think, whether it’s really the landscape architect and environmental design is I think, a lot of what you see where the profession and this discipline headed towards.

32:52 - REBECCA: Yeah, it definitely takes everyone to sort of be on board and work as a team, right? It’s like, it’s vital so DILLON: To be a team player. REBECCA: Yeah. You know, we’re just about out of time, I know it’s just past 12:30 but Jim and Dillon, it has been an absolute honor to speak with you both, and again many, many congratulations on on winning the National Design Award this year to OJB. It’s been wonderful to talk with you and to see the incredible Sunnylands. It’s gorgeous, and I hope that I get to visit soon. JIM: Great. Thank you very much. We hope you do, too, and thanks again to Cooper Hewitt for being such strong advocates for design.

DILLON: absolutely 33:40 - REBECCA: Maybe we can end with one last pan around the space to see those those cacti again? JIM: Yeah, Zach? Zach, take it away. REBECCA: So cool. DILLON: Yeah, thanks for joining us this morning or afternoon, whatever time zone you’re in, really honored to be with you and share the gardens REBECCA: Well thank you so much and and thanks to everyone in the audience for joining us today. We’re glad you were able to hop on REBECCA: See you next time! Bye! JIM AND DILLON: Thank you, goodbye. .