Weekend Event Will Celebrate San Diego Landscapes
Speaker 1: 00:00 Most of us realize that San Diego was a beautiful place to live, but we might not know just how beautiful. Not only do we have the coastline and other natural settings to admire, but through the years communities have added to nature by creating stunning public landscapes. This weekend the cultural landscape foundation brings its what's out there. Tours to some of San Diego's great landscapes from the mission day, Alcoa to Barrio Logan to Scripps park in the Hoya. Joining me by Skype is Charles balm. He's president and CEO of the cultural landscape foundation. And Charles, welcome to the program. Speaker 2: 00:39 Maureen, great to be here. Thank you. Speaker 1: 00:41 And in studio I'm joined by Amy Hoffman with San Diego based landscape architecture firm, K T U a. And Amy, welcome. Thank you Marina. Now Charles, I must admit I've never heard of the cultural landscape foundation. What's its mission? Speaker 2: 00:56 Well, quite simply Maureen, our mission is connecting people to places. So in a way that as a culture we've been hardwired to look at the BS and bunnies. The cultural landscape foundation wants to make visible the stories behind places and those places can be landscapes shaped by humankind through use and necessity, but they could also be masterworks by landscape architects and other designers. So what we want to do at the weekend and in all of our work is to make the often invisible hand of the landscape architect visible for the public. Speaker 1: 01:28 What can our landscapes tell us about who we are? Speaker 2: 01:31 Our landscapes are like texts. They are a narrative history of place. They may be cultural Lifeways of indigenous people. It could be landscapes associated with religious associations. They could be landscapes that have been witnesses to different events over time, but they can also tell a lot about how we live in the public realm. One of the things for me that's striking about San Diego is it is a city that is built on the vision of patrons and whether it was George Marston bringing the landscape architects, Samuel Parsons, by train from New York city to design what was called city park then, or do we engage John Nolan on Presidio park. We see how individual patrons can help. To shape a city. And so those people included folks in San Diego like Marston and Ellen scripts and others. So, um, we get to be the benefactors of the patronage of people who lived decades, um, sometimes a century before we did. Speaker 1: 02:31 Now, Amy, you're a landscape architect here in San Diego. Give us an idea of the kind of cultural landscapes that you believe are iconic to San Diego. Bell park is one of our most iconic landscapes and, but there's other smaller, more hidden gems around town. Um, Marston house and gardens on the outskirts of bubble ball park. Even our neighborhoods and how they were shaped. University Heights for example, has some real amazing leftover landscape areas, uh, from Spreckels and Kate sessions. Speaker 2: 03:04 Well, and I would just jump in there, Amy, to say that the leftover bits, um, are really the connective tissue. Um, I think very often, you know, to quote the great California landscape architect Tommy church, who would bemoan that often landscape was viewed as the parsley around the roast. There was much more going on here. And what's wonderful when you look at the kinds of subdivisions in places that were created, that Amy's referencing the connective tissues are the tree plantings along the public right of ways. The generous sidewalks, the foundation plantings that spill out to to invite your curiosity. And then it's also the architecture as well, the kind of architecture that you see happening in the early to mid 20th century, which is sort of tactal and generous in its use of materials. And so, you know, for me the landscape is every place that we moved through in the public realm. Speaker 2: 04:02 And I think one of the great things about San Diego is you can look at places like bell ball park and it actually tells you the whole story of how the mosaic of the American landscape has evolved over time. First in the picturesque, then during the city beautiful era where we have the exposition grounds, which is perhaps the best known section and it is a national historic landmark. But then you have these other additions that come in over time like the Japanese garden. And what's wonderful is our tours are going to make a, to quote one of them, the hidden gems visible. We're going to have expert guides who are going to bring to life these tours in a way that will tell a story that you won't get to ascertain by yourself. Speaker 1: 04:45 Well Charles, let me, let me break that down a little bit. If I can, the tours that the cultural landscape foundation is sponsoring this weekend or called what's out there, what's out there weekend. So tell us what that's going to be like. Speaker 2: 04:57 So what's going to happen first is we'll have the tours, um, which will be for about 1500 people they're starting to fill up. But um, all of these tourists will take people through these places. The other thing is that there are permanent leave behinds that we're creating as part of this weekend. The other thing that we've created, we have quietly launched it as a digital website to the city. You will be able to stand in a public landscape, one of the 45 that are currently in our database. Hit your phone, your phone button that says what's nearby. And every public landscape in the vicinity, a 10, 20, 30 minute walk or a driving distance that you define will pop up. In addition, as part of the weekend, we've created a guidebook which is newly printed. It's hot off the presses and it will Chronicle the 25 places that all of the team are taking people to, um, with short, brief essays of about 300 words in richly illustrated. Speaker 2: 05:55 And then finally, the other thing I want to here is that the San Diego guide is our 17th in our series and it's tied in with our larger national database. So perhaps if you were interested in someone like John Nolan who laid out, um, the, the mission park, you could then find out how Nolan worked throughout the United States in Venice, Florida, in Mariemont, Ohio, in Massachusetts and so on. So we think of landscapes like Russian nesting dolls. And what's nice now is we get to fill in that piece of the puzzle, which has been mysterious to us, which is the story of San Diego and how its landscape has evolved over several centuries. Speaker 1: 06:36 Amy, tell us about your involvement in this weekend project. I am part of the San Diego chapter of the American society of landscape architects. I chair the historic American landscapes subcommittee. Um, and part of that subcommittee, we try to document many of our historic landscapes around town to the West side of Bellville park. For example, the Marston house we already mentioned and several others. We have sort of tagged for documentation too, record and put into the, the library of Congress, sort of what, how important these landscapes are. Charles approached me and some other people on our subcommittee, uh, was about a year ago and uh, said, Hey, we'd like to bring this weekend to San Diego. And we all said, Oh, that sounds absolutely wonderful. We'll be happy to participate and helping that. So our subcommittee helped to, um, sort of winnowed down out of our wonderful entire city, which kind of landscapes we could take all the people on to these wonderful tours. Uh, cause there's so many choices. We winnowed it down to about 25 tours that we have available. And then you say, Charles, that these spots are going fast. How do people find out more about the Watts out there weekend in San Diego? Speaker 2: 07:49 So you can just go to our website at T like Tom C, like Charles L like landF , like frank.org. You'll see it on our event calendar and it will directly link there to our event Brite page. Speaker 1: 08:01 I've been speaking with Charles Biernbaum, president and CEO of the cultural landscape foundation and with Amy Hoffman, a landscape architect from San Diego. Thank you both very much. Thank you, Marie. Thank you Marie.
