Andrea Cochran. Landscapes

192 Pages·2009·25.01 MB·English

by  Mary Myers

Andrea Cochran
2
Andrea Cochran: Landscapes
Mary Myers
Foreword by Henry Urbach
Princeton Architectural Press
New York
Published by
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Editor: Laurie Manfra
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Special thanks to: Nettie Aljian, Sara Bader, Nicola Bednarek, Janet
Behning, Becca Casbon, Carina Cha, Penny (Yuen Pik) Chu, Russell
Fernandez, Pete Fitzpatrick, Wendy Fuller, Clare Jacobson, Aileen
Kwun, Nancy Eklund Later, Linda Lee, Aaron Lim, John Myers,
Katharine Myers, Lauren Nelson Packard, Jennifer Thompson, Paul
Wagner, Joseph Weston, and Deb Wood of Princeton Architectural
Press —Kevin C. Lippert, publisher
Front cover image by Vicky Sambunaris
Back cover image by Marion Brenner
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Myers, Mary, 1952-
Andrea Cochran : landscapes / by Mary Myers ; foreword by Henry
Urbach. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-56898-812-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Landscape architecture —Unites States. 2. Cochran, Andrea.
I. Cochran, Andrea. II. Title. III. Title: Landscapes.
SB469.33.M94 2009
712.092--dc22
2008040538
CoNTENTS
7 FoREWoRD
Henry Urbach
9 INTENTIoNAL LANDSCAPES:
THE DESIgNS oF ANDREA CoCHRAN
Mary Myers
PRoJECTS
30 Walden Studios
44 Brookvale Residence
56 Children’s garden
66 Perry Residence
78 Curran House
88 Hayes Valley Roof garden
98 Ward Residence
110 Portland Art Museum
120 Ross Residence
130 Peninsula Residence
142 Stone Edge Vineyard
164 Acknowledgments
167 Appendix A: Plant Index
170 Appendix B: Materials Index
183 Project Credits
187 Selected Bibliography
190 Image Credits
192 Staff Members, 1998–2008

7
FoREWoRD
Riotous, lush, overgrown. Such are the gardens of Andrea Cochran.
No.
Strict, clipped, manicured, fussy.
No, that’s not right either.
Eclectic, fanciful, frilly, capricious.
Not at all.
Historicist. Emblematic. Naturalistic.
No!
Abstract. Balanced. Composed. Considered. Deft. Elegant. generous. Intuitive. Layered. Mindful.
Nimble. Particular. Restrained. Rhythmic. Spatial. Textured. Understated.
That’s better; these words feel closer to the mood of Andie’s gardens. But can they really capture
what it feels like to step into one of these lovely places? on entering you find extraneous informa-
tion slipping away as an unmistakable quiet takes hold; you feel a kind of slow and gentle zooming
in. They say that simply looking at the open sea brings one’s blood pressure down, but to inhabit
one of Andie’s gardens is to be transported into another kind of space, a degree-zero zone, a
moment of stillness, a world that sustains a feeling of simply being.
We live in a time of so many endings: posthistory, posthuman, postmodern. Nature, long seen as the
source of truth and beauty, no longer maintains its authority; it has become a style, among others,
to be appropriated. So much contemporary work serves to dampen this awareness—to imagine, for
example, the formal authority of the “organic” or the ethical primacy of the “green”—yet Andie’s
projects seem to emerge instead from the knowledge that landscape, now and always, is artifice,
the practice of illusion.
In the re-natured spaces she composes, Andie gathers elements—materials, concepts, formal prec-
edents, textures— and holds them in a state of equipoise. Her work asserts the possibility, perhaps
the necessity, of quiet, stillness, and understatement in a world that continually produces a surfeit
of information and form. Restraint, as seen in these beautiful gray-green worlds, is the art of leaving
someone wanting more.
—Henry Urbach
Helen Hilton Raiser Curator of Architecture and Design, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA)

9
INTENTIoNAL LANDSCAPES: THE DESIgNS oF ANDREA CoCHRAN
glancing in, your first view of the garden is a translucent door glowing softly
white in a mocha wall. gnarled branches of an old live oak thrust up toward a
perfectly blue summer sky. As you push down gently on the silvery steel handle,
the door opens, then closes behind you. Turning, you are confronted by thou-
sands of stiff upright spears; the heights and masses of their thin black and green
stems seem to bar the way. These are Equisetum hyemale (horsetail), sheared to
a crisp five-foot height and massed in blocks like sentries. Their angular sever-
ity is unsettling, but a flowing path reassures, beckoning you forward. Brushing
against the horsetail, you meander as if in a dream, unheedful of time. The scent
of jasmine wafts over you. glancing back past the mazelike blocks, a slash of
white-topped grass, suffused with light, strikes a sharp line across the scene.
With your eyes narrowing in concentration, you breathe in, and slowly exhale,
as the soft gurgle of water draws you back toward the path.
10
A garden by Andrea Cochran is a designed space where visitors find ease amid contradiction.
Sharp angles contain flowing space, and severe geometries are softened by the delicacy of slen-
der branches and rustling leaves. Cochran’s work is distinctive for its synthesis of disparate ele-
ments. Crisp graphic legibility is countered by glowing luminescent walls and elegant plants.
Unlike other landscape architects, who may shape spaces into linear sequences of outdoor rooms,
Cochran uses abstract geometry to structure spatial experience. Her cubic landscapes give the
sensation of being within a sculpture and looking at it, at the same time.
Cochran’s landscapes defy conventional expectations. They are places in which design
merges with the realm of art. The most striking feature of her work is the combination of austere
geometry with rich materiality. Conveyed in spare language, her designs are potent expressions
of the human capacity to celebrate and interact with nature. The presence of the human hand is
always discernable through strong geometries, manmade materials, and skillful craftsmanship. It
is counterbalanced by larger forces—the rustle of the wind in bamboo leaves, the distant view of
rounded hills, or the glow of morning sunlight against a stand of grasses—to enliven the space.
John Dewey (1859–1952) wrote that elements from past experiences give body and sugges-
tiveness to a work of art, saying that “they often come from sources too obscure to be identified
in any conscious memorial way, and thus they create the aura and penumbra in which a work of art
swims.”1 Cochran’s landscapes draw on several influences, including the rigorous symmetries of
classic seventeenth-century France, as well as modernist landscape architecture of the twentieth
century. Those who have visited the gardens of Andre Le Notre or Dan Kiley may sense a kinship
with her work. Like them, Cochran uses gravel planes and grids of trees to shape space, but her
landscapes also reference sculpture, in form and experience; and painting, in theory and composi-
tion. The tactile and spatial aspects of sculpture and the color and texture of painting have helped
shape her work. Her grasp of these disciplines is largely intuitive and experiential. Her formal ele-
ments are minimalist, but she is not a purist. Driven neither by theory nor polemic, she seeks to
distill the essence of the site and to respond to its innate character with creative design.
Materiality and craftsmanship are particularly important to the landscape experiences that
Cochran devises. Materials are never used solely as decoration but are integrally linked to com-
position. Her palette is spare: steel, aluminum, glass, acrylic, gravel, stone, concrete, and plants.
A material’s purpose is to structure and support the overall design. For example, the Children’s
garden is characterized by crisp thin lines containing broad swathes of monochrome color, some-
thing like a De Stijl painting. The lines are formed of half-inch-thick sheets of Cor-ten steel; the
material’s tensile strength is capable of retaining heavy soil. If another material, such as concrete,
had been used for the edges, the effect would have been noticeably different. The lines would
Children’s garden,
San Francisco, California