OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS 



137 



COLLABORATION BETWEEN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT 

 AND AN ARCHITECT OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL* 



In this kind of discussion, everything 

 depends upon the point of view from 

 which the subject is approached ; and 

 that, in turn, should depend upon the ob- 

 ject of the evening's exercises. I know 

 not whether they be to entertain or to in- 

 struct. 



If the object of the evening be mainly 

 entertainment, the subject is best ap- 

 proached from the respective viewpoints 

 of the architect and the landscape archi- 

 tect as such ; especially that point of view 

 which each most strongly occupies when 

 fighting for his bread and butter, or when 

 fighting for those "principles of sound 

 professional practice and high artistic en- 

 deavor" which happen to be on the side 

 the bread is buttered on. 



If, however, the purpose is to throw 

 some light upon the subject in a large 

 way, I think it ought to be approached 

 from the point of view of the client. 

 Whatever is best for the client is, in the 

 long run, best for the i^rofessionals who 

 serve him. 



From the point of view of the client, 

 it is utterly immaterial whether the per- 

 son he employs to help him get what he 

 wants happens to call himself an archi- 

 tect, or a landscape architect, or an en- 

 gineer, or a sculptor, or a gardener, or 

 plain John Smith. Moreover, unless the 

 job is a very small one and the client em- 

 ploys either a gardener or plain John 

 Smith, he must engage the services, not 



of a single helper, but of a considerable 

 number of collaborators, some of whom 

 are ex]iert chiefly with the pick and 

 shovel. All these collaborators must be 

 made, by some means, to work together, 

 without too much waste of effort and too 

 many mistakes, toward a unified result, — 

 unified at least in that it all contributes 

 to the satisfaction of the client. Every 

 ]iart of the work is a part of the means 

 to that one end. 



The fact that it has been found expedi- 

 ent for one man to put up the lathing on 

 a house, and for another man to apply the 

 plaster or the stucco, does not make the 

 client regard those two elements of con- 

 struction in the least degree as separate 

 units : and he has good reason for a 

 grouch if they come apart. 



When it comes to the designers — to the 

 directors of mechanics — the principle is 

 the same. If the job is so simple in its 

 design and technique as to be clearly and 

 completely within the capacity of some 

 one designer and director, whose ability 

 and whose limitations the client really 

 knows, then it would be folly to compli- 

 cate the work by bringing in another. On 

 the other hand, it often happens that, by 

 reason of the diversity of technique in- 

 volved in solving the problem, or by rea- 

 son of the difficulty or obscurity of the 

 esthetic judgments involved in deciding 

 u])on the design, no single designer is 

 likely to get the best results if he relies 



♦An expansion of a paper read before a meeting of the Architectural League of New York, De- 

 cember 5, 1911, by Frederick Law Olmsted, and published in LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 



