On September 17th and 18th in San Francisco, The Cultural Landscape Foundation will host What’s Out There Weekend, a series of interpretive tours that highlight San Francisco’s rich and diverse heritage of Modernist designed landscapes. Dubbed “Mostly Modern”, during the weekend members of the public will be able to visit any or all of a network of 25 publicly accessible sites around the City, to participate in free tours from expert guides.
From Ted Osmundson’s Kaiser Center Roof Garden (below) in Oakland, to San Francisco’s Levi’s Plaza designed by Lawrence Halprin, to Robert Royston’s Santa Clara Central Park, San Francisco and the Bay Area has the broadest and most diverse Modernist landscape legacy in the country. Yet while local residents pass through these important Modernist landscapes on a daily basis, they often do not know their stories. The goal of “Mostly Modern” is to raise awareness about these valuable places and educate the public about the individuals who designed and created them.
The What’s Out There Weekend initiative dovetails with the web-based What’s Out There, the first searchable database of the nation’s designed landscapes. While the database offers a broad and interconnected way to learn about a region’s historic designed landscapes, the What’s Out There Weekend gets people out into their communities, to actively experience the landscapes that they see every day but often overlook. Tour and event details will be available beginning soon at www.tclf.org.
