Garrett Eckbo's Vision Part I

Eckbo, Royston & Williams street planting concepts for Park Planned Homes

I don't have a lot to add to this post just of yet, and I plan to put a few more Garrett Eckbo related plans and design up soon. I need to discuss his relationship to Ain and their partnership through the late 40s and early 50s, but we'll save that for later. You can find out more on Eckbo by reading Marc Treib and Dorothee Imbert's fantastic book, Garrett Eckbo: Modern Landscapes for Living or the paperback reprint of Eckbo's classic 1950, Landscape for Living, which features several discussions of Ain collaborations.

To my knowledge, this particular plan has never been reprinted and I don't there's been much discussion of it. What is interesting about it is the street plan calls for something far more radical than what was ever planted: a median green strip that went down the center of Highview! Our street really doesn't seem wide enough for a median, but it's certainly an incredible thing to consider had it actually been done.

Another curiousity of this design is that continues to perpetuate the problems of the shared driveway and the gap between the garages that was never possible in the actual realization of the street. It almost seems as if this rendering were done based on the photo used in the Architectural Record photo posted last week. Take a look...





Pretty similar...