Experiments in Environment: The Halprin Workshops, 1966–1971

Experiments in Environment: The Halprin Workshops, 1966–1971
THURSDAY, JANUARY 21
CURATOR'S TOUR: 4:00PM-4:45PM
OPENING RECEPTION: 5:00PM-8:00PM
California Historical Society
678 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94105 

We invite you to join William Whitaker, curator and collections manager of the Architectural Archives, for a curator's tour of Experiments in Environment: The Halprin Workshops, 1966-1971 at the California Historical Society on Thursday, January 21 at 4:00PM. 

Following the tour, guests are invited to join the California Historical Society for the public opening of the exhibition from 5:00PM-8:00PM.

ADVANCED REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED AND SPACE IS LIMITED. To register, please visit www.alumni.upenn.edu/halprinworkshops. 

In the late 1960s, American landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and avant-garde dance pioneer Anna Halprin organized a series of experimental, cross-disciplinary workshops in San Francisco and along the coast of northern California that brought dancers, architects, environmental designers, artists, and others together in a process designed to facilitate collaboration and group creativity through new approaches to environmental awareness.

Held over the course of several weeks, the Halprin workshops took place between the urban context of San Francisco; the dance deck and surrounding wooded areas of the Halprins’ Kentfield home in Marin County (Lawrence Halprin and William Wurster, 1951-54); and the Halprins’ cabin (Charles Moore, Lawrence Halprin, and William Turnbull, 1965-66) at Sea Ranch—a coastal community for which Lawrence Halprin designed the master plan (1962-67). From movement sessions on the Halprins’ dance deck, blindfolded awareness walks through the landscape, collective building projects using driftwood, and choreographed journeys diagramming everyday use and experience of urban plazas, parks, and rail cars, participants engaged in a series of multi-sensory activities in alternating environments according to loosely-structured, written guidelines in the form of open “scores.”

Organized by the Graham Foundation in collaboration with The Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, this exhibition presents archival documentation of the workshops to the public for the first time, as well as plans, drawings, and original photographs of the architectural sites at Kentfield and Sea Ranch, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2014. 

Questions? Please contact Associate Director for Annual Giving and Stewardship Janhavi Chandra at jchandra@design.upenn.edu or 215.746.3167. 

PHOTO: Experiments in Environment Workshop, 1968. Driftwood Village Score. The Sea Ranch, California, July 6, 1968. Lawrence Halprin Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania