Why did you become a landscape architect?
Fritz Haeg works between his art, architecture and design practice Fritz Haeg Studio (though the currently preferred clients are animals), the happenings and gatherings of Sundown Salon (now Sundown Schoolhouse), the ecology initiatives of Gardenlab (including Edible Estates), and other various combinations of building, curating, dancing, designing, exhibiting, gardening, organizing, talking, teaching, and writing. His home base since 2001 is a geodesic dome in the hills of Los Angeles.
Question: Why did you become a landscape architect?
Fritz Haeg: Well, actually I am not even in landscape architect. My background is in architecture and that’s architecture is really the root of all of my work in someway I think. I started becoming a way of architecture when I was really young and even when I was in 2nd grade I have vivid memories of a teacher asking us in class, what we want to be and I knew, I asked actually how do you spell architect, because I knew I want to be that before I can even spell it, I guess one way of part that. So, I started out very very nearly focused on architecture when I was young, of just being obsessive about it, spending all my free time designing buildings and reading magazines about architecture, and its been I guess the development in my work has been in gradual progression from and nearly focused interest in architecture to more broadly disperse practice, that I think today I am less and less focused on buildings, and actually more interested in well, I think a lot of it has to do with taking the particular skills that in architect has in applying them to things other than buildings like gardens or like gatherings of people.
Question: How do you cultivate these skills?
Fritz Haeg: Well, like I said I think this skills that I am using today and my work for the most part are the skills that you get in a good architecture education, which is learning how to weave together a lot of dispirit goals or challenges or problems into one cohesive thoughtful act or a solution or whatever it is, but I think architects are uniquely capable of responding thoughtfully to place and that can be with the building as most architects do, I can be with other things, I means right now with the project with animals. I am thinking about doing projects where my clients happen not to be humans, they happen to be animals to say, so it still operating in the similar way the conventional architect, but this was slightly different clients.
Recorded On: 3/10/08
Fritz Haeg wanted to be an architect before he could even spell the world.
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