Why did you become a landscape architect?

Fritz Haeg

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.

14 May, 2008

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.

videos

Virus made inequality much worse across the world, says report

Inequality in wealth, gender, and race grew to unprecedented levels across the world, according to OxFam report.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Politics & Current Affairs
  • A new report by global poverty nonprofit OxFam finds inequality has increased in every country in the world.
  • The alarming trend is made worse by the coronavirus pandemic, which strained most systems and governments.
  • The gap in wealth, race and gender treatment will increase until governments step in with changes.
Keep reading Show less
inequality economics Inequality

Scientists find 'smoking gun' proof of a recent supernova near Earth

A supernova exploded near Earth about 2.5 million years ago, possibly causing an extinction event.

Credit: NASA/ESA/G. Bacon, STScI
Surprising Science
  • Researchers from the University of Munich find evidence of a supernova near Earth.
  • A star exploded close to our planet about 2.5 million years ago.
  • The scientists deduced this by finding unusual concentrations of isotopes, created by a supernova.
Keep reading Show less
space supernova nasa cosmos universe physics astronomy chemistry

Massive 'Darth Vader' isopod found lurking in the Indian Ocean

The father of all giant sea bugs was recently discovered off the coast of Java.

SJADE 2018
Surprising Science
  • A new species of isopod with a resemblance to a certain Sith lord was just discovered.
  • It is the first known giant isopod from the Indian Ocean.
  • The finding extends the list of giant isopods even further.
Keep reading Show less
oceans science fiction animals crustaceans isopod

I spoke to 99 big thinkers about what our ‘world after coronavirus’ might look like – this is what I learned

There is no going "back to normal."

Photo by Macau Photo Agency on Unsplash
Coronavirus

Back in March, my colleagues at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University thought that it might be useful to begin thinking about “the day after coronavirus."

Keep reading Show less
global issues pandemic public health money climate change coronavirus
Quantcast