David Covey

Embarcadero, downtown. “At one time this site was a sea of asphalt.”

Last summer I awaited eagerly the arrival of Larry and Anna Marie Allen. They had never seen Southern California before, and this was to be the second half of a cultural exchange program that began in 1977. when I visited them in Memphis, Tennessee. That journey, for me, was like driving a Volkswagen into General Motors. I was in a foreign country and, as is my wont. I concentrated almost entirely on the people.

Embarcadero. "The middle of the park is tree-lined, it’s more alluring."

David Covey

The attention I paid to the countryside was minimal. Without any directional markers around — mountains, mesas, or large buildings — I kept getting lost. Then Larry advised me to “feel the river and you’ll always know where you are."

“Feel the what?” I asked.

Frank Kawasaki: “We added mounds and trees to the flat surface to achieve varieties of elevation."

David Covey

“The Mississippi. Always know where you are in relation to it. Feel it on your back, your arm. Like that. Then you’ll be all right.”

“And you say Californians are strange . . .” I muttered, having heard an apparently ridiculous piece of advice that, in time I learned, improved my sense of direction a great deal.

Ron Pekarek: “We can no longer play God and dominate the land the way Louis X!V ordered Le Notre to do."

David Covey

About the only other features of the land itself I noticed were the amounts of wild trees and shrubs growing randomly everywhere, and a beast vine called “kudzu.” which began as a decorative plant for gardens and hanging from trees but that now spreads largely unchecked and thrives parasitically on the natural vegetation, choking off its water supply and eventually killing it.

Steve Estrada: "We’ll also propose that a stairway be built down Indian Canyon — to improve beach access."

David Covey

Still, my main focus was on the people, and after I heard Larry and Anna Marie share in detail with me their image of Californians — an unflattering combination of voyeuristic wonder and moral shock — I assumed their interest would be the same as mine when they came West.

Wrong. When they arrived last summer, they were ready and willing to “respect my space,” “mellow out,” and “relate to the good vibes” of the area; Californians were not the issue. But what struck them continually were the natural and manmade environments of San Diego — the manicured yards of the homes, the landscaping around buildings, the parks, and the surrounding natural terrains — the things, because one sees them every day in San Diego, one often fails to see at all.

At one point in their visit, after we had sampled several bottles of semi-vintage California Chablis, we were walking down the concrete path toward the newly constructed Embarcadero Marina Park, which juts south from the Seaport Village complex downtown. Anna Marie, who is gifted with an alert curiosity, noticed a stand of tall shrubs to the right of the path, about fifteen yards from the beginning of the sidewalk. “Why put them there?” she inquired, noticing how they momentarily blocked the view of the harbor and calling attention to something Larry and I were walking past without perceiving at all. “There must be a reason for these shrubs. They block the view. Why? What do you think?”

Due to the Chablis, neither Larry nor I could offer much in the way of thought, but I did manage to note the obvious. “The landscaper must have had a purpose, eh?” As I said that, I realized the effect it would have on Anna Marie, whose mind moves in concentric, ever-expanding circles, like the rings emanating from a spot on the bay where a fish just swallowed an insect.

“Well, I wonder what it was,” Anna Marie replied. “What is it these designers really do? I wonder. . .”

A few hundred yards north of the shrubs at Marina Park, landscape architect Frank Kawasaki and I survey his work on the Embarcadero/Harbor Drive Redevelopment Project, which won an award during the recent competition conducted by the American Society of Landscape Architects and San Diego Home/Garden magazine. He and his firm. Kawasaki-Theilacker & Associates, have converted a gray, lifeless section of the harbor into a rolling green-belt that runs along Harbor Drive, from Broadway at the northern end, hooking south through what is called the “crescent” — flanked by the Navy Supply Depot to the east and the Navy Pier to the west — and concluding at the intersections of Market Street, Pacific Highway, and Harbor Drive, across from the police department's headquarters.

As he begins to recount the history of the project, Kawasaki notices two people, seated on the contoured benches designed by his firm, who are catching the late-aftemoon rays of the sun. A faint smile communicates his pleasure at seeing them there, making use of the area. “At one time this site was a sea of asphalt,” he says as we begin walking south on a journey through the project. “There was a four-lane road going straight through a canyon created by the large buildings on each side of the road. The width of the space was 200 feet — and it was all asphalt. I like what we’ve done here."

What he and his firm did was narrow the four-lane road and reroute the two remaining lanes so they would move along a gentle curve, thus breaking up the rigid, manmade geometrical forms of the area: the massive squares and straight lines of buildings that landscape architects often inherit when they begin to redevelop an urban location. Of course, Kawasaki also inherited the buildings themselves, as well as other constraints — railroad access to the Navy Pier and Supply Depot and the need to retain ample parking, for example — that limited the number of graceful, artistic possibilities for the project and that had to be taken into account in the plan.

Amid these restrictions, Kawasaki and his firm designed a mini-park with a pedestrian walk and a promenade for bicycles that run parallel to the shoreline and that create a pastoral interlude among the monolithic structures that enclose it. Green islands in the asphalt sea. As we walk, Kawasaki points ahead and says, “We added mounds and trees to the flat surface to achieve varieties of elevation to help ease the eye through the park and to soften the stiff dominance of the surrounding buildings.”

Working within a fixed budget of $1.6 million for the entire project (which included the cost of hiring engineers, irrigation specialists, nurseries, concrete contractors. and construction crews), Kawasaki had to decide between regrading the existing road, which was in decent condition, or adding what he calls “pedestrian amenities” — the usually unnoticed incidentals such as handrails, benches, light poles, drinking fountains, that give an area part of its distinct character. Kawasaki opted for the amenities, including as well tables and stools in a picnic area that is elevated slightly higher than the walkways.

All of the details were designed not only to blend with each other — rounded shapes are a unifying motif — but also to present the observer with a series of different textures. The picnic area, for example, seems to have wooden floors — they are actually concrete, but one has to look twice, or stamp down hard, to recognize it — that resemble the wooden plankings in the adjacent Navy Fleet Landing Area. And the sidewalks contain various patterns and finishes, all designed by the Kawasaki firm to achieve a simple yet diversified set of surfaces ranging from the nubble on the trash containers to the stamped designs on the paving, the metalwork of the tree grates, and the teak-wood inlay on the chairs and tables, all functioning along with the greenery to add coherence to the overall design.

Within the limited width of the area, there are three different routes through it and thus three different speeds with which one views the site. And Kawasaki has taken each — on foot, on a bicycle, and in a car — into account, since each requires a slightly different approach. “A landscape architect certainly considers the aesthetics of a project to be very important, but the function of a particular site is equally so. For example, when you drive through the area, you can do it in less than two minutes. So we ve reduced the number of distractions a driver sees — for reasons of safety as well as aesthetics — and have sought to unify his experience of the area by limiting the types of trees he’ll encounter. This is similar to what you see in nature. In areas like Mammoth and Big Bear, one doesn’t mind the diversity of buildings if there’s a continuity among the vegetation of the landscape, particularly among the trees. I often see projects that are too diversified, with too many varieties of trees. The result is a number of distractions, and there is no harmonious unity to the experience."

The cyclist and the pedestrian, of course, proceed at slower rates, and each of their routes has been tailored to the speed of the observer. The cyclist moves through a small valley of grassy mounds

— a pattern repeated over the entire route

— and the pedestrian, walking next to the shoreline, can appreciate the detailed amenities of the project, the textures and patterns designed for the slower, human pace.

It’s clear, from listening to Kawasaki, that there is much more going on here than has met my untrained eye. I ask him about the different elevations, the picnic area being raised slightly higher than the walkway. "Elevations, even small ones," he replies, "can perform several functions. They can enlarge an area, or make it seem so to the eye. Or they can act as a separator, as we intended here, making the area into a small, comfortable space for people who have come here to eat. The elevation and the raised benches attempt to achieve this effect, making it seem like an open room.

“But they have many purposes other than to break up the straight angles of the buildings. Mounds create a screen to block one’s view of the street — another way to make an enclosure and give the park its own sense of intimacy. At night they cut down the lights the driver sees as he goes through the area. Also, they help to muffle the sounds, for the pedestrians, of the passing cars.”

Kawasaki and I continue to walk south, toward the G Street Mole, and I ask him what sorts of things he looks for when he comes to a new project for the first time. “There are quite a few." he says, “but the main ones are usually the topography of the area, the climatic conditions, existing vegetation, land use. human use. potential views — things like that. Among the most important considerations, aside from the budget, is how the project will relate to the areas that surround it. We think it’s important that the site blend in effectively with those areas on all of its boundaries. And one of the questions we have to ask is whether or not they will alter in. say, the next five years or so. The ‘value needs’ may change in that period of time, so we try to anticipate as best we can what they might be.”

When we reach the intersection of the park with the G Street Mole, Kawasaki stops. He is watching something, and, for the life of me, I cannot figure out what it is. How the dormant Bermuda grass, which covers the mounds like a carpet, is beginning to turn an autumnal yellow? Is he watching the elongated angle of shadows created by the afternoon sun?

He is actually observing the pedestrians crossing the street that leads to the parking area on the mole. The people are walking north from the shoreline path to the promenade designed for bicycles. Five out of seven of them make this switch, veering to the right and continuing on their way down the more inland of the two paths. “I wonder why the northbound pedestrians consistently cross over at this point," Kawasaki says, somewhat puzzled by the sight. “Something either invites them to the center or encourages them not to continue on their present route.

“It’s possible that because the path in the middle of the park is tree-lined, it’s more alluring," he continues, more curious than bothered by the situation. “The inland route affords a bit more protection from the off-shore breeze, which has come up in the last half-hour or so. There are probably any number of factors here. A path choreographs the way one walks and sees a landscape, and at the same time it also arranges the way one doesn’t see the surrounding area. But in this instance I can't figure out why the people choose one path over the other. No worry, though. At least they seem to be making good use of the park."

From years past, landscape architects have somehow gained the image of being little more than gardeners (never call them “landscapers"). The image comes, incidentally. from the parallel growths of the modern profession and Sunset magazine in the last twenty-five years. Since the inception of the latter, they have been equated with the predominantly small-scale, private-home concerns of the magazine. It’s a common complaint among landscape architects, those in San Diego at least, that most people think of them as simple flower arrangers who drive around in a pickup truck with a shovel and a wheelbarrow in the back. In fact, the image is askew. In a very real sense, our environment is being produced in their offices.

No one is able to say for sure when landscape design began in the Western Hemisphere. In the Middle Ages, designs sprung up as a reaction to the outside world. They were mostly gardens, and functional ones at that — green rooms with the sky as their ceiling — and their purpose was as much to contain lovely and useful vegetation as it was to provide a retreat from the wilds outside of the enclosure.

The concept of nature in this period was closely akin to Russell Baker’s recent tongue-in-cheek definition: “The metaphor about Mother Nature is wrong. There is nothing motherly about nature. Nature is more like one of those ugly drunks you are always in danger of encountering in a strange bar — short-tempered. quixotic, dangerous.”

With the advent of the Renaissance, in the Fourteenth Century, the concept of man's relation to nature changed radically. Man became the center of all things, thus the rightful lord over nature, which he could shape at will to declare his sovereign status. The movement toward man’s ability to dominate the landscape began in this period.

At the end of his life, the great Italian Renaissance painter Raphael designed a garden villa on the slopes of Monte Mario, on the northern outskirts of Rome, called Villa Madama. Whereas the gardens of the past generally bore little relationship to the structures that housed them — and unlike later attempts to subdue the land — Raphael envisioned a harmonious blending of the architectural structures of the villa with the surrounding landscape, with each complementing the other. The project was not complete when he died in 1520, however, and in 1527 a civil war broke out and the villa was burned to the ground.

By the Seventeenth Century, organization of the natural environment assumed the guise of a mathematical endeavor. About 1660, Louis XIV of France, the “Sun King,” commissioned — commanded is a better term — Andre Le Notre to convert a bog and swampland with a small stone hunting lodge on it into a testament to the king’s unrestrained effulgence. The result was the opulent, geometric palace gardens of Versailles, an eloquent example of the notion that man now ruled nature — and by extension, that Louis XIV ruled men.

At Versailles nature was not only tamed, it became intensely regulated — vegetation pruned into unnatural, geometrical shapes that required constant attention and expulsive maintenance. And it had no specific function other than to provide aesthetic pleasure to the passers-by, on their way to a resplendent if gaudy lark rubbing elbows with the king.

Though specific dates for such events are rarely marked with precision, the late Eighteenth Century began to witness the urban effects of man’s increasing dominance over the environment. Industrialization had spread and an early form of the “back to nature" movement began in all the arts. Nature became admired for many of the qualities that had driven people away from it: its ruggedness, its sublimity, and even the serenity it could grant an English lord able to afford the fees of Capability Brown, the best-known designer of the day and a first-rate salesman of his product — the hallmark of which was “serenity.”

Brown’s real first name was Lancelot, but as he was passed around among the owners of the English estates he designed, each would ask him if he could work the property effectively. “I think it has capabilities,” Brown would reply. Eventually, he had said this to so many people, and said it on occasion about some unlikely areas for improvement, that his patrons renamed him Capability.

In the Nineteenth Century, man’s ideas about the natural environment had almost swung a full 180 degrees from the views held in the Middle Ages. Although vast expanses of wilderness remained in America, for the city dweller nature became a necessary place to retreat to — and a potentially threatened habitat. And by the 1870s, the glimmerings of movements to preserve portions of the land from human use began.

Frederick Law Olmstead. the father of the profession in America, first coined the title “landscape architect” in the mid-Nineteenth Century. Olmstead (1822-1903) collaborated with English architect Calvert Vaux on the design of Central Park in New York City, the first large city park in the Western Hemisphere. Olmstead’s guiding philosophy was to enable the common man to “put the city behind him” while still in it. His goal was to create a “passive recreation” area for the inhabitants of the city — a place designed for no activity more strenuous than mental repose — thus insuring New Yorkers with a form of relaxation by means of the green oasis he constructed in the urban setting.

Among his other projects, Olmstead joined with naturalist John Muir and wrote a report, in 1865, that led to the preservation of Yosemite as a protected region and that led eventually to the creation of the national park system. He also designed the first residential subdivision — Riverside. near Chicago, in 1869 — and two of his sons were to be involved in the replanning of San Diego’s Balboa Park for the 1915 Exposition, but they pulled out of the enterprise when they learned that structures were to be built in the center of the park, a plan that violated all of their father’s concepts.

While the Renaissance painter Raphael was among the first to consider landscape design as an art form, the works of Le Notre, Capability Brown, and Frederick Law Olmslead — to name only the highest peaks in the mountain range of Western landscape architecture — developed their craft into one.

“Ours is an often misunderstood profession.*’ says Gerry Fischer, a partner of the Del Mar-based firm of Stone, Fischer & Associates. “We’re sort of like the Coast Guard in that we are a small profession — there are only about thirty firms in the San Diego area — and most people don’t know what we do.

“Our function is primarily a land planner. We don’t install the landscape. We work in concert with various contractors on any given project. And there is a great diversity in the field right now. Although many firms still perform the traditional role of designing the landscapes for private residences, the profession also includes designing landscapes for large housing projects, urban spaces, slope irrigation, and. especially in the last fifteen years, regional development and environmental planning. A majority of these projects are a team effort composed of architects, engineers, contractors, regulatory commissions, and landscape architects.”

I mentioned to Fischer that, with only some exceptions, most of the landscape architects I had spoken with seemed reticent to comment about the artistic and functional merits of each others’ work. And though I found the apparently close-knit nature of the profession somewhat admirable, I was disturbed by the clearly defensive postures they assumed.

“One reason,” Fischer replied, “is that in the last three years there has been a move in the state government to deregulate the licensing of landscape architects. This has come from the urge to reduce governmental agencies and, because we’re a small profession, we’re seen as an easy target to ‘sunset’ — to deregulate — our licensing. But the license insures a standard of competence in the profession, like a degree from an accredited college. Since landscape architects will have a great influence on what the environment of the state will be like, rather than deregulate the license we should make the standards tougher.”

In the past, the landscape architect usually made his contributions in an essentially subordinate role to the team leader — most often the architect or civil engineer in charge of the project. It is sometimes the case today, however, that they may head the team, doing the initial planning for a project, be it an urban space or a large regional improvement. The detailed site analyses performed by the Pekarek Group, a San Diego firm, belie the image of a gardener with shovel and wheelbarrow, orchestrating the begonias in one’s backyard. Their thorough studies of a site combine a host of multiple approaches and are a vivid demonstration of this part of the profession.

Ron Pekarek, wearing a trimmed gray beard, a light-blue work shirt, and faded, nondesigner jeans, looks as if he is prepared to install, rather than design, a landscape. He also resembles a philosopher. But instead of the stereotypically slow, ponderous speech patterns associated with that image, the forty-two-year-old Pekarek talks at such a rapid, enthusiastic pace one would half expect his words to break the sound barrier. His verbal energy, however, is surpassed by Steve Estrada, a twenty-eight-year-old member of the firm whose word rate would probably clock out at around Mach 2.4.

Their office, located in the sparsely landscaped industrial section of South San Diego, is a tidy explosion of maps, charts, and designs, on the drawing boards and on the walls. The charts are categorized by the terminology of the profession: elevation analysis, hydrology, microclimate, slope aspect, and visual analysis — with each chart devoted to its specific purpose, precise replications of the features of a landscape.

Seated in a comfortable room adjacent to the main working area, Pekarek reflects on the history of planning: “Originally it was the surveyor in America who determined the design of the land. Then the civil engineer. Then the architect. Am I going too fast?”

“Not for Voyager II,” comments Estrada.

“Now the landscape architect is occasionally coming to the front, making the hard decisions about how the land is used. In the old scheme, one could take or add to the land as one saw fit. One usually ended up with a building oriented rather than an environment-oriented project. Without this latter kind of planning, a lot of the that stuff in San Diego got wiped out. Twenty years ago. urban growth went virtually unchecked. and you merely have to remember the rolling farmlands of Mission Valley to realize how quickly a natural greenbelt can become a disaster of concrete and, in winter. an unwanted swimming hole created by the absence of master planning, flood control measures — and the presence of human greed. You couldn’t screw that place up worse — unless you filled it up to the brim with dirt.

“Now we’ve run to the end of the resource,” Pekarek continues. “We can no longer play God and dominate the land the way Louis X!V ordered Le Notre to do. Instead, we must become stewards of the land, not its masters. Hey, look, a 300-year-old tree has value! We can’t afford to lose one anymore. And in the next five years, we’re scheduled to lose a large portion of the water from the Colorado River. Just to cite one instance among many, the old forms of freeway planting are based on our having Colorado River water.

“People have come to regard San Diego as a paradise of planting, where all you have to do is drop a seed and run. This will no longer be the case. And now the landscape architect is being looked to for aid, co-bombarded is a better term, since they’re supposed to make an area look beautiful and now must do it without water. What’s called for is a rational approach to site designs, because too many decisions are still made from the hip — I’ve seen 2000-acre parks planned without any analysis at all in this state. One of the main priorities of site planning has become energy observation, along with preservation of the natural systems, management of an area within increasingly strict financial guidelines, and the creation of areas for human use that don’t rip the hell out of the natural environment.”

Roughly two weeks ago Steve Estrada of the Pekarek Group was awarded the Balboa Park Development and Management Plan by the city of San Diego. The project will entail a revision and an updating of the current master plan for the park done in 1960. It will be more than merely a planning project; it will involve management of the entire park area as well — deciding the function and use of paths, whether certain streets should be closed, discovering new sources of financing and funding, and determining an economically feasible system of maintenance for the area as a whole. Though this project is not yet in its incubation stage, Estrada recently completed his site analysis and is nearing the completion of a master plan for another important project in the San Diego area, the Torrey Pines City Park. And Estrada, who will be next year’s president of the San Diego Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, consented to walk the site with me and review the steps that led to his decisions.

The proposed site for the Torrey Pines City Park is a one-hundred-forty-four-acre strip of land just south of the state park, composed of bare mesa, canyons, bluffs, a glider point, and often hazardous access to Black’s Beach below. The site extends from Indian Canyon at the northern end to Box Canyon at the southern, and it borders on the twelfth hole of Torrey Pines South Golf Course to the east. To the west is a state-owned beach, except for 600 yards to the far south, which the city owns. One hundred twenty-two acres are city park land, and twenty-two, a small parcel at the entrance to the site, are owned by the University of California

I met Estrada at the location early one morning. A steady, off-shore wind was blowing away the morning fog. and the pilots of several hang gliders were beginning to assemble their crafts for flight — a spectacular leap from the edge of the bluffs and what must be. to them at least, an exhilarating celebration of the unseen corridors of a breeze.

As we started walking the site and began our discussion, Estrada pointed to a bright red hang glider and said, “I’d really like to try that some day. You ever want to fly one of them?”

“No,“ I replied quickly.

As we walked along a narrow path, flanked by Box Canyon on the left and the steep bluffs on the right, I asked Estrada about his specific function on the project. He began: The basic purpose is to design a master plan for the park. This isn’t necessarily a hard-and-fast set of laws about the area. It’s more like a set of guidelines we submit to the city that outlines what our studies of the area indicate should be done. For instance, if you’re going to have a parking lot on the site, this is where our research says it should go. All of our recommendations for this park are.subject to the approval of a number of agencies, commissions, city representatives, and also representatives of the various groups — glider people, sun bathers, picnickers, residents of the area, and so on — who’ve traditionally used the site.

“Is it common to meet with interest groups on a project? Not really. But our feeling is that this is a public park, and as such we’ve welcomed input from the people that use it. We formed an ad hoc committee made up of representatives from the various groups and open to the public in general, that met every three weeks or so at the La Jolla Recreation Center. From these meetings, which arc still going on. I’ve gathered a lot of feedback and have taken it into account in the decisions I'm making regarding the site.’’

Once the Pekarck Group was awarded the contract as the consulting firm, Estrada determined the three basic goals for the project: restore, wherever possible, the natural vegetation to the area; increase the safety factors; and preserve the traditional human uses of the area. He planned a three-stage analysis of the site, a thorough series of rinses that take into account the “natural factors, the infrastructure [the existing utilities of the site), and the human factors.’’

In the first stage of the analysis — the natural factors -- Estrada assembled his own team of specialists in geology, botany, biology, archaeology, plus a traffic engineer, a civil engineer, and others to walk the site and prepare detailed presentations of their observations. “We use consultants to provide us with information we aren’t expert about, and I walked the site with each of the specialists to get their impressions firsthand,” he recalled. “Our aim here is a complete picture of the natural systems of the area — the wildlife, existing vegetation, topography, soil content, hydrology [the movement of watcrj, the specific climate of the region [microclimate], plus the hazardous areas of the region.’’ -

As Estrada and I combed the area, he indicated many of these hazards as we went along — a severe geological fault on a cliff at the south end of the site caused by irrigation drainage, several landslide areas, seepage from underground water that is eroding aw ay part of the bluffs, and “piping,” large tunnels at the top of the mesa near the cliffs.

"Piping is substance erosion,” said Estrada, “large hollows in the soil caused originally by burrowing rodents.”

"Monster gopher, it would seem,” I added, since some tunnels were at least five feet in circumference.

“What happens is that a lot of pedestrian traffic eliminates the vegetation and this accelerates water run-off and thus erosion. These are potentially hazardous to the land but also to the pedestrians, since the foot bridges people use to cross over the holes are unsafe and subject to collapse. One of our design decisions for this area will be to keep all improvements, except for the glider point itself, at least fifty feet away from the bluffs. That way we hope to restore the natural vegetation to this part of the mesa and to decelerate the eroding process.

“I walked the site," Estrada continued, “with Al Bruton to use his knowledge of the area to improve my picture of its hazards. Bruton’s been a city lifeguard here for the last twenty-five years. His input was very useful; he could recall the extent of landslides - how much fell and where — and also where the cliff rescues occur when people take false trails down to the beach. Most of these are just under the glider point, in the center of the site. But Bruton alerted me to two other false trails at the southern boundary, which wind down Box Canyon until they reach dangerous bluffs. The southernmost trail alone has caused the deaths of three people in the last three years. So, based on the gravity of these hazards, we’ll also propose that a stairway be built down the northern slope of the site — Indian Canyon — to improve beach access and to deter people from these false trails.”

At the end of the first stage, Estrada compiled the results of each study — then on separate charts — and made a composite chart that reflects the analyses made of all the natural factors in the area. To this composite, he added the studies of the second phase — the “infrastructure” — which include the existing utilities, the circulation of cars and pedestrians, and, unique to the project, the traffic in the air. The glider point has been defined by the Federal Aviation Administration as a small-grade airport, and Estrada, in consultation with the three different types of pilots who use it — gliders, hang gliders, and model airplane buffs — had to consider the routes each uses, in an effort to minimize conflicts in the air.

“Another proposal, related to the glider point, will be two large parking lots, one near the entrance and one toward the northern end of the mesa,” he said. “These lots will accommodate 2200 cars. We’ve decided to locate them there for reasons of both safety and protection of the natural environment.”

The third stage was a detailed study of all the human uses of the site. In addition to his consultations with representalives of the groups that use the site, Estrada did n “subjective analysis” of the landscape, determining what were, to his judgment, the better views, and how each individual space, defined by vegetation, bluffs, or rock formations, literally felt like as an enclosure, as an outdoor room. Along with his personal ideas, Estrada invited members of the ad hoc committee to the site and recorded their aesthetic impressions as well.

From his three-stage, multiple analyses of the area, Estrada then composed a schematic master plan for the park — which has yet to be approved by the city and other agencies. Along with the stairway, the parking lots, and the recommendation to curtail bluff erosion by keeping improvements at least fifty feet from the edge of the cliffs, Estrada also proposes an improved trail to the waterfall in Indian Canyon, a traditional park setting in the eastern portion of the site, and a lifeguard tower on the mesa.

About two hundred years ago, as he neared the end of his life, the British man of letters Horace Walpole wrote, ”My present and sole occupation is planting, in which I have made great progress.” But. he continued, “the deliberation with which trees grow is extremely inconvenient to my natural impatience.” Walpole discovered not only that his trees grew too slowly but that the other kinds of vegetation he planted — grasses, flowers, and shrubs — were growing at different rates as well, which frustrated his urgent wish to experience instantaneously the results of his design for the garden. Aggravated by these slow and uneven processes, Walpole complained that the inadequate science of growing things made his a “barbarous age.” He considered himself an artist, but his canvas, he learned, had a life of its own.

Unlike other visual designers, the landscape architect works with both three-dimensional space — the forms of nature, vegetation, and manmade structures — and with time, the fourth dimension that makes their artistic compositions exist in a state of continual evolution and change. At the draftsman's board, where the majority of their work occurs, they must think like chess players, seeing not only the board as it is presently constituted but also how it will look in the future. And although the science of growing has improved considerably since Walpole's complaint — leading to the creation of the “instant look’’ project, which, in San Diego, can resemble either a tailored or ill-fitting wig for a bald head — those landscape architects doing long-term projects are also subject to two other constraints. In some instances, their projects may be poorly maintained, and they witness the gradual decline of their efforts. Or. in a few other cases, in particular that of Samuel Parsons. Jr., who designed the original plans for Balboa Park, they may not live to see their projects reach full maturity.

The shrubs? On the walk at the Embarcadero Marina Park? The fish that ate the insect that began all these concentric circles? It turns out that Wimmer, Yamada & Associates, who designed the park, had at least three different reasons for them: one, they encourage pedestrians to proceed further into the site, to move to the next viewpoint; two. the straight lines of the path are broken at this point, thus creating an intended variety in the route; and three is a corollary to the first reason, since the shrubs prevent congestion from occurring at the beginning of the path. After all. how many pedestrians will want to stop and take a good long look at a bunch of shrubs?