Iconic modern landscape architect Garrett Eckbo explained Thomas Dolliver Church as “the last great traditional designer and the first great modern designer.” Church was instrumental in pushing landscape design into the modern motion. His first gig was a terraced garden for his mom, a job he finished at age 12.
Educated at University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a B.A. in landscape architecture in 1922, and later in the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Church was trained at the neoclassical Beaux-Arts tradition, which was very popular in Europe and the U.S. in the time. After graduate school, he took a trip to Spain and Italy on a travel fellowship. He set up store and returned to his native California in 1929. His designs in the point were fairly traditional in style; the principles behind them emphasized the functions of outdoor living and working together with the natural landscape. In California this meant he had been an ancient xeriscaper, as he utilized drought-tolerant native plants. He worked around mature existing trees, which he knew supplied important shade and shelter from the end.
In 1937 Church returned to Europe, this time to research modern art and the works of Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto. He learned new ways of studying layout, such as cubism and collage, which didn’t rely on the Beaux-Arts strong central axis. Church fearlessly pushed into the modern movement and was able to integrate principles from the styles, including an emphasis on orientation and views, the placement of the house, minimal maintenance and utilizing mature trees for both function and palaces. He made many residential gardens that wed form and function, as well as large projects such as the landscape for the General Motors Technical Center. Regardless of the style or scale, Church put the needs of his clients first, then let them and the natural landscape guide his layouts.
More icons of layout
The Cultural Landscape Foundation
Church’s best-known work is that the Donnell Garden at Sonoma, California (1948), which may be the most well-known modern residential landscape in the United States. The backyard is also the quintessential instance of California alive, which has been exploding during the economic good times of the post–World War II era and celebrated in magazines such as Sunset.
Before you go thinking this kidney-shape pool isn’t any big deal, be aware that this is the original kidney-shape pool. Church invented it. Figures and traces from your expansive views out to San Francisco Bay and its marshes and creeks inspired the pool’s shape.
Church collaborated with fellow landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and architect George Rockrise about the project, which contrasts biomorphic shapes in the landscape together with all the right modern lines of the architecture. The backyard space provides a simple transition from indoors to outdoors, as the California lifestyle comprises barbecuing, swimming, gathering and enjoying outdoor games year-round.
The sculpture that seems to float above the pool is located by West Coast surrealist Adaline Kent.
The Cultural Landscape Foundation
The plan for your yard resembles a collage of shapes influenced by the structures and the surrounding region and views.
A checkerboard deck piled on lines from the architecture and provides a transitional zone between landscape and shelter. The plan incorporates present mature live oaks, together with the right lines of the deck interrupted by the organic forms of the tree trunks.
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Gardens Are for People, by Thomas D. Church – $41.88
Church begins the book Gardens Are for People by saying, “In almost any era of reason, it is the owner who eventually decides the size of his backyard and the functions for which it shall be used.” He never lost sight of this most significant principle.
The Cultural Landscape Foundation
In Gardens Are for People, Church looks at the change from formal Victorian tactics to the booming housing economy and more relaxed post–World War II culture. “The huge lot with a steady has changed to a little bit with a garage absorbed into the house,” he notes. “The change from extended lace dresses and perambulators to baby nakedness provides us the modern kid’s play yard,” and “the change from high-neck ruffles to bloomers to the Bikini provides us the sun-bathing terrace.” Church was instrumental in bringing us to believe of our landscapes as “outdoor rooms,” a word that is currently a big part of the house design vernacular.
The automobile was another relatively new impact in house layout during Church’s time. Church’s strategies for house websites, parking spaces, garages, carports, sidewalks and entrances all took the car into account.
He thought carefully about the entrance encounter, from the view of the house from the road to the driveway, parking pad and through the doorway. He writes, “The psychology of birth is more important than you think. When it isn’t obvious where to park, if there’s no room to park once you get there, if you stumble into the back door trying to find the front entry, or if the entry is badly lighted, you have subjected your guests to a series of annoyances which will linger long into their own subconscious. However warm your hearth or how beautiful your view, the overall effect is going to be dimmed by these initial irritations.”
The Cultural Landscape Foundation
Among Church’s larger projects was that the 320-acre campus of the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, finished in 1955. He collaborated with architect Eero Saarinen, connecting the International-style buildings to the landscape with large-scale movements such as this rectilinear reflecting pool.
The Cultural Landscape Foundation
A line of trees adjacent to the buildings follows a grid that can help connect the buildings to the increased campus.
Thomas Dolliver Church’s sketches and writing are still researched, referenced and valued today and continue to influence landscape design and theory.
You can view more of his projects at The Cultural Landscape Foundation. To learn more about Church, check out Gardens Are for People and Thomas Church, Landscape Architect: Designing a Modern California Landscape, by Marc Treib.