Charles Morris Anderson (born 1957) is a
landscape architect
A landscape architect is a person who is educated in the field of landscape architecture. The practice of landscape architecture includes: site analysis, site inventory, site planning, land planning, planting design, grading, storm water manageme ...
and fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, He is a Principal of the Phoenix-based landscape architecture firm, Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture, which is the continuation of his practice of the Seattle-based firm Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture.
Anderson is recognized
by the American Society of Landscape Architects for combining nature, community needs, and art into his designs, emphasizing sustainability, indigenous plants and urban ecology.
Influences
Anderson's influences and contemporaries include
Peter Walker, affiliated with the team involved in the
World Trade Center Memorial
The National September 11 Memorial & Museum (also known as the 9/11 Memorial & Museum) is a memorial and museum in New York City commemorating the September 11 attacks of 2001, which killed 2,977 people, and the 1993 World Trade Center bomb ...
project;
Richard Haag
Richard Haag (October 23, 1923 – May 9, 2018) was an American landscape architect. He worked on Gas Works Park in Seattle, Washington and on the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island. Furthermore, he founded the Landscape Architecture Program ...
, famous for his
Gas Works Park
Gas Works Park is a park located in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is a public park on the site of the former Seattle Gas Light Company gasification plant, located on the north shore of Lake Union at the south end of the Wallingford ne ...
project in Seattle; and
Cornelia Oberlander
Cornelia Hahn Oberlander (20 June 1921 – 22 May 2021) was a German-born Canadian landscape architect. Her firm, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander Landscape Architects, was founded in 1953, when she moved to Vancouver.
During her career she contribu ...
, a Canadian landscape architect renown for the creative use of native plants on landmark projects like the Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, BC.
Anderson also had special interest in the work of
Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson (January 2, 1938 – July 20, 1973) was an American artist known for sculpture and land art who often used drawing and photography in relation to the spatial arts. His work has been internationally exhibited in galleries and m ...
, an influential artist of the 1960s and 1970s,
James Turrell
James Turrell (born May 6, 1943) is an American artist known for his work within the Light and Space movement. Much of Turrell's career has been devoted to a still-unfinished work, ''Roden Crater'', a natural cinder cone crater located outside ...
, a contemporary artist who focuses on light and space, and Julie Bargmann,
who focuses on regenerative landscapes.
Charles Anderson
Charles Anderson, FASLA is a Principal and Director of Urban Design/Landscape Architecture at Cuningham. A feature project in his portfolio is The Ellinikon Project in Athens Greece. This is one of the largest projects in Europe and Includes Metropolitan Park of 500 acres, 200 acres of additional open space and a mile of coastline. Projects are national and international projects as well, including, Haiti and Vietnam.
Other notable projects by Charles Anderson include providing landscape design for the
Anchorage Museum
The Anchorage Museum is a large art, history, ethnography, ecology and science museum located in a modern building in the heart of Anchorage, Alaska. It is dedicated to studying and exploring the land, peoples, art and history of Alaska.
The mu ...
expansion, as well as Seattle's
Olympic Sculpture Park
The Olympic Sculpture Park, created and operated by the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), is a public park with modern and contemporary sculpture in downtown Seattle, Washington. The park, which opened January 20, 2007, consists of a outdoor sculpture mu ...
,
Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument
Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument is a U.S. National Monument that includes the area around Mount St. Helens in Washington. It was established on August 27, 1982, by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, following the 1980 eruption. The 110,0 ...
, and Manhattan'
Arthur Ross Terrace
Some neighborhood park projects include the Roxhill Wetland and Bog Park in
West Seattle
West Seattle is a conglomeration of neighborhoods in Seattle, Washington, United States. It comprises two of the thirteen districts, Delridge and Southwest, and encompasses all of Seattle west of the Duwamish River. It was incorporated as an i ...
and the restoration of the 500 Area of
Discovery Park, both of which received Merit Awards from the Washington Chapter of the
American Society of Landscape Architects
The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) is a professional association for landscape architects in the United States. The ASLA's mission is to advance landscape architecture through advocacy, communication, education, and fellowship ...
.
Recognition
The
American Society of Landscape Architects
The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) is a professional association for landscape architects in the United States. The ASLA's mission is to advance landscape architecture through advocacy, communication, education, and fellowship ...
(ASLA) awarded Anderson for his designs in the Tables of Water in
Lake Washington
Lake Washington is a large freshwater lake adjacent to the city of Seattle.
It is the largest lake in King County and the second largest natural lake in the state of Washington, after Lake Chelan. It borders the cities of Seattle on the west, ...
(Washington State), th
Mount Saint Helens National Volcanic Monumentproject, the Trillium Projects in Seattle, and th
Arthur Ross Terrace design in Manhattan, New York and the Olympic Sculpture Park (4), Seattle, WA.
The Washington State Chapter of American Society of Landscape Architects inducted Anderson into the Council of Fellows in 2006.
Emo Urbanism (Big Nature)
Anderson has defined his emerging design theory as “Emo Urbanism.” It is differentiated from other conceptual processes with a focus on art, culture, ecology, and the fourth dimension. He emphasizes authentic landscape—habitat and complete ecosystems—within an ordered human environment. His work on the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle, WA is an example of this with its paradigm shift in nature/human interaction. Anderson's stroke introduced entropic organization along Seattle's Elliott Bay. His intervention created a native ecosystem responsive to flora, fauna, and the hard lines of existing infrastructure. Anderson made vital the natural processes that sustain a dynamic, human centered world.
The quality produced through Emo Urbanism is paramount to the tangible connection of person to place. Anderson has described this connection as the “thinness.” It is the simultaneous perception and implicit understanding of the past, present, and future. Excellent design will achieve this in a manner that is simple, immediate, and direct. Anderson believes that its traditional counterpart, “context,” is often just a justification to make a designer's brand fit the site. Within Emo Urbanism, the brand is created from the thinness. The result can embrace or contrast the physical manifestation of place, but it must always produce a unique fingerprint.
Current urbanism is pushing park space and outdoor amenity space to the rooftops in most densely developed cities. Big Nature is the principal approach to a project that carries sustainable, indigenous focused landscapes to the rooftops in cities. Not as a purist notion but instead as a counterpoint to the contemporary view of urban landscape. With these landscape will come the creatures that identify these landscapes as home.
The critical theory of Emo Urbanism was the basis for a seminar of the same name at the Arizona State University in 2012 and 2013.
Urbanature
Anderson defines the practice of Emo Urbanism as “urbanature.” In practice, he differentiates between the wilderness and wildness. Henry David Thoreau held that “in wildness is the preservation of the world.” Urbanature implements wildness—the authentic landscape—within the urban environment. Urbanature demonstrates that nature does not exist solely in an untouched wilderness.
Ashton Nichols
Brooks Ashton Nichols (born 1953) is the Walter E. Beach ’56 Distinguished Chair Emeritus in Sustainable Studies and Professor of English Language and Literature Emeritus at Dickinson College. His interests are in literature, contemporary ecoc ...
, a professor of English Language and Literature at Dickinson College, first developed the term in relation to
ecocriticism
Ecocriticism is the study of literature and ecology from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature. It wa ...
and how people perceive the world around them. He states that “the interconnectedness demanded by urbanature insists that human beings are not out of nature when they stand in the streets of Manahattan any more than they are in nature when they stand in the mountain above tree-line in Montana." Urbanature provides the tangible benefits of nature in an environment not traditionally thought of as appropriate. A clear example can be seen in Project Phoenix, an in progress soccer stadium in Haiti. Here Charles has composed a landscape entirely of edibles and a lake containing tilapia for consumption. Composting and recycling facilities are also integrated.
Anderson contends that the landscape cannot just be an aesthetic tool, it must also provide for the mental, physical, and social health of people regardless of where they live.
Anderson's award-winning urbanature includes the Alaska Museum of History and Art, the Olympic Sculpture Park, and Trillium Projects
and can be seen throughout his monograph, “Wandering Ecologies.”
[Julie Decker. Wandering Ecologies: The Landscape Architecture of Charles Anderson. Design Media Publishing Ltd, 2011. ]
References
External links
*
*
*
*
* http://design.asu.edu/events/lectures_archive.php
* https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGGE_enUS469US469&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=emo+urbanism
* https://web.archive.org/web/20140811090550/http://www.monolab.nl/en/projects.php?p=residential&id=75
{{DEFAULTSORT:Anderson, Charles Morris
1957 births
Living people
Date of birth missing (living people)
American landscape architects
Harvard Graduate School of Design alumni
Washington State University alumni