Dan Kiley; Landscape Architect--NY Times obit
Hyfler/Rosner
Dan Kiley, Influential Landscape Architect, Dies at 91
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Dan Kiley, a seminal landscape architect who combined
modernist functionalism with classical design principles in
more than 1,000 projects, died on Saturday at his home in
Charlotte, Vt. He was 91.
His son-in-law, David Holmes, said that death occurred after
a period of declining health, but that he had continued to
work until last summer.
Mr. Kiley's many notable projects, often done with the great
architects of his time, included the Gateway Arch in St.
Louis, where he worked with Eero Saarinen; the Ford
Foundation's headquarters and Lincoln Center in Manhattan;
and I. M. Pei's East Building, inside and out, for the
National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Other projects whose settings he enhanced included the John
F. Kennedy Library in Boston; the Air Force Academy in
Colorado; Rockefeller University in Manhattan, with its
exquisite Scholar Garden; Dulles International Airport in
Northern Virginia; the main pedestrian center of La Défense
in Paris; and the four-acre Fountain Place in downtown
Dallas.
Ken Smith, a landscape architect known for his own
idiosyncratic modernism, said in an interview yesterday that
Mr. Kiley inspired generations of landscape architects. "He
took modernism to the level of classical form," Mr. Smith
said. "Everything seemed perfectly resolved."
Peter E. Walker, the landscape architect who is working on
the World Trade Center memorial, said Mr. Kiley was an
elegant artist who cleverly rethought classical French
garden design. In particular, Mr. Walker recalled the garden
that Mr. Kiley did in Columbus, Ind., for J. Irwin Miller, a
manufacturer. A canopy of trees appears to extend the house
into the distant landscape.
"For many of us, that was where modernism began," Mr. Walker
said.
Kevin Roche, the architect, who worked with Mr. Saarinen on
the Miller house, said yesterday that he considered Mr.
Kiley "the most distinguished landscape architect of the
20th century."
Mr. Kiley's innovations included taking classical forms like
hedges and allées and arranging them in unexpected patterns,
using unlikely plants like beds of ferns and sometimes
employing fine materials like marble where others might have
used concrete.
He derived inspiration from sources as diverse as Ralph
Waldo Emerson's philosophy and William Blake's visionary
poetry. He once wrote that the greatest contribution a
designer could make was to "link the human and the natural
in such a way as to recall our fundamental place in the
scheme of things."
Daniel Urban Kiley was born on Sept. 2, 1912, in Boston. His
family did not have much money, and his idea of a date was
to take his girlfriend to the Arnold Arboretum, in Boston,
The New Yorker reported in 1995. Caddying on weekends
sparked an interest in golf-course design, so he started
reading books about landscape architecture.
After graduating from high school in 1930, Mr. Kiley became
an unpaid apprentice with Warren H. Manning, who had been an
associate of Frederick Law Olmsted, one of the designers of
Central Park, among many American landmarks. Mr. Manning,
was a founder of the American Society of Landscape
Architects, along with Mr. Olmsted's sons.
"He gave me two pieces of advice," Mr. Kiley said in an
interview with The New York Times in 2000. "Not to join the
society and not to go to Harvard." He never joined the
society, but he became a part-time student at the Graduate
School of Design at Harvard and stayed for two years while
continuing to work for Mr. Manning 30 hours a week.
Along with two other students, James Rose and Garrett Eckbo,
who were also bored with "the dry symmetries of the
Beaux-Arts," he wrote a series of articles for the journal
Architectural Record that called for a new kind of landscape
architecture, a functional one that answered the needs of
people in cities and suburbs, while paying attention to the
harmonies of nature.
Mr. Kiley had planned to return to Mr. Manning's office as
partner, but Mr. Manning died in 1938. Mr. Kiley left
Harvard without a degree and went to Washington, where he
worked with the early modernist Louis Kahn on housing
projects. Mr. Smith, who has studied his drawings from this
period, said Mr. Kiley did a different design for a
different house each day.
During World War II, Mr. Kiley served in the field artillery
before being transferred to the newly formed Office of
Strategic Services. There he took over Mr. Saarinen's job as
chief of design.
That led to his designing the courtroom for the Nuremberg
trials. While in Europe, he visited Versailles, with its
stunning garden by André Le Nôtre. Far from being bored by
Le Nôtre's traditionalist approach, Mr. Kiley was deeply
impressed with the master's ability to "control a
landscape," Mr. Walker said.
After the war, Mr. Kiley wanted to enjoy the peace of the
countryside and moved first to New Hampshire and then to
Burlington, Vt., before settling in Charlotte. He said the
rural setting inspired his work.
"You do your best work when you're joyful," he said in an
interview with The Burlington Free Press in 1997.
In 1947, Mr. Saarinen asked Mr. Kiley to work with him on
the architectural competition for the Jefferson National
Expansion Memorial on the banks of the Mississippi River in
St. Louis. Mr. Kiley designed a wooded park to link the arch
to the city, the river and the American West. But he was
taken off the job, over Mr. Saarinen's vigorous protests.
Several other designs of his were later changed or never
quite came off in the first place, a common hazard for
landscape architects. At Lincoln Center, for example, Mr.
Kiley's instructions for tree care were ignored, and when
his original grove of sycamores died, his plans were
forgotten. Pear trees, one to a planter, were installed in
their place.
It "devastated the design," Mr. Kiley said in an interview
with The Times in 1995. "With one little tree in there, it
just looks kind of silly."
Mr. Kiley and the former Anne Lothrop Sturges, his wife of
61 years, raised eight children on a 400-acre farm by the
shores of Lake Champlain. They built rafts and cut down pine
trees for a teepee village and became known for both fine
dinner parties and swimming in the nude.
"Everybody in the village thought we were a nudist colony,"
Mr. Kiley told The Times in 2000.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Kiley is survived by his sons
Kor, of South Burlington, Vt., Christopher, of Newtonville,
Mass., Timothy, of Newton Highlands, Mass., Caleb, of
Charlotte, and Aaron, of Ann Arbor, Mich.; his daughters
Kathleen Dunn of Burlington, Grace Kiley of Williston, Vt.,
and Antonia Holmes of Suffield, Conn.; 19 grandchildren; and
one great-grandson.
Mr. Kiley was known for colorful descriptions of serious
matters. At a seminar at Harvard, he responded to scholars
minutely analyzing his creative influences by pretending to
slalom down an imaginary ski slope.
"Life is design," he said. "It's like skiing down a
mountain."