Dan Kiley

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This article is about the modernist architect Dan Kiley. It is not to be confused with the homonymous psychologist, author of The Peter Pan Syndrome or the politician Dan Kiely.
Dan Kiley
Dan Kiley relief in Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.jpg
A sculpture relief of Kiley at the Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis.
Born
Daniel Urban Kiley

(1912-09-02)September 2, 1912
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
DiedFebruary 21, 2004(2004-02-21) (aged 91)
Charlotte, Vermont, United States
NationalityAmerican
Alma materHarvard University
OccupationArchitect
Spouse(s)Anne Lothrop Sturges
Children8
AwardsThomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture (1987)
National Design Awards Lifetime Achievement (2002)
ProjectsGateway Arch National Park

Daniel Urban Kiley (2 September 1912 – 21 February 2004) was an American landscape architect, who worked in the style of modern architecture.[1] Kiley designed over one-thousand landscape projects including Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis.[2]

Life and career[]

A photograph of the Class of 1930 from Jamaica Plain High School with a portrait of Kiley in the upper left.

Kiley was born in the neighborhood of Roxbury in Boston, where his father was a construction manager. In 1930, Kiley graduated from Jamaica Plain High School. Two years later, he began a four-year apprenticeship with landscape architect Warren H. Manning, working without pay for the first year, during which he learned the fundamentals of the field and developed an interest in the role of plants in design.[3] From 1936 to 1938, Kiley was a special student in the design program at Harvard University, now the Graduate School of Design, while continuing work with Manning. Among his classmates were Garrett Eckbo and James C. Rose, who also became influential landscape architects. After two years, upon Manning's death and the dissolution of his practice, Kiley left Harvard without graduating. He worked briefly for the National Park Service in Concord, New Hampshire, and later the United States Housing Authority, where he met architect Louis Kahn. On Kahn's advice, Kiley left the authority in 1940 to become a licensed practicing architect.

From 1943 to 1945, Kiley served in the United States Army as Captain in the Presentation Branch of the Office of Strategic Services, becoming its director after architect Eero Saarinen stepped down. At the end of World War II, Kiley designed the courtroom where the Nuremberg Trials were held. While in Europe, he visited the Château de Villandry and the Palace of Versailles, as well as the work of André Le Nôtre, whose formality and geometric layout shaped his later classical modernist style.

Following the war, Kiley found himself as one of the only modern landscape architects in the postwar building boom. In California, his colleagues Eckbo, Thomas Church, and others were also developing and practicing in the modernist style. Kiley reestablished his practice in Franconia, New Hampshire, and later moved to Charlotte, Vermont. In 1947, in collaboration with Saarinen, Kiley entered and won the competition to design the Gateway Arch National Park (then known as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial), a high-profile project that launched his career.

Throughout Kiley's practice, he hired such designers as Cheryl Barton, Miho Mazereeuw, Kevin Roche, Harry Turbott, and Peter Walker.

Legacy[]

In 2000, the actor Paul Hopkins portrayed Kiley in the miniseries Nuremberg, featuring Alec Baldwin.

In 2013, The Cultural Landscape Foundation organized a traveling exhibition titled The Landscape Architecture Legacy of Dan Kiley, which featured over forty newly commissioned photographs of Kiley's projects.[4]

Harvard's Graduate School of Design has an endowed fellowship in his name: Daniel Urban Kiley Teaching Fellowship in Landscape Architecture. [5]

Style[]

Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis.
Benjamin Banneker Park in Washington, DC.

The geometric layout of allees, bosques, water, paths, orchards, lawns, and other landscape features characterize Kiley's style. To him, regular geometry was at the heart of his design. Like his predecessors, Le Corbusier and Le Nôtre, Kiley believed that geometry was an inherent to humans. It was the structure one could use to gain comprehension and create stabilization of surroundings. Kiley also believed that humans were a part of nature, rather than being separate from it. Rather than imitating curvilinear forms in nature, he asserted mathematical order onto landscape. His designs overstepped their boundaries rather than ending elements neatly on a suggested edge. Kiley called this approach, slippage, or an extension beyond the implied boundary, creating ambiguous relationships in the landscape.

Awards[]

Selected projects[]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Martin, Douglas (February 25, 2004). "Dan Kiley, Influential Landscape Architect, Dies at 91". New York Times.
  2. ^ Byrnes, Mark (May 5, 2014). "Remembering Modernism's Go-To Landscape Architect". CityLab. Atlantic Media.
  3. ^ Walker & Simo 1996, p. 180.
  4. ^ https://web.archive.org/web/20140817080724/http://tclf.org/event/exhibitions
  5. ^ https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/landscape-architecture/fellowships-prizes-and-travel-programs/daniel-urban-kiley-teaching-fellowship-in-landscape-architecture/
  6. ^ "Lifetime Honors: National Medal of Arts". Archived from the original on 2011-07-21.
  7. ^ "Lifetime Achievement Award: Winner Dan Kiley". Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Archived from the original on 2010-09-25.

External links[]

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