Born in Rochester, New York, Fletcher Steele is the most American landscape architect influential in the years 1920-1930 because his work is reflected in the transition from the Beaux Arts style Arts and Crafts and finally to the modern. Fletcher Steele's case is exceptional because for the profession of landscape architecture , their designs represent a bridge between these periods. He acquired a good education in design, and had a great talent, so it is a key to understanding the evolution of the profession at the time. His work is very rough and is credited with the design and creation of more than 700 gardens from 1915 until the time his death. Fletcher Steele graduated from Williams College. Joined , still very young at the age of 22, the School of Landscape Architecture Harvard University in 1907 where Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr . was one of his teachers. In his two years at Harvard Steele considered "the greatest of teachers who were there were Denman Ross, who made up for lost time very much." Ross taught aesthetic theory, not landscape architecture. He remained his friend after that their students leave Harvard. Steele left the university to accept a position as an apprentice with Warren H. Manning.
In 1913 , Steele embarked on a four-month tour of Europe to study the designs of the most important gardens of several of their countries. On his return to the United States , opened his own landscape design. Their initial plans were structured based on the Arts and Crafts style English. You can check details on the use of craft-style Gertrude Jekyll , Reginald Blomfield, and TH Mawson but were even more ornate as they also used Italian-style details.
His conversion to Art Deco style began in 1925 when he visited the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes (the "Art Deco Exhibition ") and saw his examples of cubist gardens made with innovative materials such as mirrors, colored concrete and gravel. In 1930 Steele wrote showing great enthusiasm for the works of art of Andrea Vera, Tony Garnier (architect), and Gabriel Guévrékian . Steele's designs and writings of this period were factors in the transition from Art Deco style to Modernity in your country. helped raise awareness of the Modern Style among younger students of Harvard landscape in particular; Dan Kiley, Garrett Eckbo , and James C. Rose, for which Steele broke new ground and showed the possibilities of modern art and creativity inherent in the process design.
Dan Kiley later wrote that "Steele was the only designer with good work during the twenties and thirties, the only one who was really interested in new things."
Garrett Eckbo said "Fletcher Steele was the transitional figure between the old guard and the modern concepts. I have always been interested because it was an experiment."
This was the beginning of the first wave of modernism in the American landscape architecture. It begins in 1929 with a revolutionary design of Fletcher Steele an amphitheater set a visual axis of the Bay, is the Camden Amphitheatre in Maine.
This was the only public Commission Fletcher Steele. It is valued as a heritage asset in Maine, which is important as the first modernist design in America. Its innovative details are: the axis tilted relative to the library, the port, clear geometry in the use of forms, and unique handcrafted detail exhibited in the original design of the Amphitheatre. Steele designers was unique in its kind, worried obsessively about the finish of their designs, and developed a long term relationship with its customers, many of whom became lifelong friends.
Most Steele gardens have disappeared, replaced by subdivisions and parking lots. There are only two that are still open to public Naumkeag , which was his most ambitious garden, whose creation was extended about 3 decades, and the gardens of the Mission House , both are in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Naumkeag Gardens
Naumkeg map website
has one Naumkeag of the most impressive and imaginative gardens, is located in Stockbridge , Massachusetts. The cottage is also an important heritage site, has 44 rooms. Original garden was designed by Nathan Barrett. The residence is surrounded by 3.2 acres of terraced gardens. When Mabel Choate inherited the house developed the gardens Fletcher Steele as its landscape architect. From 1926, and the two collaborated to transform their gardens for a long period of thirty years. By all accounts, the two; and Mabel Fletcher , were fond of a good martini and spent many afternoons in the garden he was designing, sitting on a pair of stone chairs, drinking and talking. This was how they identified the following projects in the garden. After several drinks, and before the end of the day, Mabel called one of his staff to bring your checkbook and begin the next project.
blue ladders are the most recognizable feature of the gardens at Naumkeag in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. http://www.esf.edu/la/research/steele/Naumkeag.htm
His work in this garden includes the Garden in the afternoon, the Chinese Garden with a Moon Gate and the Blue Stairs. The latter is the most famous and distinctive feature of the garden. A flight of stairs with arched blue and white railing Art Deco style ascends through white birches. The property has over three acres of terraced gardens surrounded by sixteen hectares of woodlands, meadows and pastures that spread to the river that crosses the Housatonic Valley . Steele created a series of outdoor compartments are recognized today as a testament of this collaboration and aesthetic sensibility with which Steele designed their works. Can be recognized through this work and renewing formal characteristics of Art Deco .
His first garden of this style is to Helen Ellwanger, uses a revolutionary new material for landscaping, concrete . Forms a curved diagonal bold steps on a terrace forming an intricate pattern. Steele uses the geometry curves and counter-curves as opposed to straight lines. The garden in the hills of Berkshire Massachusetts did emanate renewing their confidence in their proposals and instead show your originality. This would be the impetus that was needed for that between twenty and fifty, American gardeners begin to go out and find their own territory and establish their own version of modern design. For historians the most valuable thing we can rescue it; "Steele capacity to look forward and backward, and be able to use the ideas and details of the past as inspiration for create the new, this is what made him so successful then and it is so attractive now. " (2)
He donated his professional papers to the American Society Landscape Architects (ASLA), which files in their libraries, so that their work can be studied today.
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