Calvin Tomkins’s 1995 profile of the landscape architect Dan Kiley is worth a read.

When a few of us from the magazine visited Kevin Roche one morning last September—his recollections made their way into our recent stories on Eero Saarinen and Associates and Roche’s Ford Foundation building—he regaled us with tales of “four-martini flights” with the hard-partying Saarinen crew, and other architectural shenanigans. He also told a memorable story about Dan Kiley, who did a number of landscape designs for Roche and his partner, John Dinkeloo (including the Ford Foundation plantings). For one such project, Roche had hoped to impress some clients by bringing them on a site visit with Kiley.

I did a big song and dance about Dan Kiley. So we arranged to meet him down at the site. Dan drove down from Vermont. He arrived in an old Army overcoat, with no socks. It looked like he was wearing his pajamas. And he had no shirt.

Apparently, this was hardly out of character. Read more…

An aerial view of a row house block in Baltimore plagued by the “broken tooth syndrome:” Lots of vacant land where housing once stood.

In last week’s New Yorker, writer Nick Paumgarten pointed out the damaging effects of the economic downturn on the urban landscape. “Putting aside the long-discussed public projects that are endangered or doomed… dozens of private undertakings have stalled or died. The calls go out to the architects: pencils down.” Read more…