Land Matters: Icons Revisited
In a preview of the October Land Matters column, Landscape Architecture magazine editor Bill Thompson, FASLA, introduces a new series for the magazine and asks if Dan Kiley's NCNB Plaza deserves its iconic status.

What’s the appropriate reaction to the demolition of an iconic landscape—tears of regret or just a resigned shrug?

That question must be asked as Dan Kiley’s North Carolina National Bank (NCNB) Plaza in Tampa, Florida, falls under the chain saw and the wrecking ball. Although, truth to tell, it has been falling apart for years owing to lack of maintenance—and probably some design and construction miscalculations as well—I wonder if there will be weeping and wailing in the landscape architecture community after it’s demolished.

Is the landscape community on the right track in the way it chooses its icons? Iconic status seems to be driven largely by the reputation of the designer and by a given project's aesthetics. Now, you may absolutely adore the look of the NCNB Plaza. I personally find its hard-edged minimalist grid and its limited plant palette simplistic and sterile, but that's just me.

“Icon” is not, of course, an official designation, but Kiley’s NCNB plaza is certainly a high-profile landscape, much published and apparently revered by many in the landscape profession. In Modern Landscape Architecture: A Critical Review (1993), Marc Treib praised the plaza as “a masterful handling of the modern idiom.” The plaza was featured in Landscape Architecture twice; in April 2004 it appeared on the cover. Treib wrote about it again in a 2005 essay in Landscape Journal and, on its web site www.tclf.org), the Cultural Landscape Foundation now privileges it among a handful of significant “Landscapes at Risk” while calling Kiley “arguably the greatest landscape architect of the twentieth century.”

Is the landscape community on the right track in the way it chooses its icons? Iconic status seems to be driven largely by the reputation of the designer and by a given project’s aesthetics. Now, you may absolutely adore the look of the NCNB Plaza. I personally find its hard-edged minimalist grid and its limited plant palette simplistic and sterile, but that’s just me. Whatever you may think of its aesthetic, the plaza certainly failed miserably as a people place. Part of the reason may have been Kiley’s blocky concrete benches that complemented the overall design but made little provision for human comfort. Add to that the fact that the plaza, being built on a parking garage, was raised several feet above the adjacent sidewalk. As happens with so many high-end designed landscapes, Tampa residents avoided it like the plague.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Toward the end of its life, quite a few homeless men set up housekeeping there. Would somebody please tell me why landscape architects would heap praise on a design that almost everyone shuns except the homeless?

Landscape architects revere their icons. Do all those icons deserve reverence? Partly to explore that question, at LAM, we’ve started the “Icons Revisited” series that documents existing icons on a case-by-case basis. This month’s installment in the “Icons Revisited” series is another Kiley plaza—Fountain Place in Dallas—that’s enjoying a happier fate than the NCNB plaza. As George Hazelrigg, ASLA, reports in “Still Walking on Water,” Fountain Place has proved to be a successful design that is thriving mainly because of the loyalty of its corporate owners, who have maintained the plaza very well since it opened in 1986 despite considerable expense.

That suggests that owners are the key figures in whether any icon thrives or tanks. But where does that leave the designer?

J. William “Bill” Thompson, FASLA
Editor / bthompson@asla.org

Please direct all comments on Land Matters to Landscape Architecture magazine editor Bill Thompson, FASLA. He can be reached at bthompson@asla.org.

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