Thomas Church
Landscape architect
Contents
Life, education, and achievements
Professional activities and pictures
Thomas Church
Landscape architect
Contents
Life, education, and achievements
Professional activities and pictures
Thomas Church was born in 1902 in California. He retired in 1977 and died in 1978.
Church was educated in the 1920's at the University of California, Berkeley, at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and in Europe on a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship. The timing coincided with a rapidly changing social context in California and a revolution in art and architecture on an international scale.
During his life he wrote two books: Gardens are for people (1955) and followed by Your Private World. Gardens Are For People.
He received the Fine Arts Medal of the American Institute of Architects (1951), The Gold Medal of the American Society of Landscape Architects (1976), The Gold Medal of the New York Architectural League (1953), the Oakleigh Thorne Medal from the Garden Club of America (1969) and a Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1978).
"By the 1950's Church had become one of the leading landscape architects in the United States, working on large commercial and institutional projects with eminent architects of the modern movement, including Eera Saarinen and Edward Durell Stone. But the bulk of his practice was on a domestic scale and it was on garden design that his reputation was based."
Church's designs focused on the increasing use of small gardens and the need to reduce maintenance while providing privacy and beauty. He increased the use of hard cover surfaces and ground-cover plantings. He used screens such as rows of trees to separate areas and small hills to create "rooms" or garden. During his time the central axis of a garden was abandoned for a multiplicity of view points.
Church used 4 basic principle for his designs: " Unity, which is the consideration of the schemes as a whole, both house and garden; function, which is the relation of the practical service areas to the needs of the household and the relation of the decorative areas to the desires and pleasure of those who use it; simplicity, upon which may rest both the economic and aesthetic success of the layout; and scale, which gives us a pleasant relation of parts to one another."
"The new kind of garden is still supposed to be looked at. But that is no longer its only function. It is designed primarily for living, as an adjunct to the functions of the house. How well it provides for the many types of living that can be carried on outdoors is the new standard by which we can judge a garden."
Professional activities and pictures
One of Thomas churches better known private gardens is the Donnell Garden in California. In this plan you can see that there is a separation between the pool to the right and the main living area to the right. This separation creates a sense of there being to separate living areas. The berm between the main house area and the pool hides one area from the other.
This is an example of how he liked to use paving and bricks to create a maintenance free garden. The area is very effective even though there is little plant use.
Church, Thomas. Gardens are for People. San Francisco, California: Mcgraw Hill Book Company. 1983
Web page by John McGarry