William “Bill” Johnson’s contributions to landscape architecture spanned nearly threequarters of a century and covered a broad cross section of professional and academic practice. When he was growing up in rural Michigan during the Great Depression, his mother used the term “whole cloth” to describe relationships between people, places, and things that she considered real. The term is rooted in a time and place and is about understanding and appreciating authenticity, an idea that profoundly shaped Johnson’s perspectives on design. After earning a degree in landscape architecture from Michigan State University, a chance encounter with Hideo Sasaki drew him to Harvard in the early 1950s, where he learned and worked alongside some of the most talented designers of the era, including Sasaki as well as Johnson’s lifelong friend Peter Walker,…
You're reading a preview of
Landscape Architecture (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2024