Architects Professional/Artistic Development

[SPDB]

Looking at an entire catalog of any architect you feel qualified to evaluate, what does the difference between his early courses and his later courses tell you about his development as an architect?

I'm more interested in earlier architects. Not because I find their development as architects more compelling (I do), but rather because there is less there to analyze. No doubt the countless tinkering and neglect of the older courses tends to obscure the architect's original work and provides little with which to compare to the more zealously preserved later works.

But I was thinking about this recently w/r/t to Geo. Thomas and thinking how he went from Marion Golf Club, which I faintly remember as a very crude and raw design that reveals little of the genius that would later be found at Bel-Air, Riviera and the other CA courses.

I'm interested in other comparisons of very early work to later accomplishments? What can you guys offer?

[RJ_Daley]

I'd have to think that Bendelow went from mostly rudimentary designs and his "appleseeding" around the country for Spaulding, to a more comprehensive approach.  Although I've seen some flashes of routing and design sophistication from his 1905-15 period, he seemed to hit his high point with American Park Builders, with Medinah, Olympia fields, and Tripoli, lecturing on GCA and using new design techniques like table top scale plaster modelling.  

[SPDB]

Dick -
That's the sort of thing i'm interested in. Was an architect a lazy router in the early days, only to develop a facility for it later? that sort of thing.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Sean,
I think most of the great names had their learning period too. Much in the same way of Thomas's work at Marion and Whitemarsh Valley. MacKenzie at Pitreavie and others in Scotland. I even have some pretty neat old Billy Bell and Max Behr stuff to look at here in SoCal!

I don't think its bad at all. In fact I think its really kind of cool. You have to also remember that a lot of it your looking at is really evolved, so you have to figure in top dressing and bunkers moving, losing their lines, etc..

Its even better when it all evolves the right way. You know, like Merion Golf Club used to be!  

[Tom_Doak]

I can tell you how I've evolved professionally and artistically, and I'll take a stab at MacKenzie's evolution, too.

MacKenzie started out with Alwoodley and Moortown.  There is some question how much of the routing at Alwoodley he inherited from Colt; there is no question that he spent a lot of time thinking about the strategy of individual holes, and that he built some unusual greens, though not as bold as on later designs.  His bunkers on those two courses were not so bold either, because he was not that practiced at building them.

After these two successes his work became much bolder ... the wild bunkering on his renovation of other courses around Leeds, the greens of Sitwell Park which ended in controversy.  So, when he goes to Australia, he dials back the boldness of the greens a bit, but he is more practiced at how to build bunkers, and he finds some great collaborators to help him.

I would say I've gone through a similar metamorphosis.  The more practice you get at building bunkers, the better you get at doing it.  You realize that you don't have to build such big features in greens to make them play the way you intend.  You keep learning about things like soils, grasses, construction methods, irrigation, and most importantly, people.  You get better at recognizing the talents of others and utilizing them to improve your work, and you keep adding new people to the mix.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that I have gotten any better over the years at routing golf holes, or at creating golf holes with interesting strategies.  It's just that now I understand better that there is a lot more to a great golf course than that.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Great Question!

A few thoughts.....

As far as routing, I learned it early as an apprentice, have a knack for it, and that part of design has probaby changed only incrementally for me in 20 years.  I suppose that someone who apprenticed at two or more firms might continue to learn different ways to do it, but eventually would revert to his/her own trademark ways of doing it.

In some ways, most routings are trend followers, not trendsetters.  That is to say, if someone gets a walking only course like Whistling Straights, you can be sure that other architects take note of the walking trend, and start routing with greens and tees much closer.  Ditto with the trend away from strung out courses through housing, albeit, however small that trend is.  

As to strategy/feature designs, I feel those can evolve more dramatically.  As we get exposed to more courses over time, and we see just how many different ways you can attack the design over what you may have learned from your mentors, and incorporate it.  While routing is a skill, feature design is an art that can evolve.

I'll bet architects go through cycles, at first exploring new things, then relying on tried and true, and then exploring again, when they have started to forget the critiques of the bolder designs, much like MacKenzie!

I doubt you'll be able to trace definitive trends for any architects work, without considering those natural cycles, as well as the budget, client objectives, work load (hard to do your best stuff when busy) personal circumstances (depression, divorce, too much time on golf club atlas, to name three common examples in the golf design field ) and other factors that determine the quality of an individual design by an architect as much as the long term trend of his career.

For example, if Tom Doaks new fame gets him some jobs with real estate developers, or for municipal courses (perhaps the only kind of jobs available in any given year) and he modifies his designs somewhat to fit the circumstances, would you say he changed his style, or did he have to by circumstance?  Just as the depression changed the design style of Tillie, Mac, and Maxwell, to name some, our designs will need to respond to the here and now, so that may influence style.

If those courses are less spectacular because of setting, has Tom lost any talent or deep thought about the designs?  Of course not!  Have his basic influences changed?  No, but the influences on any particular design, as illustrated by the examples above can explain a clinker or two in the middle of an otherwise stellar career.

[Chris_Clouser]

Maxwell is perhaps the only one I can really say much about.  

Routing:  Maxwell pretty much routed his courses using the same thought process.  Find the 18 best green sites and then route the holes so they fit together.  To him green sites were everything.  Perhaps it could be argued that his routing skill went down a little after having his leg amputated because he couldn't walk most of the property, but I would disagree from the courses I've seen that he routed after the operation.

Bunkering:  Maxwell's bunkering style definately changed throughout his career.  Aside from Dornick Hills, his bunkering early in his career was very simple and most the tight greenside variety, but it did get more complex over his career until his work with Mackenzie.  This is probably the area more than any other that Mackenzie affected him.  He became much more artistic, but after World War II he seemed to revert back to the basic simple style again.  It was almost as if he had two styles, one for Oklahoma and one for the rest of the country.

Greens:  Again, this developed the entire length of his career and reach it's highest form at Old Town.  Some believe Mackenzie directly impacted Maxwell here, but I don't believe so.  He was showing the signs of progressing to his famous rolls much earlier in his career.

Hole Design and Land Use:  I think this is where Maxwell was most consistent over his career.  He always seem to use the same philosophy throughout his career with template holes and minimal movement of the land and the use of natural contours.  If he found a greensite and the surrounding terrain that looked like a Redan, he built it.

All of this is with the exception of Dornick Hills, that was such a unique course in his career and the first he did.  He seemed to back it down after that and used much simpler ideas on the next few courses from that point.