
Because suburbia occupies a dominant presence in so many lives—a place of not only residence but also of work, commerce, worship, education, and leisure—it has become a focal point for competing interests and viewpoints. The suburbs have always been a fertile space for imagining both the best and the worst of modern social life. more
Drawn Here: Sean Griffiths of FAT
Target Free Thursday Nights
Thursday, March 6 7:00 pm
Escape to the Suburbs!
Free First Saturday
Saturday, April 5 10:00 am to 3:00 pm
Next Exit: The Shifting Landscape of Suburbia
Target Free Thursday Nights
Thursday, April 24 7:00 pm

All essays are originally from the companion book for this exhibition, Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes. Some essays appear in excerpted form where noted.

Established 1993; based in Minneapolis, with offices in New York
Shane Coen, principal
Coen+Partners, a nationally recognized landscape architecture practice, combines a light hand, a subdued palette, and sensitivity to site to produce environments that simultaneously highlight the relationship between the natural and the man-made and seamlessly integrate the two. Working collaboratively with architects on a portfolio of projects ranging from an intimate courtyard for a small residence to a planned community for one hundred families, the firm designs environments that define or reinforce the connections between built elements without compromising the local ecology. Coen+Partners’ deference to the landscape is manifest on a grand scale in its master plan for Jackson Meadow (Marine on St. Croix, Minnesota, 1998), a planned community that is an early example of compact development. In this pattern of land planning, houses are clustered on only a portion of a large site, leaving the majority of the site as open space. In many cases, such as Jackson Meadow, the public space is permanently protected by conservation easements. Like the Mayo Woodlands project featured in the exhibition, Jackson Meadow is organized topographically, exploiting rather than neutralizing the site’s natural features. Recipients of awards from the American Institute of Architects, the American Society of Landscape Architects, and Progressive Architecture, these projects reflect Coen+Partners’ desire to create interventions that are specific to place, environment, and client.
We asked people to make a video telling us about the suburbs and put it on YouTube. Selected videos are showing in the gallery at the Walker Art Center during the run of the exhibition.
Do you live in a suburb? Do you work or go to school in one? What is your experience of the “burbs? ”…
Whether you love them or hate them we’re interested in your thoughts on the phenomenon of the American suburb. We invite you to make a 5-minute video about strip malls, cul-de-sacs, office parks, and green lawns or whatever suburbia means to you. A select number of videos will be chosen to screen as part of the exhibition Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes in the Target Gallery from February 15 to May 18, 2008.
To participate, upload your video to YouTube and add the tag “walkerworldsaway” or post it as a response to our video above. We’ll feature all videos on the Walker’s YouTube page. To be considered for gallery screening, entries must be 5 minutes or less and be online by January 18, 2008.