"Keeping the Boys Busy:’ On-site, incremental design gives form to the complex relationship between site and structure in the outdoor theaters of the Great Depression

In most cases today, every detail of new construction in public landscapes in the United States, from the location of walls to the joints in pavement and the size of bolts, is drawn and specified on computer screen or paper before ground is broken. Building contractors then construct the project fron1 the designer's detailed drawings. During construction, the designer's role is limited to attending periodic job meetings where they attempt to insure that their original intentions are realised.2 This separation of design and construction is a twentieth-century phenomenon. Throughout history, designed landscapes have been created through an incremental and interactive process of design, construction, observation and re-design. As construction progressed, both the partially completed improvements and the emerging intricacies of a site, such as an unexpected exposure of bedrock or a newly revealed vista, informed designers how to craft the relationship between the site and the design intervention. Variations of this process underlie our most influential landscape designs, from the great gardens of Italy, France and England to more recent icons such as Central Park and Dumbarton Oaks.