Architects+Artisans: “A Vanishing Oasis at City’s Edge” November 15, 2010

12 Nov. 2010

 

By Mike Welton & Cheryl Wilder

 

An 11-acre, Taliesin-like landmark in Raleigh N.C. is about to be transformed into low-income housing.

Landscape architect Dick Bell’s Water Garden was conceived in the mid-‘50s as a Shangri-La for the creative community in central North Carolina.

It was decades ahead of its time.

The well-known landscape architect developed it as the city’s first mixed-use development for artists and designers in 1955, though he wouldn’t actually complete it for 14 years.  It was to be his home, his business and his landscape laboratory.  It also served as studio and gallery for those in need.

“Water Garden was an ace in the hole,” Dick said. “It was an epistle of site plan and architecture.”

 

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From Architects + Artisans: “A Life In Landscape Architecture” October 26, 2010

October 26, 2010

By Mike Welton & Cheryl Wilder

New Yorkers may claim Frederick Law Olmsted as their own, and Virginians might cling to the gardens that Charles Gillette once molded and shaped, but North Carolinians today can embrace their own living icon of the landscape architecture profession.

When Manteo native Richard “Dick” Bell launched his practice in 1955, he was just a few years out of N.C. State’s School of Design.  A leader, an educator and a winner of the Rome Prize, he’d spent time in South Florida, working with Morris Lapidus on the landscape for Miami’s Fountainbleu Hotel.  Back in Raleigh though, he was determined to promote landscape architecture as a reputable profession for North Carolina.

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Goodnight, Raleigh: “A Forgotten Treasure – The Raleigh Water Garden” July 7, 2010

By Danielle Carr, July 6, 2010

I started out with only a Facebook status update and the vague directions “across from the Carmax on Glenwood” to go on. An hour and a half later, I found the Water Garden.

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(Many thanks to all who posted comments on Goodnight, Raleigh –  including the current owner whose intentions for the future of Water Garden are well-meaning indeed.)