Landscape Architect
Bureaucratic confusion and public delight were typical reactions to his landscape designs for public areas.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Claude Cormier (“CC”) was born in a rural community in southern Quebec, Canada. His father ran the family’s dairy and maple syrup farm. His mother was a teacher.
CHILDHOOD
As a child, CC loved to spend time outdoors while he roamed the family farm. He appreciated trees and ponds, especially colorful vegetation. From his parents, CC learned to ask interesting questions and to try to find the answers for himself. This trait would eventually provide CC with the self-confidence to defend his adult artistic proposals as a landscape architect.
EDUCATION
Following his high school graduation, CC studied at a Canadian university, focusing on agronomy: the science and technology of producing and using plants for food, fuel, fiber and reclamation.
Editor’s note – Agronomy has come to include research of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and soil science. It is the application of a combination of sciences such as biology, chemistry, economics, ecology, earth science and genetics. Professionals of agronomy are termed ‘agronomists.’
CHALLENGE – ADAPTING TO CHANGING TIMES
“Gardens are boring,” CC once said. “How can we make gardens that look the same as we were making 100 years ago? Fashion, architecture, cinema, everything else has changed. Can we make gardens that represent who we are now with the values and culture and technology that we now have?”
CREATING CONTROVERSIAL PUBLIC SPACES
CC was intrigued when he was asked to create a winter garden for the lobby of Montreal’s convention center. But an interior “greenhouse” of living plants seemed to him completely unsuitable and unsustainable. What Montreal needed, especially in the Canadian winter, he thought, was color.
CC’s solution: “Lipstick Forest” – the name he gave to 52 concrete forms designed to imitate large tree trunks, lacquered in bright pink. When CC first presented his design to officials in charge of the city’s convention center, there was ‘dead silence.’ But CC persuaded the officials to proceed with his design, so the project moved forward. When the trees were finally installed, and a local newspaper reporter was invited for a preview – to hopefully entice the public to visit the convention center – the newspaper panned the trees on its front page in a bold headline: “C’est Horrible!”
The public, however, disagreed and the forest became a beloved city landmark. CC always said the newspaper had delivered his favorite review.
The Lipstick Forest was not the only landscape design by CC to create both controversy and public admiration.
For a project to reimagine a section of Dorchester Square in Montreal, CC designed a fanciful Victorian style fountain, tiered like a wedding cake, to evoke the city’s “belle epoque” period.
Editor’s note – ‘Belle Epoque’ is the period of settled and comfortable life preceding World War 1 (1914-1918). That era’s name is usually associated with French, Belgian and European history from the 1870s to 1914, characterized by public optimism, regional peace, economic prosperity, colonial expansion (of course the natives being invaded by the expansionists may not have shared the era’s optimism and prosperity) plus innovations in technology, science, and culture.
When the fountain was installed, it had been fabricated to look as though it had been sliced in half – which was CC’s response to the project’s ownership who told him to omit the fountain entirely because the city needed more room for tour buses. So, instead of eliminating the sculpture entirely, CC simply directed that it be downsized to retain the outline of the object while allowing more space as demanded by the project’s managers.
A large, public fountain in downtown Toronto was designed by CC to be ringed by life-size bronze dogs (and one cat) that spout arcs of water. When the fountain’s public managers were shown CC’s proposal, they rejected it initially because “dogs were not art.” But CC and his landscape architectural team then researched the history of dogs depicted in art and returned with a 50-page treatise on the role of dogs in art throughout history. CC’s presentation was persuasive, so his design was then approved.
When CC conceived his first urban beach design, known as HTO, on the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto, he was inspired by the well-known Georges Seurat painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” Its approach is a gentle slope planted with weeping willows; the beach is planted with yellow umbrellas.
His second public beach, Sugar Beach, a Toronto public park near a sugar factory, is planted with pink umbrellas, a nod to the refinery’s sweet product. There was initial official and journalist resistance to that hue, however: too feminine and too frivolous, some thought. But CC and his team lobbied hard and prevailed. They wore pink hard hats to the job site. The public loved their new park.
CAREER SATISFACTION
In addition to the public “voting with their feet” to visit – in large numbers – areas whose landscape designs were created by CC, eventually his esteemed reputation was formally recognized when he was made a “Knight of the Ordre National du Quebec” a high civic honor.
Another landscape architect noted that CC’s work, with its humorous and welcoming features, is designed for both pleasure and joy. “He was a pleasure activist. He changed hearts by making you feel good.”
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This career story is based on several sources, including an obituary written by Penelope Green, published by The New York Times on October 10, 2023, plus internet research including Wikipedia.
