J. Duane Estate c. 1936

Meyer Goldbaum made this design for the J. Duane Estate using pencil and watercolor. These are traditional art materials, but the drawing isn't meant as a finished artwork. Instead, it's a plan, a design proposal showing how a landscape could be organized. Consider how the hand-drawn lines and washes of color represent manicured lawns and precisely arranged flowerbeds. The very act of drawing this way, so controlled, evokes the immense labor required to realize such a plan in real life. Think of the gardeners, stonemasons, and other workers whose skill would be necessary. This is a good example of design thinking made visible. It asks us to consider the relationship between the idealized vision of the estate, and the social realities of its creation and maintenance. It reminds us that even seemingly natural landscapes are often the products of intense, and often invisible, human effort. By attending to the processes of design, production and labor, we can understand the full meaning of the work.