Joe Karr and Associates Records, 1962-2005

Joseph Paul Karr was born in Rochelle, Illinois on March 5, 1938. Karr entered the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1956 to study city planning, but soon changed his focus to landscape architecture. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Landscape Architecture in 1960. During the summers of 1958 and 1959, Karr worked as an assistant landscape architect for the State of Illinois Department of Highways to help pay for his studies. In 1960 he entered the University of Pennsylvania as a graduate student, studying under landscape architects Ian McHarg and Karl Linn. He completed his coursework for his Master of Landscape Architecture in spring 1962. While he was a student, Karr worked for the National Park Service in Philadelphia during the summers of 1960 and 1961 and part-time for the Fels Institute for State and Local Planning during the school year. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in spring 1962, Karr spent six months on active duty with the Army Engineers Reserve. He then returned to Philadelphia to begin working again for the National Park Service's Eastern Office of Design and Construction. He remained there until spring 1963, when he joined the office of landscape architect Dan Kiley at Wings Point in Charlotte, Vermont.

Kiley, and the natural beauty of Vermont, had a profound impact on Karr's aesthetics and professional development. Karr was particularly influenced by Kiley's approach to design, and to life. Because Kiley was generally away from the office with clients for weeks at a time, Karr and the other young associates at Kiley's office had a great deal of responsibility in working directly with important architectural firms from all over the country. Among the firms Karr worked with were Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates in Hamden, Connecticut, I. M. Pei and Partners in New York and Harry Weese and Associates in Chicago. At the invitation of the Weese office, Karr left the Kiley office in spring 1969, after having been there for six years, to start his own practice, Joe Karr and Associates, as a division of Harry Weese and Associates. Karr's arrangement with Harry Weese and Associates allowed his firm to take advantage of the resources of that large architectural firm. But, with the exception of insurance, accounting and office services, Joe Karr and Associates operated independently. When Harry Weese Associates was acquired by the Chicago office of the San Francisco based firm of Gensler in 2000, Karr arranged the same relationship for Joe Karr and Associates with the Chicago architectural firm of OWP&P.

Joe Karr and Associates offered landscape architecture, site planning, urban design, interior landscape design, roof garden design, recreational open space design, and land planning services. At the time of the firm's establishment, landscape architecture did not have a strong presence in Chicago and was frequently treated as an afterthought or decoration by many of Chicago's architects and other designers. Karr set out to attempt to change that attitude. His professional philosophy was that landscape architecture and site planning are integral parts of the design process for a project and should be included and coordinated with architectural, engineering and other allied design professions from the outset of the project. Karr succeeded in raising the profile of landscape architecture in the Chicago area and gained considerable recognition for his many collaborations with architects. He clearly understood the vocabulary of building architecture and his services were sought by the biggest names in architecture in the region. While most of the firm's projects were in Illinois, nearly as many were executed in other states throughout the United States and in some foreign countries.

Joe Karr and Associates engaged in a wide variety of projects, ranging from small residences to large corporate campuses. Some of the most significant projects include the Ameritech Center (Hoffman Estates, Illinois), the Kraft Foods Corporate Headquarters (Northfield, Illinois), the IBM Corporation General Technology Division Campus (East Fishkill, New York), the Abercrombie & Fitch Corporate Headquarters (New Albany, Ohio), and the Wrigley Global Innovation Center (Chicago). Karr's office designed landscapes for universities, colleges, senior living communities, institutions, parks, cemeteries, industrial sites, various residential complexes and single family homes. While Karr worked on projects of a variety of scales and types, he was also particularly adept at designing landscapes within difficult and confined urban spaces. He brought many of the same principles he used in those challenging sites to larger projects. His design talent and sensitivity to detail are clearly evident in each of his projects.

In addition to his landscape design work, Karr spoke at symposiums, participated in student reviews and gave numerous lectures to both architectural and landscape architectural students at universities and other institutions across the country. Some of these were the Rhode Island School of Design, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Purdue University, and the University of California at Berkeley. His lectures to architectural students fostered respect for the profession of landscape architecture among those new professionals. Karr's work has been published in numerous books and publications, including Architectural Record, Interior Landscape, International Landscape Design, Inland Architect, Chicago Magazine, House and Garden, and Home Magazine. Karr served on several boards, including the American Society of Landscape Architects Accreditation Board for many years. He was named a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1992.

Joe Karr and Associates was closed in 2004, though Karr continued working on the firm's final projects until their completion in 2011. As of 2011, he is retired and resides in Chicago.

This collection consists of architectural drawings and architectural reprographic prints from 358 of Joe Karr and Associates' landscape projects from between 1962 and 2005, including some drawings only available in digital form, that may be searched and browsed here.

SERIES I, PROJECTS. Arranged into subseries by project name.

• Names
  • Joe Karr and Associates.
  • Karr, Joe.
• Subject
  • Joe Karr and Associates--Archives.
  • Landscape architects--Illinois--Chicago--Archives.
  • Landscape architecture--Illinois--Chicago--Sources.

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n.d.

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Joe Karr and Associates Records, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago.

This collection was donated by Joe Karr on March 8, 2009. Additional materials were donated by Joe Karr in 2011.

This collection was processed by Valerie Higgins from November 2010 to April 2011.