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Colleagues | Department Chairs | Public Officials
"His realizations of creative outlets, which Land, Structure, and People together inspire, have impressed me as unique in giving constructive direction to the works of society. He is not merely a theorist, but a maker bent on expressing environmental validity through his natural adjustability and resourcefulness. His design tendencies are noble. He is often forced to use frugal means, but always rejects what is done through design only for design's sake."
--Louis I. Kahn, Architect, 1967
"If Karl Linn can get his ideas recognized and applied, I believe we can have a profound improvement in city living and a reduction in the present untoward consequences of urban development which so completely overlooks children and youth and forgets about providing for people to live and enjoy living."
--Lawrence K. Frank, social psychologist, Belmont, Mass., 1962 (Letter to Editor, published in Landscape Architecture.)
"I am delighted with the vigorous ways you are challenging current clichés, not only in theory but in practice. I can plainly see, in the work you are doing, the fresh shoots that will flower in a new age."
--Lewis Mumford, social philosopher and urban planner, 1961
"Karl Linn has shown us something we can do together to change what is happening on Earth, to eliminate the economic and social inequities which are major causes of disturbances and of war."
--David Brower, Founder, Earth Island Institute, San Francisco, California, 1990
"Karl Linn has stalwartly avoided the almost inevitable over specialization which seems to dog most professions today. He is especially imaginative in sensing the larger ethical and spiritual dimensions of architecture, design and planning. He has an amazing intuition for the relationship between the ritual and festive use of spaces and buildings and their physical design. Mr. Linn possesses a truly unusual capacity to listen carefully to other people, to enter into their world of feeling and imagination, and to work deftly with divergent groups of people to bring something beautiful into existence."
--Harvey G. Cox, Theologian, Harvard School of Divinity, 1977
"I first met Karl [in 1962] while serving as a Unitarian minister in Washington, D.C. He was responsible for much of my earliest enthusiasm for the possibilities of urban community development. Let me say with emphasis that his ideas were -- and remain still today -- particularly exciting to those of us who are concerned with realizing the potential for cooperative action among diverse populations, and for reaching the most profound communal bases of feeling and motivation of a constructive nature available to conscious artistic articulation. The relation of the architectural and other arts to community remains an unmet challenge of American civilization. Karl remains one of the most original, visionary, experienced, and articulate spokesmen for its possibilities."
--Rev. Ronald Engels, Meadville Theological Seminary, Chicago, 1974
"Karl is a true leader who expresses his ideas as much in action as in words and it is necessary to understand the history of his community participation projects to clearly see the role of his great spirit and energy as a vehicle for his ideas. It is very rare in my experience to encounter a person whose ideas are unique, profound, and appropriate to a time when humanitarian purpose and ethical insight are in such a great need. This sounds like a lot, and it is, but Karl is a very unusual man.... He has been a mentor and professional advisor to many of his colleagues. That early work was unique in its time because Karl was one of the first planners of any kind to invite the neighbors in. His work is open, participatory, non-dogmatic, and therefore rich with the input of those who will use it."
--Mayer Spivak, Director, Environmental Analysis and Design, Laboratory of Community Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1974
"I find Karl one of the most exciting, imaginative and creative thinkers who has applied himself to urban problems. His approach is fresh and one that to my knowledge has no peer in this field. He is extremely energetic and enthusiastic and applies himself voraciously to whatever he undertakes."
--George A. Wiley, Executive Director Poverty/Rights Action Center, 1967
"I believe your neighborhood renewal projects have two primary values for our program. First, they represent for youth a concrete way in which they can act upon their environment, a way in which they can both release frustrations and channel creative energies into constructive work. The flexibility which your approach allows for individual freedom of expression and corporate decisions concerning form are important here. Secondly, the completed commons area provides the physical surroundings necessary to the development of community life in the depressed area. It is only when such life exists that youth will learn and experience what it means to be stable participants in the larger society."
--Peter J. Countryman, Executive Director, Northern Student Movement Coordinating Committee for Civil Rights (SNCC), New Haven, Connecticut, 1963
"It is the simplicity of your work that strikes me most. Social problems are usually dissected for analysis, and the remedies recommended are thus inevitably partial. You have seen the problems as whole, complex situations and found basic cures with manifold repercussions and more, with the positive joys of achievement. By simple, direct acts you have cleared trails through the social delinquency which we allowed to grow around us, and which blights our neighbors' lives and our own towns and properties. Within those plain, encouraging acts may lie more than alleviation. They may carry the germ of a new realism in our views of social behavior. The roles of art and action in leisure may seem less self indulgences and more, constructive mutual opportunities."
--Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., Curator, Museum of Modern Art, NYC, 1962
Reflections by Colleagues | Department Chairs | Public Officials
