Robert Chipman, ASLA is a landscape architect and product designer working in Austin since the early 1980s. A graduate of Michigan State University, he joined the early days of the planning and landscape architecture firm of RVi in 1984. In 1989 he formed RCLA, Inc and now is semi-retired from private practice, one which included a history of product design work for the public space furnishing company Landscape Forms, designing furniture with them since 1990. Notably, the Chipman line of site furnishings continues to be one of the largest selling lines for Landscape Forms. In addition to the IDEA award-winning Chipman chair, he has designed over 40 other products for Landscape Forms including the Verona chair, Plainwell, Wellspring and Austin lines of benches and litter receptacles, the Catena chair and tables, Sorella planters, and the Solstice umbrellas, which was a winner of IDEA Gold and Best of NeoCon awards. His latest design is the Generation50 line, which celebrated 50th year of the company.
In addition to product design, he has had a long career of collaborations with notable landscape architects, who engage him for his conceptual design insights and visual communication skills. Bob has contributed to a multitude of award-winning projects, all while “flying under the radar” to some extent. These collaborations include working with firms in Michigan, Colorado, Virginia, Hawaii and Arizona, but mostly in Texas. He also continues to individually serve a few private clients with design and planning consultation, again somewhat below the radar of public notice.
In the early 2000s he was part of the freehand drawing revival and encouraged hand drawing throughout many annual ASLA national conferences, as one of the leaders of the Sketch! field session series for over 12 years. As an early proponent of digital hand drawing on pen-interactive computer screens Bob introduced landscape architects and students to these techniques through presentations at regional and national ASLA conferences, student workshops and publications including Freehand Drawing and Discovery, with James Richards and Field Sketching for Environmental Designers, with Chip Sullivan. He continues to do this today and feels hand drawing is essential for the design process.
In 2011 he became a founding member of the Michigan State University Landscape Architecture Alumni Advisory Board, and has remained active there, establishing the LA Innovation Fund endowment and engaging with students to promote hand drawing and thinking methods, including an adjunct overseas professorship. His commitment to our future generations of landscape architects is one of his proudest missions.
From a more hobby related perspective has also been a long-time mountaineering enthusiast, a rock climber since his teenage years. Along with this love for mountain exploration is a similar love for watercolor painting, and he developed a technique for high-country painting techniques which he terms ‘thin air painting’, carrying ultralight watercolor gear and homemade panoramic accordion watercolor folios to remote summits to record scenes rarely seen by the typical plein air painter. His landscape paintings try to capture the spirit of the place, whether on a high summit or in the low country.
