[1] Beginning his career in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, in 1949, Halprin often collaborated with a local circle of modernist architects on relatively modest projects.

These figures included William Wurster, Joseph Esherick, Vernon DeMars, Mario J. Ciampi, and others associated with UC Berkeley.

[4]: 2  Being Jewish,[5][6] after finishing Poly Prep at 16, he went to Israel on a kibbutz for three years near what is today the Israeli port city of Haifa.

[8] While at Wisconsin, his wife Anna convinced Halprin to visit Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's studio in Wisconsin, which in turn sparked Halprin's initial interest in architecture;[7] after he left Talesin, he went to the school library, where he found and was inspired by Christopher Tunnard's Gardens in the Modern Landscape.

Returning to school the following Monday, he spoke with the department head of horticulture, who directed him to the landscape architecture group upstairs, where he met Professor Franz Aust.

[4]: 5–6  There he earned a second bachelor's degree (in landscape architecture, awarded 1942), where his professors included architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer.

[9] After his discharge from military service, Halprin joined the firm of San Francisco landscape architect Thomas Dolliver Church.

When Halprin introduced himself to Church, he was hired immediately and told "I'm going to pay you more than usual, but I don't want you to come back every two seconds and ask for more money.

Halprin's work is marked by his attention to human scale, user experience, and the social impact of his designs, in the egalitarian tradition of Frederick Law Olmsted.

Halprin's final three projects were all completed in 2005: the Letterman Digital Arts Center (for George Lucas), the approach to Yosemite Falls, and the amphitheatre at Stern Grove.

"[2]: 153–154  The interplay of perspectives informed projects which encompassed urban parks, plazas, commercial and cultural centers and other places of congregation:[2]: 154