Landscape Architecture News

Monday, September 16 2013

The Zabbaleen, a community of garbage collectors and recyclers, carve amazing Coptic Christian churches into the caves in Cairo. (inhabitat)

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

• Blowing up in the Twittersphere today: ASLA launches a new Landscape Architect’s Guide to Boston just in time for the ASLA meeting this November. (ASLA)

• Earlier last week, ASLA also launched a new guide on the health benefits of nature. (The Dirt)

• Greening Philly: Stormwater management takes center stage in Soak it Up!–the city’s interdisciplinary design competition. (The Field)

• City Parks Alliance takes a tour of one of the most park-poor cities in the nation: Los Angeles. (City Parks)

& RELATED

• This Friday, Park(ing) Day will transform hundreds of metered parking spots into public parks. (Parking Day)

• In the worst environmental disaster to ever hit Hawaii, a massive molasses spill is killing off thousands of fish. (NPR)

• Four reasons why protected bike lanes are great for business. (Streetsblog)

• Don’t want your post-industrial city to become the next Portlandia? Aaron Renn introduces Rust Belt Chic as an alternative urban revitalization method. (Urbanophile)

Happy Friday and Labor Day Weekend! August 30, 2013

Winner of the INDEX: Award 2013, this life-saving “smart” highway can charge electric vehicles on the go. (Inhabitat)

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

• Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates and BIG architects unveil their new designs for Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 6. (Curbed NY)

• Speaking of MVVA, here’s a cool time-lapse of their team setting up a massive site model for ‘A Gathering Place for Tulsa.’ (Youtube)

• ASLA’s Jared Green explains what we should expect from New York’s Queensway Park. (The Dirt)

• In celebration of the upcoming school year, LAF compiles seven LPS Case Study Briefs on school and campus projects. (Landscape Architecture Foundation)

& RELATED

• Talk about hidden depths. Scientists have discovered a massive canyon—twice as long as the Grand Canyon—beneath the Greenland ice sheet. (NPR)

• What if a cocktail could help build the world’s first underground park? (Inhabitat)

• Giving kids bicycles is a low-tech and fun way to effectively reduce drop-out rates in India. (The Atlantic)

Thursday, August 29 2013

DUTCH LANDSCAPES: Artist Mishka Henner finds art in the pixelated patterns overlaid onto censored government sites in Google Earth. (Co.Design)

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

• Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects takes on planting selection and design in their latest installment in the Green Team series. (Metropolis)

• The PBS gardening program GardenSMART features expert horticulturalists from fantastic garden locations every week. Most recently, they visited Battery Park City to focus on topics like soil testing and high quality compost as well as Brooklyn Bridge Park, where they explored plants ideal for a salt marsh and how to start a wetland garden. (GardenSMART)

• The 2013 Case Study Investigation (CSI) program came to a close on August 9 with a 1.5-hour information packed webinar. LAF released two of the presentations and encourages us to keep an eye out for more in the coming weeks. (Landscape Architecture Foundation)

• James Corner and Field Operations have just completed a $46.1 million seven-acre park in Santa Monica, CA. Architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne applauds the execution of the gently rolling landscape but criticizes Corner for soft-pedaling the design. (LA Times)

& RELATED

• Earlier this month I touched on agriculture-induced algae outbreaks in our waters. This time the Mediterranean coast is being invaded by an army of jellyfish because of overfishing and (probably) climate change. (NPR)

• China’s got a bad rap for environmental destruction and greenhouse gases. Here’s a fascinating inside look behind what Chinese factory owners really think about environmental protection and the reasons why. (chinadialogue)

• Kaid Benfield reminds us to not forget the peaceful meditative spaces in the rush to design lively and bustling places. (Switchboard)

• Streetfilms gives us yet another fantastic glimpse into the power of placemaking–this time in Montreal. I love the colors on the site furniture! (Streetfilms)

Wednesday, August 28 2013

Talk about a Sonic Bloom. Seattle’s psychedelic new solar-powered streetlights are 40-foot flowers that sing to passerbys. (Atlantic Cities)

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

• Penn State University’s MLA program achieves LAAB accreditation. (Stuckeman)

• Competition alert! The James Rose Center for Landscape Architectural Research and Design launches Suburbia Transformed 3.0, a new residential landscape design competition with a focus on sustainability. (The Dirt)

• Landscape architects pride themselves on the diversity of their skill sets–but why isn’t that diversity reflected in our demographic numbers? (OLIN)

• Explore the work and process of landscape architect Mikyoung Kim in this video interview conducted by Alex Ulam. (Landscape Architecture Magazine)

& RELATED

• The next time you park your car, please remember to look at your rear view mirror before opening the door. You could save a cyclist’s life. (Atlantic Cities)

• Writers for the garden and landscape design industry will meet for the first annual Garden Bloggers Conference in Atlanta, GA from September 22 - 24. (Urban Gardens)

• Mindblowing video of the massive Rim Fire burning near Yosemite National Park. (Skip to the 4:00 minute mark for a full view). Progress update: Rim Fire is 20% contained with a recent decline in wildfire activity across the nation. (NPR)

• An ecosystem like no other grows on the summit of an extinct volcano on Ascension island, one of the most remote places on earth. This man-made tropical forest challenges the typical standpoints on dichotomies like natives vs invasives and Nature vs garden. Very, very cool article. (Yale)

Lead Image by Dan Corson

Tuesday, August 27 2013

Think your rain gutters are too passé? Three Dresden artists transform their neighborhood gutters into a multi-story musical instrument. (Grist)

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

• Say hello to the next generation of landscape architects. This summer, middle schoolers in Georgia got a head start in the world of planning and landscape architecture in a week-long educational camp, ‘Designing Our World.’ (APA)

• The landscapes of the 21st century are moving towards a new ecological paradigm, trading in neat lawns for wild and vibrant native seed. Samuel Geer explores the paradigm shift and how to keep the momentum going. (The Field)

• The land of the midnight sun has a surprisingly robust public-private parks partnership in Anchorage. A symbiotic team of landscape architects, the Anchorage Park Foundation, community members and legislators help protect and develop the city’s 500,000 acres of parkland. (City Parks)

& RELATED

• Earthscape, a playground design/build firm, creates a fun, colorful playhouse using recycled doors and invites you to make one too. (playscapes)

• As a near-record wildfire continues to burn through Yosemite, the U.S. Forest Service wildfire spending surpassed $1 billion last week with many blaming climate change for the rise in spending in recent years. (Inhabitat)

• Tactical urbanism strikes again! The Dutch Cyclists’ Union wants to start an urban hitchhiking movement in Utrecht, where pedestrians can hitch a ride with passing cyclists. (Pop Up City)

lead photo via architectureartdesigns.com

Monday, August 25 2013

Playscapes looks at the work of Jeppe Hein, a Danish artist famous for reimagining the bench as a social and play sculpture. (playscapes)

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

• Hoerr Schaudt recaps six quick tips for designing a successful shade garden from Doug Hoerr’s recent article for Organic Gardening Magazine. (Hoerr Schaudt)

• The AGILE Landscape Project develops the CHAIR>bench, a type of secure moveable site furniture embedded with sensors to collect data on how much the space is used and the patterns in which users reconfigure the furniture. (AGILE Landscape)

• Designed by LandDesign landscape architects, Charlotte’s Romare Bearden Park is set to open over Labor Day as part of the city’s 2020 Vision Plan for downtown revitalization. (Arch Paper)

• Design Boom reminds us of Charles Jencks’ ‘Cells of Life,’ a massive land art installation completed in 2011 for the outdoor sculpture park Jupiter Artland. The configuration of the landscape draws inspiration from the cell cycle, particularly the process of mitosis. (Design Boom)

& RELATED

• California Governor Jerry Brown declares a state of emergency for San Francisco as the massive Rim Fire continues to burn out of control in Yosemite National Park. According to the Fire Tracker, over 130,000 acres of land has been destroyed so far with only 7% contained. (NPR)

• One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. After Barcelona banned graffiti, artist Francisco de Pajaro decided to get his fix for street art by rearranging and dressing up street trash into strange, otherworldly creatures. (Atlantic Cities)

• A 383-year old Endicott pear tree–one of the first fruit trees in America–is still alive and bearing fruit to this day. (Treehugger)

Thursday, August 22 2013

Did you know that the Mississippi River watershed is the fourth largest in the world? The National Atlas of the United States has created Streamer, an online exploration tool–it’s like Google Maps for creeks–that aims to help people learn more about where their water goes. (Co.Design)

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

• A psychedelic, interactive forest of lights takes over an empty factory in Eindhoven, Netherlands. (The Dirt)

• Landscape Forms announces their partnership with Brazilian company Kojima, marking a milestone in the company’s global growth strategy. The partnership makes Brazil Landscape Forms’ first major market outside North America. (Landscape Forms)

• Is the High Line coming to Queens, NY? WXY architecture + urban design and dlandstudio were recently selected to lead the design and feasibility plan to turn 3.5 miles of an abandoned railroad into the new QueensWay park. (Trust for Public Land)

• The Graham Foundation recently awarded $448,000 in grants to 40 projects by organizations! Among them: ‘Airport Landscape: Urban Ecologies in the Aerial Age,’ an exhibit curated by the GSD landscape architecture department chair Charles Waldheim and associate landscape architecture professor Sonja Dümpelmann. It will be open October 30 to December 19. (Harvard)

& RELATED

• Speaking of Graham Foundation Grant winners, the Design Observer’s Places Journal has also been awarded a grant! The grant will fund a series of in-depth articles, “History of the Present,” that focus on urban issues. (Places) 

• Urban planning takes on positive education reform through “mixed-use education,” a way of integrating educational spaces with other community uses. (Planetizen)

• Thanks to climate change, by 2050, coastal flooding could cost cities $60 billion a year… (Grist)

• And the situation won’t getting any better if China’s land use patterns don’t change. (Mother Jones)

Wednesday, August 21 2013

Recent architecture grad Hank Butitta converted an old school bus into a sleek and modern mobile home using wood recycled from an old gymnasium. And it’s gets even cooler: Hank his two buddies embarked on a 5,000 mile road trip across the U.S. on said bus. Check out their trip! (Inhabitat)

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

• A leaked draft report by the IPCC says that they are 95-percent certain that climate change is caused by human activity. (The Dirt)

• Donald Molnar, FASLA, writes a preview of the upcoming fourth edition to Anatomy of a Park, a series of lectures that seek to bridge the learning gap between landscape architects and park users. (The Field)

• Landscape architects are increasingly given their due as major leaders in complex urban issues. Starting with Chris Reed’s Flux City, a landscape architecture studio that focused on rising sea levels and climate change, Harvard hopes to further expand the issue into an interdisciplinary dialogue across the University. (Harvard)

& RELATED

• I’ve been raving about Pittsburgh ever since my first visit last year. I got used to the skeptical looks, but the rust belt city is increasingly winning over the hearts of many. On my dash recently: reasons why it’s a great city for biking and walking, a “best city” face-off between Pittsburgh and Portland, and how the Steel City plans to warm up winter with a great temporary arts program. 

• Bruce McVean of Movement for Liveable London recommends 16 must-read city books for all us urbanophiles out there. (This Big City)

• How a road diet can lead to successful placemaking: the redesign of Main Street in Hamburg, NY into a pedestrian friendly avenue dramatically increased the quality of life and brought the town back from the brink of death. As one resident says: if you build a place for cars, it will gather cars; but build it for people, and it will gather people. (NY Times)

Hey guys! Just wanted to let you all know that I’ve started writing for Inhabitat and it’s been pretty great. I’ve been busy with some other work and haven’t had time to contribute as much as I would like yet, but if you’re interested you can follow me on the site. Thanks!