July 17, 2018 by LAM Staff
BY ZACH MORTICE
“Altitudes” reorients formerly disused ecologies for the production of local cash crops, organized vertically in the Selva Central region of Peru. Image courtesy Openfabric.
The coffee production industry is a “global economy with a local ecology,” says Francesco Garofalo of the landscape architecture studio Openfabric. The studio has a plan for a coffee-producing region of Peru that would align local cultivation practices with global distribution networks. Openfabric’s “Altitudes” plan steps back from coffee plantation monocultures to spread cash crop risk by encouraging production of a range of foodstuffs. The goal is to create more sustainable cycles of cultivation, production, and distribution.
The plan focuses on the Selva Central region of Peru, east of Lima, which straddles both the Andes and the Amazon River Basin. The local economy is intensely reliant on coffee production, but it’s a fragile and volatile market. Prices surge and plummet on a whim, vulnerable to small climatic shifts that can greatly affect yield. That makes life for the region’s coffee producers precarious.
And lately, temperatures in Selva Central have been rising because of climate change, causing Continue Reading »
Posted in CLIMATE, ECOLOGY, ECONOMICS, ENVIRONMENT, HABITAT, LAM ONLINE, PLANTS, RECREATION, REGION, RESEARCH, SOIL, SPECIES | Tagged agriculture, Altitudes, Amazon River Basin, Andes, cash crops, climate change, coffee, CSR Netherlands, Dutch Embassy in Peru, farming, FOOD, Francesco Garofalo, fruit, global trade, global warming, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, native plantings, Netherlands Enterprise Agency, Openfabric, Peru, Rotterdam, Selva Central, tourism, Zach Mortice | Leave a Comment »
July 12, 2018 by LAM Staff
BY RANDY GRAGG
Plans to string gondolas over American cities abound.
In the early 2000s, one of Portland, Oregon’s leading employers and research institutions, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), faced a steep, downhill battle. Sited on a hilltop, surrounded by unbuildable canyons and neighborhoods unwilling to yield another inch to expansion, OHSU’s nearest sizable hunk of developable land lay on the Willamette River less than a mile away—for a blue heron. Cars and buses contended with winding, traffic-snarled commutes of anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes.
A campus planner’s brain brightly blinked: Why not an aerial tram? Protests erupted, politicians tangled, and costs lurched $47 million over the earliest budget fantasy of $9.5 million. But in 2007, two sleek, bubble-shaped cars (their shiny artisanal shells carefully machine-hammered by craftsmen from Gangloff Cabins of Switzerland) began flying to and fro across the campus. Today, they ferry more than 50,000 riders per week to a 2.35-million-square-foot cluster of new OHSU buildings.
At the time, the tram was only the third urban transit ropeway system in America, after Telluride’s in Colorado and Roosevelt Island’s in New York. Now, however, proposals for urban tramways are becoming more prevalent. A consortium in Washington, D.C., is poised to launch a $1 million environmental impact study for an aerial connection between Rosslyn, Virginia, and Georgetown across the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., to bypass the clogged Key Bridge. New York is angling for two flights: a midtown connection to Roosevelt Island and Continue Reading »
Posted in CITIES, LAM MAGAZINE, NOW, PLANNING, TRANSPORTATION, VIEWS | Tagged aerial tram, Austin, Boston, Carol Mayer-Reed, DC, Gangloff Cabins, Gondola, Infrastructure, landsape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Mike Deiparine, New York, Oregon, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, Randy Gragg, Roosevelt Island, Sarah Graham, SCJ Alliance, Steven Dale, The Gondola Project, transit, Washington, Willamette River | Leave a Comment »
July 10, 2018 by LAM Staff
The things our art director, Chris McGee, hated to leave out of the current issue of LAM.
Image courtesy John Donnelly, ASLA/SCAPE.
From “Guardians of the Soil” in the July 2018 issue, about how tree grates enhance urban tree growth and soil quality.
“Geometric grates.”
–CHRIS MCGEE, LAM ART DIRECTOR
As always, you can buy this issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine at more than 700 bookstores, including many university stores and independents, as well as at Barnes & Noble. You can also buy single digital issues for only $5.25 at Zinio or order single copies of the print issue from ASLA. Annual subscriptions for LAM are a thrifty $59 for print and $44.25 for digital. Our subscription page has more information on subscription options.
Posted in LAM ONLINE, NOW, PHOTOGRAPHY, PLANTS, RESEARCH, SOIL, STREETS, WATER | Tagged Art Director's Cut, compaction, growth, Hood Design, infiltration, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Photos, SCAPE, soil, tree grates, trees, urban | Leave a Comment »
July 5, 2018 by LAM Staff
BY JANE BERGER
There’s a palm for just about any place you’re planting.
You can’t always get what you want—unless, that is, you’re into palms. Lisa Gimmy, ASLA, of Lisa Gimmy Landscape Architecture in Los Angeles, finds palms uniquely suited to small gardens, given small root balls that leave “a very tiny footprint on the ground.” One that Gimmy likes to use is the blue hesper or Mexican blue palm (Brahea armata), native to Baja California, Mexico, with stunning, silvery-blue, fan-shaped fronds and creamy white flower clusters that cascade down from the leaves. Gimmy selects palms for spatial characteristics first, then for texture, leaf color, and the character of the trunk. “They are like poems,” she says. “With the head up in the air, there’s really nothing else like it.” Gimmy also likes palms because they provide “instant gratification, and that’s very important in Southern California.”
Ray Hernandez, the president of the International Palm Society, told me a story about a friend who drives from Long Island, New York, to Florida every year to pick up specimens that will last for just the summer season. “The folks that live out in the Hamptons and have 10 zeros behind their bank account can afford to haul up a coconut palm or something hardier and plant it in their landscape, and Continue Reading »
Posted in CLIMATE, LAM MAGAZINE, NURSERY, PLANTS, SPECIES | Tagged acai, bismarck palm, black sugar palm, Botanics Wholesale, cabbage palmetto, California, California Fan Palm, cherry palm, Chinese Windmill Palm, Cindy Cline, clara palm, coconut palm, coconut palms, Craig Reynolds, date palm, Designing with Palms, European fan palm, fan palm, flamethrower palm, Flora Grubb Gardens, Florida, habitat, International Palm Society, Jane Berger, Jason Dewees, Jeff Searle, Jesse Bergman, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Lisa Gimmy, Lisa Gimmy Landscape Architecture, Mesopotamia, Mexican blue palm, Mike Tevelonis, monocots, needle palm, palm oil, palms, plantings, plants, queen palm, Rainforest Collection, Ray Hernandez, roots, royal palm, Satake palm, Saw Palmetto, sealing wax palm, southern jelly palm, teddy bear palm, thatch palms, trees, Tropical, wax palms, Wertimer + Cline Landscape Architects, yellow butterfly palm | Leave a Comment »
July 3, 2018 by LAM Staff
As landscape design coalesces more and more around an infrastructural and regenerative mandate, there’s been less emphasis on what is perhaps the most fundamental (and broadly shared) conception of what landscape architecture is: the aesthetic arrangement of plantings. That’s the view of a recent symposium held at the University of California, Berkeley’s Landscape Architecture + Environmental Planning department, organized by the professor emeritus of architecture Marc Treib. The Aesthetics of Planting Design symposium, held February 17–18, invited landscape architects and historians to lecture on a topic that’s been lately marginalized by sustainability, resilience, and social justice. In his introduction, Treib begins by questioning the notion that “good morals automatically yield good landscapes,” though he emphasizes that all landscapes have a dual responsibility to both art and beauty, as well as resiliency and conservation. While planting aesthetics are most commonly addressed in small gardens, according to Treib, it’s seldom discussed at a civic (or larger) scale—though notable exceptions include the designers invited to lecture at this very event. This international group of presenters includes Peter Walker, FASLA; Christine Ten Eyck, FASLA; Andrea Cochran, FASLA; and Kate Cullity.
You can watch the symposium lectures here.
Posted in GARDENS, LAM ONLINE, PARKS, PLANTS, SAN FRANCISCO, UNIVERSITY | Tagged Aesthetics, Aesthetics of Planting Design, Andrea Cochran, Berkeley, Christine Ten Eyck, Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, Kate Cullity, LAMcast, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Marc Treib, Morality, Peter Walker, planting, RESILIENCE, Social Justice, Sustainability, Symposium, University of California | 1 Comment »
July 2, 2018 by LAM Staff
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It’s the beginning of July, which means the latest issue of LAM is here! You’ll find these stories inside:
FOREGROUND
Urban Scanner (Interview)
Shannon Mattern’s book, Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media, uncovers the way information has shaped our cities.
The Hole Story (Parks)
Hornsby Quarry in New South Wales was thought too big to fill and too unsafe to leave open.
Now it could be a park.
Palms Out (Plants)
Palm trees may be iconic of Miami or Los Angeles, but they can
thrive in more—and colder—places than you may think.
FEATURES
The Old and the Neutral
In New Orleans, Hargreaves Associates weaves the hopeful future into
the industrial past in Crescent Park.
Two London Squares and a Theory of the Beige Hole
Sleek, tidy, generic: a critique of Fitzroy Place and Rathbone Square, two privately owned
public spaces in London’s West End.
Balancing Act
In a wetter world, how do we weigh the need to adapt to the future
against the imperative to preserve the past?
All this plus the regular Now and Goods columns. The full table of contents for July can be found here.
As always, you can buy this issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine at more than 700 bookstores, including many university stores and independents, as well as at Barnes & Noble. You can also buy single digital issues for only $5.25 at Zinio or order single copies of the print issue from ASLA. Annual subscriptions for LAM are a thrifty $59 for print and $44.25 for digital. Our subscription page has more information on subscription options.
Keep an eye out here on the blog, on the LAM Facebook page, and on our Twitter feed (@landarchmag), as we’ll be posting July articles as the month rolls out.
Credits: “Two London Squares and a Theory of the Beige Hole,” londonsurvival/JOEHOOVER (londonsurvival.wordpress.com); “The Old and the Neutral,” Timothy Hursley; “Balancing Act,” Newport Restoration Foundation/Ashley Braquet; “Palms Out,” Botanics Wholesale; “The Hole Story,” Hornsby Shire Council; “Urban Scanner,” Michael K. Chen and Justin Snider, Michael K. Chen Architecture.
Posted in CITIES, ENVIRONMENT, FEATURES, HABITAT, INTERVIEW, LAM ONLINE, OCEANS, PARKS, PEOPLE, PLANTS, PRESERVATION, RECREATION, REGION, REGULATIONS, RESEARCH, RESILIENCE, SAN FRANCISCO, SANDY, SHORELINE, SOIL, SPECIES, STREETS, STUDENTS, TECH, UNIVERSITY, WATER | Tagged book, climate change, Code and Clay, Crescent Park, Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media, Fitzroy Place, flooding, Hargreaves Associates, Hornsby Quarry, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, London, New Orleans, palms, Park, Preservation, Rathbone Square, sea-level rise | Leave a Comment »
June 28, 2018 by LAM Staff
As part of an ongoing effort to make content more accessible, LAM will be making select stories available to readers in Spanish. For a full list of translated articles, please click here.
Click above for a full PDF of the translated text with English text available below.
BY JONATHAN LERNER / PHOTOGRAPHY BY ADAM WISEMAN
One bright December day, Mario Schjetnan, FASLA, was ushering a visitor around Mexico City’s historic Chapultepec Park, where his firm, Grupo de Diseño Urbano (GDU), has been enacting subtle renovations for nearly a decade and a half. He detoured, though, to show something that has not required the firm’s intervention. It was a concrete sump, perhaps five meters square, three meters deep, and open on top. It is the terminus of an aqueduct, completed in 1951, that brings water from 60 kilometers away through a tunnel under a mountain range. At the time, the city’s population had more than doubled in two decades, to three million thirsty souls. This new aqueduct must have seemed like deliverance. (Today, the population of the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico, comprising the city proper plus 41 contiguous municipalities, numbers more than 21 million.)
The sump, whose function was really just to hold water before it was piped into four enormous tanks buried nearby, was treated reverentially. Sheltered within a temple-form building, the depression’s walls and floor were painted by Diego Rivera in a fantastical narrative called Water, Origin of Life. The inlet seems to pour through the hands of Tlaloc, the Aztec god of floods and droughts. Swirling around the floor and up the walls are life forms of increasing complexity. There are an ur-man and ur-woman, and depictions of everyday people using water (swimming, sipping, irrigating gardens), of workers jackhammering rock, and of giant pipes and valves. When the sump was actually used, the view through water surely added a vitalizing shimmer, but water was destroying the mural. Eventually the flow was rerouted and the painting restored.
Now Schjetnan pointed to where Rivera had portrayed a gathering of two dozen men in modern dress, some in hard hats, some in suits; on a table before them is a sheaf of blueprints. “The engineers who built the aqueduct,” he said respectfully, Continue Reading »
Posted in BROWNFIELDS, CITIES, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, FEATURES, GARDENS, LAM MAGAZINE, OFFICE, PARKS, PLANNING, PLANTS, RESILIENCE, SECURITY, TRANSLATED, WATER | Tagged aqueduct, aquifer, bioswales, botanical garden, brownfield, channels, Chapultepec Park, chinampa, Cistern, civic space, coniferous cloud forest, deciduous tropical forest, Desert, Diego Rivera, disuse, elevation, elevation change, Felipe Correa, floating garden, fountains, Garden, greenhouses, Grupo de Diseño Urbano, Harvard GSD, industrial properties, irrigation, Jonathan Lerner, La Mexicana, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Louise Noelle, Mario Schjetnan, Master of Landscape Architecture in Urban Design, metro system, Mexico, Mexico City, National Workers’ Housing Fund Institute, New Santa Fe, oil refinery, orchid, orchidarium, Parque Bicentenario, planter, plaza, pool, rainwater, ramps, Refinería, rehabilitation, SECURITY, sewage, signage, skatepark, stormwater, sump, Tecnoparque, temperate wetland, Tenochtitlán, terrace, tropical evergreen forest, volcanic stone, wastewater, Water, water net negative, water net zero, Water Origin of Life, Wells, xeric scrubland | Leave a Comment »
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