June 13, 2019 by LAM Staff
BY AIDAN ACKERMAN, ASLA
The collaborative power of information-driven modeling software.
It’s a familiar scene in landscape architecture offices of all sizes: Around a conference table, a debate arises about the benefits and drawbacks of adopting a Building Information Modeling (BIM) work flow. The advantages of BIM adoption are rarely as obvious as the drawbacks. The popular architecture-centric Autodesk Revit software lacks functional landscape modeling tools, though it has a library of building objects such as floors, windows, doors, and roofs. Vectorworks, a more landscape-focused BIM software, does not exchange files directly with Revit, an obstacle that impedes digital collaboration with architects. Regardless of the software being used, the up-front costs of adopting BIM, such as software and training expenses, can quickly eat up profits. Yet despite these challenges, landscape architects are beginning to include BIM in their digital toolboxes. A recent survey by the American Society of Landscape Architects’ Digital Technology Professional Practice Network, with Benjamin George, ASLA, of Utah State University and Peter Summerlin, ASLA, of Mississippi State University, found that 21.8 percent of the 480 ASLA members who responded said their firm currently uses Revit, and 30.6 percent were interested in adopting a BIM work flow. Of those currently using Revit, 12.39 percent use the software daily, and 11.06 percent said it is extremely important to their work flow.
The “B” in BIM stands not for an architectural building but for the process of building something, an acronym that hints at BIM’s strengths in capturing the construction feasibility of a design project. BIM models contain information such as material assemblies, structural details, and quantities, all coordinated in a single file that can also be used to generate plans, sections, perspectives, and detail drawings. BIM is a popular and established work flow for architects: In a 2018 survey of more than 2,000 architecture firms, the American Institute of Architects found that 45 percent of architecture firms use BIM for billable projects, an increase from 40 percent in 2015. The largest area of growth in BIM adoption is among firms with fewer than 10 employees, which increased to 34 percent in 2017 from 28 percent in 2015. The report also shows that 71 percent of architecture project revenue comes from BIM projects, with no major differences across firm sizes or areas of specialization. With greater numbers of architects adopting BIM, landscape architects have begun to forge their own path toward this complex technology.
The main draw of using BIM for landscape architects lies not in its modeling prowess, but rather in the ways it enables communication among designers. Landscape architects who work with architects typically encounter frustration when it comes time to Continue Reading »
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Posted in ASLA, PRACTICE, RESEARCH, TECH | Tagged Aidan Ackerman, American Society of Landscape Architects’ Digital Technology Professional Practice Network, AutoCAD, Autodesk, Autodesk Civil 3D, Benjamin George, BIM, BIM 360, Building Information Modeling, Chris Golden, coding, communication, CRJA-IBI Group, detail drawings, File conversion, file interoperability, landarchBIM, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Lauren Schmidt, material assemblies, network, perspectives, Peter Summerlin, Phyllis Zhou, plans, programming, quantities, Revit, sections, sharing, Site Designer for Revit, software, structural details, three dimensions, two dimensions, Vectorworks, web-based | Leave a Comment »
June 11, 2019 by LAM Staff
BY NATE BERG
A landscape architect and a biologist team up to counter urban biodiversity loss.
A hawk glides overhead. An egret perches alongside a pedestrian walkway. Butterflies flutter in the foreground. From across the spectrum of the animal kingdom they appear in the drawings and renderings of modern architecture and landscape projects, hinting at a harmony between the designed space and the natural world. The projects, these animal cameos suggest, are not just urban developments, but healthy and diverse habitats.
“I won’t say it’s a lie, but these are big promises,” says Thomas Hauck, a Berlin-based landscape architect and a professor at the University of Kassel, in Germany. Hauck understands these images are meant to be aspirational, to show an idealized version of the designs they represent. But, he argues, sometimes too many illustrative liberties are taken “without evidence,” especially when urban development is more likely to destroy animal habitat than create it.
Hauck isn’t saying the animals should be taken out of the renderings. Rather, he wants to ensure animals actually show up once the project is built. To make that happen, Hauck has teamed up with a biologist from the Technical University of Munich named Wolfgang Weisser. Together, they’ve developed a theoretical design approach called Animal-Aided Design that seeks to counteract the ways development harms urban biodiversity by deliberately designing projects to accommodate animal species from the start. Through the careful targeting of species most likely to inhabit a given area, their approach provides the habitat requirements those species need to thrive throughout their life cycle.
“People hang up nest boxes and wonder why they’re empty,” Weisser says. “It’s because everything else is missing.” Continue Reading »
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Posted in BIRDS, CITIES, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, FEATURES, HABITAT, RESEARCH, SPECIES, WILDLIFE | Tagged AAD: Animal Aided Design, Animal-Aided Design, bats, Bavaria, biodiversity, biology, birds, Bogevischs Buero, breeding, Bundesamt für Naturschutz, conservation, Courtyard, Der Spiegel, design, design standards, drainage, drawing, ecosystem, entomologist, European hedgehog, facades, fauna, federal office of nature conservation, FOOD, Gemeinnützige Wohnungsbaugesellschaft, GEWOFAG, habitat, house sparrow, housing, Ingolstadt, insects, Katrin Hauth, Landesbund für Vogelschutz, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Munich, Nate Berg, nesting, rainwater, red admiral butterfly, rendering, roof, Rudolf Wittmann, Süddeutsche Zeitung, SPECIES, Stefan Feller, Studio Animal Aided Design, Technical University of Munich, Thomas Hauck, urban development, urban habitat, Wolfgang Weisser | 2 Comments »
June 10, 2019 by LAM Staff
Stave sections of trees native to Scotland, from a Scottish Gaelic alphabet. Image courtesy Laurel McSherry.
The Design with Nature Now conference at the University of Pennsylvania will celebrate the life and work of the pioneering landscape architect Ian McHarg this month with a slate of exhibitions and conference events held at the design school.
Among them will be an exhibition of works by the landscape architect and artist Laurel McSherry titled Laurel McSherry: A Book of Days that twins the valleys that defined Ian McHarg’s life—the River Clyde in his native Scotland and the Delaware in Philadelphia—and incorporates McSherry’s own meditative explorations of Glasgow through video, etchings, and sculpture. In this interview conducted by Lynn Marsden-Atlass, the executive director of the Arthur Ross Gallery, McSherry weaves a site-specific installation that encourages people to reconsider the prosaic landscapes that surround them.
Design with Nature Now takes place June 21–22, 2019, at the University of Pennsylvania. Laurel McSherry: A Book of Days will be on view from June 21 through September 15. Continue Reading »
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Posted in ART, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, PEOPLE, SHORELINE, UNIVERSITY, WATER | Tagged art school, Arthur Ross Gallery, Center for Advanced Textiles, circulation, Clydebank, Delaware River, Design with Nature Now, drawing, Exhibit, Fulbright Fellowship, GalGael Trust, Glasgow, hydrology, Ian McHarg, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Laurel McSherry, Laurel McSherry: A Book of Days, Lynn Marsden-Atlass, maps, McHarg Center, multidisciplinary, National Library of Scotland, Ordnance Survey map, Philadelphia, Rivers, Scots Gaelic, shipbuilding, site-specific, temporal, The Glasgow School of Art, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, The River Clyde, transect, trees, University of Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, walking, walks | Leave a Comment »
June 3, 2019 by LAM Staff
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FOREGROUND
Early Exposure (Education)
An Ohio middle school teacher is holding a class in landscape design to point
students toward possible careers.
The BIM That Binds (Tech)
For landscape architects who have crossed over to building information modeling,
collaboration with architects is considerably easier.
FEATURES
The Schoolyard Is Sick
The ecological designer Claire Latané believes much of student stress in public schools comes from the schools themselves—locked-down buildings and hard lots. She is on a collaborative mission to redesign them.
Creature Comforts
In Germany, a landscape architect and a biologist have developed an approach to invite animals into urban development projects. It involves providing all, not just some, of what species need as habitat.
Omni-Boss
Ursula Hoskins, ASLA, is the first landscape architect to run major capital projects at the New York Botanical Garden. Her latest project, the Edible Academy, addresses the problem of food security found right outside the garden gates.
All this plus the regular Now and Goods columns. The full table of contents for June 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 June articles as the month rolls out.
Credits: “The Schoolyard Is Sick,” Edmund Barr; “Creature Comforts,” Robert Bischer; “Omni-Boss,” Marlon Co/The New York Botanical Garden; “The BIM That Binds,” CRJA-IBI Group; “Early Exposure,” Haley Masey.
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Posted in BIRDS, CITIES, ECOLOGY, EDUCATION, ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT, GARDENS, HABITAT, HEALING GARDENS, HEALTHY COMMUNITIES, NEW YORK CITY, ONLINE ONLY, PARKS, RECREATION, RESEARCH, SCHOOLS, SPECIES, STUDENTS, TECH, WILDLIFE | Tagged animals, BIM, Claire Latané, commnunication, Edible Academy, food security, Germany, habitat, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, mental health, middle school, New York Botanical Garden, school, Ursula Hoskins, What's New | Leave a Comment »
May 28, 2019 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.
BY BRIAN BARTH
In many respects, we’ve entered a golden era of landscape architecture. The profession’s profile appears to be on the rise, as environmental crises become more urgent and unavoidable and landscape architects increasingly take on lead roles in major projects. Interest in stormwater management, habitat restoration, and the public realm has expanded dramatically in recent decades, driving demand for landscape architecture services. The industry took a hit during the Great Recession, but since 2012, the American Society of Landscape Architects’ quarterly survey of firms (which tracks billable hours, inquiries for new work, and hiring trends) has found consistently robust growth.
One would expect new recruits to flock to the profession as a result. But this is not the case.
The number of people working in the field of landscape architecture peaked at around 45,000 in 2006, then nose-dived to about 30,000 in 2013. The postrecession boost in demand for services, though welcome, did not translate into warm bodies at the office. By 2016, the most recent year for which Bureau of Labor Statistics data is available, landscape architecture employment had dropped below 25,000.
Student enrollment in landscape architecture programs has followed a similar trend, Continue Reading »
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Posted in ASLA, FEATURES, PRACTICE, STUDENTS, UNIVERSITY | Tagged Academy of Art University, accreditation, alumni, ASLA, ASLA Business Survey, BLA, boys club, Brian Barth, compensation, CompTIA, degree, DesignIntelligence, Douglas Smith, enrollment, gender, graduate survey, graduates, haggling, Harvard Graduate School of Design, information technology, international students, job interviews, job offers, Kansas State University, Kristopher Pritchard, landscape architect, Landscape Architectural Accreditation Board, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Louisiana State University, Mark Boyer, median income, MLA, online education, PRACTICE, race, ROI, salary, San Francisco, Stephanie Rolley, student debt, students, teaching | 5 Comments »
May 23, 2019 by LAM Staff
The things our art director, Chris McGee, hated to leave out of the current issue of LAM.
Image courtesy Mahan Rykiel.
From “Twice Bitten” in the May 2019 issue by Jared Brey, about Ellicott City, Maryland’s near-yearly run-ins with 1,000-year floods.
“Can removing historical structures help save lives?”
–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.
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Posted in ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, ONLINE ONLY, PARKS, PLANNING, PRESERVATION, SHORELINE, STREETS, WATER | Tagged Ellicott City, flooding, Jared Brey, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Mahan Rykiel, Maryland, Preservation, river | Leave a Comment »
May 21, 2019 by Jennifer Reut
BY JENNIFER REUT / PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE PLANTHUNTER BY DANIEL SHIPP
The Planthunter finds an audience searching for connections between people and plants.
The Planthunter, despite its adventuresome name, is not about seeking bromeliads in the wilds, except that it kind of is. A web publication and now a book just out from Timber Press, The Planthunter is a platform for a community of designers and artists who have congregated around the landscape designer and writer Georgina Reid, and her aspiration to create a space where the many shades of our relationship with gardening could be unpacked. The Planthunter is for those who seek not specimen plants but a place to question the culture of people and plants.
Reid is based in New South Wales, Australia. She began looking for ways to upend her thinking after she had been designing gardens for about a decade and found herself frustrated with the publications she was reading. “I just got to a point where I was asking a lot of questions about gardens and design,” Reid says. “If you had a gardening magazine, you were being very practical and very horticultural, and there didn’t seem to be room to explore the wider context of plants and gardens in relation to culture and in relation to art design.”
“But there were no real conversations happening around why we garden.” Continue Reading »
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Posted in BOOKS, ECOLOGY, ENERGY, GARDENS, HEALING GARDENS, PEOPLE, PHOTOGRAPHY, PLANTS, THE BACK | Tagged art, Australia, book, climate change, culture, Daniel Shipp, design, essays, Experimental, GARDENS, Georgina Reid, horticulture, images, Instagram, Jennifer Reut, landcape architecture, landscape architect, landscape design, mystery, New South Wales, New Zealand, Obsession, Orongo Station, plants, punk landscape architecture, Sydney, The Planthunter, Thomas Woltz, Thrift, Timber Press, Ugly | Leave a Comment »
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