April 19, 2018 by Jennifer Reut
As part of an ongoing effort to make content more accessible, LAM will be making select stories available to readers in different languages. 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 JENNIFER REUT / IMAGES BY SARA ZEWDE
There are a number of arresting images in Sara Zewde’s proposal for a memorial at Valongo Wharf in Rio de Janeiro, but my favorite is the one with the water. In it, ghostly figures in white are faded back over a scrim of water overlaid on the sea. Above their heads is a diagram of points and lines that ricochet out from a dense cluster triangulating across the sky. The palette is one of muted blues and grays. It feels both transcendent and somber.
The diagram comes from one of the spatial analyses that Zewde did on samba, the distinctly Brazilian musical form with African roots that lives in the city’s streets and squares. It depicts the roda de samba, an informal dance circle of musicians and spectators who become musicians. The character of samba is both sad and happy, a shout of joy and a lamentation.
In July 2017, the Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site in Rio de Janeiro became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Zewde helped write the nomination, and her ideas are threaded through the descriptions. Recognized for “Outstanding Universal Value,” for its material, spiritual, and cultural significance, the wharf was and is the central element in a landscape that profoundly shaped the history of the Western Hemisphere: the built environment of slavery. Continue Reading »
Posted in CITIES, FEATURES, HEALING GARDENS, LAM MAGAZINE, MEMORIAL, OCEANS, PARKS, PEOPLE, PLANNING, PLANTS, RESEARCH, SPECIES, STREETS, STUDENTS, WATER | Tagged African diaspora, Afro-Brazilian, Anita Berrizbeitia, archaeology, baobab trees, Brazil, Brazilian Pavilion, Cais do Valongo, Circuit of African Heritage, city planning, commemoration, Ficus, GGN, Giovanni Harvey, Harvard GSD, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional, Instituto Rio Patrimônio da Humanidade, Landscape Architecture Foundation, memorial, MIT, Monticello, Mulberry Row, National Trust for Historic Preservation, New Orleans, Olmsted Scholar fellowship, Olympics, plants, Porto Maravilha, racial justice, Richmond, Richmond Slave Trail, Rio de janeiro, Rob Nieweg, roda de samba, samba, Sara Zewde, Shockoe Bottom, slave port, slave trade, slavery, Social Justice, South America, time, UNESCO World Heritage Site, Valongo Wharf, Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site, Venice Biennale, Virginia, West Africa, western architecture, Wharf, Whitney Plantation Museum | Leave a Comment »
April 19, 2018 by LAM Staff
University of Virginia Landscape Architecture Chair Bradley Cantrell, ASLA, sees the future of landscape design as a spectrum of interactions between technologies that sense the environment, model and simulate it, and then finally affect the physical world—all without constant human input and monitoring. As argued in his March 13 LAM Lecture (and in his recent book Responsive Landscapes, written with Justine Holzman, ASLA), the future of landscape architecture is one of designing protocols for how natural systems behave, and tuning these algorithms and eventually the land itself, thus loosening the stranglehold static and monofunctional infrastructure has on the planet. “It’s not about us controlling every aspect,” he says. “It’s about us setting a range of ways those behaviors can act within.”
Cantrell’s research is grounded in the previous century’s cutting-edge modeling and simulation methods, like the Army Corp of Engineers Mississippi River Basin Model in Clinton, Mississippi, which modeled the entire rivershed, scaled down to a mere 200 acres. From there, Cantrell details contemporary research that is equal parts computational and material, honing ever more granular data points toward more accurate models. For example, there’s USC Assistant Professor Alexander Robinson’s Office of Outdoor Research, Landscape Morphologies Lab work, which uses an articulated robot arm to scrape out dust-mitigating landforms at California’s Owens Lake. Cantrell’s own inquiries involve test bed river basin models that deposit sediment via the variable flow of water, which he has been able to manipulate as though it were a geologic 3-D printer, expanding and cutting back sediment deposit “land” where it’s desired. The resulting topographies are scanned and converted into point-cloud maps.
Cantrell’s approach pushes landscape architecture’s prevailing infrastructure fixation until it ricochets out of the physically imposing world of concrete and culverts and into abstract data, underpinning the omnipresent ways we reengineer ecologies with quantitative facts. The biggest challenge for modeling and simulating dynamic environments, Cantrell says, is not gathering all the requisite data, but getting it to interact in a way that matches reality. At its core, it’s a call for new levels of observational rigor: first, to observe all the factors that make an ecosystem function, and then to understand how those factors work together to create a landscape.
Posted in ASLA, CLIMATE, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, LAM ONLINE, PLANNING, REGION, SHORELINE, SOIL, TECH, UNIVERSITY, WATER | Tagged Army Corp of Engineers, automation, Bradley Cantrell, California, Clinton, Computation, digital modeling, Dust Mitigation, ecosystem, Infrastructure, Justine Holzman, LAM Lecture, LAMcast, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Mississippi, Mississippi River Basin Model, model, Owens Lake, Responsive landscapes, Robotics, simulation, technology, topography, University of Virginia, USC Morphology Lab | 1 Comment »
April 18, 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 different languages. 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 DANIEL ELSEA
Paris “is still a crucible, still a focal point.” These are words written by Henri Lefebvre, the philosopher and sociologist best known for his insights regarding urban development, power, and the organization of space in cities. He wrote these words in his seminal work The Production of Space as the dust was still settling from the trauma of the 1968 revolts that rocked the city. His words previewed a French modern tradition meant to inject gusto in the city—the grand projet. In the 1970s and 1980s came a string of grands projets: from great new cultural institutions with muscular buildings to match (Centre Pompidou, Musée d’Orsay) to a corporatist paradise for French multinationals (the La Défense business district). The inauguration of grands projets continued apace through the 1990s with loud echoes of France’s global reach (Jean Nouvel’s Institut du Monde Arabe and Musée du Quai Branly) and a rather large park by Bernard Tschumi (Parc de la Villette). With their strong design pedigree and a dose of radicalism, these seductive projects are a bursting of the French id, and they’ve been good to French designers.
Crucially, grands projets involve heavy public sector backing. It is in this tradition that Paris has embarked on major regeneration projects around the Périphérique, the ring road around the edge of Paris proper. Three significant new neighborhoods are being built at the moment, and each of them features a large public park at its heart, the Grand Parc de Saint-Ouen, the Parc Martin Luther King, and Parc de Billancourt, designed by either Agence Ter or Atelier Jacqueline Osty, Parisian landscape architects known for their large-scale civic projects with a growing international profile. Ter recently won the competition to overhaul Ricardo Legorreta’s Pershing Square in Los Angeles.
The parks anchor massive regeneration projects delivered via public–private partnerships, or P3s, in which private developers collaborate with the state to deliver whole new neighborhoods and a significant expansion to Greater Paris’s housing supply. But these are not the P3s you might know. The public sector retains a majority share of ownership in the delivery vehicles set up for each. In France, one P is more important than the other two. Continue Reading »
Posted in CITIES, FEATURES, LAM MAGAZINE, PARKS, PLANNING, RESIDENTIAL, TRANSLATED, VIEWS | Tagged 2017 Landezine International Landscape Award, affordable housing, Agence TER, Atelier Jacqueline Osty, Bertrand Delanoë, Boulogne-Billancourt, cherry trees, Clichy-Batignolles, Daniel Elsea, farming plots, flood, France, French, French garden, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, Grand Parc de Saint-Ouen, Grand Paris regional Métropole, grand projet, Henri Bava, housing, Ile Seguin Rives de Seine, immigrants, Jacqueline Osty, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Olivier Philippe, Olympics, P3, Parc de Billancourt, Parc Martin Luther King, Paris, PARKS, Périphérique, poverty, public–private partnerships, ring road, Saint-Ouen, Séquano, Seine River, Seine-Saint-Denis, Suburb, Turenscape, ZAC des Docks | 1 Comment »
April 17, 2018 by zachmortice
BY ZACH MORTICE
Images are the work of invited panel participants as noted. Collage courtesy UVA School of Architecture.
A UVA panel looks for ways landscape can lead the way in a city shaken by intolerance.
The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017, welcomed white supremacy, resulted in the murder of a counterprotester, Heather Heyer, and changed that city and a great many residents and members of the University of Virginia (UVA) community. There were torch burning, Nazi symbols, and chants of “Jews will not replace us” in the public spaces of what’s often painted as an idyllic Southern college town. That dichotomy will be the topic of a panel and presentation moderated by the UVA Architecture Assistant Professor Elgin Cleckley at UVA later this week. “Landscape Perspectives for Future Publics” will gather eight landscape designers, academics, and writers to present their visions of Charlottesville’s future and to consider the landscape implications of race. The presentation will occur on April 20 from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at UVA’s Campbell Hall.
Presenters will offer rapid-fire imagery illustrating past/present/future triptychs for Charlottesville.
Participants will include: Continue Reading »
Posted in HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, HISTORY, LAM ONLINE, MEMORIAL, PEOPLE, UNIVERSITY | Tagged A12, Alexa Bush, Alt-Right, Amber Wiley, Azzurra Cox, Campbell Hall, Charlottesville, Elgin Cleckley, Frank Dukes, Garnette Cadogan, heather heyer, Kofi Boone, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Landscape Perspectives for Future Publics, memorial, monuments, panel, presentation, racism, Sara Zewde, Unite the Right, University of Virginia, UVA, UVA School of Architecture, Virginia, Walter Hood, White Supremacy, Zach Mortice | Leave a Comment »
April 12, 2018 by LAM Staff
BY WENDY GILMARTIN
Ensuring project integrity over the long term takes tact and tenacity.
After months and possibly years of design development, on-site meetings, contractor discussions, submittal reviews, and long days drafting construction documents, the project is finally unveiled, the ribbon is cut, and handover completes the timeline. Or not? The time after a turnover can become its own stand-alone phase after all else is completed. How do firms ensure plants will be cared for, gutters cleaned, controls checked at the appropriate times, and that there are enough (or any) return visits accounted for in the fee? Three firms in different regions explain their approaches to maintenance and client relationships. Interviews have been edited and condensed. Continue Reading »
Posted in LAM MAGAZINE, MAINTENANCE, OFFICE, PRACTICE, THE CLIENT | Tagged 3north, Andrea Almond, behavior mapping, Brad McCauley, Brooke Whalen, budget, data, education, Hana Ishikawa, irrigation, Jay Hugo, KTUA, Kurt Carlson, landcape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape contractors, landscape design, maintenance, Monroe Park, Monroe Park Conservancy, Postoccupancy, PRACTICE, private sector, private-sector donations, public sector, Site Design Group, soil, Stephen Nunez, survey, Virginia Commonwealth University, Wendy Gilmartin | Leave a Comment »
April 10, 2018 by LAM Staff
The things our art director, Chris McGee, hated to leave out of the current issue of LAM.
Photo by Jerry Bauer.
From “Battered, But Not Broken” by Timothy A. Schuler in the April 2018 issue, about the consoling post-hurricane recovery of Puerto Rico’s El Yunque National Forest.
“Vegetation devastation.”
–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 ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, LAM ONLINE, NOW, PHOTOGRAPHY, PLANTS, RESILIENCE, SHORELINE, SPECIES, WATER | Tagged Art Director's Cut, damage, Disaster, El Yunque National Forest, forest, Hurricane, Hurricane Maria, International Institute of Tropical Forestry, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Puerto Rico, recovery, Timothy Schuler, trees, tropical forest, vegetation | Leave a Comment »
April 5, 2018 by LAM Staff
BY STEPHEN ZACKS
An expansive park at the foot of the Kremlin helped drive a series of revolutionary improvements to the Russian capital.
At Zaryadye Park in central Moscow, a procession of Eurasian birch trees, grasses, and shrubs winds downhill from a glass-encrusted outdoor amphitheater that tops the new Philharmonic Hall, framing photogenic views of the candy-colored cupolas of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. The park’s verdant terrain folds onto the rooftops of five scalloped pavilions that shelter a botanical display, an educational center, a food court, and a screening room that plays an immersive 3-D film on Russian history. The park, which covers 32 acres, stretches to the edge of Red Square, and even adds 11 square feet to the square that was uncovered during excavation. The pavilions, with their vegetated roofs, and most of the park’s terrain sit atop a 430-car underground parking garage. To keep the whole landscape in place, a geocell soil-stabilization system rests on top, anchoring granite pavers on pedestrian pathways that stretch onto an arching, boomerang-shaped overlook that cantilevers and hovers over the Moskva River. Here visitors of all ages and groups compulsively photograph themselves against the backdrop of the Kremlin and the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building, one of the Stalinist high-rises that define Moscow’s skyline.
Zaryadye Park is an entertaining landscape intended as a spectacular place, a special attraction, and a free public space—a term that Russian architects agree had almost no precedent in the language before a series of convergences brought the park into being. Continue Reading »
Posted in BROWNFIELDS, CITIES, GREEN ROOFS, LAM MAGAZINE, PARKS, PLANNING, RECREATION, STREETS, THE BACK, UNIVERSITY, WATER | Tagged 2012 Moscow Biennial of Architecture., Alexander Mamut, Anna Kamyshan, Bolotny Island, Buromoscow, Center for Contemporary Architecture, Central Park Conservancy, Charles Renfro, Citymakers, civic space, Denis Leontiev, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Djao-Rakitine, Dmitry Medvedev, Ed Uhlir, Eugene Asse, Friends of the High Line, Friends of Zaryadye Park, Gehl Institute, Gorky Park, Hargreaves Associates, Kapkov Revolution, Khokhlovskaya Square, kiosks, Kitay-gorod, Krymskaya Embankment, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, language, Lubyanka Square, Mary Margaret Jones, Millennium Park, Moscow, Moscow Architecture School, Moskva River, My Street, Park, pavilions, Petr Kudryavtsev, politics, Project Meganom, Public space, Red October chocolate factory, Rossiya Hotel, Russia, Sergei Kapkov, Sergei Tchoban, Sergey Adonyev, Sergey Kuznetsov, Sergey Sobyanin, shrubs, sidewalks, Snøhetta, Stephen Zacks, streetscape, Strelka Institute, Strelka KB, trees, Triumfalnaya Square, Tverskaya Street, Union of Russian Architects, Varvara Melnikova, Vladimir Putin, West 8, Wowhaus, Yekaterina Maleeva, Yury Luzhkov, Zaryadye Park | 1 Comment »
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