Can large landscape infrastructure projects deliver ecological transformation better than their industrial predecessors?
By Robert Levinthal and Richard Weller
Courtesy Robert Levinthal.
For nearly a century,a new breed of megaproject has gone unrecognized, and it is now proliferating. These projects, which we have named “mega-eco projects,” are different from old-school megaprojects in important ways: They seek to address biodiversity loss, land degradation, and climate change while simultaneously improving the living conditions of the planet’s now eight billion inhabitants. We have documented nearly 250 of these mega-eco projects currently under construction and believe there is a big opportunity for the profession of landscape architecture to participate in them and better fulfill its mandate to steward the land.Continue reading The Mega-Eco Age→
A new podcast aims to demystify the Green New Deal and its implications for the profession.
By Anjulie Rao
José Alfredo Ramírez.
Since Senator Edward J. Markey and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Green New Deal (GND) house resolution to Congress in 2019, architecture and landscape architecture educators have been teaching emerging designers to grapple with the possibilities of a carbon-neutral future outside the formal landscape practice (see “The Year of the Superstudio,”LAM, April 2022). Faculty are educating students on the interconnected systems related to economic policy, social movements, and the built environment, effectively blurring boundaries between areas of expertise.Continue reading Listen To Reasons→
A review of Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation by Rosetta S. Elkin.
By Jennifer Wolch
Tree planting campaigns are widely seen as a nature-based solution to a variety of environmental challenges. Trees can absorb carbon emissions, halt desertification, protect biodiversity, cool urban heat islands, and redress environmental injustice.
In California’s wine country, a landscape architect helps farmers and residents prepare for wildfires.
By Jennifer Reut
Working with homeowners on design templates was a way to support those who had lost homes to wildfires. Courtesy Christie Jarvis/Ann Baker Landscape Architecture.
Having grown up in Northern California, Ann Baker remembers the region’s wine country before it was dotted with tasting rooms and destination spas. Baker often visited her grandparents, the Solaris, at Larkmead Vineyards, the historic winery and vineyards that have been in her family since the mid-20th century. “As a kid, I always was going out to Larkmead because that was their home, and we always had big family gatherings there and played games on the lawn and had ravioli for Thanksgiving, and then the turkey and everything else,” she says. Continue reading Together for the Terroir→
The park uses trees and topography to screen the adjacent elevated freeway. Image courtesy Peter Vanderwarker Photography.
Traveling into Boston on the elevated section of Interstate 93, a small pop of green is visible among the swath of industry in Charlestown’s Hood Park. Designed by Offshoots, Inc., in conjunction with Elkus Manfredi Architects, that green dot is known as Hood Bike Park. Continue reading Pocket Ecologies→
Falon Mihalic’s sculpture charts the atmospheric forces that bind us.
By Zach Mortice
The color palette used in Windbloom was determined by the average wind direction for the entire year. Image by Falon Land Studio.
Windbloom, a 12-foot-high sculpture and pavilion under construction near Houston by the artist and landscape architect Falon Mihalic, will give physical form to ephemeral weather processes—specifically, which way the wind blows. The site-specific piece will map the direction of local wind, and its biomorphic qualities will reflect the vitality and energy of the Gulf Coast skies it surveys. Continue reading Windbloom Maps the Breeze→
In early August 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation declared the first ever Tier 1 shortage for the Colorado River, based on the agency’s projection that Lake Mead would drop below a threshold of 1,075 feet above sea level in January. Water levels in the river’s two main reservoirs—Lake Powell (behind Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona) and Lake Mead (behind Hoover Dam on the Arizona–Nevada border)—are now at their lowest since they were filled and flows in the river have declined. Continue reading Tier Drops→
The Magazine of the American Society of Landscape Architects
