There’s no swimming at Sugar Beach, but the crowds come anyway.
By Daniel Jost, ASLA
It’s 80 degrees Fahrenheit, or, as they say here in Toronto, a balmy 27 degrees. Stephanie McCarthy leans back in a white Adirondack chair and digs her feet into the sand. On Canada’s Sugar Beach she’s just a short walk from her downtown apartment, though as she sits in the shade of a pink umbrella, it seems a little unreal. “It feels like you’re somewhere tropical,” she says, “like a minivacation.” Continue reading Claude Cormier: How Sweet→
As the news of Claude Cormier’s death touched us, we look back to a profile we published in 2020. A remembrance of Cormier’s legacy and life is available on the Cultural Landscape Foundation website.
Claude Cormier, ASLA, designed bridges, which double as romantic viewing platforms, over the entrances to a pair of underground parking decks. Photo by Jean-François Savaria.
When Claude Cormier, ASLA, and I pull up to Dorchester Square in Montreal, a man is leaning against the grand fountain, with its three Victorian bowls, all painted a very Victorian shade of green, smoking a cigarette. When we get out of the car, I realize it’s not a cigarette, but a joint. Continue reading Claude Cormier: Hell of Fun→
Lone Oaks Farm had a master plan as ambitious as they come. Implementation has been rocky.
By Timothy A. Schuler
The cabins opened in summer 2023, but the site was cleared prior to construction. Image by Penny Russell.
From the beginning, the idea behind Lone Oaks Farm in Middleton, Tennessee, was ambitious. Acquired by the University of Tennessee (UT) in 2015, the 1,200-acre property was to be a new home for 4-H summer camps; offer hunter education programs and a world-class sporting clays course; host corporate retreats and private events; and serve as a model for ecological restoration and environmental conservation, all while continuing to operate as a working cattle farm. The goal was to connect people of all ages, especially youth, to the Tennessee landscape, which the farm would do through education, sport, hospitality, food, and agricultural science.Continue reading Form Follows Funding→
A Fresh look for the ASLA Awards issue emerges from dozens of almosts.
“I realized we needed to take a big step back and think about how we were presenting our awards to our readers. We were presenting them as one large object instead of individual objects. The main thing was that we needed a color structure that would allow the reader to jump around and know where they were.”
For the past 20 years, the places where President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed have been marked on Dallas’s Elm Street on the north side of Dealey Plaza by two white Xs—not as part of an official commemoration, but at the hands of what Mark Lamster, the architecture critic for the Dallas Morning News, describes as “assassination tourist guides.” “[They] come and spray-paint these really tawdry Xs on the ground, and every time the city tries to erase them, they just get spray-painted back there,” says Lamster, who began thinking about Dealey Plaza and its shortcomings in 2013, during the 50th anniversary of the assassination.Continue reading Creative Writing→
Terrain-NYC turns a bedrock cliff in the Bronx into a garden for all seasons.
By Zach Mortice
The entry courtyard creates an elevated terrace that allows residents to look out over the surrounding neighborhood. Courtesy Terrain-NYC Landscape Architecture PC.
Faced with the need for a meditative and richly planted landscape for an affordable and supportive housing project in the Bronx on top of exposed bedrock, Brian Green, a landscape architect at Terrain-NYC, looked to the other geologic formations in Manhattan, particularly in Central Park, and in the Bronx. What he noticed most were the ferns that grew in these places. Typically considered too delicate to take root in rock, they were surprisingly persistent. “They’ll find their way, somehow, into these little crevices,” he says.Continue reading Top of the Rock→
What does Dungeons & Dragons have in common with landscape architecture? More than you’d think.
Interview by Maci Nelson, Associate ASLA
When not working as a biochemist, Frank Tedeschi and fellow players gather around custom-built terrain models. Courtesy Frank Tedeschi.
Dungeons & Dragons is a tabletop role-playing game where imagination and strategy are the core of play. To participate, you must build a world that does not physically exist but must be understood by others. Dungeon Masters are similar to designers in that they design experiences for people and curate encounters specific to their players and their world for dynamic interactions. In this interview, Frank Tedeschi, a biochemist and the founder of Dead Box Games, discusses the interdisciplinary process of world-building and the way his professional training influences his game making, mirroring the efforts of designers to create spaces.Continue reading Gateway Games→
The Magazine of the American Society of Landscape Architects
