Firms are sharing project contracts and budgets more openly across teamsas a matter of staff engagement.
By Bradford McKee
Clockwise from top left: Paul Kissinger, FASLA, CEO, Kissinger Design, Dexter, Michigan, photo courtesy EDSA;Susannah Ross, ASLA, director, landscape architect, Agency Landscape + Planning, Cambridge, Massachusetts, photo courtesy Agency Landscape + Planning;Greg Tuzzolo, managing director, STIMSON, Cambridge, Massachusetts, photo by Garrett Stone;Jennifer Zell, ASLA, director of Los Angeles operations and director of Regenerative Design Studio, MIG, Los Angeles, photo by Evan Mather, FASLA.
Landscape architecture offices are competing for creative, productive talent in spheres much broader than their peer groups in other design offices. This means the stakes are higher to show commitment and earn it back among their staff and new recruits. Entrants to the profession these days show a desire, principals and practice consultants say, for genuine enrollment in their firms and to support the firm’s evolution. People want to know more and be able to ask more questions.Continue reading Who Needs To Know?→
In 2022, a group of 18 students at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) had the rare experience of designing and building their own school’s research facility. Rising 30 feet above a hillside site amid the dense forest canopy of Barcelona’s Collserola Natural Park, the Forest Lab for Observational Research and Analysis (FLORA) is a mass timber observation tower that will allow students to observe and catalog the park’s biodiversity, specifically the organisms that make their home in the forest canopy.Continue reading Close Encounters→
Revamping the landscape history curriculum to uproot racist histories.
By Timothy A. Schuler
Participants toured sites such as Piscataway Park and the National Colonial Farm. Photo by Andrea Roberts.
On the evening of June 11, 2020, amid mass protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Marc Miller, ASLA, tweeted: “It’s time y’all. Revive American landscape history and reboot it to reflect the long history of systemic racism that helps to make it.”Continue reading Past Imperfect→
Updated and expanded for 2023 grads, with more tech, more cult books, and a few surprising must-haves for the newly minted designer.
By the LAM Editorial Advisory Committee*
Well, it’s finally happened. You (or your family member/friend/roommate/mentee/colleague) have graduated from a landscape architecture program, and you’re ready to start your career as a design professional. Landing a job is first up, but there are tips and gear that can help you feel more prepared to start on your path. Continue reading 35 Perfect Gifts for Landscape Architecture Graduates→
Edited by B. Cannon Ivers; Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser, 2021; 512 pages, $34.99.
Reviewed by Gale Fulton, ASLA
A former Toronto brickworks, now a city dump, makes Jane Mah Hutton’s point to consider material afterlives. Courtesy City of Toronto Archives.
What does a 21st-century landscape architect need to know?
The question is daunting. At least it should be, in the field and especially for those of us in academia who are tasked with laying the foundation on which future landscape architects will continue to build throughout their careers. But determining which skills and what knowledge are essential in such an expansive discipline is elusive at best. The book 250 Things a Landscape Architect Should Know attempts an answer.Continue reading Book Review: The Rule Book→
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 memorial garden for a 12-year-old victim of police violence becomes a springboard for serving generations of children.
By Anjulie Rao / Photography by Sahar Coston-Hardy, Affiliate ASLA
Volunteers and staff from the Tamir Rice Foundation greet visitors at the garden’s unveiling.
I arrived at the Marion C. Seltzer Elementary School playground around 11:00 a.m., just before the day’s heat peaked. It was a Friday, and students were making the short commute between the elementary school and the Cudell Recreation Center, located just a stone’s throw northwest. A group of toddlers had gathered with their teachers—likely a preschool daycare—along a bench that bordered a butterfly garden.Continue reading The Butterfly Effect→
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