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Archive for the ‘MATERIALS’ Category

THE SCRIPTED SURFACE

Posted in CONSTRUCTION, DETAILS, MATERIALS, PRACTICE, RESEARCH, TECH, tagged , , , , , , on November 10, 2020| 2 Comments »

BY JESSICA CANFIELD, ASLA

Parametric modeling aids the design for a complex paving pattern at a corporate campus.

FROM THE NOVEMBER 2020 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

 

When stepping off the city sidewalk and into the site of the Cummins headquarters building in Indianapolis, there’s an immediate sense of arrival into a distinct landscape. David A. Rubin, FASLA, the principal and lead designer at DAVID RUBIN Land Collective, says that the site is an expression of choice, with amenities for collaboration and contemplation, “allowing people the capacity to choose where to be most creative.” This could be in a cluster in the amphitheater, in movable seating, at an isolated bench, or around the long, Wi-Fi-enabled community table, dubbed the “High-Tech Harvest Table” by the design team.

Located in downtown Indianapolis, the Cummins DBU (shorthand for Cummins Inc.’s Distribution Business Unit headquarters) site spans a full city block. Along the site’s western edge is the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, a citywide bike and pedestrian path. Sweeps of vegetation planted atop elongated berms extend inward from here to guide circulation and, as Rubin describes it, to create a sense that the landscape was intentionally carved back to reveal the underlying hardscape. The main path, which zigzags east–west to connect the building entry and parking garage, widens at the heart of the site to become the central plaza. This multifunctional gathering space is framed by amphitheater seating and can accommodate performances and special events. Just adjacent is a communal work space, the Social Hub, where employees can bring their laptops and connect to power and Wi-Fi. A more secluded area, the Dell, offers benches for quieter work. These distinct subspaces are threaded together by a continuous two-toned paving pattern, creating a unified surface and visual identity for the site.

The eye-catching paving pattern, comprising alternating bands of light and dark concrete pavers, echoes the calibrated facade of the new Deborah Berke Partners building and is emblematic of a checkered flag, in reference to the Cummins diesel engine enterprise. The design team first explored concepts for the paving pattern through sketches and a 3-D model. According to Land Collective’s project manager, Henry Moll III, Affiliate ASLA, “Early studies included larger concepts of fading patterns and pixilation,” but ultimately they went with the more geometric and focused pattern. After selecting the two-toned scheme, the team turned to Grasshopper to further explore and refine the pattern’s scale and color distribution.

Grasshopper, which is now included in Rhino 6, is a visual scripting tool used for parametric modeling. In parametric modeling, design outcomes are created through the application of scripts, which establish and define relationships between components within given constraints. In a design workflow, a script can be used for ideation or for accomplishing a specific task. Moll describes Grasshopper as ideal for working with repetitive elements, because you can automate complex goals, which lends itself well to developing patterns. (more…)

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AWARDS FOCUS: ALLEYWAYS AT THE CENTER OF PUBLIC LIFE

Posted in ASLA, AWARDS, CITIES, ENVIRONMENT, HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, MATERIALS, ONLINE ONLY, PRESERVATION, STREETS, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »

This fall, LAM will be highlighting professional and student winners from the 2020 ASLA Awards by asking designers to dive deep into one image from their winning project.

Yongqing Fang Alleyways: An Urban Transformation, by Lab D+H Landscape and Urban Design, Professional Urban Design Honor Award.

Photo courtesy Arch-Exist.

“During the construction of this project, most of the original stone slabs from the alleys were stolen. A lot of construction waste, such as the demolition of the building bricks and tiles, was piled up on the site. We were thinking that the best way to preserve the historical context and bring back those old memories was to reuse those old materials. Thus, most of the details [in the photo] are made from recycled materials. In fact, except for the large piece of stone in the middle of the road, the rest was basically re-completed by recycled materials. All of our efforts are to make the new design and the old [memories] work together in a microintervention.”

—Zhongwei Li, Lab D+H Landscape and Urban Design

 

Planning for urban renewal requires careful consideration of surroundings as well as sentiment; in Guangzhou’s old town, a transformation revitalized a network of crumbling alleyways while honoring residents’ emotional attachment to a culture of street life. Phase 1 reimagined two alleyways as central points of public life by rehabilitating existing alleyways and adding larger-scale public nodes. First, several damaged or illegal structures were removed; many of those materials were reused throughout the project. Insufficient drainage and lighting were remedied with a multifunctional system that blends historic features with contemporary infrastructure. Three new public amenities—the Grand Wooden Steps, the Roof Garden, and the Water Feature Garden—provide and define new public space. During the day, the Grand Wooden Steps are used as a rest and display area, whereas at night they become seating for movie screenings. Nearby, the Water Feature Garden is set back from the main street and shaded by existing trees. The Roof Garden connects the rear of buildings and provides a semiprivate leisure area. Acting as new nodes for existing alleyways, the project unifies and modernizes the neighborhood without damaging vibrant, historic public life. “The Yongqing Fang alley project proves that choices made at the microscale have the capacity to inform much larger urban design decisions,” said the jury.

—Anjulie Rao

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TINKERING WITH A “TOTAL WORK”

Posted in ART, ENVIRONMENT, HISTORY, MATERIALS, ONLINE ONLY, PRESERVATION, RECREATION, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 15, 2020| Leave a Comment »

BY ZACH MORTICE

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s plan for the Hirshhorn’s Sculpture Garden. Image courtesy Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

At the Hirshhorn, a preservation row tests the bounds of unity between building and landscape.

 

The Hirshhorn Museum’s Sculpture Garden is a cloistered 1.5-acre art landscape just across Jefferson Drive SW from the museum. Stepped into the earth and filled with modern sculpture arranged in intimate outdoor rooms, it’s a definitive change of pace from the broad civic expanse of the National Mall, though no less significant as it’s the only Smithsonian entity with “Sculpture Garden” in its official name, per the law that established the institution.

The sculpture garden was originally designed by the Hirshhorn Museum’s architect, Gordon Bunshaft. His initial sculpture garden was a harsh, wide expanse of hardscape and gravel when it opened in 1974, centered on a 60-foot-wide rectangular reflecting pool. In 1977 the Smithsonian enlisted Lester Collins to soften the landscape and make it more hospitable, especially during Washington, D.C.’s sweltering summers. When the new landscape opened in 1981, it was with additional lawn and shade cover recessed into the ground—a more layered experience of concrete walls that cordoned off and defined outdoor rooms for the quiet contemplation of sculpture. Collins selected trees with an intense sculptural presence (weeping willows, weeping beeches, ginkgoes, dawn redwoods) and was lauded for his progressively accessible design, nearly a decade before the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

But the museum’s new plan for a revised landscape by the artist and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto is drawing the attention of landscape advocates who charge that the changes proposed will alter the relationship between the landscape and Bunshaft’s monumental ring of aggregate concrete, two elements of the museum campus that were conceived as one. With the new landscape, the Hirshhorn (the staff is quick to point out that only 15 percent of museum visitors make a visit to the sculpture garden) hopes to offer art lovers more programmatic flexibility in the garden and the chance to host larger, more performance-driven events. (more…)

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PROVIDING PLAY IN A PANDEMIC

Posted in CITIES, EDUCATION, MATERIALS, NOW, RECREATION, STUDENTS, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 18, 2020| Leave a Comment »

BY KIM O’CONNELL

With playgrounds off limits, Philadelphia’s Studio Ludo gets creative for low-income families.

FROM THE AUGUST 2020 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

 

In downtown Philadelphia, a colorful city development project is under way. The buildings are bright blue and orange, the gabled roofs patterned with triangles and chevrons. The front doors are sunflower yellow, and residents seem happy and content—at least as content as little plastic dinosaurs can be.

The project is Tube Town, a “city” made of toilet paper tubes, construction paper, markers, and glue. Tube Town is one of Studio Ludo’s new Play Packs, a resource created for families during the COVID-19 crisis, and the brainchild of the firm’s executive director, Meghan Talarowski, ASLA. In addition to providing 30 downloadable play and craft projects online—all imaginatively staged and photographed, as with the addition of the little dinos—the firm has worked with local community organizations to distribute play materials to families in need. “We thought, since we’re not doing outside projects right now, how do we bring play to families?” Talarowski says. (more…)

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A SPRING OF SURPRISES

Posted in CONSTRUCTION, ECONOMICS, MATERIALS, NURSERY, PLANTS, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 23, 2020| 1 Comment »

BY JARED BREY

Contractors, suppliers, and growers ply the busy season amid the pandemic.

FROM THE JUNE 2020 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

 

For Joseph Marando, the shutdown notice came at just the wrong moment. It was early spring, and Marando, of Frank Marando Landscape Inc., in Queens, New York, was contracted for a planting job in a New York City park. He’d been expecting the job to be canceled, as so much construction was put on pause while the coronavirus outbreak seized New York. But when indications seemed good that it would move forward, he went ahead and asked the Virginia-based nursery he was working with to dig out the oaks, cherry trees, and serviceberries he had ordered. The shutdown notice came the next day, while the truck was en route, and Marando couldn’t very well ask the driver to turn around. So he took the trees, their roots in burlap, and heeled them in at his own holding yard in College Point. Whenever the project gets the green light, he’ll have to reload the plants onto a truck and take them to the site, ballooning the costs for freight and labor.

“But this is what we’re dealing with,” Marando says. “I have no other choice.”

Around the country, stay-at-home orders and social-distancing guidelines arrived at the height of the spring construction season for landscape architects. But the implications for their projects, and for the supply chains they rely on, varied greatly by region. (more…)

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JUNE LAM: ONWARD, BUT OFF-SCRIPT

Posted in CONSTRUCTION, ECOLOGY, ECONOMICS, EDUCATION, ENVIRONMENT, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, MATERIALS, ONLINE ONLY, PEOPLE, PHOTOGRAPHY, RESILIENCE, tagged , , , , , , on June 1, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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Our June issue of LAM begins—because nobody knows the end—to look at the effects of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Amid all the dread, the vital and often unheralded work of landscape architects, now and through history, has become a staple of social survival as people confined close to home, if not inside their homes, have reflexively turned to parks and public spaces for solace. People have always done this, hit the parks for a mental and physical break, but the yearning has concentrated incalculably as the only outlet from a fear like they’ve never experienced before.

We asked landscape architects and designers to reflect freely on what the emergencies of COVID-19 mean to them professionally. Several dozen weighed in with their hopes and their skepticism, between the upheaval in work life to the undeniable roles of landscapes in a changed human condition.

Also this month, we look at the acute and early shocks to the food supply with two landscape architects, Phoebe Lickwar, ASLA, and Roxi Thoren, ASLA, whose new book, Farmscape: The Design of Productive Landscapes (Routledge), argues from historical and contemporary positions that landscape architects have a singular role to play in rethinking the design and production of agriculture, and in bringing people closer to the sources of their nourishment.

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 250 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: “What’s Next?” Annalisa Aldana; “A Spring of Surprises,” Courtesy J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co. 

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APRIL LAM: LANDSCAPE FOR LIFE

Posted in CONSTRUCTION, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, IN THE ISSUE, INTERVIEW, MATERIALS, ONLINE ONLY, PARKS, PHOTOGRAPHY, PLAYGROUNDS, PRACTICE, SCHOOLS, WATER, WORKSTATION, tagged , , , , , , on April 1, 2020| 1 Comment »

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FOREGROUND

The Bricks Are Back (Materials)
A beloved theater and public plaza are reimagined for accessibility and diversity.

Worked Up (Workplace)
Working on two Indiana campus sites for a hometown company, DAVID RUBIN
Land Collective balances corporate identity with a sense of place.

FEATURES

 The Wild World of Terremoto
Terremoto is a young firm in Los Angeles betting that the future depends on redesigning practice
along with the Southern California landscape.

Fair Play
Working inside the Milwaukee Public Schools system, Pam Linn, FASLA, is rolling out an equitable model
for upgrading dozens of Milwaukee’s dreary schoolyards and playgrounds.

Hell of Fun
Montreal-based Claude Cormier + Associés hurdles design obstacles with a sly sense of humor and vibrant colors, but it only looks easy. It’s not.

In honor of World Landscape Architecture Month, the entire April digital issue is available for FREE, and you can access it here. As always, the April issue covers a wide swath of the work landscape architects do designing equitable schoolyards, playful public spaces, community-oriented corporate campuses, and unexpectedly wild gardens. Be sure to take a look at ASLA’s #WLAM2020 and #LifeGrowsHere programs and initiatives aimed at promoting the profession and how you can participate. We will continue to post new stories all month on the impacts of COVID-19 on the profession of landscape architecture here and abroad.

You can buy Landscape Architecture Magazine online. Single digital issues are available for only $5.25 at Zinio or you can 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 website, on the LAM Facebook page, and on our Twitter feed (@landarchmag) for more updates on COVID-19 impacts, #WLAM2020, and fresh journalism on the profession of landscape architecture.

Credits: “Fair Play,” Colin Boyle/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Via Imagn Content Services, LLC; “Hell of Fun,” Cyril Doisneau; “The Wild World of Terremoto,” Stephen Schauer; “The Bricks Are Back,” Meghan Montgomery/Built Work Photography; “Worked Up,” Hadley Fruits. 

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