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Archive for the ‘PLANNING’ Category

THE WATER YOU CAN’T SEE

Posted in ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, FEATURES, HABITAT, HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, INVASIVE SPECIES, PARKS, PLANNING, PLANTS, RECREATION, RESILIENCE, SHORELINE, SOIL, SPECIES, THE CLIENT, UNIVERSITY, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 5, 2019| 1 Comment »

BY KOFI BOONE, ASLA

A civic hydrology park emerges on Duke University’s campus.

FROM THE DECEMBER 2019 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

Having lived in Durham, North Carolina, for more than a decade, I’ve come to realize that it’s almost impossible to discuss Durham without referencing Duke University, and vice versa. Duke is a private university, and its West Campus, although in the city, stands apart and within Duke Forest, a vast patch of woods created through a component of a century-old Olmsted Brothers master plan. The campus landscapes cultivated by Duke offer a stark experiential contrast to the eclectic environmental qualities of a rapidly suburbanizing region. Duke’s campus is a big draw for wedding receptions, picnics, walking and biking, and the occasional respite from nearby urban life. Durhamites regularly use the campus as an extended city park system. I’ve visited Duke’s landscapes many times with family and students in search of memorable settings in an educational environment.

Duke Pond, one of the newest campus landscapes, has been an increasingly popular attraction. On a recent visit to Duke Pond with my daughter, she waded into shallow water to scoop up a tadpole and said, “This place is kinda scruffy, but I like it!” When I relayed this story to Warren T. Byrd Jr., FASLA, the renowned landscape architect who concluded his career at Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects with this project, he laughed. He was thrilled that younger generations felt comfortable engaging the landscape directly. Enabling the informal discovery of ecology was what he had in mind. On a campus populated with works by many leading landscape architects, most of them manicured and tightly controlled, the pond offers an example of a different aesthetic as well as the roles landscape can play in exciting the next generation about environmental stewardship. (more…)

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ART DIRECTOR’S CUT, DECEMBER 3

Posted in CITIES, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, ONLINE ONLY, PARKS, PHOTOGRAPHY, PLANNING, RECREATION, RESILIENCE, SHORELINE, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »

The things our art director, Chris McGee, hated to leave out of the current issue of LAM.

Image courtesy Jaime Lerner Associated Architects.

From “On the Edge” in the December 2019 issue by Jimena Martignoni, about a project to bring the waterfront of Porto Alegre back to the people.

“Porto Alegre waterfront.”

–CHRIS MCGEE, LAM ART DIRECTOR

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.

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GET REAL

Posted in ART, CITIES, CLIMATE, ECOLOGY, ECONOMICS, ENVIRONMENT, FEATURES, PEOPLE, PLANNING, PRACTICE, RESILIENCE, THE CLIENT, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 21, 2019| Leave a Comment »

As part of an ongoing effort to make content more accessible, LAM will be making select stories available to readers in Spanish. For a full list of translated articles, please click here.

BY DIANA FERNANDEZ, ASLA

FROM THE NOVEMBER 2019 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

 

Vicki Estrada, FASLA, opened Estrada Land Planning in 1985, and over the course of nearly 35 years, the firm has worked on planning and landscape architecture projects that have helped define the city of San Diego. Her work as a community planner and advocate over the past three decades was community engagement before there was “community engagement,” and her imprint can be seen everywhere in the city’s parks, streets, communities, and transit. We asked Diana Fernandez, ASLA, an associate at Sasaki, to interview Estrada about her career and her life, and what followed was a very candid and wide-ranging conversation about gender, representation, identity, and making landscapes that don’t pretend. (This interview has been edited and condensed.)

Diana Fernandez: I’m so curious to find out what brought you to landscape architecture. I often feel like all of us landscape architects have stumbled into the field somehow.

Vicki Estrada: It’s a funny, interesting story actually. There were two processes. First of all, when I was in elementary school, I would draw. They were little downtowns. I was supposed to be listening to the teacher, but I would draw little downtowns in isometric view and with a ballpoint pen and my dad’s old office papers. You can still see his office logo on them.

The principal came by one day and said, “Hey, Steve,” my name at the time, “you’re going to be an architect.” I am? So from fourth grade on, it was kind of ingrained in me. You’re going to be an architect. You’re going to be an architect.

I got accepted at Cal Poly for architecture, and I went off. I had one year to go. I met some architecture friends, and I went down to Cal Poly Pomona on one Saturday to visit them. I remember walking down to the campus on a Saturday afternoon. It’s all deserted. It’s all quiet. We looked at this great big new lecture hall. So I walked in—have you seen the movie, The Blues Brothers?

Fernandez: No, I haven’t.

Estrada: Well, there’s a scene in The Blues Brothers where they walk into a church, and James Brown is the preacher, and the door opens up and you see the sunlight come down. I opened up the door, and there’s this room full of students, and onstage was this old guy with long, gray hair, with a cane. He pounds on the stage and he points—I swear it looked like he was pointing at me. “Imagine the Earth as a canvas,” he says. “Architects put dots on the canvas. Engineers connect the dots. You are the only ones who can paint the entire canvas.” Being an architect, I go, “What the fuck? What is he talking about?” (more…)

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FLOODS THAT KNOW NO BOUNDS

Posted in CITIES, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, FEATURES, PARKS, PLANNING, PRACTICE, REGION, RESILIENCE, STREETS, TRANSLATED, UNIVERSITY, WATER on November 14, 2019| 1 Comment »

As part of an ongoing effort to make content more accessible, LAM will be making select stories available to readers in Spanish. For a full list of translated articles, please click here.

BY LISA OWENS VIANI

FROM THE NOVEMBER 2019 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

 

Named for the walnut trees that used to line its banks, the Arroyo de los Nogales, a tributary of the Santa Cruz River, flows from south to north, descending from the high Sonoran desert in Mexico into Arizona. The main arroyo and its many smaller tributaries form a watershed, shaped roughly like a human heart, that is broken in two by the U.S.–Mexico border wall. Facing each other across the wall, in the river’s floodplain, are two cities, each named Nogales, that share social and environmental problems—including repeated flooding caused by rapid urbanization, ineffective flood control efforts, and the border wall itself.

Gabriel Díaz Montemayor, ASLA, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas, and Francisco Lara-Valencia, an associate professor at the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University, have a greener vision for these border cities (together called Ambos Nogales), whose streets and arroyos often run brown with sediment and sewage in heavy storms. Díaz Montemayor and Lara-Valencia want to increase permeability throughout the watershed, slow peak flows in heavy storms, and develop more ecological connectivity between the two cities, despite the dividing presence of the wall.

They hope their ideas for an extensive network of green infrastructure can transform the way the cities develop, not only to improve water quality and flood management but also to provide more green space for residents. As the cities have grown, impervious surfaces have too, destroying natural areas. Both cities lack green space: There is just 1.1 square meter per person in Nogales, Mexico, and only 2.2 square meters per person on the U.S. side, Lara-Valencia says.

“We are not saying development shouldn’t happen,” Díaz Montemayor says. “We’re saying, ‘Let’s provide a structure for that development to happen [that] is based on natural systems.’” (more…)

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A NEW URBANISM, PLUCKED FROM THE GARDEN

Posted in BROWNFIELDS, CITIES, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, GARDENS, HABITAT, HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, ONLINE ONLY, PARKS, PLANNING, PLANTS, RECREATION, RESIDENTIAL, RESILIENCE, REUSE, RIVER RESTORATION, SHORELINE, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 7, 2019| Leave a Comment »

BY NATE BERG

A view of the park’s two lakes, with the city in the distance. Photo courtesy Bundesgartenschau Heilbronn.

An urban-scale garden exhibition in Germany became an opportunity to re-envision a riverside industrial site.

 

For more than half a century, the historic center of the southwestern German city of Heilbronn looked out across the waters of the Neckar River onto 80 gray acres of railyards and warehouses. As its industrial activity shifted and concentrated, the need for such large swaths of land diminished and much of this logistics landscape lay fallow.

“For urban planners, this was like a gold mine,” says Oliver Toellner. He’s a landscape architect and urban planner, and for the past 10 years he’s been transforming this large industrial plot into a new park and urban district for 3,500 residents and 1,000 jobs. (more…)

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NOVEMBER LAM: DROUGHT & DELUGE

Posted in CITIES, CLIMATE, ECOLOGY, EDUCATION, ENVIRONMENT, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, FEATURES, HABITAT, HEALTHY COMMUNITIES, HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, HISTORY, ONLINE ONLY, PARKS, PEOPLE, PLANNING, PLANTS, PRESERVATION, RECREATION, REGION, RESILIENCE, RIVER RESTORATION, SPECIES, STREETS, THE CLIENT, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »

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FOREGROUND

Get with the Program (Tech)
As workflow patterns change, designers are diversifying in the types of software they rely on,
a recent survey of landscape architects shows.

Lunch Break Brutalism (Preservation)
The water is flowing again at M. Paul Friedberg’s much-disputed Peavey Plaza in Minneapolis,
after a renovation by Coen+Partners adjusts the space to latter-day concerns.

FEATURES

Look to the Sky
In Santa Fe, Surroundings Studio relies on scarce rainfall for all the water one
house’s garden could need.

Floods That Know No Bounds
Nogales, Mexico, and Nogales, Arizona, have a border wall between them, but an unruly, overstressed watershed needs a binational solution to stop flooding. Gabriel Díaz Montemayor, ASLA, and a colleague, Francisco Lara-Valencia, have some ideas.

Get Real
Vicki Estrada, FASLA, talks about the change in her practice at Estrada Land Planning in San Diego
since her transition 13 years ago. For one thing, it has meant no more going along to get along

In Kīlauea’s Wake
After a series of violent eruptions of Kīlauea in 2018, the staff of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park is figuring out ways to proceed with a natural and cultural treasure that is constantly changing.

All this plus the regular Now and Goods columns. The full table of contents for November 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 November articles as the month rolls out.

Credits: “Floods That Know No Bounds,” Gabriel Díaz Montemayor, ASLA; “Look to the Sky,” Stephen Dunn; “Get Real,” Brian Kuhlmann; “In Kīlauea’s Wake,” USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory; “Get with the Program,” Drew Hill, Student ASLA/Utah State University; “Lunch Break Brutalism,” Peter Bastianelli-Kerze.

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PETER WALKER’S POINT

Posted in AWARDS, BROWNFIELDS, CITIES, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, FEATURES, HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, HISTORY, MATERIALS, NURSERY, PARKS, PEOPLE, PLANNING, RECREATION, RESILIENCE, REUSE, SHORELINE, SOIL, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 17, 2019| 1 Comment »

BY GWENETH LEIGH, ASLA

The Barangaroo Reserve transforms Sydney Harbour’s old industrial landscape.

FROM THE NOVEMBER 2016 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

 

When I was a child growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, my understanding of landscape was one of changing purpose. Cornfields were converted into housing subdivisions and office parks. Old winding roads were straightened, thickened with extra lanes, and punctuated by traffic lights. It was the small discoveries—an arrowhead in the garden, a bullet lodged in a tree—that revealed the older stories of these fractured landscapes. The layers of roads, power lines, and strip malls made any trace of a site’s earlier history difficult to imagine.

But what if we were to allow a landscape to break free from the confines of concrete curbs, smooth out its industrial wrinkles, and pluck off architectural blemishes in an effort to recapture a semblance of its younger, more picturesque self? Where injections of earth and rock serve as the Botox for an aging landscape, erasing the creases of human development in favor of a more natural topography. So begins the story of Barangaroo Reserve in Sydney, Australia. (more…)

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