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Archive for the ‘PLANNING’ Category

ART DIRECTOR’S CUT, SEPTEMBER 8

Posted in ART, ASLA, AWARDS, LAM ONLINE, PLANNING, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 8, 2016 | Leave a Comment »

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

Credit: MIR for Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects.

Credit: MIR for Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects.

A rendering from the ASLA 2016 Analysis & Planning Professional Honor Award winner “Memorial Park Master Plan 2015” by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects in the September 2016 issue, featuring the reworking and restoration of Memorial Park in Houston.

“Morning fog, photorealistic edition.”

—Chris McGee, LAM Art Director

You can read the full table of contents for September 2016 or pick up a free digital issue of the September LAM here and share it with your clients, colleagues, and friends. As always, you can buy this issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine at more than 700 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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WARY OF CHANGE

Posted in LAM MAGAZINE, PLANNING, STUDENTS, UNIVERSITY, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 11, 2016 | 1 Comment »

BY NATE BERG

As Las Vegas’s historic westside faces change, residents ask, who benefits?

As Las Vegas’s historic Westside faces change, residents ask, who benefits?

From the August 2016 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.

At the start of a three-day design charrette in a small Las Vegas community center, one of the first questions Steven Clarke, ASLA, asked the 100-person crowd was how many had participated in a design charrette before. “About 80 percent of them raised their hands,” says Clarke, a fair-haired 45-year-old from Winnipeg, Manitoba, who was new to this group of people, many of whom weren’t particularly happy to be doing another charrette. The purpose of the current exercise was to focus on the historic Westside neighborhood of Las Vegas, which has been a marginalized African American neighborhood since the early 20th century. Many of the community members who had gathered wanted to know what would be different this time around, Clarke says. The skepticism quickly boiled into anger. Some demanded to know how the charrette process would do anything to create jobs in the neighborhood. Others demanded to know how much Clarke was being paid, and by whom. “It got extremely tense,” he says. “It was probably the most challenging charrette I’ve faced in my career.”

The Westside was once the healthy heart of the city’s African American community. Today the area is largely vacant, a wasteland of urban disinvestment. The neighborhood’s blocks hold more than 200 empty lots and dozens of abandoned buildings and burned-out houses. The main commercial strip is a ghost town. Its few businesses—a minimarket, a barbecue joint, a clothing shop—are modest, and foot traffic is all but nonexistent. Down a side street, residents of an apartment building are hosting what looks like a regular sidewalk sale of old vacuum cleaners and electronics. A few blocks away, a middle-aged sex worker sits on a curb and halfheartedly propositions the few cars that drive past.

Just on the other side of intersecting freeways, less than half a mile away, is (more…)

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HOUSTON BETS ON THE BAYOU

Posted in CITIES, HEALTHY COMMUNITIES, LAM MAGAZINE, PLANNING, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 17, 2016 | 1 Comment »

BY BRIAN BARTH

Parks and bike paths embroider the city in the Bayou Greenway Initiative plan.

Parks and bike paths embroider the city in the Bayou Greenway Initiative Plan.

From the March 2016 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.

Kinder Baumgardner, ASLA, the president of SWA Group and the managing principal of its Houston office, is not the type of landscape architect to shy away from controversial ideas. In 2013, at the zenith of the vitriolic debate around the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, he sent an unsolicited design proposal to the White House, the State Department, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, and a slew of other federal agencies with a stake in the project. In it were a set of overlay maps of the proposed route that illustrated various ecological and cultural dimensions of the pipeline landscape, as well as a set of renderings suggesting that a bike path be built within the pipeline corridor from its starting point in Hardisty, Alberta, down to the terminus in Port Arthur, Texas, near Houston.

“It was roundly hated,” says Baumgardner of the idea, insisting it was not an endorsement of the pipeline but an attempt to puncture the status quo notion of “infrastructure as a one-dimensional thing.” Reactions were neatly divided along ideological lines. “Some people saw it as: ‘You’re trying to make this bad thing better, and that might mean it would get built.’ On the other side, people who were much more conservative were saying, ‘You shouldn’t be doing this; it’s going to make it difficult to operate and they’ll end up closing it down.’”

The Obama administration recently gave what appears to be the final ax to the (more…)

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NEW IN MARCH

Posted in HOUSE CALL, LAM MAGAZINE, PARKS, PLANNING, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 1, 2016 | Leave a Comment »

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The March LAM focuses on Charles Anderson, FASLA, and the long and winding road to redesign Hellinikon, an abandoned airport in Athens, into what would be one of the largest urban parks in Europe; the transformation of Long Dock Park  in Beacon, NY, from a derelict property on the Hudson River into an amenity for local residents, by Reed Hilderbrand; and Queens Quay Boulevard, by West 8 in collaboration with DTAH, turns a stretch of the Toronto lakefront into a multitransit, public promenade that connects the city to Lake Ontario.

In Planning, a plan for the Bayou Greenway Initiative by SWA Group weaves a network of new and existing green corridors in Houston. In Parks, a new park in one of the most diverse counties in the South responds to multiple wants through passive recreation. And in House Call, Savino & Miller Design Studio reimagines a small side yard into a lush jungle retreat. And don’t miss our regular Now, Species, Goods, and Books columns. The full table of contents for March can be found here.

As always, you can buy this issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine at more than 200 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 ungating March articles as the month rolls out.

Credits: “Greek Revival,” Alex Ulam; “Alive on the Edge,” James Ewing/OTTO; “Leafed Out,” Nicola Betts for West 8; “Houston Best on the Bayou,” Jonnu Singleton; “The Call for Open Space,” John Gnoffo; “The Make-Do Shrine,” Steven Brooke.

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ART DIRECTOR’S CUT, OCTOBER 8

Posted in ASLA, AWARDS, IDEAS, LAM ONLINE, PLANNING, STUDENTS, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 8, 2015 | Leave a Comment »

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

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Credit: Clementine Inhye Jang, Student ASLA; Michelle Shofet, Student ASLA; and Jia Joy Hu, Student ASLA.

ASLA 2015 Analysis and Planning Student Honor Award winner “Airborne” by Clementine Inhye Jang, Student ASLA, Michelle Shofet, Student ASLA, and Jia Joy Hu, Student ASLA, in the October 2015 issue, features the investigation of designing easement networks through aerial seed transmission.

“This has a mesmerizing perspective with a mysterious quality that presents more questions than answers.”

—Chris McGee, LAM Art Director

Pick up a free digital issue of the October LAM here and share it with your clients, colleagues, and friends. As always, you can buy this issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine at more than 200 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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“IF WOMEN BUILT CITIES” WINS

Posted in AWARDS, CITIES, LAM ONLINE, PEOPLE, PLANNING, PRACTICE, VIEWS, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 17, 2015 | 2 Comments »

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“If Women Built Cities, What Would Our Urban Landscape Look Like?” by Susanna Rustin from The Guardian on December 5, 2014.

BEDIT_Susanna Rustin portrait

Susanna Rustin

Every year LAM honors two articles that stand out in the realm of landscape architecture with the Bradford Williams Medal—one that has appeared in LAM, and one from outside the magazine. For the 2015 medals, articles from the 2014 calendar period were nominated by LAM’s Editorial Advisory Committee and then were narrowed to two winners from the nominees.

Earlier we announced Mimi Zeiger’s “Fresno v. Eckbo” as the winner for an article in LAM, from December 2014. Today we’re proud to announce Susanna Rustin, a feature writer at The Guardian, as the winner for an article outside of LAM for her December 2014 story “If Women Built Cities, What Would Our Urban Landscape Look Like?” Rustin’s article focuses on the need for diversity, particularly women, among those who shape the human environment.

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The Bradford Williams Medal is awarded to two outstanding articles in landscape every year.

The medal’s namesake, Bradford Williams, was an editor and publisher of LAM in its earlier days when it was Landscape Architecture Quarterly. The medal was named to honor his contributions to the magazine and to ASLA. A list of past winners can be found here.

The medals will be presented at ASLA’s 2015 Annual Meeting & EXPO on Monday, November 9 in a ceremony at Chicago’s McCormick Place for the ASLA Student and Professional Awards.

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WE, THE EMERALD ISLE

Posted in ENVIRONMENT, HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, HISTORY, LAM MAGAZINE, NOW, PLANNING, PRESERVATION, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 15, 2015 | Leave a Comment »

BY DANIEL ELSEA

Ireland's National Landscape Strategy makes clear the twining of land and national identity.

Ireland’s National Landscape Strategy makes clear the twining of land and national identity.

From the September 2015 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.

In May, Ireland unveiled a National Landscape Strategy (NLS), in an attempt to establish guidelines for the governance of the country’s historic geography while recognizing its inherent dynamism. Getting to grips with a nation’s landscape in such an ecumenical, broad-brushstrokes way is a tall order, even for a small island nation the size of Maine. Human settlement has left its mark on the Irish landscape for nearly 10,000 years. It’s an old place etched with memories, from the craggy coasts of Western Ireland to the karst of County Clare to the genteel Georgian terraces of Dublin.

These all now come under the protective purview of Ireland’s Department of Arts, Heritage, and Gaeltacht (the latter word referring to the Gaelic language). The agency has committed itself to a 10-year program to implement the NLS, with the completion of a comprehensive national Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) within five years. “It encompasses all landscapes—rural and urban, beautiful and degraded, ordinary and unique,” says Martin Colreavy, Ireland’s principal adviser on built heritage and architectural policy.

Ireland, of course, is a divided island, and the department’s remit extends to the boundaries of the Irish Republic—that is, the three historic southern provinces. The fourth province to the north—what we call Northern Ireland—remains part of the United Kingdom. The Northern Ireland Environment Agency has drawn up its own “Landscape Charter,” which will complement this one, reminding us that politics is often a land-based proposition.

If boundaries define landscapes, then landscapes define identity. As the NLS indicates, this is Ireland living up to its European obligations as (more…)

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