As landscape architects prepare to descend on Minnesota for the 2023 ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture this month, we’ve asked Minneapolis design firms, including TEN x TEN Landscape Architecture and Urbanism and Damon Farber Landscape Architects, to guide us through their favorite places in and around the Twin Cities. Continue reading A Designer’s Guide to the Twin Cities
Every rights movement carries a tacit “before” and “after” scenario in its theory of change, and global disability rights movements are no different: In the before, a nation’s normative legal policies, its structures of education and governance, its built environments have been inaccessible to people with atypical bodies and minds. In the after—the imagined desirable future—those same structures are newly loosed from these hindering barriers. The world goes from inaccessible to accessible. It is retrofitted, refashioned, its seams opened up for more flexibility, pliability, generosity, making smoother passage through the human-made world a form of civic enfranchisement. Continue reading Book Review: Access Measures
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
Fire is both ruly and unruly. It conforms to physical principles, yet it’s also incredibly dynamic and unpredictable. Across the world we are witnessing changes in what wildfire is, due to past and current human actions, and in tandem, fire risks are increasing and expanding. In the western United States, so are wildfire severity and frequency. Continue reading Stewarding Change in a Time of Fire
Rachel Wilkins was 28 years old when she got her first job in landscape architecture. Since graduate school, she had dreamed of working for a woman, but at the large Houston firm where she’d been hired—which Wilkins declined to name—all her bosses were men. Though she had “two wonderful male mentors,” she says she also regularly felt demeaned as a woman, passed over for promotions that went to male colleagues or, when the firm was called out for its lack of women in leadership, to women with less experience but more social capital. Her bosses, Wilkins says, seemed to “consider themselves the dads of the office,” a dynamic she says is omnipresent in landscape architecture—and problematic. “I don’t need a dad,” Wilkins says. “I need a boss who’s invested in my growth.” Continue reading Roadblocks Remain
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
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
