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?→
The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes Beyond Access
By David Gissen; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022; 216 pages, $24.95.
Reviewed by Sara Hendren
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→
What does Dungeons & Dragons have in common with landscape architecture? More than you’d think.
Interview by Maci Nelson, Associate ASLA
When not working as a biochemist, Frank Tedeschi and fellow players gather around custom-built terrain models. Courtesy Frank Tedeschi.
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→
A survey sheds light on why midcareer women leave design firms.
By Timothy A. Schuler
Maya Sharfi, the founder of Build Yourself. Photo by Jessie Wyman Photography.
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→
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→
The Magazine of the American Society of Landscape Architects
