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Please pardon the fish smells. The landscape architects at Taylor Cullity Lethlean and Wraight + Associates were trying not to cutify the waterfront of Auckland, New Zealand, too much with their master plan for 86 acres of port. So you get a park, a promenade, a playground, and outdoor dining, but you also get the sights and smells of an active fishing sector and the noises of maritime industry up close. The North Wharf Promenade and Silo Park won the Rosa Barba Prize at the Eighth International Biennial of Landscape Architecture in Barcelona in 2014 for the ways it takes waterside work at face value but makes room for people to relax and play. Our correspondent in Sydney, Gweneth Leigh, ASLA, tells this month how it came together.
You may have read in the New York Times last week about China’s push to be first in the world in developing artificial intelligence systems for things like speech recognition, rescue missions, and warfare. The newly appointed chair of landscape architecture at the University of Virginia, Bradley Cantrell, ASLA, and two colleagues recently wrote a paper in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution about prospects for deploying AI and “deep learning” systems in ecological restoration and management, based on several approximate examples they found currently in action. LAM invited Kristina Hill, an associate professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning and urban design at the University of California, Berkeley, to query the authors’ assumptions and, ultimately, ethical questions around such projected uses for AI, such as: Is a human-induced machine responsible for the effects of its actions, or is the human?
Back in 2008 the Atlanta BeltLine, the ambitious linear park planned to ring around the city, was just getting off the ground. LAM dispatched Jonathan Lerner to survey the role this unique trail might play. Today, big sections of it have been built—though it’s by no means complete—and enthusiasm for its impacts is far from universal. And Lerner has gone back to Atlanta to survey the victories, the asymmetries, and the mixed emotions surrounding the project.
In Books, don’t miss the review of two new books on logistics, by Gale Fulton, ASLA, an associate professor and chair of landscape architecture at the University of Tennessee, and what it reveals about the ways logistics not only shapes our landscapes, but has become them. 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 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.
Keep an eye out here on the blog, on the LAM Facebook page, and on our Twitter feed (@landarchmag), as we’ll be ungating June articles as the month rolls out.
Credits: “Ecology on Autopilot,” Bradley Cantrell, ASLA; “The Wharf at Work,” Simon Devitt; “A Thousand Moving Parts,” Jeff Keesee; “In Search Of,” Courtesy HBB Landscape Architecture/Jed Share Photography; “Tame the Sun,” Courtesy SWA Group; “Yonkers Uncorked,” Christopher St. Lawrence.
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