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Archive for the ‘PRACTICE’ Category

THE OFFICES: EVERYTHING CHANGES

Posted in ECONOMICS, OFFICE, ONLINE ONLY, PEOPLE, PRACTICE, THE CLIENT, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 27, 2020| 1 Comment »

BY BRADFORD MCKEE

With regular business upended by the novel coronavirus, landscape architecture principals plot, wait, and wonder.

 

There was a moment on Friday, March 13, when the novel coronavirus changed everything at the office, says Annette Wilkus, FASLA, the founding partner of SiteWorks in Manhattan. “I walked in on Friday, and one of the staff who’s usually solid had this look in her eye and said, ‘Annette, it’s getting really crazy.’” By Monday the 16th, everyone at SiteWorks was working from home, the day that schools, businesses, and Broadway were closing and the S&P 500 fell by 12 percent, the Dow by 13. New York City was bracing for what would swell into the country’s largest wave of COVID-19 cases.

Around the country at the same time, principals of landscape architecture firms were hurrying to get people home to work safely while they sorted out office logistics, took the pulses of clients and their projects, and mentally packed for a weekend that could last months—just as spring was arriving to cold climates where construction otherwise would be firing up. (more…)

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In Public: Honolulu

Posted in CITIES, ENVIRONMENT, ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, HEALTHY COMMUNITIES, ONLINE ONLY, PARKS, PRACTICE, RECREATION, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 25, 2020| 2 Comments »

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

Honolulu’s popular Queen Kapi‘olani Park is closed as of Friday, March 20. Photo by Timothy A. Schuler.

It could have been a scene from any number of dystopian films: a group of skateboarders, their faces obscured by bandanas or other makeshift masks, slaloming down an otherwise empty street, the landscape around them—the wide beach, the grassy lawn, the parking lot—deserted. In reality, the scene was one of many strange tableaux in Honolulu this past Friday afternoon, following the closure of city parks and beaches in response to the outbreak of COVID-19, a disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Hawaii is regularly ranked as one of the healthiest states in the nation, and Honolulu is a bustling city with a noticeably active population. Over the past 96 hours, it has become a ghost town. On Saturday, as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases climbed to 48 (which in two days would nearly double), Hawaii’s governor instituted a mandatory 14-day quarantine for all incoming travelers. The next day, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell ordered residents and visitors to “shelter in place” and leave their houses and apartments only for essential services, an order that was later expanded to the entire state. By Monday, Waikiki’s famed hotels sat mostly empty, its shops shuttered as if preparing for a Category 5 hurricane. Along Waikiki Beach, yellow caution tape fluttered from trees and lampposts, encircling public areas and blocking access points as if the entire beachfront were one giant crime scene. (more…)

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TEACHING AND LEARNING ONLINE, BY FORCE

Posted in ONLINE ONLY, PEOPLE, PRACTICE, STUDENTS, TECH, UNIVERSITY, tagged , , , , , , on March 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »

BY JARED BREY

Robert Hewitt, FASLA, at Clemson University leads students and colleagues through a studio project where they designed a satellite city outside Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus outbreak began. Image courtesy Robert Hewitt, FASLA.

Even before the latest round of social distancing efforts and shelter-in-place orders began to shut down American communities, colleges and universities were making plans to finish their semesters online. And for some courses, the transition is trickier than for others. Students and teachers in landscape architecture design studios are facing the same day-to-day meeting and communication questions as everyone else. But they’re also facing challenges to the long-standing culture of the studio, where casual interactions are encouraged and friendships are formed, professors give in-person feedback to students in real time, juries convene to evaluate student projects that take months to complete, and students experiment with materials and fabrication techniques. At the same time, educators at nearly a dozen schools of landscape architecture in the United States say the technology needed to carry out the most critical functions of design studios is largely available, and most schools are well-positioned to switch to online learning, at least temporarily. 

“The conversation around the shift to remote instruction has always found this uncomfortable relationship with how you do that for a design studio,” says Roberto Rovira, ASLA, an associate professor and the chair of landscape architecture at Florida International University. “In some ways, I see this as an opportunity to really test that, and see how we can bring about a paradigm shift that is no longer really a choice but rather a need. That is something we all saw coming, but now we have to respond to it.” (more…)

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MARCH LAM: WHERE THE WILDNESS IS

Posted in CITIES, CLIMATE, ECOLOGY, EDUCATION, ENVIRONMENT, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, HEALING GARDENS, ONLINE ONLY, PEOPLE, PLANNING, PLANTS, PRACTICE, RECREATION, RESILIENCE, REUSE, SHORELINE, SOIL, SPECIES, WATER, WILDLIFE, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 2, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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FOREGROUND

On Belonging and Becoming (Interview)
Julian Agyeman, a Tufts University planning professor, talks about his work in the realm of
environmental justice.

Perfume Genius (Materials)
SALT Landscape Architects relates the history of downtown Los Angeles through a series of olfactory encounters.

FEATURES

The Thin Green Line
The second phase of Hunter’s Point South in Queens, designed by the office of Thomas Balsley, FASLA, (now SWA/Balsley) with Weiss/Manfredi Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism, extends the park’s renowned toughness.

Tallgrass Rehab
A former U.S. Army arsenal in Illinois is now Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, the only public land
of its kind, and one of the continent’s rarest biomes.

Have Van, Will Garden
The Winnipeg-based landscape architects Anna Thurmayr and Dietmar Straub, ASLA, have a simple
description of their work: humble and never complete.

All this plus the regular Now and Goods 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 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 March articles as the month rolls out.

Credits: “The Thin Green Line,” © Vecerka/Esto, courtesy SWA/Balsley and Weiss/Manfredi; “Have Van, Will Garden,” Brian Barth; “Tallgrass Rehab,” Michelle Wendling, “On Belonging and Becoming,” Alonso Nichols/Tufts University; “Perfume Genius,” Michael Wells. 

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SHOW YOUR WORK, EXPAND YOUR SPHERE

Posted in BROWNFIELDS, CITIES, CLIMATE, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, ONLINE ONLY, PEOPLE, PLANNING, PRACTICE, REGION, RESEARCH, RESILIENCE, THE CLIENT, UNIVERSITY, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »

BY ZACH MORTICE

A mirrored hut, in the shape of Thoreau’s New England cabin, reminds us to slow down our metabolism for appraising and interpreting landscapes. Photo by Justin Knight.

Günther Vogt on the limits of design, and the boundless reach of landscape architecture.

 

Ask Günther Vogt what the problems facing landscape architecture are, and he’ll tell you that there’s a bit too much design happening today.

This provocation suggests that it’s time for landscape designers to spend less time fussing with the proportions of a public square and more time working through urban and region-scaled problems. That was the thrust of Vogt’s Frederick Law Olmsted Lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design earlier this month, which accompanied an exhibition of his work on display now at the GSD’s Druker Design Gallery at Gund Hall. First the Forests exhibits six of Vogt’s projects and is filled with artifacts, models, specimens, and dioramas presented in tactile wood boxes—references to the European tradition of the “Wunderkammer” or “cabinet of curiosities,” eclectic containers filled with wonder and mystery.

There are cylindrical core samples of Boston’s mineral geology, impossibly delicate 19th century Italian gypsum models of mushrooms, excerpts from German plant morphology diagrams, and deconstructed and collaged 19th century landscape paintings, with foreground and background elements cut out and separated between panes of glass, giving the painting a semblance of texture and depth. LAM spoke to Vogt before the lecture about the exhibition. (more…)

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ASLA HONORS: 2020 NOMINATIONS CLOSE FRIDAY

Posted in ASLA, AWARDS, ONLINE ONLY, PRACTICE, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 5, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Photo courtesy EPNAC.

Every year, ASLA presents a number of honors to individuals and groups for their service to the landscape architecture profession and its ideals in the public realm. They include the ASLA Medal, the highest honor conferred by the Society; the Jot D. Carpenter Teaching Medal, given to a distinguished educator; and the Landscape Architecture Firm Award, given to an office that has built a distinguished body of work. ASLA also bestows honorary membership to nonmembers nominated for their service to the profession.

The deadline for 2020 nominations is this Friday, February 7. The Society depends on its professional members and chapters to put forward nominations of potential recipients—and asks those nominating to keep nominations confidential from the persons or groups being nominated. For the Landscape Architecture Firm Award, however, firms may nominate themselves or be nominated by others. The other nominations must be made by third parties other than the nominee.

The ASLA Board of Trustees votes on the recipients at its spring meeting, and the honors will be presented at the Conference on Landscape Architecture (previously known as the ASLA Annual Meeting & EXPO) in Miami, which runs October 2–5, 2020.

If you have questions, e-mail honorsawards@asla.org, or call Makeeya Hazelton, ASLA’s honors and awards manager, at 202-216-2331.

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PUBLIC SPACE, NO EXCEPTIONS

Posted in ACCESSIBILITY, CITIES, ENVIRONMENT, HEALTHY COMMUNITIES, PARKS, PEOPLE, PRACTICE, REGULATIONS, RESEARCH, RESILIENCE, THE CLIENT, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 4, 2020| 1 Comment »

BY BRICE MARYMAN, FASLA

The Supreme Court leaves in place a decision that prevents criminalizing the habits of the homeless.

FROM THE FEBRUARY 2020 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

 

With nowhere else to go, people experiencing homelessness increasingly occupy spaces designed by landscape architects: parks, medians, overpasses, stream corridors, and urban forests. Fearful of this new phenomenon, many communities have made it illegal to ask for change, sleep on benches, or pitch tents in public. A recent action by the United States Supreme Court may stem this tide of reactive stigmatization, criminalization, and incarceration. While homeless advocates and constitutional scholars hope that it may force cities to pivot toward a more comprehensive, proactive set of strategies to help people exit homelessness, they are also wary of recent signals from the federal government that suggest a doubling down on counterproductive punitive approaches.

Between 2007 and 2009, Boise, Idaho’s criminal justice system cited, fined, and sentenced Janet Bell and Robert Martin for violating the city’s new ordinances that made it illegal for anyone to be “occupying, lodging, or sleeping in any…place…without…permission,” including the use of “streets, sidewalks, parks, or public places as a camping place at any time.” Though they were members of the public, sleeping in the city’s public spaces had been deemed a crime. (more…)

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