Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘RIVER RESTORATION’ Category

A FORCE FOR PEOPLE

Posted in CITIES, FORWARD, INTERVIEW, LAM MAGAZINE, PARKS, PEOPLE, PLANNING, PRACTICE, REGULATIONS, RIVER RESTORATION, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 4, 2018| 1 Comment »

BY ZACH MORTICE

Damon Rich talks about the planning approaches that recently earned him a MacArthur Fellowship.

FROM THE JANUARY 2018 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

Damon Rich describes himself as a designer who uses the tool set of a community organizer. Rich says his goal at his design firm, Hector, with partner Jae Shin, and at his previous post as a founder of the Center for Urban Pedagogy, is to “[assemble] constituencies, trying to connect people so they can better exert political influence.” As a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship grant recipient, Rich will get a chance to see how an infusion of money ($625,000), translated through broad-based grassroots urban planning, can pull policy levers to make urbanism more equitable, healthy, and vital.

With Hector, his goal is to go into a neighborhood and uncover design elements that can offer multilayered meanings and associations to meet a wide range of needs. “I’m really excited to keep on finding ways to design things that really become social objects and social symbols,” Rich says. At the Newark Riverfront Park project, designed by Lee Weintraub, FASLA, during Rich’s tenure as the planning department director for the city of Newark, New Jersey, the color orange is used prominently in a boardwalk. The color references local schools’ heraldry and Newark’s municipal neighbors, East Orange and West Orange. It also works because it’s a neutral hue across local gang turfs. After it was built, a yoga instructor who teaches classes there complimented Rich for selecting this color because (unbeknownst to him) orange represents the water chakra.

Rich practices largely in the urban planning tradition, but he’s not careful about disciplinary lines. At the Center for Urban Pedagogy, he created users’ manuals for the city, working with marginalized communities that most need civic jargon translated into plain language. “I Got Arrested! Now What?” explains in graphic novel format how the justice system works, while “Vendor Power!” uses nearly wordless IKEA-like diagrams to show street vendors (who may be recent immigrants who don’t read English) how to comply with vending rules. Clear explanations of the city’s form, use, and regulations are part of his responsibility to (more…)

Read Full Post »

READY, SET, SWIM

Posted in ACCESSIBILITY, LAM MAGAZINE, NOW, RIVER RESTORATION, SHORELINE, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2017| Leave a Comment »

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

A recent study shows that Portland’s public docks nicely suit swimmers.

FROM THE DECEMBER 2017 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

Early morning swims across the river. An annual river float and beach party. A full-moon, women-only swim known as “Naked Goddess.” These are just some of the events organized by the Human Access Project to encourage people in Portland, Oregon, to dip their toes (and more) in the Willamette River. After all, says Willie Levenson, the ringleader (his official title) of the nonprofit organization, the river is the city’s largest public space and ought to be seen and used as such. Most recently, Levenson enlisted the help of MIG’s Portland office to explore the feasibility of repurposing downtown boat docks as places for sanctioned swimming.

City planners, working with Mayer/Reed, already had evaluated downtown Portland for potential swimming areas but had focused mostly on beaches. Levenson saw the city’s docks as another, potentially cheaper point of access. Working practically pro bono (Levenson’s budget was $5,000), MIG chose five docks (more…)

Read Full Post »

DECEMBER LAM: PORT STORIES

Posted in CITIES, ENVIRONMENT, HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, LAM ONLINE, OFFICE, PHOTOGRAPHY, PLANNING, PRACTICE, PRESERVATION, REGION, RESILIENCE, RIVER RESTORATION, SHORELINE, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 1, 2017| 1 Comment »

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This December LAM is under (and around and in) water. The feature well is saturated with new ideas about designing with and through water. The Port of Baltimore is open to designing with its dredge materials and has green-lit a pilot project for Mahan Rykiel’s sustainable and social enhancement of the Chesapeake’s Hart-Miller Island. Along the lakeshore, Chicago’s Navy Pier is putting aside its tourist-magnet past, with a redesign by James Corner Field Operations that now attracts native Chicagoans and visitors alike. And a handful of local efforts aim to combat the persistent encroachment of sea-level rise in the vulnerable communities surrounding Hampton Roads, Virginia, one of the most important strategic sites in the United States.

In Water, the EPA’s Campus RainWorks Challenge draws out creative solutions from landscape architecture students for treating and managing stormwater. Four landscape architects discuss the benefits and challenges of working in multidisciplinary firms in Office. In Materials, a quirky relic of an industrial past gets a glittery makeover for a Seattle park. And this year’s Landslide campaign from the Cultural Landscape Foundation calls attention to public landscapes and national monuments in immediate danger of erasure. All this plus our regular Books, Now, and Goods columns. The full table of contents for December 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 posting December articles as the month rolls out.

Credits: “Pier Review,” Sahar Coston-Hardy; “Dredging Up the Future,” Mahan Rykiel Associates; “The Rising Tidewater,” Sahar Coston-Hardy; “The Biggest Smallest Move,” Mutuus Studio; “It Always Rains on Campus,” Cory Gallo, ASLA; “In the Mix,” Joe Ben; “Not Gone. Yet,” Jeff Katz

Read Full Post »

THE LOS ANGELES RIVER, CUT LOOSE

Posted in ART, BROWNFIELDS, CITIES, LAM ONLINE, PLANNING, PLAYGROUNDS, RECREATION, REUSE, RIVER RESTORATION, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 22, 2017| 1 Comment »

BY ZACH MORTICE

AECOM’s plan turns the riverbed into an outdoor activities park. Image courtesy of the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering and AECOM.

The big conundrum of the Los Angeles River—that it is so imposing yet so divorced from the city—shows in the visions for its future proposed in early June by seven architecture, engineering, and landscape architecture firms. The occasion was the Los Angeles River Downtown Design Dialogue, a pro bono charrette that took place on the 10th anniversary of the city’s original master plan for the river. The design firms showed ways that visitors could step down to its shallow waters, although the concrete-lined waterway runs so low at times it can seem more like a quasi-natural splash pad. But the most fascinating plans marginalized the typically modest amounts of water in the river almost entirely.

There are no immediate plans to execute any of the projects. Rather, Gary Lee Moore, the city engineer of Los Angeles, described the charrette as an opportunity to (more…)

Read Full Post »

ART DIRECTOR’S CUT, MARCH 14

Posted in BROWNFIELDS, CITIES, LAM ONLINE, PHOTOGRAPHY, RECREATION, RIVER RESTORATION, WATER, tagged , , , , on March 14, 2017| Leave a Comment »

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

chicagoriverwalk_0369-cpp-9733_resize

Photo by Christian Phillips Photography.

From “Walking the Walk” by Jane Margolies in the March 2017 issue, a feature on Chicago’s six-block riverwalk, a decade and a half in the making.

“Down by the river.”

–CHRIS MCGEE, LAM ART DIRECTOR

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.

Read Full Post »

WALKING THE WALK

Posted in ACCESSIBILITY, BROWNFIELDS, CITIES, HABITAT, LAM MAGAZINE, PARKS, PLANTS, RECREATION, REUSE, RIVER RESTORATION, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 7, 2017| 2 Comments »

BY JANE MARGOLIES

lam_03mar2017_riverwalk-cover_resize

Fifteen years in the making, a new public space reunites Chicago with the river that runs through it.

FROM THE MARCH 2017 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

“Isn’t it hot?” Gina Ford, ASLA, asked excitedly, waving a well-jacketed arm around her on a cold morning this past fall as she, the architect Carol Ross Barney, and Terry Ryan, FASLA, met up at the Chicago Riverwalk to show me around.

Not exactly the word I would have chosen, given the temperature, but, yes, the new promenade they designed along the Chicago River, in the downtown of Illinois’s largest city, most definitely is.

Extending eight blocks along the river’s southern bank at a level below the streetscape, the Riverwalk is part of a 1.25-mile path from Lake Michigan inland that some are calling the city’s “second shoreline” (the lake, which borders Chicago to the east, being the “first,” of course). Each block-long space is bookended by the historic bridge houses that operate the movable spans that cross the waterway. And each has its own distinct riverside character, ranging from the Marina, a hub of food and drink purveyors, to the Jetty, an ecology-themed section that includes floating gardens and fishing piers. A continuous pathway stitches the segments together, weaving around the bridge houses before continuing on. And all of it adds up to a (more…)

Read Full Post »

LAMCAST: URBAN RANGERS TO THE RESCUE

Posted in CITIES, LAM ONLINE, OFFICE, PEOPLE, RIVER RESTORATION, STREETS, WATER, tagged , , , , on November 14, 2016| Leave a Comment »

 

The Los Angeles Urban Rangers bring a naturalist’s eye to the urban jungle. Since 2004, they’ve led Angelenos in guided hikes and campfire talks through their city, tallying security cameras and public art instead of rare mushrooms and finches. Their latest video (a tour of downtown Los Angeles’s financial district) seems mostly like an act of whimsy and make-believe—until they guide explorers through dark tunnels and dense webs of infrastructure to one of the few places that offer public access to the concrete-entombed Los Angeles River. From that hidden vantage point, it’s much clearer that all landscapes, green or gray alike, require access and appreciation to survive and thrive.

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »