Archive for the ‘SOIL’ Category

THE RIVER BENEATH THE RIVER

Posted in BROWNFIELDS, CITIES, ECOLOGY, ECONOMICS, ENVIRONMENT, FEATURES, HEALING GARDENS, HEALTHY COMMUNITIES, LAM MAGAZINE, PARKS, PEOPLE, PHOTOGRAPHY, PLANNING, PLANTS, POLLUTION, REAL ESTATE, RECREATION, REGION, RESILIENCE, RIVER RESTORATION, SHORELINE, SOIL, TRANSLATED, WATER, tagged 11th Street Bridge Park, African-American, Akiima Price, Anacostia Park, Anacostia River, Anacostia River Sediment Project, Anacostia Riverkeeper, Anacostia Waterfront Initiative Framework Plan, Anacostia Waterfront Trust, Anacostia Watershed Society, Andrew Altman, Anthony Williams, asthma, Audi Field, bacteria, bag tax, bald eagles, beaver, better connections, BioBlitz, biodiversity, Bladensburg, Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant, Buzzard Point, cancer, Channelized, Chesapeake Bay, chlorophyll, Chris, Christopher Allen, Claudia “Lady Bird” Alta Taylor Johnson, Clean Rivers Project, Clean Water Act, combined sewer overflow, combined sewer system, consent decree, cormorants, D.C. United, DC, DC Water, Department of Energy & Environment, depth, displacement, dissolved oxygen, District of Columbia, District Wharf, E. coli, Eastern Branch, ecological recovery, economic justice, economic revitalization, Environmental Justice, environmental restoration, EPA, Equitable Development Plan, Erin Garnaas-Holmes, fecal matter, gentrification, George Hawkins, green infrastructure, Gretchen Mikeska, habitat, Heritage Island, housing, improved transportation options, infant mortality, Jennifer Reut, Jim Foster, Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens, Kingman Island, Krista Schlyer, Lady Bird, landfill, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Lucy, Lucy Diggs Slowe, Maryland, Nacotchtank, Nannie, Nannie Helen Burroughs, National Arboretum, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, Native Americans, Navy Yard, new development, Northeast Boundary, osprey, PARKS, pesticides, pH, point source pollutants, pollution, Poplar Point, Potomac River, race, riparian, river, River of Redemption: Almanac of Life on the Anacostia, rivershed, Rock Creek, sewage, shipping channels, Southeast Federal Center, strong neighborhoods, Swim Guide app, Texas A&M University Press, Toni L. Griffin, tours, TRANSLATED, Trey Sherard, tunnel boring machines, tunnels, turbidity, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, urban waterways, Washington, Washington Channel, water quality, watershed, wetlands, Yards Park, Year of the Anacostia on November 27, 2018| 2 Comments »

As part of an ongoing effort to make content more accessible, LAM will be making select stories available to readers in Spanish. For a full list of translated articles, please click here.

Click above for a full PDF of the translated text, with English text available below.

BY JENNIFER REUT

FROM THE NOVEMBER 2018 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

For a long time, the Anacostia River didn’t even have a name. It was just the Eastern Branch, the other, less promising section of Washington, D.C.’s better known and more distinguished river, the Potomac. But it was always known as a fortunate course to the Nacotchtank, the Native Americans who used it as a trading post, and later to the European colonists who relied on the river’s deep port at Bladensburg, Maryland, to carry tobacco, and to the generations of farmers, tradesmen, and laborers who never seemed to run out of fish, fowl, and game to hunt. For nearly nine miles, the Anacostia eased in and out with the tide, with no particular urgency, toward its confluence with the Potomac, tracing an unhurried flow through thousands of acres of tidal wetlands.

Of course, that was before the port and the shipping channels silted up in the 19th century from agricultural misuse; before the river was (more…)

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ART DIRECTOR’S CUT, NOVEMBER 20

Posted in ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, HEALTHY COMMUNITIES, LAM ONLINE, PHOTOGRAPHY, POLLUTION, RECREATION, REGION, RESILIENCE, RIVER RESTORATION, SHORELINE, SOIL, WATER, tagged Anacostia Park, Anacostia Park Roller Skating Pavilion, Anacostia River, Art Director's Cut, DC, equity, Jennifer Reut, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, river, Washington on November 20, 2018| Leave a Comment »

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

Photo by Sahar Coston-Hardy, Affiliate ASLA.

From “The River Beneath the River” in the November 2018 issue by Jennifer Reut, about Washington D.C.’s quest to make its second most famous river, the Anacostia, vibrant and healthy once more. Here, kids scoot out of the sun at the Anacostia Park Roller Skating Pavilion along the river’s shores.

“Keeping cool in Anacostia Park”

–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.

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ROME’S MILLENNIA OF “MODERN RUINS”

Posted in CITIES, CONSTRUCTION, ENVIRONMENT, HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, LAM ONLINE, PHOTOGRAPHY, PLANNING, RECREATION, RESILIENCE, REUSE, RIVER RESTORATION, SHORELINE, SOIL, WATER, tagged Alessandro Specchi, Alexander Robinson, bronze, built in modeling clay, cardboard, chipboard, excavation, Italy, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, landscape model, Landscape Morphologies Lab, melted wax, model, modern ruin, Office of Outdoor Research, Piranesi, Porto Ripetta, river port, Rome, Rome Fellow, Tiber River, University of Southern California, video, Zach Mortice on October 26, 2018| Leave a Comment »

BY ZACH MORTICE

Alexander Robinson’s model is made from modeling clay, cardboard, melted wax, chipboard, and bronze. Image courtesy Alexander Robinson.

More than 2,000 years of built history along the Tiber River in Rome speeds by in Alexander Robinson’s landscape model “Feast of the Picturesque, Act X. Porto Ripetta, Tevere” and in videos Robinson made of the model, built in modeling clay, cardboard, melted wax, chipboard, and bronze.

Still photographs of the model as it advances through the ages combine to form the videos. Sometimes a tub of glue gets into a shot. And Robinson flits in and out of the making-of video like a wraith, cutting, gluing, and manipulating here and there. Robinson’s process makes clear that with 2,000 years of history on a site, a final, destined form is fiction. “Feast” revels in the continuous churn. (more…)

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ON BRAZIL’S BEHALF

Posted in BOOKS, ECOLOGY, ECONOMICS, ENVIRONMENT, GARDENS, HABITAT, LAM MAGAZINE, PEOPLE, PLANTS, POLLUTION, PRESERVATION, REGION, REGULATIONS, RESILIENCE, SOIL, SPECIES, THE BACK, WATER, WILDLIFE, tagged Acalypha, activist, Agrarian Reform, agriculture, Amazon, and Plantation Settlement for Latin American Countries, Aniba rosaeodora, Anthropocene, Araras, Araucaria angustifolia, Araucária Forests, Bahia, big-leaf mahogany, biodiversity, biological reserves, book, botanical gardens, botany, Brad McKee, Brazil, Brazilian Pine, Brazilian walnut, Bromeliads, Cambessedesia, Carta de Brasília, Cassia siamea, Casuarina, Catherine Seavitt Nordenson, cedar, cinnamon, conservation, Curitiba, Department of National Historic and Artistic Heritage, Depositions: Roberto Burle Marx and Public Landscapes under Dictatorship, ECOLOGY, economic development, Equatorial, Espírito Santo, Eucalyptus, extinction, Federal Cultural Council, flooding, forest, Forestry Code, Forestry Service, geology, habitat, hardwood, highways, Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, Hydroelectric Dam, ivorywood, Kalimeris, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Leandra, Lychnophoras, Lygodium, Mahogany Forest Reserve, Melastomataceae, Microlicia, military dictatorship, mining, monoculture, national cultural council, National Institute of Agrarian Development, National Parks, nuclear power, nutrients, Paepalanthus, Pandanus, Paraná, Parque Nacional do Vale do Jequitinhonha, pau-marfim, pau-rosa, peroba, Philodendron adamantinum, pinheiro da Bocaina, Pinus elliotis, Podocarpus lambertii, Public Policy, quaresmeiras, quebracho, Resource Extraction, restinga, Rio Araguaia, Rio de janeiro, Roberto Burle Marx, Schinopsis lorentzii, Seminar Concerning Forestry Development, Sipolisia, soil, Spathodea campanulata, subtropical native forests, Swietenia macrophylla, tanin, Terminalia catappa, timber, translation, Tropical, tropical broadleaf forest, tropical hardwood, United Nations, University of Texas Press, Vellozias, Wunderlichia on October 19, 2018| Leave a Comment »

BY CATHERINE SEAVITT NORDENSON, ASLA

Araucárias, Paraná, ca. 1884. Photo by Marc Ferrez/Gilberto Ferrez Collection/Instituto Moreira Salles.

FROM THE OCTOBER 2018 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

Speaking out against the military dictatorship of Brazil during the late 1960s and early 1970s had definite risks. Politicians, human rights advocates, artists, and intellectuals who publicly opposed the right-wing government’s programs of hyperdevelopment did so under threat of arrest, imprisonment, torture, and death. Many fled into exile. Roberto Burle Marx, the Brazilian landscape architect (1909–1994), had been a public figure for decades when, three years after the 1964 coup, he was appointed by the dictatorship’s first president, Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, to a 24-member national cultural council. For Burle Marx, the decision to join the council was ethically freighted. He accepted with one clear objective: to save the Brazilian landscape.

In a new book, Depositions: Roberto Burle Marx and Public Landscapes Under Dictatorship (University of Texas Press, 2018), Catherine Seavitt Nordenson, ASLA, brings forth a series of 18 frankly activist speeches, or depositions, that Burle Marx delivered as a member of the council. They target, among other things, the unchecked destruction of Brazil’s forests for raw materials and agriculture. He surveyed the progression of environmental tragedy with a deep knowledge of botany and ecology, an intricate alertness to policy, and always appealing to a Brazilian pride in its national landscape patrimony.

“The way I read his depositions, Burle Marx is positioning an argument that’s against the economic development theory of the regime,” Seavitt Nordenson told me recently. “Sometimes they listen to him and sometimes they don’t. But he’s on the inside and he’s arguing passionately, because he’s been working on the cultural project of the Brazilian landscape for so long.” Seavitt Nordenson notes that in these speeches of 50 years ago, Burle Marx touches on two huge problems of today, anthropogenic impacts affecting climate and the loss of biodiversity. “They’re very clear—they’re jocular speeches, often funny, and have so much spontaneity—and he manages to communicate a serious message to an audience that has significant political power.”

This excerpt of Depositions includes a brief introduction by Seavitt Nordenson to three depositions on forests, followed by her translations of the depositions themselves.

—Bradford McKee

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OCTOBER LAM: FOLLOW THE FLOW

Posted in AWARDS, BROWNFIELDS, CITIES, CLIMATE, ECOLOGY, ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT, GARDENS, HEALING GARDENS, HEALTHY COMMUNITIES, HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, LAM ONLINE, PARKS, PEOPLE, PHOTOGRAPHY, PLANNING, PLANTS, PRACTICE, REGULATIONS, RESEARCH, RESILIENCE, REUSE, RIVER RESTORATION, SHORELINE, SOIL, STREETS, STUDENTS, UNIVERSITY, WATER, tagged Anne Whiston Spirn, Belgium, Biohabitats, Columbus, downtown, Erik Dhont, farm, Fountain, Garden, infill, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Longwood Gardens, MKSK, Ohio, Old Masters, Pittsburgh, REBRANDING, river, stairs, Thomas Paine Plaza, Travel, Water, West Philadelphia on October 1, 2018| 1 Comment »

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It’s the first of October, which means the latest issue of LAM is here! You’ll find these stories inside:

FOREGROUND

All Over the Place (Almost) [Travels]
Where the projects are (and aren’t) that appeared in the magazine in the past year.

Brand New (Office)
Rebranding your practice—large or small—involves more than just changing your name.

Fuller Blast (Water)
The redesigned fountains at Longwood Gardens reinvent a crumbling
relic with cutting-edge infrastructure.

Concrete Crops (Food)
In Philadelphia’s Center City, Thomas Paine Plaza takes on new life as a mini-farm.

Step by Step by Step (Planning)
Everybody takes the stairs in Pittsburgh.

FEATURES

Where the Water Was
Anne Whiston Spirn, FASLA, has made West Philadelphia—
and the water that flows beneath it—a life’s work.

Hydro Power
MKSK makes public space out of river infill in Columbus, Ohio,
drawing a whole new generation downtown.

Science to Design
Biohabitats’s mission is nothing less than healing the Earth.

Lower Here, Higher There
The Belgian landscape designer Erik Dhont creates modern gardens inspired
by the minds of the Old Masters.

All this plus the regular Now and Goods columns. The full table of contents for October can be found here.

Keep an eye out here on the blog, on the LAM Facebook page, and on our Twitter feed (@landarchmag), as we’ll be posting October articles as the month rolls out.

Credits: “Hydro Power,” MKSK; “Science to Design,” Stuart Pearl Photography; “Lower Here, Higher There,” Jean-Pierre Gabriel; “Where the Water Was,” Sahar Coston-Hardy, Affiliate ASLA; “Step by Step by Step,” Merritt Chase; “Fuller Blast,” Jaime Perez; “Concrete Crops,” Viridian Landscape Studio; “Brand New,” Gensler/Ryan Gobuty.

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SELECTIONS FROM THE 2018 STUDENT AWARDS

Posted in ASLA, AWARDS, BROWNFIELDS, CLIMATE, ECOLOGY, EDUCATION, ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT, LAM ONLINE, MATERIALS, NURSERY, PARKS, PLANNING, PLANTS, POLLUTION, RECREATION, REGION, REGULATIONS, RESEARCH, RESILIENCE, SOIL, SPECIES, STUDENTS, TECH, Uncategorized, UNIVERSITY, tagged 2018 ASLA Student Awards, Afghanistan, algae, Analysis and Planning, Andrew Prindle, Angeles National Forest, bedrock, Berkeley, bioluminescent algae, blue green algae, buffer zone, bunker, car exhaust, Catherine Seavitt Nordenson, cell, chaparral, Chengzhe Zhang, City College of New York, clay, Columbia River, Communications, Craig Douglas, Danika Cooper, David Watts, Derek Lazo, diatom algae, DMZ, dune, Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility, erosion, Fadi Masoud, farm, fertilizer, flight path, General Design, Hamoun lakes, Hanford nuclear site, Hanford Reach National Monument, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Iran, Jiawen Chen, Jungyoon Kim, Kasia Keeley, lake, Lake Winemucca, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Manhattan Project, Matthew Seibert, Mount Khajeh, myth, Native American, native species, Nevada, Niall Kirkwood, Nilafar Makaremi Esfarjani, nitrogen, North Korea, nuclear waste, NURSERY, Paiute, Park, phosphates, pollution, Pyramid Lake, Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation, radioactive, Reno, rocks, San Gabriel Valley, Sarah Toth, Sediment, sediment flow, Sediment thruway, Serena Lousich, Siyu Jiang, soil, solar energy, South Korea, Southern California, Stone Mother, Texas, Thaisa Way, tomb, trail, Trinity River, Truckee River, Unification, University of California, University of Toronto, University of Washington, Walls, war landscape, Washington State, wastewater treatment plan, wax, wildfire, wind energy, Xiwei Shen, Yoon-Jin Park, Zach Mortice on September 25, 2018| Leave a Comment »

BY ZACH MORTICE

“Stop Making Sense” resists applying easily explicable narratives to the open question of nuclear waste storage. Image courtesy Andrew Prindle, Student ASLA, and Kasia Keeley, Student Affiliate ASLA.

The winning entries of the 2018 ASLA Student Awards offer solutions for extreme sites and surreal conditions, completely appropriate to the times in which they were crafted. Here is a selection of six award-winning student projects that greet such days with humanity, nuance, and rigor.

Stop Making Sense: Spatializing the Hanford Site’s Nuclear Legacy

General Design: Honor Award

Composed of a pair of inscrutable concrete bunkers that are 1,000 feet long and dug 60 feet into the earth, “Stop Making Sense” by Kasia Keeley, Student Affiliate ASLA, and Andrew Prindle, Student ASLA, pushes aside dominant narratives about how our nation treats and digests nuclear waste.

“We didn’t want to give people answers, and we didn’t want to force a perspective,” Keeley says. “What we wanted to do was raise questions and incite curiosity.” (more…)

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THE RISING TIDEWATER, REVISITED

Posted in CITIES, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, FEATURES, LAM MAGAZINE, PLANNING, PLANTS, REGION, RESILIENCE, SHORELINE, SOIL, STREETS, Uncategorized, UNIVERSITY, WATER, tagged Ann C. Phillips, Ann P. Stokes, Ann P. Stokes Landscape Architects, Arcadis, bioretention cells, Brett Anderson, Carol Considine, Center for Climate and Security, Chesapeake Bay, Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professional Certification, Chesterfield Heights, cisterns, climate science, Dale Morris, David Imburgia, David Waggonner, Donald Whipple, Dutch Dialogues, engineering, erosion, flooding, Fort Monroe, gate, Glenn Oder, grasslands, Hampton, Hampton Roads, Hampton University’s Department of Architecture, Haynes Creek Stormwater Park, HUD, Hurricane, Hurricane Florence, hydrology, Lafayette River, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Larry Atkinson, linear park, living shorelines, Mason Andrews, Military, Mujde Erten-Unal, National Disaster Resilience Competition, National Historic Landmark District, Netherlands, New Orleans, Newmarket Creek, Newport News, Norfolk, oceanography, ODU Resilience Collaborative, Ohio Creek Watershed Project, Old Dominion University, Phoebus, Pippa Brashear, Portsmouth, raised road, Ramiro Diaz, RESILIENCE, Rockefeller Foundation, runoff, SCAPE Landscape Architecture, sea-level rise, Shereen Hughes, SHORELINE, Structures of Coastal Resilience, Terry O’Neill, Tidewater, US Navy, Virginia, Virginia Beach, Waggonner & Ball Architects, Water, water retention, waterfront park, watershed, Wayne Creek, wetlands, wetlands watch on September 13, 2018| Leave a Comment »

BY BRETT ANDERSON / PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAHAR COSTON-HARDY, AFFILIATE ASLA

Disparate but urgent efforts to address sea-level rise in the Virginia Tidewater, one of the country’s most important strategic centers, are striving to keep up with visible realities.

Editor’s Note: Norfolk, Virginia, is both highly vulnerable to sea-level rise and a critical center of military and government infrastructure. As Hurricane Florence bears down on Virginia and the Carolinas, the risks associated with storm surge flooding are intensified by the region’s strategic importance. As Brett Anderson reported in the magazine’s December 2017 issue, this isn’t a new story, and landscape architects, academics, municipal officials, and residents are collaborating to find ways the region can respond to the inevitability of rising tides.

The first question that sprang to Ann C. Phillips’s mind soon after she moved to Norfolk, Virginia, in 2006 was, “Why, when it rains, does the whole place submerge?”

She wasn’t referring only to dramatic weather events, although Phillips, a retired rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, landed in Norfolk during a bumper crop of those: Norfolk saw more major coastal storms and hurricanes in the 2000s than in the four previous decades combined, according to the city government.

Harder to fathom were the floods caused by light rains and “blue sky floods” triggered by lunar tides. Tidal flooding affects low-lying areas of Norfolk nine times per year on average.

These more regular floods were unlike anything Phillips experienced growing up in Annapolis, Maryland. They’re an alarmingly routine part of life in Norfolk and the surrounding Hampton Roads area (more…)

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Landscape Architecture Magazine

The Magazine of the American Society of Landscape Architects

Archive for the ‘SOIL’ Category

ART DIRECTOR’S CUT, NOVEMBER 20

“Keeping cool in Anacostia Park”

–CHRIS MCGEE, LAM ART DIRECTOR

ROME’S MILLENNIA OF “MODERN RUINS”

BY ZACH MORTICE

ON BRAZIL’S BEHALF

BY CATHERINE SEAVITT NORDENSON, ASLA

FROM THE OCTOBER 2018 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

OCTOBER LAM: FOLLOW THE FLOW

FOREGROUND

FEATURES

SELECTIONS FROM THE 2018 STUDENT AWARDS

BY ZACH MORTICE

THE RISING TIDEWATER, REVISITED

BY BRETT ANDERSON / PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAHAR COSTON-HARDY, AFFILIATE ASLA

Free Digital Issue: Your Land

Subscribe to LAM Digital: December 2018

Free Digital Issue: September 2018

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