Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘SOIL’ Category

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

Posted in ENVIRONMENT, LAM MAGAZINE, LAND MATTERS, REGION, REGULATIONS, RESILIENCE, SAN FRANCISCO, SANDY, SOIL, STREETS, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 30, 2018| Leave a Comment »

BY BRADFORD MCKEE

FROM THE OCTOBER 2016 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

 

“It’s happening again.” That was a repeated phrase May 27 on Twitter as a deluge of water came downhill on Main Street in Ellicott City, Maryland, carrying cars and garbage and ruining businesses that had rebuilt after a similar flood in 2016. This time, the historic town received more than seven inches of rain within a few hours; a Maryland National Guardsman was killed as he tried to help a woman rescue her cat.

Ellicott City has known flooding since its founding, though it now comes from above the town rather than creeping up from the Patapsco River below. Our editorial in October 2016 explains the problem, which officials still, apparently, have not been able to fix.

——

Main Street in Ellicott City, Maryland, has reopened, its historic storefronts repaired for the moment but its bigger problems unsolved. On July 30, almost six inches of rain fell in two hours right atop the 244-year-old former mill town—now a shopping and dining destination—which is built into a tight granite valley atop a network of streams that flow into the Patapsco River. The flood was a surprise. The water came not from the river but from upland, where suburban development in recent decades has hardened the ground. Main Street turned into a torrent within minutes. Dozens of people who had gone out to shop or eat had to be rescued, and two people died. The water shoved around a couple hundred cars and gouged out the streetscape, baring the infrastructure beneath about 100 ruined businesses. (more…)

Read Full Post »

SLOPE STYLE

Posted in ECOLOGY, LAM MAGAZINE, PLANTS, PRACTICE, SOIL, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 24, 2018| Leave a Comment »

BY ANNETTE WILKUS, FASLA

Large trees and steep slopes can work together—but it takes thought.

FROM THE APRIL 2018 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

It’s interesting to watch the evolution of planting design alongside our profession’s affection for steep slopes. Using steep landforms allows us, as designers, to create dramatic rooms in small places. In any urban environment, the use of landform has become increasingly important to expanding our environment without increasing the square footage of its footprint. Slopes greater than 3:1 have become the sweetheart of the landscape architecture world—­and the steeper the better.

As space becomes smaller and landforms become steeper, clients are requesting larger plants that provide an instant landscape. The bigger the tree or shrub, the better. So we see a lot of enormous plants placed into sharp slopes as a standard practice.

In our practice, we’ve seen steep landforms become a challenge for contractors when installing large root balls, trying to establish the plants, and maintaining them during the warranty period. We’ve also seen misunderstandings among designers over the relationship between (more…)

Read Full Post »

LAMCAST: COMPUTATIONAL ECOSYSTEMS

Posted in ASLA, CLIMATE, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, LAM ONLINE, PLANNING, REGION, SHORELINE, SOIL, TECH, UNIVERSITY, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 19, 2018| 1 Comment »

University of Virginia Landscape Architecture Chair Bradley Cantrell, ASLA, sees the future of landscape design as a spectrum of interactions between technologies that sense the environment, model and simulate it, and then finally affect the physical world—all without constant human input and monitoring. As argued in his March 13 LAM Lecture (and in his recent book Responsive Landscapes, written with Justine Holzman, ASLA), the future of landscape architecture is one of designing protocols for how natural systems behave, and tuning these algorithms and eventually the land itself, thus loosening the stranglehold static and monofunctional infrastructure has on the planet.  “It’s not about us controlling every aspect,” he says. “It’s about us setting a range of ways those behaviors can act within.”

Cantrell’s research is grounded in the previous century’s cutting-edge modeling and simulation methods, like the Army Corp of Engineers Mississippi River Basin Model in Clinton, Mississippi, which modeled the entire rivershed, scaled down to a mere 200 acres. From there, Cantrell details contemporary research that is equal parts computational and material, honing ever more granular data points toward more accurate models. For example, there’s USC Assistant Professor Alexander Robinson’s Office of Outdoor Research, Landscape Morphologies Lab work, which uses an articulated robot arm to scrape out dust-mitigating landforms at California’s Owens Lake. Cantrell’s own inquiries involve test bed river basin models that deposit sediment via the variable flow of water, which he has been able to manipulate as though it were a geologic 3-D printer, expanding and cutting back sediment deposit “land” where it’s desired. The resulting topographies are scanned and converted into point-cloud maps.

Cantrell’s approach pushes landscape architecture’s prevailing infrastructure fixation until it ricochets out of the physically imposing world of concrete and culverts and into abstract data, underpinning the omnipresent ways we reengineer ecologies with quantitative facts. The biggest challenge for modeling and simulating dynamic environments, Cantrell says, is not gathering all the requisite data, but getting it to interact in a way that matches reality. At its core, it’s a call for new levels of observational rigor: first, to observe all the factors that make an ecosystem function, and then to understand how those factors work together to create a landscape.

Read Full Post »

APRIL LAM: CROSSING BORDERS

Posted in BROWNFIELDS, CITIES, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, FEATURES, LAM ONLINE, MAINTENANCE, MATERIALS, OFFICE, PARKS, PLANNING, PRACTICE, SOIL, SPECIES, STREETS, STUDENTS, THE CLIENT, UNIVERSITY, VIEWS, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 2, 2018| Leave a Comment »

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

It’s the beginning of April, which mean’s LAM’s World Landscape Architecture Month issue is here! You’ll find these stories inside:

FOREGROUND

Maintenance Matters (Office)
Maintenance is all about relationships. And money.


Slope Style (Materials)
Pointers and pitfalls for planting trees on steep grades.

Royal Treatment (Gardens)
The art of bonsai is easier to see in Rhodeside & Harwell’s new pavilion at the
National Bonsai & Penjing Museum.

FEATURES

Ethic and Aesthetic
The acequia—a centuries-old irrigation technology—is ideal for stormwater management
at a New Mexico house.

Scale Factor
SWA combines beauty and security at Mexico’s University of Monterrey.

Parisian Accents
Three new parks anchor regeneration projects near the city’s periphery.

Out of Time
The past and the present merge in a new language for commemorating slavery at
Valongo Wharf, the largest slave port in the Americas.

THE BACK

Soft Power in Moscow
Public spaces devoid of politics are a new idea in Moscow. You could even call them revolutionary.

All this plus the regular Now and Goods columns. The full table of contents for April 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 April articles as the month rolls out.

Credits: “Parisian Accents,” Atelier Jacqueline Osty & Associés; “Out of Time,” Sara Zewde; “Ethic and Aesthetic,” Kate Russell; “Scale Factor,” SWA Group/Jonnu Singleton; “Maintenance Matters,” Josef Gutierrez, ASLA; “Slope Style,” SiteWorks; “Royal Treatment,” Allen Russ Photographer; “Soft Power in Moscow,” Iwan Baan, courtesy Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

Read Full Post »

ART DIRECTOR’S CUT, MARCH 22

Posted in GARDENS, LAM ONLINE, PLANTS, SOIL, SPECIES, THE BACK, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 22, 2018| Leave a Comment »

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

Image courtesy Rosetta S. Elkin.

From “Covered Ground” by Bradford McKee in the March 2018 issue, on Rosetta Elkin’s research into how the smallest plants can have a big impact in our landscapes.

“The big little.”

–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 »

SOLID AS A ROCK

Posted in ENERGY, LAM MAGAZINE, MATERIALS, REGULATIONS, REUSE, SOIL, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 27, 2018| Leave a Comment »

BY MEG CALKINS, FASLA

The stone industry adopts a new sustainability standard.

FROM THE FEBRUARY 2018 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

In 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design, Bill Browning, an environmental designer and founder of Terrapin Bright Green, cites “material connection with nature” as a significant principle. In other words, materials from nature, with minimal processing, can be used to construct the built environment—reflecting the local geology and connecting people to a place and natural setting. More than any other material, stone fulfills this “pattern”—often seamlessly settling a built landscape into the larger natural context. Yet in some cases, heavy stone can travel thousands of miles between harvest and use—offering absolutely no connection to the local natural landscape and creating a substantial environmental footprint.

Stone holds great potential to be a highly sustainable construction material for use in paving, stairs, and walls. It can be extremely durable, with relatively low embodied energy (energy used to produce a material), and nontoxic. However, a study from the University of Tennessee estimates that more than half of all dimension stone—defined as any stone that has been cut or shaped for use in construction—is imported, primarily from China, India, and Brazil, owing to far lower labor costs and fewer worker safety regulations, which combine for a lower product cost. Some of this stone might have been harvested in the United States, sent overseas for processing, then returned as “imported stone.” Minimal records of stone harvest, sales, and processing make it challenging to track stone’s path to market. Additionally, environmental impacts from waste and water use in stone quarrying and manufacture are not insignificant. Fortunately, a new standard from the Natural Stone Council (NSC) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) offers criteria for reducing the environmental impacts of stone harvest and processing and requires a chain of custody for stone so consumers can know for sure the path their “local” stone has traveled.

The stone quarrying process is often lumped together with metal mining’s heavy blasting and toxic runoff, but Kathy Spanier, the marketing director at Coldspring in Minnesota and a participant in the development of the new stone standard, emphasizes (more…)

Read Full Post »

FEBRUARY LAM: Earth, Trees, and Stone

Posted in DETAILS, ECOLOGY, EDUCATION, ENVIRONMENT, FEATURES, GARDENS, HEALING GARDENS, HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, IDEAS, LAM ONLINE, MATERIALS, PARKS, PHOTOGRAPHY, PLANTS, PLAYGROUNDS, RECREATION, REGULATIONS, SOIL, SPECIES, TECH, VIEWS, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 1, 2018| 1 Comment »

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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

FOREGROUND

Secrets to Share (Gardens)
Sadafumi Uchiyama, ASLA, can teach you how to
make a Japanese garden in Portland, Oregon.

Woven in Place (Details)
At Kopupaka Reserve, New Zealand, the Isthmus Group is weaving
Maori culture into stormwater infrastructure.

Solid as a Rock (Materials)
Is stone always a sustainable building material?

FEATURES

A Forest in the City in the Forest
Sylvatica Studio’s landscape for the Fernbank Museum of Natural History
immerses visitors in Atlanta’s old-growth Piedmont forest.

Ripple Effect
A topographically exuberant campus by Snøhetta embraces
the MAX IV synchrotron particle accelerator.

A View of the World
Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects has restored
the landscape of the painter Frederic Church’s estate.

All this plus the regular Now and Goods columns. The full table of contents for February 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 February articles as the month rolls out.

Credits: “Ripple Effect,” Felix Gerlach; “A View of the World,” Detail of Clouds over Olana, 1872, by Frederic Edwin Church, Oil on paper 8 11⁄16 x 12 1⁄8 inches, OL.1976.1. Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, New York, Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation; “A Forest in the City in the Forest,” Timothy Hursley; “Solid as a Rock,” GGN; “Secrets to Share,” Jonathan Ley; “Woven in Place,” David St. George.

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »