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Archive for the ‘WATER’ Category

OUT OF TIME / SAINDO DO TEMPO

Posted in CITIES, FEATURES, HEALING GARDENS, LAM MAGAZINE, MEMORIAL, OCEANS, PARKS, PEOPLE, PLANNING, PLANTS, RESEARCH, SPECIES, STREETS, STUDENTS, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 19, 2018| Leave a Comment »

As part of an ongoing effort to make content more accessible, LAM will be making select stories available to readers in different languages. 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 / IMAGES BY SARA ZEWDE

FROM THE APRIL 2018 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

There are a number of arresting images in Sara Zewde’s proposal for a memorial at Valongo Wharf in Rio de Janeiro, but my favorite is the one with the water. In it, ghostly figures in white are faded back over a scrim of water overlaid on the sea. Above their heads is a diagram of points and lines that ricochet out from a dense cluster triangulating across the sky. The palette is one of muted blues and grays. It feels both transcendent and somber.

The diagram comes from one of the spatial analyses that Zewde did on samba, the distinctly Brazilian musical form with African roots that lives in the city’s streets and squares. It depicts the roda de samba, an informal dance circle of musicians and spectators who become musicians. The character of samba is both sad and happy, a shout of joy and a lamentation.

In July 2017, the Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site in Rio de Janeiro became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Zewde helped write the nomination, and her ideas are threaded through the descriptions. Recognized for “Outstanding Universal Value,” for its material, spiritual, and cultural significance, the wharf was and is the central element in a landscape that profoundly shaped the history of the Western Hemisphere: the built environment of slavery. (more…)

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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.

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ART DIRECTOR’S CUT, APRIL 10

Posted in ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, LAM ONLINE, NOW, PHOTOGRAPHY, PLANTS, RESILIENCE, SHORELINE, SPECIES, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 10, 2018| Leave a Comment »

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

Photo by Jerry Bauer.

From “Battered, But Not Broken” by Timothy A. Schuler in the April 2018 issue, about the consoling post-hurricane recovery of Puerto Rico’s El Yunque National Forest.

“Vegetation devastation.”

–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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SOFT POWER IN MOSCOW

Posted in BROWNFIELDS, CITIES, GREEN ROOFS, LAM MAGAZINE, PARKS, PLANNING, RECREATION, STREETS, THE BACK, UNIVERSITY, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 5, 2018| 1 Comment »

BY STEPHEN ZACKS

An expansive park at the foot of the Kremlin helped drive a series of revolutionary improvements to the Russian capital.

FROM THE APRIL 2018 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE. 

At Zaryadye Park in central Moscow, a procession of Eurasian birch trees, grasses, and shrubs winds downhill from a glass-encrusted outdoor amphitheater that tops the new Philharmonic Hall, framing photogenic views of the candy-colored cupolas of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. The park’s verdant terrain folds onto the rooftops of five scalloped pavilions that shelter a botanical display, an educational center, a food court, and a screening room that plays an immersive 3-D film on Russian history. The park, which covers 32 acres, stretches to the edge of Red Square, and even adds 11 square feet to the square that was uncovered during excavation. The pavilions, with their vegetated roofs, and most of the park’s terrain sit atop a 430-car underground parking garage. To keep the whole landscape in place, a geocell soil-stabilization system rests on top, anchoring granite pavers on pedestrian pathways that stretch onto an arching, boomerang-shaped overlook that cantilevers and hovers over the Moskva River. Here visitors of all ages and groups compulsively photograph themselves against the backdrop of the Kremlin and the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building, one of the Stalinist high-rises that define Moscow’s skyline.

Zaryadye Park is an entertaining landscape intended as a spectacular place, a special attraction, and a free public space—a term that Russian architects agree had almost no precedent in the language before a series of convergences brought the park into being. (more…)

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RE-GROWING DETROIT’S URBAN EDGE

Posted in BROWNFIELDS, CITIES, COMPETITIONS, ECOLOGY, LAM ONLINE, PARKS, PLANTS, PLAYGROUNDS, VIEWS, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 3, 2018| 2 Comments »

BY ZACH MORTICE

The Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates plan uses a series of intensely programmed pavilions at the park’s urban edge. Image courtesy Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates.

Update 4/10/2018: The Detroit Riverfront Conservancy has chosen Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates’ plan as the competition winner. 

At 22 acres on a prime Detroit River site southwest of downtown, the future West Riverfront Park could become the city’s new civic front yard.

A design competition hosted by the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy has collected a short list of plans to fill this need, with work by GGN, James Corner Field Operations, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA), and Hood Studio making the cut. The winner will be determined by jury later this month. Several of these plans deal with the site’s relative surrounding vacancy and lack of connection to active, urban uses by building up dense layers of programming, but differ on whether the park is to be a regional centerpiece or one notable amenity along the Detroit RiverWalk’s miles-long string of them.

West Riverfront Park is part of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy’s larger plan to rejuvenate 5.5 miles of the Detroit Riverfront. East of downtown Detroit, 3.5 miles of the RiverWalk is already complete, featuring entertainment and event spaces, sculpture gardens, cultural venues, parks, and hotels. At the confluence of downtown, Corktown, and Mexicantown, the West Riverfront Park sits near some of the city’s most dramatically resurgent (and stable) neighborhoods. But the park site has been largely barren for decades. Previously, a hulking warehouse for the Detroit Free Press dominated the site. It was privately owned and closed off to the public for about (more…)

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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 »

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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.

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PROMISED LAND / LA TIERRA PROMETIDA

Posted in CITIES, FEATURES, HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, LAM MAGAZINE, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 29, 2018| Leave a Comment »

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 MARCH 2018 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

To be honest, you probably won’t notice the landscape design at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) the first time you come. The newest Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C., has been a doorbuster—it had one million visitors in the first four months, and 2.5 million visitors in its first year. Timed entry tickets are snapped up three months in advance, and a maze of stanchions clutters the entryways to control the unexpected press of people. The museum’s restaurant, the Sweet Home Café, was a semifinalist for Best New Restaurant in the James Beard Foundation Awards. The talismanic objects in the museum’s collection include Nat Turner’s bible and Parliament-Funkadelic’s Mothership, among nearly 37,000 personal objects, photographs, and historical documents. Visitors sometimes have to wait in line just to enter the museum gift shop. There are so many reasons to go to the museum and stay there all day, you might slide right over the landscape.

And that’s partly by design. From early on, the landscape design, by Kathryn Gustafson, FASLA, and Rodrigo Abela, ASLA, of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN), was meant to (more…)

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