November 26, 2018 by Brad McKee
Oh, wouldn’t you know, more than a dozen federal agencies release a major report on dire climate trends and the coming shocks to the United States, and the White House drops it on everyone’s stoop in the dead of Black Friday. Disregard if you can the president’s tweets about the “cold” during Thanksgiving week. And if you missed the incoherent nonsense uttered by Danielle “I’m Not a Scientist” Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute on NBC’s Meet the Press (which went unchallenged by the host, Chuck Todd) and by Rick Santorum on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning, consider that a win. But check out the report, the Fourth National Climate Assessment, for yourself.
For more breakdown, here is a roundup of news and analysis pieces assembled by the Society of Environmental Journalists.
“Major Trump Administration Climate Report Says Damage Is ‘Intensifying Across the Country’” (The Washington Post)
“Government Climate Report Warns of Worsening US Disasters” (AP)
“Federal Report: Climate Risks, Damage Rising Across U.S.” (ClimateWire)
“Climate Change Puts U.S. Economy and Lives at Risk, and Costs Are Rising, Federal Agencies Warn” (InsideClimate News)
“Clashing with Trump, U.S. Government Report Says Climate Change Will Batter Economy” (Reuters)
“Climate Change Is Already Hurting U.S. Communities, Federal Report Says” (NPR)
“Climate Change Will Shrink US Economy and Kill Thousands, Government Report Warns” (CNN)
“Climate Change ‘Will Inflict Substantial Damage on US Lives'” (The Guardian)
“What’s New in the Latest U.S. Climate Assessment” (The New York Times)
“Climate Change Poses Major Threat to United States, New Government Report Concludes” (Science)
“Trump’s Dire Climate Report Hands Ammunition to Democrats” (Politico)
“Experts to Discuss New Federal Climate Change Assessment Report for the U.S.” (NOAA)
“Federal Report: Hurricane Harvey Was a Climate Change Harbinger” (The Texas Tribune)
“Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume II” (U.S. Global Change Research Program)
Posted in CLIMATE, ECOLOGY, ECONOMICS, ENVIRONMENT, LAM ONLINE, PLANNING, REGION, REGULATIONS, RESEARCH, RESILIENCE, SECURITY | Tagged Black Friday, Brad McKee, Catastrophe, climate change, Federal Agency, Fourth National Climate Change Assessment, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, report, Society of Environmental Journalists, Thanksgiving, Trump Administration | Leave a Comment »
November 20, 2018 by LAM Staff
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.
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 | Leave a Comment »
November 19, 2018 by zachmortice
BY ZACH MORTICE
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Sea Ranch, in Northern California, seems to have always existed, emerging from the Pacific Coast cliffs like sun-dappled lichens spread across the rocks. But it was like little else people had seen when it was built by a supergroup of designers, developers, and artists in the early 1960s.
A new website is pulling back the curtain on how this masterpiece came to be. “Journey to the Sea Ranch” holds more than 800 digitized images from the Environmental Design Archives of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Architectural Archives at the University of Pennsylvania to tell the story of how Sea Ranch was conceived and built. Continue Reading »
Posted in ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, LAM ONLINE, PEOPLE, PHOTOGRAPHY, PLANTS, RECREATION, RESIDENTIAL, SAN FRANCISCO, SHORELINE, WATER | Tagged Agile Humanities Agency, Al Boeke, Architectural Archives, archive, Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, barn, Berkeley, California, cedar, Charles Moore, Chris Marino, cliffs, documents, drawings, Emily Vigor, Environmental Design Archives, Environmental Design Library, ephemera, Jean Walton, Joseph Esherick, Journey to the Sea Ranch, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Lawrence Halprin, Marion Conrad, marketing, National Historical Publications and Records Commission, Northern California, Oceanic Properties, Pacific Coast, Pacific Ocean, Penn, PennDesign, PHOTOGRAPHY, planned community, planning, plantings, RESIDENTIAL, Sea Ranch, SFMOMA, sketches, Sonoma County, supergraphics, timeline, University of California, University of Pennsylvania, vernacular, virtual tour, website, William Whitaker, wind, Zach Mortice | Leave a Comment »
November 16, 2018 by LAM Staff
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 ANNE RAVER / PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAHAR COSTON-HARDY, AFFILIATE ASLA
We were driving around west Philadelphia when Anne Whiston Spirn, FASLA, stopped at the corner of Walnut and 43rd Streets to recall the moment of discovery that still drives her work. It was 1971. She was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, on her way to the supermarket, when she was stopped at a gaping hole where the street had caved in over the Mill Creek sewer. “I looked down and saw this big, brown rushing river, and all this masonry that had fallen in. I thought, ‘My God, there are rivers underground. We’re walking on a river.’”
She was looking at Mill Creek, buried in the brick sewer pipe in the 1880s. Historic photographs show workers dwarfed by its size, constructing the pipe, about 20 feet in diameter, snaking along the creek bed. Drawings depict horse-drawn carts loaded with soil—millions of cubic yards dug with pickaxes and shovels—to cover up the pipe. Row houses were built right on top of the fill.
That buried river would become the heart of Spirn’s work when she came back to Penn 15 years later to chair the landscape architecture department and to launch the West Philadelphia Landscape Project (WPLP), but also in her larger vision of Continue Reading »
Posted in CITIES, FORWARD, GARDENS, HEALING GARDENS, LAM MAGAZINE, PARKS, PEOPLE, PHOTOGRAPHY, PLANNING, POLLUTION, REAL ESTATE, RECREATION, REGION, REGULATIONS, RESEARCH, RESILIENCE, STREETS, STUDENTS, UNIVERSITY, WATER | Tagged Adam Levine, Anne Raver, Anne Whiston Spirn, Aspen Farms, Award, Ben Turpin, Black Bottom, Boston, Boston Urban Gardeners, buried river, Charlotte Kahn, Chelsea Bruck, Clean Waters, combined sewer overflows, community gardens, Cooper Hewitt, Design Mind, Design with Nature, disinvestment, Dorchester, ecological urbanism, floodplain, Frances Walker, funeral procession, gentrification, Green City, green infrastructure, Harvard, Hayward Ford, Howard Neukrug, Ian McHarg, Janice Trap, John Widrick, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Lucien E. Blackwell Homes, Merion Botanical Park, miniature golf, National Design Award, Netter Center for Community Partnerships, outdoor classroom, Penn, Pennsylvania General Assembly, Philadelphia, Philadelphia City Planning Commission, rain garden, real estate speculation, Robert Trap, Roxbury, Sahar Coston-Hardy, segregation, Sewer, Shaping the Block: Redesigning Small Urban Neighborhoods, Smithsonian Design Museum, Social Justice, stormwater retention, Sulzberger Middle School, The Eye Is a Door, The Granite Garden, The Language of Landscape, U.S. Geological Survey, University of Pennsylvania, urban studies, vacant land survey, Vacant Land: A Resource for Reshaping Urban Neighborhoods, vacant lots, Wallace McHarg Roberts & Todd, West Philadelphia, West Philadelphia Landscape Plan: A Framework for Action, West Philadelphia Landscape Project | Leave a Comment »
November 15, 2018 by LAM Staff
BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER
A group of designers, artists, and community activists are fighting to save the bridge. A rendering by the landscape architect Michael Beightol illustrates the viaduct’s potential as a linear park. Image courtesy Michael Beightol.
IN ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA, A HISTORY OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION ANIMATES THE DEBATE OVER A PIECE OF CRUMBLING INFRASTRUCTURE.
Michael Keys used to walk the McBride Viaduct nearly every day to and from school. It was the most convenient route over the busy rail yard that bisected his east side Erie, Pennsylvania, neighborhood. Now, as a member of the local urban design advocacy group Erie CPR: Connect + Respect, Keys is one of dozens of residents fighting to save the 1,700-foot-long viaduct. The organization argues that the bridge is a crucial linkage between some of Erie’s poorest communities and that tearing it down could do harm to populations already considered vulnerable.
Erie CPR projects that removing the viaduct, which has been closed to vehicles since 2010, will force residents to cross the tracks at grade, which can be dangerous, or walk some 2,000 feet to a busy road known as the Bayfront Connector. With its high-speed traffic and blind corners, the connector is far less safe for pedestrians than the viaduct, says Adam Trott, an architect and the president of Erie CPR. Another danger, especially for children, is daily exposure to vehicle emissions. A recent World Health Organization report found that 10 percent of deaths among children under the age of five are attributable to air pollution.
The city’s decision to demolish the viaduct, which was originally built in 1938 and overhauled in the 1970s, is based on a feasibility study conducted by the engineering firm L. R. Kimball. The engineers reported that rehabilitating or replacing the viaduct were cost-prohibitive, in part because the bridge no longer meets basic road width requirements. And yet, having studied 11 alternatives— Continue Reading »
Posted in LAM ONLINE, PEOPLE, PLANNING, POLLUTION, STREETS, TRANSPORTATION | Tagged Abdullah Washington, Adam Trott, African-American, automobile, Bayfront Connector, bike path, bridge, Charles Buki, Charles Mock, Community Missionary Baptist Church, Demolition, Edinboro University, emissions, Environmental Justice, Erie, Erie CPR Connect + Respect, Erie Reader, Erie Times-News, feasibility study, health, Inequality, Infrastructure, Joe Schember, John Norquist, L.R. Kimball, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Latino, Lisa Austin, low-income, McBride Viaduct, median income, Michael Beightol, Michael Keys, Mindy Thompson Fullilove, pedestrian bridge, Pennsylvania, poverty, railyard, Rust Belt, Terry Schwarz, Timothy A. Schuler, transit, umemployment | 4 Comments »
November 13, 2018 by LAM Staff
BY MIMI ZEIGER
A beloved Lake Merritt play sculpture is a reminder that creativity is a public good.
Guiding the transition of San Francisco’s Presidio from military base to national park may be the standout accomplishment of the landscape architect and parks administrator William Penn Mott Jr., who assumed the helm of the U.S. National Park Service in 1985, but it’s a little “monster” from early in Mott’s career that has received renewed attention.
In 1952, when Mott was parks superintendent for the city of Oakland, he commissioned the artist Robert “Bob” Winston to create a unique play structure on the sandy banks of Lake Merritt. Sculptural and organic, the chartreuse green piece was known as the Mid-Century Monster. It was one of the first designs in the United States to depart from Continue Reading »
Posted in LAM MAGAZINE, PARKS, PLAYGROUNDS, SAN FRANCISCO, STUDENTS, WATER | Tagged Alison Schwarz, Amedee Sourdry, California, California College of Arts and Crafts, children, conservation report, Creative Playthings, Dance to the Music, kids, Lake Merritt, Lake Merritt Breakfast Club, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Mid-Century Monster, Mid-Century Monster Fan Club, Military Base, Mimi Zeiger, national park, Oakland, Oakland Public Works, Page and Turnbull, play, play structure, playgrounds, Public Art Ordinance, restoration plan, Robert Winston, San Francisco’s Presidio, Sly and the Family Stone, the Monster, U.S. National Park Service, William Penn Mott Jr. | Leave a Comment »
November 8, 2018 by LAM Staff
REVIEWED BY JUSTIN PARSCHER 
In their continual search for respect, recognition, and equal pay, landscape architects find themselves in a quandary. On one hand, they understand that credit attaches itself to authors, masters with distinct visions and styles, and are forever writing letters to the editor to assert that the city didn’t do it—the landscape architect did. They celebrate acting as project leads, not only because it validates their way of working, but because the project lead can safely be given final credit. However, having toiled so long in subsidiary roles, landscape architects are also mindful of the networks of expertise that actually form ambitious designs, particularly in the public realm. A chain of public officials, architects, structural and civil engineers, ecologists, lighting designers, and community members all contribute to the shape of the place, which is naturally also conditioned by social and environmental realities on the ground.
The urban historian Alison Isenberg’s Designing San Francisco is, among its many other virtues, a vital text for helping landscape architects think through this dilemma. Isenberg’s book focuses on Continue Reading »
Posted in CITIES, CONSTRUCTION, ECOLOGY, ECONOMICS, ENVIRONMENT, HISTORY, LAM MAGAZINE, PEOPLE, PLANNING, REGION, SAN FRANCISCO, THE BACK, THE CLIENT | Tagged Alison Hirsch, Alison Isenberg, Andrea, architects, Bobbie Stauffacher, book, book review, Bruno Latour, California, Caree Rose, Claude Stoller, community members, Designing San Francisco, ecologists, Ghirardelli Square, Grady Clay, Graphic Design, Green and Johnston, helvetica, Justin Parscher, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Lawrence Halprin, Leila Johnston, lighting designers, Maggie Baylis, Marion Conrad, model makers, Princeton University Press, public officials, publicist, Robert Marquis, Robert Royston, Ruth Asawa, San Francisco, sculptor, Sea Ranch, structural and civil engineers, supergraphics, The Bay Area, The Ultimate Highrise: San Francisco’s Mad Rush Toward the Sky, Thomas Church, Virginia Green | Leave a Comment »
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