July 26, 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 TIMOTHY A. SCHULER
On a chilly Sunday afternoon in the spring of 2016, a group of designers and preservation professionals wandered through one of Newport, Rhode Island’s oldest neighborhoods, visualizing what it would look like underwater. It wasn’t hard to imagine water flowing down the narrow streets and into the basements of the quaint, colonial-era homes located just blocks from Newport Harbor and a mere four feet above sea level. Some had already seen it.
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy sent floodwaters into many of the Point neighborhood’s historic homes, including 74 Bridge Street, a red-painted, two-story house originally built in the late 1720s. The basement flooded up to the first-floor framing and the kitchen took on at least seven inches of water.
Two years later, the Newport Restoration Foundation (NRF), a nonprofit preservation group founded by Doris Duke in the 1960s, purchased the house at 74 Bridge Street. As the house of one of Newport’s most notable cabinetmakers, a Quaker named Christopher Townsend, it had sat for years at the top of the NRF’s list of most desirable historic Newport properties. It was an important acquisition for the NRF, which currently owns 78 properties throughout the city and helps fund their upkeep. But the organization also knew that 74 Bridge Street would flood again.
“It’s in the lowest point in the Point neighborhood—literally, the lowest topographical point,” says Shantia Anderheggen, NRF’s former director of preservation. With sea levels on the rise—and in Newport they already had risen 11 inches over the past century—it was a statistical certainty that what happened in 2012 would happen again. And it wasn’t just the Townsend residence. The entire Point neighborhood, which has one of the highest concentrations of colonial-era structures on the continent, was under siege from the sea. Continue Reading »
Posted in ECOLOGY, ECONOMICS, ENVIRONMENT, FEATURES, HISTORY, LAM MAGAZINE, OCEANS, PLANNING, PRESERVATION, REGION, SAN FRANCISCO, SANDY, SHORELINE, WATER | Tagged AKRF, algorithm, and Tourism Management, Anthony Veerkamp, Arcadis, architectural historians, Atlantic City, Avenida Menendez seawall, Boardwalk, CH2M, climate change, CMG Landscape Architecture, Conference, Department of Parks, developers, Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve, economists, Embarcadero, Erin Seekamp, flooding, Florida, Fred Halback, HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, history, Keeping History Above Water, Kevin Conger, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Madeleine Helmer, Marquis Latimer + Halback, National Historic Preservation Act in 1966, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, National Trust for Historic Preservation, New Jersey, Newport, Newport Restoration Foundation, North Carolina State University, objects and systems, OptiPres, Point, Preservation, Preservation Green Lab, Preservation Strategies, Randall Mason, recreation, Rhode Island, Saint Augustine, San Francisco, sea-level rise, Shantia Anderheggen, Superstorm Sandy, Teresa Crean, tides, Timothy A. Schuler, Tropical Storm Gabrielle, U.S. Geological Survey, University of Pennsylvania School of Design, University of Rhode Island Coastal Resources Center | Leave a Comment »
July 24, 2018 by LAM Staff
BY CAROL E. BECKER
An Australian town decides what to do with a spent quarry.
Hornsby Quarry is like many quarries that roared with life in the 19th and 20th centuries and then suddenly fell silent because their resources were tapped out or became too expensive to extract. It is deserted today. The quarry, in Hornsby, New South Wales, Australia, has for a generation remained “the big hole in the ground”—300 meters roughly square, 100 meters to the bottom—and a major safety hazard that Hornsby Shire was forced to buy at the market rate of AU$25 million (about $16 million U.S.) after CSR Limited, a private company, ceased extracting hard rock basalt for road base material and gravel in 2001.
The Hornsby Shire Council acquired the quarry in 2002. Because it was built before reclamation laws and it was zoned as Local Public Recreation Land (technically called Open Space A) by the New South Wales Environmental Planning Act in 1994, CSR had no obligation to mitigate the site before ceasing operations, and the Shire was required by state legislation to buy it back. The huge cost of the land, set by the solicitor general, was ultimately reduced in court by AU$9 million, but the final price still cost each rate-holder (taxpayer) approximately $50 per year, for a total of 10 years, says Kurt Henkel, a landscape coordinator at Hornsby Shire.
The quarry will not remain dormant, however. Its stories—physical, historical, geographical—parallel the long development of Australia and are about to get a bold retelling. The vision for Hornsby Quarry Continue Reading »
Posted in BROWNFIELDS, ENVIRONMENT, LAM MAGAZINE, PARKS, PLANNING, PLAYGROUNDS, PRESERVATION, REUSE, SOIL, STUDENTS, UNIVERSITY | Tagged adaptive reuse, adventure park, Australia, Barangaroo Park, basaltic diatreme, basaltic rock soils, Berowra Creek, Berowra Valley National Park, Blue Gum High Forest, Carol Becker, Clouston Associates, conservation, Crosbie Lorimer, Eucalyptus saligna, fill, geology, granite, Great North Walk, gum trees, hole, Hornsby, Hornsby Quarry, Hornsby Shire Council, industry, Infrastructure, Jessica Hodge, Kurt Henkel, lake, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, mine, New South Wales, Newcastle, NorthConnex, Park, Peter Walker, politics, Preservation, quarry, rail, sandstone, Simon Leake, soil, spring, Sydney, University of New South Wales, volcanic basalt, volcano | Leave a Comment »
July 19, 2018 by LAM Staff
The things our art director, Chris McGee, hated to leave out of the current issue of LAM.
Image courtesy of the Rising Up team, BLA4, University of Guelph.
From “Quiet Riot” by Brian Barth, in the July 2018 issue, about a beach pavilion by University of Guelph landscape architecture students that puts the issue of urbanization on floodplains front and center.
“Puzzle pieces.”
–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 LAM ONLINE, NOW, PHOTOGRAPHY, REGION, SHORELINE, STUDENTS, UNIVERSITY, WATER | Tagged Art Director's Cut, Beach, Don River, flooding, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, pavilion, plywood, Quiet Riot, Tornonto, University of Guelph, urbanization | Leave a Comment »
July 17, 2018 by LAM Staff
BY ZACH MORTICE
“Altitudes” reorients formerly disused ecologies for the production of local cash crops, organized vertically in the Selva Central region of Peru. Image courtesy Openfabric.
The coffee production industry is a “global economy with a local ecology,” says Francesco Garofalo of the landscape architecture studio Openfabric. The studio has a plan for a coffee-producing region of Peru that would align local cultivation practices with global distribution networks. Openfabric’s “Altitudes” plan steps back from coffee plantation monocultures to spread cash crop risk by encouraging production of a range of foodstuffs. The goal is to create more sustainable cycles of cultivation, production, and distribution.
The plan focuses on the Selva Central region of Peru, east of Lima, which straddles both the Andes and the Amazon River Basin. The local economy is intensely reliant on coffee production, but it’s a fragile and volatile market. Prices surge and plummet on a whim, vulnerable to small climatic shifts that can greatly affect yield. That makes life for the region’s coffee producers precarious.
And lately, temperatures in Selva Central have been rising because of climate change, causing Continue Reading »
Posted in CLIMATE, ECOLOGY, ECONOMICS, ENVIRONMENT, HABITAT, LAM ONLINE, PLANTS, RECREATION, REGION, RESEARCH, SOIL, SPECIES | Tagged agriculture, Altitudes, Amazon River Basin, Andes, cash crops, climate change, coffee, CSR Netherlands, Dutch Embassy in Peru, farming, FOOD, Francesco Garofalo, fruit, global trade, global warming, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, native plantings, Netherlands Enterprise Agency, Openfabric, Peru, Rotterdam, Selva Central, tourism, Zach Mortice | Leave a Comment »
July 12, 2018 by LAM Staff
BY RANDY GRAGG
Plans to string gondolas over American cities abound.
In the early 2000s, one of Portland, Oregon’s leading employers and research institutions, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), faced a steep, downhill battle. Sited on a hilltop, surrounded by unbuildable canyons and neighborhoods unwilling to yield another inch to expansion, OHSU’s nearest sizable hunk of developable land lay on the Willamette River less than a mile away—for a blue heron. Cars and buses contended with winding, traffic-snarled commutes of anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes.
A campus planner’s brain brightly blinked: Why not an aerial tram? Protests erupted, politicians tangled, and costs lurched $47 million over the earliest budget fantasy of $9.5 million. But in 2007, two sleek, bubble-shaped cars (their shiny artisanal shells carefully machine-hammered by craftsmen from Gangloff Cabins of Switzerland) began flying to and fro across the campus. Today, they ferry more than 50,000 riders per week to a 2.35-million-square-foot cluster of new OHSU buildings.
At the time, the tram was only the third urban transit ropeway system in America, after Telluride’s in Colorado and Roosevelt Island’s in New York. Now, however, proposals for urban tramways are becoming more prevalent. A consortium in Washington, D.C., is poised to launch a $1 million environmental impact study for an aerial connection between Rosslyn, Virginia, and Georgetown across the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., to bypass the clogged Key Bridge. New York is angling for two flights: a midtown connection to Roosevelt Island and Continue Reading »
Posted in CITIES, LAM MAGAZINE, NOW, PLANNING, TRANSPORTATION, VIEWS | Tagged aerial tram, Austin, Boston, Carol Mayer-Reed, DC, Gangloff Cabins, Gondola, Infrastructure, landsape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Mike Deiparine, New York, Oregon, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, Randy Gragg, Roosevelt Island, Sarah Graham, SCJ Alliance, Steven Dale, The Gondola Project, transit, Washington, Willamette River | Leave a Comment »
July 10, 2018 by LAM Staff
The things our art director, Chris McGee, hated to leave out of the current issue of LAM.
Image courtesy John Donnelly, ASLA/SCAPE.
From “Guardians of the Soil” in the July 2018 issue, about how tree grates enhance urban tree growth and soil quality.
“Geometric grates.”
–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 LAM ONLINE, NOW, PHOTOGRAPHY, PLANTS, RESEARCH, SOIL, STREETS, WATER | Tagged Art Director's Cut, compaction, growth, Hood Design, infiltration, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Photos, SCAPE, soil, tree grates, trees, urban | 1 Comment »
July 5, 2018 by LAM Staff
BY JANE BERGER
There’s a palm for just about any place you’re planting.
You can’t always get what you want—unless, that is, you’re into palms. Lisa Gimmy, ASLA, of Lisa Gimmy Landscape Architecture in Los Angeles, finds palms uniquely suited to small gardens, given small root balls that leave “a very tiny footprint on the ground.” One that Gimmy likes to use is the blue hesper or Mexican blue palm (Brahea armata), native to Baja California, Mexico, with stunning, silvery-blue, fan-shaped fronds and creamy white flower clusters that cascade down from the leaves. Gimmy selects palms for spatial characteristics first, then for texture, leaf color, and the character of the trunk. “They are like poems,” she says. “With the head up in the air, there’s really nothing else like it.” Gimmy also likes palms because they provide “instant gratification, and that’s very important in Southern California.”
Ray Hernandez, the president of the International Palm Society, told me a story about a friend who drives from Long Island, New York, to Florida every year to pick up specimens that will last for just the summer season. “The folks that live out in the Hamptons and have 10 zeros behind their bank account can afford to haul up a coconut palm or something hardier and plant it in their landscape, and Continue Reading »
Posted in CLIMATE, LAM MAGAZINE, NURSERY, PLANTS, SPECIES | Tagged acai, bismarck palm, black sugar palm, Botanics Wholesale, cabbage palmetto, California, California Fan Palm, cherry palm, Chinese Windmill Palm, Cindy Cline, clara palm, coconut palm, coconut palms, Craig Reynolds, date palm, Designing with Palms, European fan palm, fan palm, flamethrower palm, Flora Grubb Gardens, Florida, habitat, International Palm Society, Jane Berger, Jason Dewees, Jeff Searle, Jesse Bergman, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, Lisa Gimmy, Lisa Gimmy Landscape Architecture, Mesopotamia, Mexican blue palm, Mike Tevelonis, monocots, needle palm, palm oil, palms, plantings, plants, queen palm, Rainforest Collection, Ray Hernandez, roots, royal palm, Satake palm, Saw Palmetto, sealing wax palm, southern jelly palm, teddy bear palm, thatch palms, trees, Tropical, wax palms, Wertimer + Cline Landscape Architects, yellow butterfly palm | Leave a Comment »
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