As landscape architects push the profession to become more equitable, some landscape architects and planners say it’s time to replace the industry-standard term “master plan.” The term not only has racial overtones, but more significantly signals a top-down approach that is antithetical to the profession today, they say.
In the United States, “master” was the term for slaveholder in the slave codes enacted by states starting in the mid-1600s. Because of its associations with slavery, various professions have been moving away from using “master” in its various forms, and the Black Lives Matter movement has accelerated these initiatives. For example, the tech industry has been trying to eliminate references to “master and slave” software routines, a common parlance for relationships between elements. Last summer, several real estate associations announced they were using “primary bedroom” in lieu of “master bedroom” in listings. As far back as 2014, activists in Philadelphia urged the city to drop the term “master plan” because “master” was an insulting term to the Black community. Continue Reading »
A collaboration between Jennifer Bonner and Martin Rickles Studio, Bonner’s “Lean-to-ADU” develops a new landscape type for accessory dwelling units. Renderings courtesy Jennifer Bonner / MALL.
Carley Rickles came to a realization that’s unfamiliar to most landscape architects when she was beginning the landscape plan for an accessory dwelling unit (ADU). There was, strictly speaking, no site. As part of Los Angeles’s ambitious program to alleviate its housing crisis by dropping ADUs across the city’s legendary single-family-home horizon, each structure would sit in a backyard that could contain different dimensions, constraints, and contexts.
Rickles’s landscape design would be paired with a crisp and angular garden shed-like unit designed by Jennifer Bonner’s MALL, a creative practice that stands for Mass Architectural Loopty Loops, Miniature Angles & Little Lines, or Maximum Arches with Limited Liability. “It felt like all we had to draw from was the architecture,” Rickles says.
Among the popular myths about Los Angeles is that prior to European settlement the city was a desert. The Los Angeles River basin, where a good portion of the city sits, was once a major wetland ecosystem, with miles of streams, marshes, vernal pools, wet prairies, and willow thickets. And yet myths originate from apparent truths, and when it comes to water, the city of Los Angeles has long behaved like a desert. For a century, the city has siphoned the majority of its drinking water from far-flung rivers and lakes, in some cases draining those bodies of water dry. L.A. may not be a desert, but it has created them.
The mechanics of Los Angeles’s hydro-engineered reality are ever present in the city. Much of its aboveground hydrologic infrastructure defines the urban character and has become an iconic part of the cultural landscape. Silver Lake Reservoir, 100 acres of glistening water five miles north of downtown Los Angeles, is a prime example. The reservoir, along with its smaller neighbor, Ivanhoe Reservoir, was built in 1907 by the city engineer William Mulholland, the architect of the city’s sprawling water system, as a backup for the city’s drinking water supply. Following construction, thousands of eucalyptus trees were planted along the reservoir’s banks, and it was eventually ringed by a wide promenade. For the first 30 years of its life, the water body was accessible to the public. It was a node in a complex machine and an urban pleasure ground. Continue Reading »
The things our art director, Chris McGee, hated to leave out of the current issue of LAM.
Photo by Arup.
From “Whose Eyes on the Street?” by Karl Krause in the May 2021 issue, about how critics of crime prevention through environmental design are reshaping the role designers play in making communities safer.
In 1285, King Edward of England issued the Statute of Winchester—a sweeping reform of law enforcement to curb rising crime across the country. To address highway robbery, the statute required a change to the environment: All landowners had to remove “bushes where one could hide with evil intent” within 200 feet of country roads—an early attempt to codify environmental design to improve safety that became the standard practice in English law enforcement for centuries.
The use of environmental design to address safety continues today with Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, more commonly known as CPTED (pronounced “sep-ted”). Along with calls for police reform and defunding, amplified in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, design activists such as the New Orleans-based Colloqate Design have demanded abolition of CPTED tactics that “criminalize Blackness under the guise of safety” and fail to address the underlying causes of crime. So how has CPTED, meant to replace traditional policing with community policing, come to be seen as oppressive? Continue Reading »
The things our art director, Chris McGee, hated to leave out of the current issue of LAM.
Photo by Jacob Fischer/LYTT.
From “Global Security” by Lisa Abend in the May 2021 issue, about how security barriers by LYTT Architecture at the Danish parliament building provide protection from vehicular attacks without quashing the public’s ability to assemble and enjoy this vital civic space.
Last winter, Dana Tinio, Student ASLA, a graduate student in landscape architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, responded to a prompt the National Association of Minority Landscape Architects (NAMLA) posted to its Instagram account: “What do you think is the biggest challenge for minorities in obtaining leadership roles in landscape architecture? And what would you propose to remedy this challenge?”
The prompt was part of NAMLA’s first mini-scholarship campaign for students, and it carried a tempting prize of $500.
“Landscape architecture in the U.S. is a historically white profession guided by Western pedagogy, thought, practice, and bias,” wrote Tinio in her winning submission. “This fact underlies the biggest barrier for minorities to achieve leadership roles in the field. Though the discipline is growing more diverse, changing dominant structures and perspectives is a challenge.” Continue Reading »
