Environment

Most Industrial

April 28, 2016 LAM Staff Leave a comment

Milwaukee cleans up the Menomonee Valley but keeps it working.

By Adam Regn Arvidson, FASLA

BEDIT_LAMapr16_currentconditions — The Menomonee Valley cuts through Milwaukee from Miller Park on the west to downtown Lake Michigan to the east.

Menomonee means wild rice, and that is the original story of this river. Continue reading Most Industrial →

General

Right Sized

April 12, 2016 LAM Editor 1 Comment

Four firms talk about how they decide how much staff is too much (or too little).

Colwell Shelor is planning to move into a larger office in the next year. Credit: Colwell Shelor. — Colwell Shelor is planning to move into a larger office in the next year. Courtesy of Colwell Shelor.

Design firms come in all sizes—though a large design firm of, say, 400 people is peanuts in many other businesses. Continue reading Right Sized →

Environment, Water

Alive on the Edge

March 29, 2016 LAM Staff Leave a comment

Reed Hilderbrand overturns a century of casual destruction at Long Dock Park in Beacon, New York.

By Anne Raver

A bucolic park, built on fill, is sustained by the tides that recharge its wetlands and meadows. *Courtesy of Reed Hilderbrand.*

Ten years ago, Long Dock was a postindustrial ruins built on fill—the layered detritus of its past—that sprawled 1,000 feet across the tidal flats of the Hudson River at the foot of the boarded-up city of Beacon, New York. Continue reading Alive on the Edge →

General

Greek Revival

March 24, 2016 LAM Staff Leave a comment

From Los Angeles, Charles Anderson, FASLA, tackles the site of a lifetime at the old Athens airport.

By Alex Ulam

BEDIT_LAMmar16_HellinikonMap — Courtesy of Werk | Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture.

The Hellinikon, an enormous area on the outskirts of Athens, Greece, is testament to how rapidly man-made forms literally can go to seed. Continue reading Greek Revival →

Parks

Houston Bets on the Bayou

March 17, 2016 LAM Staff 2 Comments

Parks and bike paths embroider the city in the Bayou Greenway Initiative Plan.

By Brian Barth

SWA Group hoped to garner bipartisan support for its vision of Keystone XL as a multiuse corridor. *Courtesy of SWA Group.*

Kinder Baumgardner, ASLA, the president of SWA Group and the managing principal of its Houston office, is not the type of landscape architect to shy away from controversial ideas. Continue reading Houston Bets on the Bayou →

General

Welcome Home

February 25, 2016 LAM Staff 2 Comments

A community for adults with autism shows the power of an understated landscape.

By John King, Honorary ASLA

BEDIT_F2-Sweetwater_1411-025 — Sweetwater Spectrum’s residential area is visible through one of the thresholds.

If Sweetwater Spectrum in Sonoma, California, had been one of her typical Bay Area projects—the visitor center of a winery, perhaps—Nancy Roche might have chosen a different aesthetic in selecting the five trees that will form a statuesque line between the lawn and the communal porch within the cluster of four spacious four-bedroom houses designed by Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects. She might have gone with ornamental pear or a particularly vivid maple, something that in the autumn would shed its leaves with fiery drama. Continue reading Welcome Home →

Environment