Tag Archives: By A. Raver

Permafrost Frontier

Around a school in an arctic town, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander made a landscape to withstand the prospect of a warming world.

By Anne Raver / Photography by Ihor Pona

Simon Taylor designed playground equipment made out of logs and driftwood from the area. Photo by Ihor Pona.

The permafrost is melting in Inuvik, a flat delta town in the Northwest Territories, 2 degrees north of the Arctic Circle. Continue reading Permafrost Frontier

Here Comes Everybody

The final pier has opened. Brooklyn Bridge Park is all but complete.

By Anne Raver

Photo by Alex MacLean.

It was raining, so we crouched, rather than sat, in the grassy bowl that Michael Van Valkenburgh, FASLA, had envisioned as the centerpiece of the newly completed green space and playground on Pier 3, which, like most of the other piers in Brooklyn Bridge Park, sprawls over five acres, into the East River. Continue reading Here Comes Everybody

Where the Water Was

In West Philadelphia, Anne Whiston Spirn’s Work Goes Deep.

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. Continue reading Where the Water Was

The Tiny Menace

Two closely related Asian beetles are boring their way through Southern California’s trees.

By Anne Raver

The beetle carries pathogenic fungi, which flourish on the tree’s nutrients and water. Image courtesy of the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Smaller than sesame seeds, two beetle species are spreading through Southern California, killing hundreds of thousands of trees and infecting many thousands more with a pathogenic fungus. Continue reading The Tiny Menace

Along for the Ride

Studio Outside coaxes many landscapes from one neglected ranch.

By Anne Raver

The emergence of American beautyberry and other natives in an edited woodland. Photo by Raylen Worthington.

There’s a journey-like feeling to this landscape, both in space and time, as the path curves through dense stands of red cedar and yaupon holly, then out to open savanna, dotted with live oaks and groves of post oaks. Continue reading Along for the Ride

A Foodshed Moment

Preserving farmland is not enough if it doesn’t stay in the hands of farmers.

By Anne Raver / Photography by Frederick Charles 

The Kiernans’ easement, at Walt’s Dairy in Copake, protects 357 acres—and the view. Photo by Frederick Charles.

A gorgeous October morning in the Hudson Valley and people are out leaf peeping, but not Chris Cashen, a farmer. Continue reading A Foodshed Moment

Alive on the Edge

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.
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