Tag Archives: By J. King

Welcome Home

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

Parklets, Everywhere

As parks the size of postage stamps pop up all over San Francisco and spread to other cities, “tactical” urbanism is taking on a cannily strategic edge. 

By John King, Honorary ASLA

SF Planning.

If you’re a tourist who’s visiting San Francisco, you’re unlikely to find yourself on the 4600 block of Noriega Street near the Pacific Ocean, and until recently there’s been little to miss. Continue reading Parklets, Everywhere