Preserving the private gardens of a pioneering landscape architect should have been a breeze.
By Timothy A. Schuler
Many of the landscape features seen in this portrait of Joe and Liz Yamada, from the May 1977 issue of San Diego Magazine, still exist today. Photo by Zenia Cleigh, courtesy Insun Lee and Troy Wu.
When Joseph Yamada and his wife, Elizabeth, died within nine days of each other in May 2020, obituaries and appreciations appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and NPR. Most focused on the couple’s incredible story: Born two days apart in 1930, the two met at age 11 at a Japanese internment camp.
They later attended the same high school, studied together at the University of California, Berkeley, then moved back to San Diego, where Joe Yamada became one of the most celebrated landscape architects of his generation and Liz Yamada was the first Asian faculty member at San Diego High School, later joining her husband’s firm, Wimmer Yamada & Associates, as a partner.Continue reading Honor Roll→
A pair of landscape designers come up with a winning idea for the land-starved Louisiana coast.
By Timothy A. Schuler
Larix Underground’s floating planter is designed to be accessible in multiple locations, including alongside docks or even in the open water. Image courtesy Larix Underground.
Like many residents of southern Louisiana, the Indigenous residents of Grand Bayou Village, located among the southernmost reaches of Plaquemines Parish in the Mississippi River Delta and accessible only by boat, live with the varied effects of coastal land loss.Continue reading Made for the Marsh→
Virtual views to help overtaxed teachers see the future in nature-based play spaces.
By Timothy A. Schuler
Muntazar Monsur designed virtual walk-throughs to allow educators to access high-performing outdoor environments. Courtesy Muntazar Monsur.
When Muntazar Monsur and his wife emigrated to the United States from Bangladesh in 2011, they enrolled their then 18-month-old daughter in childcare for the first time. They were both starting PhD programs at North Carolina State University, and the childcare center their daughter attended was an early demonstration site of the Natural Learning Initiative, established in 2000 at NC State to demonstrate the importance of nature in children’s development and play. “She went to that childcare center for three years, and I was one of the parents who saw how the daily life of my daughter changed,” says Monsur, now an assistant professor of landscape architecture at Texas Tech University.Continue reading Log In to Log Off→
A new gorilla conservation campus by MASS Design Group and TEN x TEN is a laboratory for reforestation.
By Timothy A. Schuler
The experimental landscape at the new Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund headquarters features plant communities that are critical to mountain gorillas’ survival. Photo by Iwan Baan.
The plan was ambitious, even by MASS Design Group standards. For the headquarters of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, the world’s foremost mountain gorilla conservation organization, the designers envisioned a series of lily pad-like buildings nestled into a landscape made up of plant communities drawn almost exclusively from the gorillas’ native habitat in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park.
North of the student union, a new, permeable plaza provides space for events as well as informal gatherings. Photo by Denmarsh Studios/LBA.
In the mid-1950s, the fast-growing University of Pittsburgh acquired two historic properties: the Hotel Schenley, built in 1898, and the Schenley Apartments, built between 1922 and 1924. The buildings were renovated for use as dormitories—and later, in the case of the hotel, a student union—but the spaces around them were left largely untouched, updated over the years to meet local codes but otherwise given little thought. Continue reading (Re)making the Grade→
A vision for 20 miles of Honolulu’s waterfront is based on a network of amphibious green spaces that buffers the city from sea-level rise. Image courtesy of the University of Hawai’i Community Design Center.
United States-controlled islands such as Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and American Samoa are rarely mentioned in U.S. climate coverage, but the projected impacts of sea-level rise to island communities are severe and far-reaching. Continue reading Hawaii Coastline Report Links Resilience with Access→
The Magazine of the American Society of Landscape Architects
