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Posts Tagged ‘Houston’

RAINBOW DRIVE-BY

Posted in ART, CITIES, LAM ONLINE, STREETS, TRANSPORTATION, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 10, 2017| Leave a Comment »

BY ZACH MORTICE

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The linear art installation SWA designed for Houston’s Highway 59/Interstate 69 bridges came with two important traffic safety stipulations: no words, and no faces (so as not to distract the drivers zipping by).

Natalia Beard, the lead designer, came up with a pixelated vision of bright colors splashing across several 300-foot sections of chain-link fence along the sidewalk of the elevated freeway. The linear imagery (called “Houston Bridges”) tracks the velocity and movement of the freeway. It gives you enough depth to ponder when stuck in traffic. The images came from photos by Houston schoolchildren, digitally turned into jubilant checkerboards of neon color.

This smoke-stained stretch of highway, which connects Houston’s downtown to its primary airport, is (more…)

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MAY LAM: MICROLOCAL

Posted in AWARDS, CITIES, ENVIRONMENT, FARMS, INVASIVE SPECIES, LAM ONLINE, MATERIALS, PARKS, PLANNING, PLANTS, PLAYGROUNDS, PRACTICE, RECREATION, SPECIES, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2017| Leave a Comment »

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You can almost watch it come to life on the page: In the sprawl of Bangkok, an illegal dump the size of a large city block was scraped clean, sculpted, and planted thickly with 60,000 trees, many of them quite small. It now looks thick as a rain forest, with an elegant skywalk overhead and cobras on the ground (which is why you’d use the skywalk). This remarkable reforestation project, called the Metro-Forest, by Landscape Architects of Bangkok, repatriates more than 275 species once common enough locally, as James Trulove reports, that sections of the city around it bear their names. Thick as it appears, it’s only getting started. The plan is for the trees to engulf the skywalk in their canopy.

How to describe the vindication of taking an embarrassed site and bringing back some form of its original dignity? “Strangely exciting,” is how Gwendolyn McGinn, Associate ASLA, puts it to the reporter Anne Raver in this issue. McGinn, of Studio Outside, in Dallas, is working at the Tylee Farm in Texas, not far from Houston. The farm holds what is left of southern post oak savanna that was overturned and grazed nearly to death since the mid-1800s. With Studio Outside’s founder, Tary Arterburn, FASLA, and Amy Bartell, a project manager, she is working to restore the many ecological segues the site once had for newish residential owners who want to live well—as long as their land does, too.

Also in this issue: Staff writer/editor Katarina Katsma, ASLA, writes about the interlocking of plant science and aesthetics in the designs of Sandra Clinton, FASLA, in the mid-Atlantic; Jeff Link looks at the fine points of poured-in-place rubber playground surfacing; Karl Kullmann considers the new heights of drone mapping; and Jane Gillette reviews City of Refuge: Separatists and Utopian Town Planning by Michael J. Lewis, a book that will leave you thinking about squares. The full table of contents for May can be found here.

As always, you can buy this issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine at more than 700 bookstores, including many university stores and independents, as well as at Barnes & Noble. You can also buy single digital issues for only $5.25 at Zinio or order single copies of the print issue from ASLA. Annual subscriptions for LAM are a thrifty $59 for print and $44.25 for digital. Our subscription page has more information on subscription options.

Keep an eye out here on the blog, on the LAM Facebook page, and on our Twitter feed (@landarchmag), as we’ll be ungating May articles as the month rolls out.

Credits: “Control of the Canopy,” Rungkit Charoenwat; “Side Pocket,” By oinonio [CC BY-SA 2.0] via Flickr; “Along for the Ride,” Gwendolyn McGinn, Associate ASLA; “Color and Cushion,” Site Design Group; “The Right Fit,” Huguette Row.

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MARCH LAM: START IT UP

Posted in BROWNFIELDS, CITIES, ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT, LAM MAGAZINE, OFFICE, PEOPLE, PHOTOGRAPHY, PRACTICE, REGULATIONS, SPECIES, STREETS, TRANSPORTATION, WILDLIFE, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 1, 2017| 1 Comment »

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Launching a design firm is not for the faint of heart. In building a landscape architecture business, mobile tech and shared work spaces have changed the game, but some things remain the same—long hours and total dedication are a given. Kevan Williams talked to more than a dozen young firms about what it takes to take the leap in a postrecession world and what keeps principals up at night. If big demands take time away from design, they also deliver independence and professional growth. Principals talk candidly about finding balance, building on experience, and focusing on a few key elements among other backstage insights.

Steve Durrant, FASLA, is a bike evangelist, and that makes him a bike lane evangelist, too. Fred Bernstein profiles Durrant and his firm, Alta Planning + Design, about the current state of our bicycle infrastructure. Chicago’s Riverwalk is a triumph of patience and public landscape design. The work, by Sasaki, is an insertion into the long-used but somehow underutilized spaces along the channelized Chicago River that runs right through the heart of the city’s iconic Loop.

In the Foreground, Timothy Schuler looks at the emerging questions about aesthetics and renewable energy. Can we—and should we—make wind and solar farms look better and relate more meaningfully to the places where they are increasingly part of the economy? Allyn West looks at the opportunity that drought and tree die-off made in Houston’s urban forest in Ecology. Now has student-creature design collaborations, a park design that enlarged after a social media takeover, and a Baltimore firm using a development requirement in an innovative way to provide a community benefit. The full table of contents for March can be found here.

As always, you can buy this issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine at more than 700 bookstores, including many university stores and independents, as well as at Barnes & Noble. You can also buy single digital issues for only $5.25 at Zinio or order single copies of the print issue from ASLA. Annual subscriptions for LAM are a thrifty $59 for print and $44.25 for digital. Our subscription page has more information on subscription options.

Keep an eye out here on the blog, on the LAM Facebook page, and on our Twitter feed (@landarchmag), as we’ll be ungating March articles as the month rolls out.

Credits: “Start Your Engines,” Brandon Stengel/http://www.farmkidstudios.com; “Walking the Walk,” Christian Phillips Photography; “Pedal Harder,” Michael Hanson; “The Upside of a Die-Off,” Design Workshop, Inc. and Reed Hilderbrand; “The Art of Infrastructure,” Robert Sullivan.

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MIGRATION MACHINE AT MAIN STREET

Posted in ART, BIRDS, CITIES, LAM ONLINE, PARKS, STREETS, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 31, 2017| Leave a Comment »

BY ZACH MORTICE

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Avenida Houston is a 60-foot-wide promenade in front of Houston’s convention center. Image courtesy of Jonnu Singleton/SWA.

Avenida Houston was designed to celebrate the flyway paths of migratory birds and the vibrant energy economy that has made Houston attractive to domestic and international migrants alike. But in early February a new set of visitors will be attracted to this linear plaza: Football fans drawn by the suite of Super Bowl programming unfurled at the nearby (and newly renovated) George R. Brown Convention Center, and Super Bowl LI, to be played a few miles away at NRG Stadium.

Avenida Houston, designed by SWA Group, is a four-acre, 60-foot-wide strip of space that turned a desolate and unforgiving stretch of multilane traffic in front of the city’s convention center into an informal promenade. Two central themes, seemingly opposed, animate this new public event space: Houston’s industry and nature. “The conversation really started as, (more…)

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ART DIRECTOR’S CUT, SEPTEMBER 8

Posted in ART, ASLA, AWARDS, LAM ONLINE, PLANNING, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 8, 2016| 1 Comment »

The things our art director, Chris McGee, hated to leave out of the current issue of LAM.

Credit: MIR for Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects.

Credit: MIR for Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects.

A rendering from the ASLA 2016 Analysis & Planning Professional Honor Award winner “Memorial Park Master Plan 2015” by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects in the September 2016 issue, featuring the reworking and restoration of Memorial Park in Houston.

“Morning fog, photorealistic edition.”

—Chris McGee, LAM Art Director

You can read the full table of contents for September 2016 or pick up a free digital issue of the September LAM here and share it with your clients, colleagues, and friends. As always, you can buy this issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine at more than 700 bookstores, including many university stores and independents, as well as at Barnes & Noble. You can also buy single digital issues for only $5.25 at Zinio or order single copies of the print issue from ASLA. Annual subscriptions for LAM are a thrifty $59 for print and $44.25 for digital. Our subscription page has more information on subscription options.

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HOUSTON BETS ON THE BAYOU

Posted in CITIES, HEALTHY COMMUNITIES, LAM MAGAZINE, PLANNING, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 17, 2016| 2 Comments »

BY BRIAN BARTH

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

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

From the March 2016 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.

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. In 2013, at the zenith of the vitriolic debate around the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, he sent an unsolicited design proposal to the White House, the State Department, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, and a slew of other federal agencies with a stake in the project. In it were a set of overlay maps of the proposed route that illustrated various ecological and cultural dimensions of the pipeline landscape, as well as a set of renderings suggesting that a bike path be built within the pipeline corridor from its starting point in Hardisty, Alberta, down to the terminus in Port Arthur, Texas, near Houston.

“It was roundly hated,” says Baumgardner of the idea, insisting it was not an endorsement of the pipeline but an attempt to puncture the status quo notion of “infrastructure as a one-dimensional thing.” Reactions were neatly divided along ideological lines. “Some people saw it as: ‘You’re trying to make this bad thing better, and that might mean it would get built.’ On the other side, people who were much more conservative were saying, ‘You shouldn’t be doing this; it’s going to make it difficult to operate and they’ll end up closing it down.’”

The Obama administration recently gave what appears to be the final ax to the (more…)

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NEW IN MARCH

Posted in HOUSE CALL, LAM MAGAZINE, PARKS, PLANNING, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 1, 2016| Leave a Comment »

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The March LAM focuses on Charles Anderson, FASLA, and the long and winding road to redesign Hellinikon, an abandoned airport in Athens, into what would be one of the largest urban parks in Europe; the transformation of Long Dock Park  in Beacon, NY, from a derelict property on the Hudson River into an amenity for local residents, by Reed Hilderbrand; and Queens Quay Boulevard, by West 8 in collaboration with DTAH, turns a stretch of the Toronto lakefront into a multitransit, public promenade that connects the city to Lake Ontario.

In Planning, a plan for the Bayou Greenway Initiative by SWA Group weaves a network of new and existing green corridors in Houston. In Parks, a new park in one of the most diverse counties in the South responds to multiple wants through passive recreation. And in House Call, Savino & Miller Design Studio reimagines a small side yard into a lush jungle retreat. And don’t miss our regular Now, Species, Goods, and Books columns. The full table of contents for March can be found here.

As always, you can buy this issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine at more than 200 bookstores, including many university stores and independents, as well as at Barnes & Noble. You can also buy single digital issues for only $5.25 at Zinio or order single copies of the print issue from ASLA. Annual subscriptions for LAM are a thrifty $59 for print and $44.25 for digital. Our subscription page has more information on subscription options.

Keep an eye out here on the blog, on the LAM Facebook page, and on our Twitter feed (@landarchmag), as we’ll be ungating March articles as the month rolls out.

Credits: “Greek Revival,” Alex Ulam; “Alive on the Edge,” James Ewing/OTTO; “Leafed Out,” Nicola Betts for West 8; “Houston Best on the Bayou,” Jonnu Singleton; “The Call for Open Space,” John Gnoffo; “The Make-Do Shrine,” Steven Brooke.

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