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Archive for March, 2011

Taking Nature to the City

Posted in Gardens, Green Buildings, Green Roofs, Landscape Architecture, Urban Design, Wildlife on 03/31/2011 | 2 Comments »

In Biophilic Cities: Integrating Nature into Urban Design and Planning, Timothy Beatley, Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of Virginia, argues that planners and landscape architects must design cities so people feel intimately connected with nature. Beatley hopes his book will foster a dialogue about biophilic cities by first defining what these are, offering a set of indicators for [...]

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The Suburbs’ Second Growth

Posted in Smart Growth, Sustainable Transportation on 03/31/2011 | Leave a Comment »

Reprinted from the April issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM). In honor of National Landscape Architecture Month, the April issue is available for free online. For decades, people have bewailed sprawl and demanded that we stop developers from spreading it any farther. While urbanists have proposed numerous alternative development patterns and zoning regulations that might [...]

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Blurring the Lines Between Building and Landscape

Posted in Ecosystem Services, Green Buildings, Green Roofs, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Security Design, Sustainable Design, Water Management on 03/31/2011 | 1 Comment »

Sam Lubell, west coast editor of The Architect’s Newspaper, argues that the demands of sustainability are forcing a merger of building and landscape. At the level of the design process, this integration has led to increased collaboration between some architects and landscape architects and, in some cases, for the two disciplines to “reverse roles.”  One architect, Michael Maltzan, designed Playa Vista park [...]

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Which Cities Are Smarter?

Posted in Climate Change, Smart Growth, Sustainable Design, Urban Design, Waste, Water Management on 03/31/2011 | Leave a Comment »

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has launched Smarter Cities, a comprehensive “multimedia Web initiative,” designed to answer the questions: What makes a smarter city? Which cities are smarter? In this instance, NRDC is defining smarter as “more efficient, sustainable, equitable and livable.” Included in this new trove are online resources focused on ”leader cities,” selected for their [...]

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Santa Monica Unveils Designs for Civic Center Parks

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces on 03/29/2011 | 1 Comment »

Last year, James Corner Field Operations won the commission to design the new Santa Monica Civic Center parks, which includes a new town square and Palisades garden walk. Designs for the seven-acre, $25 million project were recently unveiled, showing an “ambitious, layered” proposal that will be broken up into a number of “systems,” writes The Architect’s Newspaper. [...]

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Aligning Historic Preservation and Sustainable Design

Posted in Green Buildings, Historic Preservation, Sustainable Design, Sustainable Materials on 03/28/2011 | Leave a Comment »

Historic preservation and sustainable design are two disciplines that no longer need to be at odds but can actually join together to improve the sustainability of buildings, argued Maria Casarella, an architect with Cunningham | Quill Architects, Brendan Owens, Vice President of LEED Technical Development, and Eleni Reed, chief greening officer at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). These [...]

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What’s an Eco-City?

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Opportunities, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization on 03/24/2011 | 1 Comment »

The University of Washington’s landscape architecture department has put together a symposium that will explore the idea of the Eco-City. In ”Next Eco-City,” a range of leading landscape theorists and practitioners like Kristina Hill, Affiliate ASLA, Pierre Belanger, ASLA, and Yu Kongjian, International ASLA, will cover how the Eco-City concept has evolved with increased urbanization and rapid globalization.  The conference organizers argue that “urban environments worldwide are [...]

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Vancouver’s Blue Trees

Posted in Land Art, Public Spaces on 03/23/2011 | 79 Comments »

The Vancouver Biennale, a bi-annual public art exhibition that “turns the city into an open-air museum,” is featuring artist Konstantin Dimopoulos’ “The Blue Trees“ this year. The installation is a set of trees that have received a rich yet enviromentally-safe “temporary colourant” designed to fade gradually over the course of a few weeks. Art Market Canada says Dimopoulos’s public installations are meant to [...]

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BIG Goes Biophilic with New Sports Center

Posted in Green Buildings, Green Roofs, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Sustainable Design on 03/22/2011 | 1 Comment »

Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, perhaps one of the youngest architects to get the “starchitect” label, is creating a model of biophilic design with a new sports center in Umea, Sweden, which will be set in an ”open landscape where the inside and outside meet seamlessly.” Preserving the natural lines of the site located in the Umedalen Sculpture Park, [...]

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Energy Efficient Home Landscapes

Posted in Ecosystem Services, Green Buildings, Green Roofs, Landscape Architecture, Renewable Energy, Residential Design, Technology on 03/21/2011 | Leave a Comment »

Watch an animation from ASLA’s Designing Our Future: Sustainable Landscapes online exhibition that explains how to use the landscape to reduce the energy consumed by a typical suburban home. See how smart tree placement and green roofs and walls dramatically improve energy efficiency. Trees are being cut down to make way for new single-family homes, [...]

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