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Archive for July, 2011

Bing Thom: Social Architect

Posted in Green Buildings, Public Spaces, Smart Growth, Sustainable Materials, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization on 07/28/2011 | Leave a Comment »

Bing Thom is the subject of a new full-color book by Princeton Architectural Press. Prominently featured in the collection is his new Arena Stage, which has helped catalyze redevelopment in southwest Washington, D.C. (see earlier post). The book, however, also goes way beyond his recent critically-acclaimed D.C. work and explores his earlier large-scale cultural projects in his native [...]

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The Genius of Olmsted

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces on 07/27/2011 | 4 Comments »

Genius of Place: the Life of Frederick Law Olmsted, a new biography by Justin Martin, illuminates Olmsted’s major achievements as a visionary artist, social reformer, pioneering environmentalist, and founder of the modern profession of landscape architecture. Olmsted is best known for creating several noteworthy landscapes, including New York City’s Central Park. Martin, a journalist who has written two [...]

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Sustainable Design Still Not Mainstream Among Design Professions

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Sustainable Design on 07/27/2011 | 2 Comments »

DesignIntelligence, publishers of market intelligence for the architecture and design industry and creators of annual school rankings, released their 2011 Green & Sustainable Design Survey, which argues that despite all the talk, “sustainable design practices are not yet in the mainstream of architecture and design.” How is this possible? DesignIntelligence points to “inertia” along with [...]

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Rebel Art Goes Global

Posted in Land Art, Public Spaces on 07/27/2011 | 2 Comments »

Rebel Art, an intriguing blog by French art critic and curator Alain Bieber (although he also seems to enjoy being confused with teen pop singer Justin Bieber) features a number of “rebel art” projects around the world, often created by well-established artists with MFAs. Given the huge numbers of projects covered by Bieber along with the proliferation of Web sites and blogs dedicated to tracking [...]

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Redefining Urban Design in Caracas

Posted in Green Roofs, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization, Water Management on 07/21/2011 | 1 Comment »

This article has been reprinted and adapted from the ASLA Urban Design Professional Practice Network (PPN)’s Summer 2011 Newsletter. Sometimes your education, training, and experience cannot prepare you for a project, no matter how much expertise you believe you may have. Such was my circumstance when I first encountered the barrio of La Moran in [...]

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The Magic of Screen Printing

Posted in Uncategorized on 07/20/2011 | Leave a Comment »

Mike Perry, a artist, designer, and screen-printer who has done work for Apple, Dwell, New York Times Magazine, and Nike, has put out a new book, ”Pulled: A Catalog of Screen Printing,” which explores the vivid work of 40 talented screen printers around the world. His reasons for making a book on screen printing: “It smells good. It’s messy and takes some [...]

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Updated Guide: Climate Change and Landscape Architecture

Posted in Climate Change, Environment, Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation, Public Spaces, Renewable Energy, Water Management, Wildlife on 07/20/2011 | Leave a Comment »

A recent report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” According to the IPCC, average global temperatures are increasing at an alarming rate. In just the past 50 years, northern hemisphere temperatures were higher than during any other 50-year period in the last [...]

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Design Competition: Rethink Water Use in the Face of Climate Change

Posted in Uncategorized on 07/20/2011 | 1 Comment »

Drylands Design, a new ideas competition sponsored by the California Architectural Foundation in partnership with the Arid Lands Institute at Woodbury University and AIACC Academy for Emerging Professionals and created in honor of architect William Turnbull, is seeking submissions for “retrofitting the American West.” The goal of the program is to “re-think” water use in the West in the [...]

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Australia Unveils Carbon Tax

Posted in Climate Change, Policy and Regulation on 07/18/2011 | Leave a Comment »

After more than six months of intense public debate and parliamentary maneuvering, the Australian government announced the introduction of a new carbon tax that will price the pollutant at nearly US$25 per ton by mid-2012. Then, in 2015, the tax will be replaced by an emissions trading system like the one found in Europe. While Australia’s prime [...]

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Peter Zumthor’s Garden Sanctuary

Posted in Gardens, Landscape Architecture on 07/15/2011 | 1 Comment »

Peter Zumthor, considered one of the world’s great architects and a recent winner of the Pritzker Prize, recently partnered with Dutch horticulturalist and garden designer Piet Oudolf to create Hortus Conclusus, an enclosed garden, for the Serpentine Gallery in London, which sponsors a pavilion from a leading architects every summer. DesignBoom says the project realizes Zumthor’s vision of “a synthesized [...]

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