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Another Winner: The London Olympics’ Landscape

Posted in Ecosystem Restoration, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Sustainable Design, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization, Water Management, Wildlife on 08/22/2012 | 4 Comments »

While the architecture of the London Olympic games certainly won the U.K. a lot of press, there seemed to be a real dearth of coverage on the Games’ highly successful landscape architecture. Nearly 250 acres were turned into a spectacular setting. According to John King, Hon. ASLA, architecture critic for The San Francisco Chronicle, that success was due to a team of landscape architecture firms, including U.K.-based LDA Design and U.S.-based landscape architecture firm, Hargreaves Associates, who came in at the proverbial last minute to update the master plan in key spots, along with English planting designers Nigel Dunnett, Sarah Price, and James Hitchmough.

King reports that the Olympic Delivery Authority in the U.K. “wasn’t happy with the open space elements” of their master plan. George Hargreaves, FASLA, said to King: “The client told us, ‘We’ve got this product, we don’t like it, we’re not sure why.’”

Working with LDA Design, Hargreaves changed the planned river, creating “wider and more natural banks,” which were then cloaked in a sea of greenery, including a wildflower meadow planted by Dunnett and his colleagues. (The meadow, an iconic English landscape, is said to be the largest ever planted in the U.K).

Also, King reports, the plazas in the master plan were reduced in size in order to create space for new hillocks, or what Hargreaves called “sculptural tectonic forms.” These hillocks provide a platform for visitors to see the city, beyond the Olympic Village, and also help create a “softening” of the transition from the busy avenues packed with throngs of visitors.

On their Web site, Hargreaves says the plan developed with LDA Design “restores a river and transforms former industrial land, much of it contaminated through years of industrial neglect” into 100 hectares of parklands. Furthermore, the design was inspired by “the Victorian and post-war pleasure and festival gardens.”

LDA Design says the masterplan provided a solid foundation for the entire site, helping make the London Olympics one of the more sustainable ones to date. “The hour-glass shape of the Olympic Park naturally divides the park into a ‘wilder’ green northern half, The North Park and a more urban South Park. The previously canalised River Lea has been transformed into a three dimensional mosaic of new habitats – wetland, swales, wet woodland, dry woodland and meadow – that together form an absorbent flood-control measure. Specific habitats and wildlife installations have been integrated into the design to support key species identified in the Olympic Park Biodiversity Action Plan, such as Kingfisher, Sandmartin and European eel.”

Dunnett, one of the planting designers, added more about the specifics of the planting approach: “The Olympic Park comprises two different character areas: the North Park which has a more extensive and informal character, and the South Park, which includes the main Olympic Stadium and has a more urban character. Plantings in the North Park largely represent designed versions of native habitats and celebrate native biodiversity. They include species-rich meadows of different types; wetland plantings, including rain gardens and bioswales; woodland underplantings, and dramatic perennial ‘lens plantings.’ Plantings in South Park focus on visual drama and have a strong horticultural basis. They include the 2012 Gardens, Display Meadows and the ‘Fantasticology’ art installation.”

King says the city, at least the local design press, was thrilled by the park. LDA Design’s Web site lists a whole set of positive critical reviews, including one by Kieran Long, Evening Standard: “The real star of the Olympic site is the landscape design. It’s simply beautiful, with borders packed with mixed wildflowers, all blooming gaily thanks to the wet weather. Its hillocks and valleys, ordered by the waterways that run north–south through the park, make it a unique place, and give a flavour of what will be a wonderful public space after the Games.”

The London Olympics just ended with a bang so the landscape will now become public parkland. According to LDA, the park will be expanded, reopening as the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in 2014. A 55-acre piece of that bonanza of a project will go to who else but James Corner Field Operations, designers of the High Line and winners of the Chicago Pier design competition.

See lots more photos of the Olympic landscape.

Image credits: (1) Nigel Dunnett, (2) Andy Harris, Hargreaves Associates, (3-4) Nigel Dunnett, (5) Peter Neal, Hargreaves Associates, (6) Master plan concept, LDA Design, Nigel Dunnett, Hargreaves Associates, (7-8) Nigel Dunnett.

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New Park in Singapore Shows What Rivers Can Do

Posted in Ecosystem Restoration, Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Sustainable Design, Sustainable Materials, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization, Water Management, Wildlife on 07/25/2012 | Leave a Comment »

Singapore is heavily dependent on Malaysia for its water supply but is now creating new sustainable parks designed to reduce its reliance, said Herbert Dreiseitl, International ASLA, Atelier Dreiseitl, at the Greater & Greener: Reimagining Parks for 21st Century Cities, a conference in New York City. As an example, his amazing new 62-acre Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park recreates nature, transforming a 2.7-kilometer concrete-channel lined river into a 3-kilometer natural meandering system. At the same time, the new system slows down and stores some of the rainfall that hits the city-state. The park is a model for how cities can transform outmoded, broken systems into natural systems.

Singapore has to import so much water because all its hard surfaces funnel water straight into the ocean. In the tropical heat, much is also lost to evaporation. “They can’t keep their water they have.” To address these problems, the city-state has created a new strategic master plan to reduce reliance on Malaysia and capture more of its own water for reuse. The new plan, which includes water guidelines Dreiseitl created for the Singaporean government, focuses on “collecting, slowing down, and storing rainwater.”

A central catchement — the Kallang River — is part of the larger system providing drinking water to the city-state. In the past, the river was actually set within a concrete channel in many key places so in heavy monsoons it would flood and then evaporate.

Dreiseitl convinced the government to let the river escape its concrete channel and meander through the park, turning an “old-fashioned park and canal” into green infrastructure system that teaches the community about how nature actually works. The new system is actually a lot safer — the previous concrete channel actually killed many residents who were playing soccer down there when flash flooding struck.

In Dreiseitl’s cutting-edge approach, the “blue and green are integrated.” To achieve this, he has to convince the city departments that handled water and parks to abandon their siloed approaches and better communicate with each other. “Now, territories, finances, and maintenance overlap.”

To make this seismic change happen, Dreiseitl said he had to get the Singaporean government to trust his new approach, so he actually used his own design fee to create a test site. Exploring 12 different “bioengineering techniques,” Dreiseitl commissioned a set of in-depth hydraulic and materials studies. He was floored by how “crazy” the plants grow in Singapore so he had to adjust his models based on plant growth. He figured out what kinds of soil conditions would ensure slope stability in those temperatures. Lastly, he invested heavily in training the construction workers. “We couldn’t just show them pretty drawings of the new systems because they had no experience with these systems. We had to train them.”

With the approval of the government in place, Dreiseitl moved towards creating a new stream while the river was still flowing. In a feat of sequenced engineering, Dreiseitl managed to re-engineer soils, add bio-engineered plant systems along with trees, break up the existing concrete channel and reuse the rubble to stabilize the entire system — all while the river was still running. No artificial fertilizers were added. All materials on site were reused. In fact, some of the excess rubble was used to create a new hill, a look-out point over the park.

Importantly, the new system actually works. Dreiseitl said the new river “can hold lots of capacity and cuts in half the peak floods.” The new, cleansing biotope digest pollutants and creates oxygen in millions of gallons of river water each day. Some of the cleansed river water is diverted and reused in the watery playscapes. Before the water touches people, it’s further cleansed by a UV radiation filter. “It’s not only a purification system, but also a beautiful garden.”

The German landscape architect said for the project to work Singaporean officials just needed to be “learn how to behave with risk.” They had wanted to put a fence around the meandering river to keep people out of the flood plain, but Dreiseitl threatened to quit over that, arguing that it would not only ruin the design but break the human connection to the natural system. Instead, Dreiseitl’s team worked with the government to create an “amazing” early warning system, with towers that flash lights and use loudspeakers to make announcements in 6 languages so people can still sit down there but get early warnings when the river is going to overflow.

He thinks this kind of experience with nature in Singapore, the “most artificial of cities,” is critical. In Singapore, everyone “lives in of air-conditioning. They use underground subways and go to underground shopping centers” to escape the heat. As a result, much of the population is cut-off from nature. He said kids are particularly blown away by the wildlife in Bishan. Since the park was redesigned, biodiversity is up 30 percent. There are now 59 species of birds, including sea eagles, and 23 kinds of dragonflies.

To add proof to a recent U.S. National Park Service report that being near a wildlife preserve raises property values, Dreiseitl said the nearby apartments are up 48 percent in value since the park opened. To laughter, he added, “I should have bought a place before it opened.”

Dreiseitl believes that to implement such a game-changing system landscape architects need to have a “strong, logical argument.” Designers “must convince with a narrative.” There has to be inter-disciplinary planning with engineers and architects to capture all the benefits. He also said climate change can be a “engine” for convincing clients to move forward with new models like these. “In the past, cities thought water was a problem to get rid of, but with climate change we need to focus on water security and reuse all water.”

Read an interview with Dreiseitl on designing with water.

Image credits: Atelier Dreiseitl

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Designing the Sustainable Site

Posted in Ecosystem Restoration, Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation, Residential Design, Sustainable Design on 06/26/2012 | 2 Comments »

Designing the Sustainable Site: Integrated Design Strategies for Small-Scale Sites and Residential Landscapes by Heather Venhaus, who worked on the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) guidelines and benchmarks at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas at Austin, provides a broad overview of sustainable landscapes from concept to implementation.

Venhaus cites the common definition of sustainability as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland 1987). She further describes sustainability as a recognition of the interdependency of the environment, human health, and the economy. Venhaus argues that sustainable landscapes need to be regenerative, not only easing environmental damage but actively reversing it. In order for a design to be regenerative, we cannot simply add sustainable elements to the end of a conventional design. Instead, ecological systems must be integrated into every step of the design process. For this reason, Venhaus has written a book that is aimed not only at landscape architects but also planners, architects, contractors, and home gardeners.

Designing the Sustainable Site is a broad introduction to a variety of concepts and tools, most of which will be quite familiar to landscape architects. The book discusses, among other things, how to assemble multi-disciplinary design teams, write construction documents, conduct site analysis, and formulate maintenance plans. The remaining bulk of the book is devoted to “Sustainable Solutions,” which mostly reads as an overview of current sustainable design technologies. These chapters cover techniques for addressing air pollution, water pollution, flooding, water conservation, invasive species, and loss of biodiversity.

Experienced landscape architects are not necessarily Venhaus’s target audience. Instead, Designing the Sustainable Site could be an introductory textbook for students of planning, architecture, or landscape architecture. In many ways, this book looks and reads like a textbook: it’s full of diagrams that are clear, legible, but uninspiring. More successful than the diagrams are the extensive, photographically-documented case studies of residential sustainable design. These case studies begin to communicate the aesthetic potential of sustainable design, lending the book a bit of graphic interest.

By stressing the importance of integrative design – working sustainability into all aspects of a project – Venhaus makes it clear that sustainability falls across multiple disciplines. While the concepts presented in this book may be obvious to landscape architects, unfortunately they may be news to other design professionals and much of the public. By specifically addressing residential landscapes and small-scale sites, Venhaus moves sustainability out of the exclusive domain of landscape architects and into the hands of anyone involved in the design and building process, including all those prospective clients.

Read the book.

This guest post is by Benjamin Wellington, Student ASLA, master’s of landscape architecture candidate, Louisiana State University, and ASLA 2012 summer intern.

Image credit: Wiley & Sons

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New Rankings on Environmental Performance

Posted in Climate Change, Ecosystem Restoration, Ecosystem Services, Environment on 06/05/2012 | 2 Comments »

Since 2000, Yale University and Columbia University have been ranking countries’ environmental performance, releasing their comprehensive results and trend reports every two years. Responding to the need for “rigorous, data-driven” measurements, the index is meant to “add to the foundation of empirical support for sound policymaking.” The universities, which have collaborated with the World Economic Forum, also wanted to create an independent report that could aid government reformers who must show “tangible” results for all their environmental investments. Preserving and even enhancing the environment costs money these days, but, as a recent UN report argues, can also pay off big-time in terms of improved human health, ecosystem function, and green job growth, providing net (and long-term) gains for any economy. Moving to a more sustainable economy could mean millions of new local jobs each year, particularly in low-income countries.

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks 132 countries on 22 performance indicators spanning ten policy categories, which track performance and progress on two broad objectives: environmental health and ecosystem vitality. The index is heavily weighted towards indicators of ecosystem vitality (70 percent), with the rest of a country’s performance determined by numbers from environmental health indicators. Categories include environmental burden of disease; water (effects on human health); air pollution (effects on human health); air pollution (ecosystem effects); water resources (ecosystem effects); biodiversity and habitat; forestry; fisheries; agriculture; and climate change.

As to be expected, the top ten is taken up by European countries with high per-capita income levels, with the incredible exception of Costa Rica (#5), a middle-income country that has made significant investments in sustainable development, preserving its natural resources, and reducing pollution. Switzerland topped the charts because it “leads the world in addressing pollution control and natural resource management challenges.” Major European economies, such as France, the UK, and Sweden, also made it into the top 10.

The U.S., which ranked a sad 61st place in 2010, is now 49th, which is still much lower than it should be. Despite progress on reducing emissions from cars in the past few years under President Obama, U.S. rankings were further dragged down by its near-bottom-of the list performance on climate change, at 121st place. Interestingly, the U.S. ranks #1 in the world though for air pollution control for human health. On ecosystem vitality, which covers agriculture, air’s impact on ecosystem performance, water resources, and biodiversity, the U.S. averages out at 100, pretty low on the list. On water resources alone, the U.S. ranks a poor 104 out of 132.

The report authors acknowledge that “wealth matters” so comparing developed and developing countries may be a bit unfair. Performance within the index is clearly linked to GDP per capita, although there is a “diversity of performance within every level.” As an example, there are high income countries with pretty poor performance like the U.S. and middle-income countries with amazing results like forward-thinking Costa Rica.

While the quality of ecosystems may have a slightly looser connection with GDP, ”the environmental health scores reveal a significant relationship with GDP per capita.” This makes sense given many developing countries are, well, developing, undergoing significant programs of industrialization that reduce air and water quality, create waste, and negatively impact human health. According to the report, developing countries also face major challenges “associated with poverty and underinvestment in basic environmental amenities, such as access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.” These countries are under immense pressure to deliver increased standards of living to populations that demand them, while also moving towards more sustainable production processes and consumption patterns.

For the first time, the group of universities also created a trend report designed to show whether countries are moving forward or backward over time. While most countries are trending upwards, there are some that fell during 2000 to 2010. ”Estonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Russia were countries with the worst negative trends. Russia, at the very bottom of the Trend EPI ranking, has suffered a severe breakdown in environmental health as well as performance declines related to over-fishing and forest loss. It shows declines in every category except for slight improvements in sulfur dioxide emissions, though levels are still far below target.” (In fact, it’s so bad IKEA was just accused of taking advantage of Russia’s lax environmental regulation to harvest Russia’s old-growth forests for their cabinets and desks). Iraq also continues to rank dead last as air quality spirals downward and water becomes increasingly scarce.

For the one-third of the planet who live in China and India, the rankings don’t offer any good news either. Already, in China, which comes in at 116th place, health experts see air pollution as the greatest threat to public health. The Guardian highlights some scary data demonstrating the poor air quality in China’s cities: ”Lung cancer rates are two or three times higher in cities than in the countryside, even though smoking rates are the same.” Unfortunately, India’s air pollution may be even worse; that country comes in at 125th. The OECD estimates that bad air will now kill 3.6 million each year by 2050, with most of those deaths in China and India. Unless those countries’ governments begin to take reports like these more seriously and finance a real shift to sustainable development, the number of pollution-induced deaths will only increase.

Explore the rankings for 2012 and read the full report.

In other bad news, there are now 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the world’s atmosphere, at least in the Arctic. For years, scientists have said 350ppm is really the safe upper-most limit. According to NASA scientists, the planet has not reached 400ppm for at least 800,000 years. The connection with current unsustainable development practices is pretty clear to all: The International Energy Agency just reported that global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tonnes in 2011, up 3.2 percent.

Image credit: Costa Rica Rainforest / Jet Guer. Flickr

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A Robust, Sustainable Reference

Posted in Climate Change, Ecosystem Restoration, Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture, Sustainable Design, Sustainable Materials, Waste, Water Management, Wildlife on 05/07/2012 | Leave a Comment »

The Sustainable Sites Handbook: A Complete Guide to the Principles, Strategies, and Best Practices for Sustainable Landscapes by Meg Calkins, ASLA, elucidates strategic design approaches, measures for site performance, and provides an intelligent framework to discuss sustainability and understand technical issues. The handbook is extremely clear and well-structured, synthesizing a wealth of specific information into a useable form. The book embodies the very significant achievement of the Sustainable Sites initiative (SITES), in its broad-based collaborative approach to the subject.

The book begins by discussing the conceptual underpinnings of sustainable design and then moves through a comprehensive project development framework; from planning and site selection, through water, vegetation, soils and materials, to a discussion of human health and well-being and the issues of management and stewardship.

The broad disciplinary base of the SITES program, with its numerous expert contributors and reviewers, has allowed a surprisingly detailed and nuanced approach to the subject areas covered. The value of the book is as a guide to practitioners who are finding their way through the SITES system but also as a general reference to issues of sustainable site development more generally.

Perhaps even more than its professional use, I believe the book will be an invaluable resource for educators and students as a guide to sustainable design practice. Its comprehensiveness and synthetic approach to issues of site development and management provide a framework that can be broadly applied. The book brings together sound technical and procedural information placed within a well-reasoned intellectual context.

The book’s layout is clear and legible but the book design and production exhibit the limitations of quality in both materials and images so ubiquitous in contemporary textbooks. Given the density of the material, significantly more attention to a more dynamic graphic design and layout would have made a profound difference to the reader experience. The photographic images, which are vital in the elaboration of the text, suffer from being uniformly low contrast black and white images as a result of paper quality, and a more varied and lively design approach to typography, illustrations, and color would enhance both the ability to absorb the information and relay how much fun it is. Given the quality of the content and its broad market appeal, this would have been an opportunity for the publisher to invest in what should be a classic text and reference work, and one can only hope that will happen for subsequent editions.

Given the scope of this book, Meg Calkins has done a superb job in providing intellectual direction and expert content and guiding her excellent collaborators in the creation of what is destined to become a key reference work for the profession.

Read the book.

This guest review is by Elizabeth Mossop, FASLA, Professor, Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture, Louisiana State University

Image credit: Wiley & Sons

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Help Restore One of Farrand’s Masterpieces

Posted in Ecosystem Restoration, Historic Preservation, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces on 04/30/2012 | Leave a Comment »

“A precious area of the city has been neglected for too long,” said Italian Ambassador Claudio Bisogniero, about Dumbarton Oaks Park, a 1920′s style “naturalistic” landscape designed by one of the foremost American woman landscape architects, Beatrix Farrand. Bisogniero said all embassies that line the 27-acre park, the northwest D.C. communities that ring it, and even greater Washington, D.C. must play a part in restoring this “jewel.”

Restoration work is already underway, in partnership with the National Park Service, which has jurisdiction over this site and the surrounding Rock Creek Park. Over a year, said Tara Morrison, Superintendent, Rock Creek Park, “weed warriors have been at work.” They are working hard towards removing all invasive species (and there are a lot). Neighboring embassies are also being brought into the conversation about how to use green infrastructure to manage more stormwater outside the park so it doesn’t just flow in.

Rebecca Trafton, President, Dumbarton Oaks Park Conservancy, has been amazing at getting volunteers involved. Larry Weaner, a landscape ecologist, and Biohabitats, a landscape restoration firm, have volunteered their expertise to come up with an ecological restoration plan. The Conservancy team is also getting support from the National Park Foundation in “strategic planning, capacity building,” which can “provide a foundation of support for our restoration work.”

An initial step is to clear the invasive plants. Next, a 2-acre piece of the park will be “restored to ecological health and historic design intent” at a cost of around $75,000. New interpretive signs will be added. Future restoration work will then be done in a piece-meal fashion. We have to have a ”sustainable, maintainable process for restoration,” said Trafton.

Ann Aldrich, Executive Director of the Conservancy, asked the audience of local officials, landscape architects, and residents to imagine “5 years from now, when there’s a restored beech grove, terrace, wildflower meadows, gardens free of weeds, and repaired dams and waterfalls with stable stream banks, and a reconstructed arbor with stone benches.”

The Conservancy team is clearly inspired by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, who started the Central Park Conservancy in New York City and is now the president of the Foundation for Landscape Studies. Rogers, who’s written many books on landscape architecture, explained how the Central Park team spent three years developing a comprehensive plan for restoring Central Park, which was critical to ensuring that “we avoided a scatter-shot approach.”

She said Central Park is the “quintessence of romantic landscape design,” and like a symphonic work has motifs but they take the form of woods, soils, and streams. Central Park also shows how landscape architects can “fuse nature and engineering into a great work of landscape art.” The great feat of engineering was separating traffic so that pedestrians could flow over carriages and now cars and trucks.

Before her conservancy got started in the early 80s, Central Park was in pretty bad shape, with 50,000 square feet of graffiti, eroded slopes, trashed ponds, shattered lights, and bombed-out buildings. The systematic survey led to an action plan with lots of different pieces that could be financed separately. She said her group made sure “not to restore anything unless we had the funds to maintain it.” So fundraising was really the other critical piece beyond having a comprehensive restoration plan and solid team.

Regardless of how well-loved the restored Central Park is now, “place is still tenuous,” meaning that if a new mayor came in who no longer valued Central Park and wanted to discontinue the public-private partnership, the park could once again fall to pieces. With a warning for all communities and their parks, Rogers said “we live in troubling times.” The beauty of a park today is no guarantee of the future.

For those in the D.C. area, learn more about how you can volunteer or help finance the restoration of Dumbarton Oaks Park.

Image credit: Dumbarton Oaks Park / The Georgetown Metropolitan

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Playa Vista Overcomes Its Obstacles

Posted in Active Design, Ecosystem Restoration, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Real Estate Development, Residential Design, Smart Growth, Urban Design, Water Management, Wildlife on 04/25/2012 | 2 Comments »

Once mired in litigation and always fraught with controversy, Playa Vista, a 1,000-plus acre wetland, residential community, and commercial development in western Los Angeles, may now be considered a success story. While parts of the 3-mile-long by 1.5-mile-wide site are still in contention, Playa Vista’s combined parklands, residential community, and commercial district certainly offers an improvement on the usual Los Angeles model: sprawl on steroids. Sure, residents still need to drive to this publicly-accessible yet privately maintained community, but once there, cars are hidden in underground parking lots and residents can walk on nice sidewalks, bike, go to cafes, walk their dog, or chill in one of the many parks. Film and multimedia studio employees in the commercial sector can walk to the site’s central park or even hike a trail along the ridgeline. And at a tour of the site during the conference of the American Planning Association, bicyclists were even seen carrying trays of coffee, making their way to studios.

Playa Vista’s innovative master plan was created in the 1990s by OLIN, a leading urban and landscape design firm, and other firms. There were a few major segments in the plan: a protected wetland, central park, multiple residential communities, and a commercial area, which houses Howard Hughes’ old aircraft facilities, structures that are mostly protected under California’s historic preservation rules. Then Playa Vista Capital and the Trust for Public Land worked off that plan to create an updated master plan that sets aside some 70 percent of the land as open space.

Indeed, they may have had to set aside a big chunk as protected nature. A major share of the site is one of the last remaining wetlands in California and lies within the coastal zone. Also, lawsuits in the mid-80s prevented an earlier development team from damaging the Ballona wetlands so Playa Vista Capital decided to hand this piece over to the state. Preserving this area was a great thing though: the wetlands are lush, but could be further improved if the state moves forward with a major restoration project that will take out the narrow concrete lining parts of the river in favor of a meandering natural system. That’s still being debated between a number of local organizations and the state.

There’s some forward-thinking green infrastructure systems here that connects the development to the greater ecological system of the area. A 51-acre riparian corridor and reconstructed marsh (see image above) was designed by Friends of the Ballona Wetland, Psomas & Associates, landscape architecture firm Collaborative West, and Erik Streaker, a water quality expert, to cleanse and manage the development’s stormwater and connect with the wetlands. Already, the new marsh has brought in 100+ plus birds, including an endangered species. A new central park by the Michael Maltzan Architects and the Office of James Burnett is already in place to welcome the second residential segment, the new ”Village,” now underway (moving forward only after more lawsuits were finally settled after they went to the State Supreme Court). Maltzan’s park provides a sustainable, multi-functional public space bridging the residential and commercial sides, which is also now under development.

First conceived as a New Urbanist community, given its tight density, multi-family housing complexes, and use of street grids, the first residential community diverges from that rigid model in a few key ways. There’s lots of affordable housing units. Diverse parks and street landscapes play a central role in making the community, a two-square mile development, seem a bit less like the creepy community in the Truman Show. According to Mark Huffman, Playa Vista Capital, the landscape architecture was central to making Playa Vista work so well. There are 17 acres of “active parks” and another 12 acres of “passive recreation” set within distinct park districts, with a “concert” park, “fountain” park, and others.

Streets, which have bicycle lanes, each have their own plant-based identities. “We want people to be able to find their own street,” said Huffman. Some of the buildings do look very similar to each other, even though many architects worked on the different buildings within the complex. Huffman added that 50 percent of all plants are native and drought tolerant, but some “did better than others,” with some trees felled by mites.

An innovative homeowners fee finances the upkeep of the landscapes, green infrastructure, and much of the community work. Given some 3,200 residences have been purchased, meaning some 6,000 people are living in these two square miles, the fees must not be onerous. In fact, one of the selling points of the fees may be that they help ensure the community keeps close watch over the initiatives that make this development more environmentally and socially-sound than others in Los Angeles. While the marsh is self-sustaining, said Huffman, fees are needed to cover all the permits and regulatory reporting and control the cattails in the marsh and corridor. The cattails, which are the heart of the constructed wetland system that remove pollutants from the water, often grow too wild so they have to be pruned back. Fees also help finance programs for the community, including widening the 4-lane street right out front of the development, and new computer labs for nearby schools.

Throughout, there are other sensitive ways of dealing with water. All the parks are watered with recycled water provided by automated systems. A new wetland ”discovery” park designed by Levin & Associates still isn’t quite open to the public because the groups involved first need to finalize the details on the non-profit that will run the site, but that also promises to educate the public about the critical importance of water and wetlands.

While the development isn’t really the “Live, Work, Play” development it’s sold as — given most of its residents still face a long car ride to their workplaces — the commercial district isn’t too far for those lucky ones that live nearby, perhaps a 10-15 bicycle ride. The commercial side, which is run by The Ratvokich Company, offers very nice reuse of historic buildings. The Hercules Campus is named after the Hercules, the wooden plane Howard Hughes created in World War II and was deemed the “Spruce Goose” by the press. Hercules was built in the old hangers now leased out by Ratkovich to movie studios. (We had to sign a non-disclosure agreement so can’t talk about the new Hollywood movie being produced there).

The beautiful, gargantuan hangers from the 1940s are actually made entirely of wood, like large boats turned upside down. There are molded, glued wood beams that tower 72 feet and provide the frame of the structures. New tenants coming in to use other buildings for “production support” include Google, with its new YouTube channel; social media marketing; and multimedia production studios. In Los Angeles, buildings can be zoned for “production support,” which is different from plain-old office space.

Milan Ratvokich, one of the developers, seemed bemused by what “creative professionals” like in these old buildings – the cavernous loft spaces and the old, authentic materials – but clearly “saw a place with a lot of opportunities.” Designed by a sensitive interior designer, the old spaces, one of which includes an old vault Hughes kept his plane designs in, could be amazing new creative spaces for movie and Web workers.

Ratvokich proves that they are at the cutting-edge of development: They are not only looking at bringing in a new hydrogen-powered fuel cell to serve as a generator for a cluster of buildings, but also working to preserve the 100-year old Sycamore trees that line the old 1940′s Hughes offices.

Image credits: (1) Ballona Marsh / Friends of the Ballona Wetlands. Lisa Fimiani (2) Central Park, Michael Maltzan Architects / Iwan Baan copyright, (3-4) Playa Vista Concert Park and Spyglass Park / Playa Vista Capital, (5) Playa Vista streetscape / Debra Berman and Pat Kandel Real Estate, (6) Ballona Wetland Park / Friends of Ballona Wetland, (7) Howard Hughes’ “Spruce Goose” aircraft hangar, Playa Vista / The Wall Street Journal, (8-10) Buildings at Hercules Campus / The Ratvokich Company.

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Restoration on the Edge

Posted in Ecosystem Restoration, Ecosystem Services, Water Management, Wildlife on 03/29/2012 | Leave a Comment »

Brooklyn College recently played host to the mid-atlantic chapter of the Society for Ecological Restoration, providing space for a conference entitled “Restoration on the Edge.” The dialogue, which focused on the fragility, opportunity, and resiliency in changing ecosystems, was mostly centered around those of New York City. As restoration ecologists, biologists, landscape architects, and environmental engineers filled the seats to capacity, it was clear that the issues discussed affected a wide body of disciplines. And although Brooklyn College is home to wild parrots, an ecological wonder, it was the array of speakers who we came to see.

Tim Chambers, currently the Deputy Director of the Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC) in Staten Island, spoke of ecological restoration in the context of urban agriculture and native seed production. The GNPC, which focuses much of its work on the collection and storage of native seeds in the tri-state region, believes in “land management.” Their mission is “small scale eco-regional seed production.” In their partnership with the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, GNPC takes care not to disturb local ecologies. Restoration requires understanding existing natural systems and which systems are susceptible to degradation. Even in seed extraction one must respect nature and be really careful. Chambers assured the audience that “certain methods are deployed to randomize collection processes,” an imperative when “borrowing from nature.”

Erin English, a professional engineer with Natural Systems International, a subsidiary of Biohabitats, Inc., spoke of “living infrastructure.” English’s work focuses on the design of ecological wastewater, stormwater, and greywater management systems. In her opening comments she wondered whether stormwater can “inspire dance.” The answer was yes. She showed images of students interpretive-dancing upon the successful and sustainable stormwater/greywater system at Sidwell Middle School in D.C. Sidwell, a project led by landscape architects Andropogon Associates, shows how “the entire landscape is a living water cycle.” (see a case study)

The project also demonstrates a key aspect of English’s message that “decentralized wastewater treatment needs to be a closed-loop system.” The water cycle, as we imagine it diagrammatically, is a closed-loop system. But what happens when that system interacts with a “pollution bomb” such as farmland and agriculture? She believes that through design solutions, sometimes very “simple solutions” can prove to be very powerful and may inspire us to do more than dance.

In a lecture entitled, “The Theory and Practice of Seagrass Restoration: Lessons Learned over the Last 20 Years in New York,” habitat restoration specialist, Chris Pickerell discussed eelgrass (Zostera marina), a seagrass. According to Pickerell, “seagrass losses have been widespread and dramatic worldwide.” In areas where “sediment and water quality has dramatically changed,” such as New York Harbor, we have seen a major “paradigm shift.”

As far as ecological restoration is concerned, Pickerell acknowledged there has been a decent response. However, studies have indicated that a “large-scale loss of habitat has led to alternative stable states where natural re-establishment of native species may not be possible unless some minimum size or density thresholds are met.” Pickerell’s talk focused on lessons learned through restorative efforts and offered suggestions for creating more successful future ecological restoration efforts. Over those 20 years restoration ecologists have gained valuable experience relating to a number of factors, “ranging from site selection and planting method to timing that affect restoration success.”

The closing lecture was giving by Queens native soil scientist, Sally Brown. On ecological restoration, a science-based approach to the re-creation of past ecosystems, soil seem to be the perfect subject on which to end the day. Soil, whose “ecosystem services have enormous value,” has not seen the top layer of New York City’s surface in a long time. Brown spoke of the importance of soil as “a wonderful medium.” Soil, the eight-hundred pound gorilla in the room, was well-understood by the informed audience as a dwindling yet critical resource.

That is why it is so vital for landscape architects, engineers, and ecologists to “understand basic soil information.” Breaking down soil components, Brown clarified the organic material and elements needed to build up soil fertility. “Building soil is an artform,” she added. Basically, when it boils down to soil manufacturing, the “carbon-nitrogen ration of a compost is the most important factor.” A soil scientist from Queens talking about manufacturing urban soils? I want to hear more.

Although the data on our degraded environments seems catastrophic, the solutions offered by some of our regions’ most talented and dedicated restoration ecologists were inspiring. Understanding the dire state of our current ecosystems, I took away from the SER conference a renewed sense of duty as a steward of our environments and hope the message will spread.

This guest post is by Tyler Silvestro, a master’s degree candidate at the City College of New York (CUNY), and writer for The Architect’s Newspaper.

Image credits: (1) Sidwell Friends School, Washington, D.C. / Andropogon Associates, (2) Eelgrass / Washington DNR

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Bringing Nature to the Neighborhood

Posted in Ecosystem Restoration, Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Water Management, Wildlife on 03/15/2012 | 2 Comments »

An ambitious project is taking shape in Louisville, Kentucky, a city of nearly three-quarters of a million. The Parklands of Floyds Fork, which won an ASLA planning and analysis award, will help expand Frederick Law Olmsted’s original vision for the community. Olmsted had created a series of parks and parkways just outside the edge the late 19th century city, in an effort to “bring nature to the neighborhoods.” Now that Louisville, a city with more than 100 parks totaling 12,000 acres, has been engulfed by development, the city is turning eastward to seek new green horizons. WRT, a Philadelphia-based landscape architecture firm, is working with their client, 21st Century Parks, a local non-profit, to develop a plan that adds some 4,000 acres of open space to a 20-mile length of bottomland in eastern Jefferson County. The firm says this $113 million project will create a green infrastructure framework to shape the expected future growth of the community and help the city create a more sustainable model for urban growth beyond the city limits.

The Parklands will be divided into four new parks, each with their own purpose and character. Beckley Creek Park, Pope Lick Park, Turkey Run Park and Broad Run Park will be linked by a braided system of passages, including a water trail on the creek (Floyds Fork), a park road, local roads, and a multipurpose trail corridor called the Louisville Loop. The Parklands will form one fifth of 100-mile length of the Louisville Loop, first proposed in WRT’s mid-1990’s plan for the regional open space network.

Beckeley Creek Park will offer the grand open space, a 23-acre “Egg Lawn,” with canoe launches into the ponds, along with lodges and picnic areas. Visitors can fish in those ponds, use the sports fields, or bring their kids to a “creekside playground and spray park.” Intriguingly, WRT is also building a “bark park.” Turkey Run Park will have “adventure programming” like zip lines and rope courses, along with rock climbing, while Broad Run Park will provide access to the waterfalls, springs, and wetlands.

The master plan calls for reserving 80 percent of the 4,000 acres for natural habitat. WRT actually broke down the zones and their environmental benefits for us:

2,000 acres of forestland will increase oxygenation and store CO2.
400 acres of restored native meadowlands will provide habitat corridors and reduce the need for mowing (which gives off CO2 emissions)
50 acres of restored wetlands will enhance habitat and improve water quality
7 miles of restored streambanks will reduce erosion
400 acres will be converted to support sustainable agriculture; no chemical use allowed.
All that protected habitat will provide home to 25 species of reptiles and amphibians; 40 species of fish; 20 species of freshwater mussels; 138 species of birds; 19 mammals; and 450 types of native plants, including endangered ones.

The Parklands, says WRT, is the “next generation of open space outside of the city’s cherished Olmsted park system. The client and partners seized the chance to develop the 20-odd miles as more than a greenway – as a megapark that dwarfs even the ambitious dimensions of the city’s established Olmstedian system.”

Interestingly, the firm adds that this isn’t just about preserving ecosystems, but creating a system of green infrastructure at the largest scale and integrating people and nature into a more sustainable pattern of development. “The Parklands is not a preservation project – the client’s intent has been to place people in nature, and to proactively use open space as an agent in shaping future regional development on a county-wide scale.”

Their client, 21st Century Parks made the case. Dan Jones, head of the organization, told The Architect’s Newspaper the park will provide a new framework for development at the fringes of the city. While some may consider this expansive, not compact urban development, some ecological guidelines are already forming. Structures built along the new parklands must face the park and street trees have to be incorporated into the designs. Jones said: “A city has both a core and an edge. You can’t ignore the edge condition.”

The team is also looking to improve the standard subdivision model used in Louisville by creating a “model” community development in an “ailing, partially developed, adjacent subdivision” purchased by the group when real estate prices were low. These new model subdivisions are expected to be dense, offer high levels of connectivity, leverage the green infrastructure systems, and protect the natural habitat.

It’s good to see the project’s managers are starting to think out how to combine the benefits of both nature and density. As a number of landscape architects have argued, if you want people to live in dense urban areas, you need nature.

The first phase will be completed in 2013, with following phases finished by 2015.

Explore the parkland and see the earlier master plan.

Image credits: (1-2) Parklands of Floyds Fork / WRT, (3) Parklands of Floyds Fork /Rendering by Bravura

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Restored Wetlands: Not as Good as the Original

Posted in Ecosystem Restoration, Ecosystem Services, Environment, Urban Revitalization, Water Management, Wildlife on 03/01/2012 | Leave a Comment »

New research published in the online journal, PLoS Biology, argues that wetlands are some of the most valuable ecosystems on Earth. Mangrove forests and boreal peatlands mitigate the impacts of storms and flooding on coastal communities, limit erosion, store carbon, and provide habitat for lots of fish and bird species. Unfortunately, many communities have never realized this. More than half of wetland ecosystems in North American, Australia, Europe, and Asia, have been destroyed by development. And there’s more bad news. According to the group of researchers from Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and other universities, restored, man-made wetlands don’t provide as much value as natural ones. ”Restoration performance is limited. Current restoration practice fails to recover original levels of wetland ecosystem functions, even after many decades.”

A “meta-analysis” of more than 600 wetland sites worldwide found that even 100 years post-restoration, ”biological structure (driven mostly by plant assemblages), and biogeochemical functioning (driven primarily by the storage of carbon in wetland soils), remained on average 26% and 23% lower, respectively, than in reference sites.” The researchers conclude that either recovery times are “very slow” or some sort of additional disturbances happened to these wetlands — from pollution or development.

Location and temperature does make some difference in recovery rates, though. ”Wetlands restored in warm (temperate and tropical) climates recovered more rapidly than smaller wetlands and wetlands restored in cold climates.” In addition, the sites with more water washing through them did better than “depressional” wetlands.

For the researchers conducting the analysis, bigger-scale recovery efforts may also help improve the recovery rates. To date, most restored wetlands are just snippets of once vast systems. “Recovery may be more likely and more rapid if more than 100 contiguous hectares of habitat are restored.”

Their findings don’t bode well for future restoration efforts either, unless restoration approaches change: ”If restoration as currently practiced is used to justify further degradation, global loss of wetland ecosystem function and structure will spread.”

David Moreno-Mateos, a wetland ecologist at the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve at Stanford University and the lead author of the paper, told The New York Times’ Green Blog that means changing the way restored wetlands are evaluated and testing the biological processes: “In traditional restoration, people repair hydrology, put in some plants, and after a few years say the wetlands are good. But if you look at what’s really going on down there, you see the processes are not recovering.”

If the research is further replicated and confirmed, there could be implications for both governments and the development industry. According to Moreno-Mateos, over the last 20 years, the U.S., Canada, and Mexico have spent $70 billion restoring more than seven million acres of wetlands. In addition, developers often “promise to create or restore wetlands in one location in exchange for getting permission to bulldoze wetlands in another location.” The research is saying these new sites just don’t do as well, though.

For example, in newly restored sites, plants are particularly hard hit and take the longest to recover. The New York Times Green Blog writes: “On average, they took 30 years to return but still remained less biodiverse and abundant up to 100 years after restoration.” This “plant lag” may be due to “recovering carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus storage.”

Still, for communities that don’t have any wetland systems at all, unearthing and restoring historic yet damaged systems or creating new ones may still provide value, even while offering lower levels of ecosystem service. As an example, check out a wonderful new project in Los Angeles (see images at top and below), which turned a 9-acre parking lot into a somewhat functioning wetland park. According to The Architect’s Newspaper, the new park has “kidney-shaped storm water pools, deep cleaning retention basins, and banks of native plants chosen for their ability to clean water.” Now, in an area with lots of toxic run-off and little green space, there’s a park that can process up to 680,000 gallons of stormwater a day.

While it may not be as good as the real thing, it still provides enormous social value for an underserved community, along with some intrinsic environmental value: there’s now a way to deal with all that runoff and some species are seen returning to the site.