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Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category

A New Home for a Bee Colony

Posted in Environment, Green Buildings on 06/22/2012 | 1 Comment »

The University of Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning seems especially respectful of nature. After the success of their bat tower, a beautifully-designed structure for a bat colony that the bats themselves seem to love, the school’s architecture and urban planning grad students moved on to designing new spaces for bees. According to the school, a massive and thriving colony was living in an abandoned, derelict office building in Buffalo owned by Rigidized Metals Corporation, a metals manufacturer. When the president of the firm was visiting the old space, which is targeted for rehabilitation, he discovered the gigantic hive. Instead of calling the exterminator, he decided to launch a design competition to find the colony a new, safer home. They’ve since moved into the grad student’s winning design: the 22-foot-tall Elevator B, a “free-standing steel, glass and cypress tower.”  

The bee colony had been living in the walls of the old office for some time. Given the hive was humongous — and therefore a successful home for the bees – the students didn’t know if the bees would actually move. The students decided to use hexagonal shapes, inspired by natural honeycomb, and mimic the tubular design of the nearby grain silos. Inside the bee tower, a “bee cab” or elevator made of cypress and glass was created. The shape was designed to provide the colony “protection and warmth.”

The bees did indeed make the shift, and now there’s safe access for both bees and people. ”The bees will enter the cab through holes near its top, about 10 feet above the ground in its raised position. The cab can be lowered to the ground to permit the beekeeper to attend to the health and safety of the bees.” Furthermore, the glass wall enables people to better interact with the colony. “The bee cab typically will be in a raised position to allow visitors to step into the tower, look up and watch the colony through a glass window.”

Bees are under enormous pressure. The Scientific American reports that one-third of all honeybee colonies have died out in the past six years. Possible culprits include viruses, mites, the spread of unnutricious plants, or pesticides. Now, two studies have recently implicated insecticides in colony deaths. The issue is very serious for us as well: without bees, there won’t be much agriculture. “They pollinate about one third of U.S. crop species, including almonds, apples, grapes, soybeans, cotton, and others, the failure of which could lead not only to food shortages, but also to large economic hits for farmers—and consumers.”

Beyond building hives bees like, landscape architects, designers, and gardeners of all kinds can help support these hard workers of the natural world by eliminating the use of chemical insecticides and incorporating the plants bees love. The College of Natural Resources at the University of California, Berkeley, has created a list of these plants.

See the details of the Elevator B design and more photos.

In other news from the natural world, scientists discovered that the shark fin soup beloved in many parts of Asia is not only terrible for sharks but also for people. The New York Times reports: “Shark fins contain high levels of a potent neurotoxin that scientists have linked to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.” Demand for the soup leads to about 73 million shark deaths annually and the destruction of the delicate food chains in marine ecosystems.

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Nature Animated

Posted in Environment, Land Art, Wildlife on 06/20/2012 | Leave a Comment »

“From water waves to light waves, the same patterns emerge across all scales of space and time,” writes Sosolimited and Plebian Design, who created Patterned by Nature, a wonderful installation for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences’ Natural Research Center in Raleigh. An animated “scupltural ribbon” weaves through the museum’s plaza. Sequences flow through migrating small birds to a flock of noisy geese. Drops of water transform into ocean waves, and then, beneath the waves, we see the pulsating skin of a cuttlefish. The museum writes: “The exhibit celebrates our abstraction of nature’s infinite complexity into patterns through the scientific process and through our perceptions.”

The ribbon, which is about 90 feet long and 10 feet wide, winds itself through a 5-story atrium. The installation is made up of 3,600 LCD glass tiles. Amazingly, the whole thing runs on 75 watts, about the same amount of energy needed to power a laptop. 

While the clip above shows just a few snippets of the full animation, there are actually twenty sequences. According to the museum and design team, these range from “clouds to rain drops to colonies of bacteria to flocking birds to geese to cuttlefish skin to pulsating black holes.” Real footage of nature and ”algorithmic software modeling of natural phenomena” were used to create the fascinating visuals. There are also eight different soundtracks, corresponding to different parts of nature. 

For another, perhaps somewhat more disturbing animation of nature, see a project by Ivan Henriques and Professor Bert van Duijn from the Netherlands’ Leiden University. Fast Company says Mimosa pudica is “one of the few plants in the world that can sense touch stimulus and move its leaves immediately in response.” Henriques, with the help of the professor, “upgraded the plant’s responsiveness with the capabilities of a motorized wheelchair.”

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Global Pessimism Before Rio+20

Posted in Climate Change, Environment, Policy and Regulation, Wildlife on 06/20/2012 | Leave a Comment »

Twenty years ago, the Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro, a hugely important event in the history of global action on sustainability. The conference was attended by 108 heads of state and 2,400 representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). A total of 172 governments participated. The summit called for a transformation in the way we live and brought the concept of sustainable development to the mainstream. Covering such issues such as climate change, biodiversity, toxic waste, alternative energy, public transportation, and water scarcity, the conference produced a comprehensive environmental action plan, Agenda 21.

Now 20 years later, the Rio+20 conference, a foll0w-up on the original summit, seeks to address many of the same issues and check in on progress. The conference identifies its two main themes as: “a green economy in the context of sustainable development poverty eradication; and the institutional framework for sustainable development.” Additionally, the conference identifies seven priority areas, including green jobs, sustainable energy, sustainable cities, food security, accessible water, ocean management, and disaster resiliency.

Like the first conference, Rio+20 is huge in scale. Described as, “a once-in-a-generation opportunity” by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, it’s expected to draw upwards of 50,000 participants, with representatives from 180 countries. Yet unlike the original conference, many important world leaders are conspicuously missing. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and U.S. President Barack Obama are all not attending the conference.

This apparent lack of enthusiasm on the part of the United States and Western Europe has been blamed on recent economic and politic turmoil. In an interview with The New York Times, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, said: “Europe has been the great leader of environmental action but Europe is hardly functioning now.” Similarly, former head of the U.S. E.P.A. William K. Reilly told The New York Times: “The international community is going to have to learn never to hold a big global conference during an American presidential election year.”

Others have blamed the lack of western enthusiasm on a general loss of idealism. When President George H.W. Bush attended the Earth Summit in 1992, he was riding a wave of idealism following the end of the Cold War. John Vidal in The Guardian writes that, “the days of hope and idealism are over. Rich countries have little new to offer, and China, Brazil, India and other rapidly emerging economies are now in the development driving seat.”

Today, with sustainability firmly in the mainstream, we are left to consider the tangible environmental consequences of the 1992 conference. Despite increasing awareness, many do not see actual environmental progress being made. With record greenhouse emissions, melting polar icecaps, and a rapidly expanding global population, environmentalists argue that existing policies have done little to alter the trajectory of development and environmental degradation. In a pre-recorded video speech to the Rio+20 conference, Prince Charles stated, “Like a sleepwalker, we seem unable to wake up to the fact that so many of the catastrophic consequences of carrying on with ‘business-as-usual’ are bearing down on us faster than we think, already dragging many millions more people into poverty and dangerously weakening global food, water and energy security for the future.”

Some of the harshest criticism has come from World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Director General Jim Leape, who condemned the recently released draft text on green global development, stating “despite a late night negotiating session, the revised text is a colossal failure of leadership and vision from diplomats. They should be embarrassed at their inability to find common ground on such a crucial issue.” He went on to criticize the text’s lack of hard language, concluding, “World leaders ‘recognized’ problems 20 years ago, and they’ve done little about them since. How long are we going to accept ‘we’ll look into it’ as a solution?”

Despite the prevailing negativity, some people are still hopeful that the conference will have a positive impact. In a green energy forum hosted by The Atlantic magazine, former head of the E.P.A . and recent climate change czarina Carol Browner acknowledged that the enthusiasm of twenty years ago simply no longer exists, though she still holds out hope that the conference will produce “measurable, concrete steps.” Furthermore, Browner was optimistic regarding the future of sustainable energy in general. She expressed that now is the time for the United States to support the nascent clean energy industry, discussing the ways smart environmental regulation can lead to innovation in new technologies and produce economic growth.

Still, the meeting does serve as a useful tool for keeping sustainable development high on the international agenda. And many countries do use these conferences as goal posts, deadlines for achieving significant environmental progress. As an example, just days before the meeting, Australia recently announced it had created the largest marine nature preserve in the world. If only the U.S. and European countries were able to make similarly grand commitments — either to finance developing countries’ efforts to improve their environment or to do more good in their own backyard.

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: Australian Marine Preserve / Australian Geographic. Getty Images.

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Somewhere Between Art and Nature

Posted in Environment, Land Art on 06/19/2012 | 1 Comment »


In his new book, Woodcut, artist Bryan Nash Gill displays wood stump prints that read as personal histories. In the book’s introduction, Verlyn Klinkenborg, who writes op-eds for The New York Times, describes how “Gill’s art – his ability to capture the individuality of these trees – is a reminder that there is something generic or platonic in the mere working out of the life force in each organism. What separates each organism and gives it its distinctive, living shape is experience.” In other words, the form of the tree results from its history, with each experience registered in its interior rings. Through a process of cutting, sanding, and burning, Gill makes this history legible; each print reveals lifetime of interactions with human and non-human forces.

In Spruce, 2008, we see that this tree was 97 years old when it died. It had a branch cut at age twenty, and a metal spike was driven into it when it was thirty. The white lines are tunnel holes from insect invasions, typical of soft-wood species such as Norway spruce. The pruned branch and metal spike reveal interactions with humans, and the insect scars reveal interactions with nature. All of these factors result in the form of the tree. However, the print itself is just as much a product of Gill’s creative process as it is the tree itself.


The progression from wood to wood block to print represents a series of creative decisions. Gill salvages wood from anywhere he can find it including his own property and local farms. He chooses his wood based on the qualities he’s interested in investigating. Once he has found an appropriate piece of wood, he will cut it up with a chainsaw, paying particular attention to areas within the wood that he finds interesting. This process transforms the wood into a wood block. He continues cutting until he is satisfied.

In preparation for print, the block undergoes a treatment of sanding and burning as well as additional manipulation with a variety of tools. The exact method of preparation depends on the species of tree and the quality of the wood. Next, the wood block is inked. This is not a simple matter of applying ink but instead a subjective decision based on Gill’s aesthetic judgment. Gill writes, “the print is not a fingerprint of the wood; it’s not a stamp. It’s the feel of the wood that I’m after.” Similarly, the choices of paper and printing process are artistic choices. Therefore, the resulting print is not simply documentation of the life of a tree but an aesthetic object in its own right. In the print below, Southport Oak, we see a series of cracks that resulted from the block air drying in Gill’s studio.


Abstracted from their source, the tree rings form beautiful printed patterns. Gill’s process heightens the contrast of the rings, allowing his prints to achieve a level of intricacy and detail that does not exist on a typical piece of cut wood. Still, Gill never allows his work to become completely abstracted from its origin: each print indicates the species and age of the original tree.

This relationship between nature and art is central to landscape architecture. Landscapes are continually shaped by human and non-human processes. It’s through intentional design that a landscape becomes an aesthetic object. While at first glance Gill’s prints are unbiased reproductions of natural objects, they are actually highly designed art pieces, just as much about Gill’s own artistic impulses as they are about the trees. In the same way, while a park may appear to be natural, it’s actually the aesthetic result of an intentional design. 

In addition to bridging the gap between art and nature, Gill’s work is a reminder that people and nature are interconnected, often in invisible ways. Interactions with human and non-human forces influence the forms of trees, and these histories are permanently registered in their rings. Sometimes the relationship between people and nature can become convoluted. In the case of Cedar Pole, Gill’s print reveals a mundane telephone pole to be built from a 200+ year old cedar tree.


Just as trees are influenced by a variety of human and non-human forces, we are subject not only to dealings with other people but the ecology of our surrounding environment. While we do not create rings to register our experiences, our lives are still influenced by a variety of daily interactions with a host of cultural and ecological processes. The design of our landscapes facilitates these interactions.

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 credits: Bryan Nash Gill / Woodcut. Princeton Architectural Press

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Can the U.S. Become Like Denmark?

Posted in Environment, Renewable Energy on 06/18/2012 | 6 Comments »


The U.S. isn’t going to become like Denmark, which relies on wind power for 22 percent of its energy needs, anytime soon. In that sustainable northern European country, sometimes the total share of wind power even jumps up to 60-70 percent during really windy periods, said Willet Kempton, Professor, Center for Carbon-free Power Integration, University of Delaware, at a green energy forum organized by The Atlantic magazine. After nearly $100 billion in investment over the past few decades, wind power is still just nearing 4 percent of the total U.S. energy system and won’t get up to Denmark’s levels without a dramatic shift in how energy is created and distributed, added Michael O’Sullivan NextEra Energy Resources’ Senior Vice President. NextEra, one of the world’s largest solar and wind energy providers, has alone invested some $20 billion in U.S. wind power to date.

According to Martin Klepper, co-head of the energy and infrastructure projects group at law firm Skadden Arps, federal financing, which has totaled $20 billion, has also helped bring the cost of solar and wind power down. Solar is down from $4 a watt to around $1. There are similar trends for wind.

Just a few states really offer the opportunity for “utility-scale” wind power. The same goes for solar power. That’s because there are only a few states with enough wind and sun to justify the expense of rolling out the expensive transmission lines and systems that can store power when there’s no wind blowing or sun shining.

The price trends are positive so the share of renewables is slowly growing though. The U.S. is now in the process of installing some of the largest solar, solar thermal, and wind power installations anywhere in the world. However, China may be eating the U.S.’s lunch given the rapid way they are scaling up.

O’Sullivan didn’t seem scared by China’s great progress though. He said some 25-30 percent of the enormous wind capacity China has built isn’t “connected to the grid. It’s wind to nowhere.” While China is adding 50-100 mega watts each year, the U.S. has a more “mature regulatory environment.” Comparing China to the Wild Wild West, the U.S. 75 years ago, O’Sullivan said “there’s a simpler regulatory regime there.” Klepper said it’s amazing but in one day a new power plant can receive land, water, air permits and financing, whereas in the U.S. that process can take anywhere from 2-5 years and involve lots of risk. A number of those proposals fail to win approval, meaning all those consulting fees go down to the toilet.

Perhaps the main stumbling block to turning the U.S. into Denmark is the lack of a national smart grid and any hope of one in the near term. A national smart grid could help transmit wind power collected in the central great plain states (the windy core of the country) and quickly move it to other parts of the states. O’Sullivan said the policy and regulatory landscape among the 48 lower states is so different that there are almost “48 different countries.” Within that mess of regulations, there are some 500 utilities that “own some piece of the grid.” As a result, infrastructure investment has to be done state by state or maybe regionally. “The technology is the easy part. It can decades to permit infrastructure. This isn’t like the interstate system.” The policy and regulatory differences between states and lack of cross-border coordination are slowing the U.S. down in a big way.  

While the U.S. federal government and utilities have invested in research and development, it’s a fairly small number: a few billion. O’Sullivan said private equity and capital — see the energy entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley — are really driving the industry. They saw a “positive price signal from the federal government” and have gone for it.

What do all these firms now still need to boost wind production? Certainty that policies won’t change in the future so they can get busy building out these long-range projects. Klepper says the industry needs a federal renewable energy standard (see earlier post) and measures to reduce the cost of financing. Kempton would like policymakers to internalize the “externalities” in energy production, all the health and environmental costs that the public now covers. If the true cost of those were included in the price of energy, the story goes that the true benefits of wind and solar power will become clearer and the cost of these energy sources will be cheaper than dirty coal and oil.

Check out a map of American wind resources and explore the state of wind power generation in the U.S. In the midwest at least, farmers and communities could even benefit from wind farms.

Earlier in the day: Given much of Washington, D.C. now considers natural gas a clean energy, Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, a former geologist and fan of “clean coal,” made a multi-pronged defense of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” to improve extraction. Saying he’s been doing fracking projects since the early 1980s, he believes these projects can be safe and he knows very few instances where fracking has led to groundwater contamination or earthquakes. Still, earthquakes are “possible” if the fluids cause earth plates to slide. He said that “like any industrial process, it can be done well or sloppily.” To be sure damage doesn’t occur, Colorado has doubled its fines for any damage to the groundwater. “We have a zero tolerance” policy on water pollution. Gas is clearly big business in Colorado.

Image credit: Wind farm mixed in with a real farm in Kansas / Grit

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The Bee’s Knees

Posted in Environment on 06/18/2012 | Leave a Comment »


In her new book, BEE, photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher provides a larger than life look at a tiny yet exemplary creature. BEE illustrates the beauty at the intersection of art and science. Using a scanning electron microscope, the author provides the reader a complete anatomical study of these magnificent creatures, each one a work of art to behold.

The plates are arranged in sections: antenna, body, eye, leg, proboscis, and wing. The levels of magnifications, which range from 10x to 5000x, and a clear explanation of the function of each body part accompany each photograph. At first glance, many of the images appear to be abstract studies of plant or sea life. Is the viewer looking at a Venus fly trap or perhaps a sea anemone?


Each photograph explains how every minute part of a bee’s body performs an important function. For example, there’s a photograph of the elliptical dome-like surface of the honeybee’s eye, which is magnified 190x. What do all of these tiny hairs and hexagons do exactly?


Well, as the author explains, honeybees uses these to “perceive the range of color spectrum from yellow to ultraviolet light; red is perceived as black. Ultraviolet light reveals patterns, contracts, and markings in flowers that are imperceptible to humans, but visible and attractive to the honeybee, informing her where to land and where to find nectar and pollen.” 


“Each worker’s compound eye comprises about 6,900 hexagonal, faceted lenses, and each lens captures light from its own angle. Combining visual information from each tiny eye, forms are perceived as a mosaic of dots rather than with fine detail. Bee vision is better suited to perceiving light and motion than form.”

As a body of work, BEE serves to reinforce the principal that form is joined with function: “Honeybees live in a peaceful society whose industries benefit life. How can we emulate their example of harmlessness and beauty? For me, the honeybee symbolizes and embodies a congruency of form and function, vision and action, sprit and matter, all being of the same essence.”


The author’s fascination with “our most important pollinator” is evident in every photograph and, as result of Ms. Fisher’s awe, what could have been presented as dry scientific data becomes a wondrous exploration of the natural world.

Explore the world of bees.

This guest post is Susan Apollonio, Marketing Manager, ASLA. Susan and her family have an obsession with bees.

Image credits: BEE / Princeton Architectural Press 2012 (1) Sabine 15 x, (2) eye pollen 800x, (3-4) eye, (5) proboscis  

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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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Recycling Should Be Fun and Easy

Posted in Environment, Sustainable Materials on 05/30/2012 | Leave a Comment »


A new bin design in Portugal makes recycling fun and easy, two qualities not often associated with sorting your trash. These qualities may be needed though, at least in higher-trafficked areas, given most recycling bins are anything but user-friendly these days. Created by architectural and urban design firm AND-RÉ, the prototype set of bins are meant to give recycling a higher profile in the community, while will also encouraging more “democratic” use among many types of users.

The use of bold forms and colors is meant to seduce people into recycling their organic waste, glass, metals, paper, and cardboard. The designers assert: “The negative perception of the garbage bins was forgotten by changing the status of the object itself.” And people seem to be responding. Tourists were seen taking photos next to the bins. Children were even observed asking parents to put garbage in the right bins, turning sorting into a kind of game.


Made of composite fiber and high-resistance stainless steel, the bins limit unpleasant interactions with “dirty surfaces” and waste smells. While the set of bins have a similar look, inside, there are different sorting and storage mechanisms. ”The system for organic waste and metal use a container (a drum with rotary counterweight axis) associated with the movement of the lid. Glass and paper systems use a fixed conduit, regardless of movement of the lid.” There’s also a pedal that frees the hands so more O.C.D. users can avoid touching the bins all together.


While the design is eye-catching, more sustainable recycled (and recyclable) materials should be incorporated if these get rolled out in more communities in Portugal or elsewhere.

Image credit: AND-RÉ

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An Exciting Way to Visit the Plants

Posted in Education, Environment, Gardens, Landscape Architecture, Water Management, Wildlife on 05/23/2012 | Leave a Comment »

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) is not only very serious about its plants but also about design. Assembling a top-notch multidisciplinary team led by architecture firm Weiss/Manfredi and landscape architecture firm HM White, the BBG just added 100,000 plants with its new, model-breaking 3-acre visitor center, which provides a vivid starting point into the 52-acre garden. Of these 100,000 plants, some 45,000 have taken root on the visitor center’s 10,000-square foot roof meadow that blurs the lines between building and landscape. The other 55,000 – including cherry, magnolia, and tupelo trees, viburnums, roses, and “water-loving” plants — are spread throughout the new garden. A total of 100 plant species are represented, 90 of which are new to the garden. 

On the new entry way experience, Scot Medbury, president of Brooklyn Botanic Garden, said: “The visitor center is both an extension and elevation of the garden’s topography, softening the transition from the gray to the green and underscoring the garden’s long-standing commitment to connecting the urban and natural worlds in new and forward-thinking ways.” NYC Cultural Affairs commissioner Kate D. Levin added: “This dynamic new Visitor Center will teach audiences about horticulture through cutting-edge, green infrastructure.”


HM White tells us about how visitors enter through their new landscape: ”The visitors are greeted along Washington Avenue by an arrival plaza with two garden basins carved out of the concrete surface and a steep sculptural berm as backdrop. As one progresses through the gateway of two buildings, the unanimity is maintained by an undulating living roof meadow above that slips through the hillside. As the architecture peels away, a 3-acre landscape slowly unfolds in swaths of horticultural diversity.” The site is a “stage set” designed to bring visitors into a “native woodland, a grassland palette, which was absent from the Garden’s extensive plantings.”

The design purposefully creates views along the paths, but is also engineered to ecologically manage stormwater. “New topographic features allow for views from as high as 25 feet above ground level, crested by a mature Ginkgo allée, and form the edge of the garden and the spine of the visitor center project. The sculpted berm landform spreads and slows the flow of rain water through planted depressions and direct surface run-off to stone-filled stormwater channels and, ultimately, to terminal raingardens. These function as bioinfiltration basins at the center’s entry and event plazas and absorb stormwater and avoid discharge to the city’s combined sewer system. Similarly, all water not held on the living roof is directed to the basins.”

Unlike some other landscape projects, there’s no need for any “subsurface water retention basins,” or below-ground cisterns to store water. There’s a new “landscape infrastructure” comprised of soils, plants, and water conveyance systems that keep the landscape alive. HM White says: “Bio-engineering technology was fused with sustainable horticulture design and soil engineering to reveal a captivating landscape infrastructure. Collectively, these efforts are expected to conserve significant amounts of water each year: 200,000 gallons of water from the living roof alone.”

Stormwater is then designed to be funneled via a “diffuser system” set up to spread water to the plant communities. The salvaged and re-engineered soils work together with carefully-chosen and placed plants to make the overall system work. “The soil profiles were specifically designed to increase volume capture, facilitate ground-water recharge and filter pollutants. The multi-layered riparian plant community has evolved to survive seasonal cycles of inundation and drought. Water quality is improved through filtration, sedimentation, and biological processes.” 


Hank White, a licensed landscape architect, said the project was a true collaboration with the client, architects, civil engineering firm Weildlinger Associates, and soil scientist Pine & Swallow, to make the system not only technically-sound but also educational. White said: “We envision that visitors will now be able to observe and witness native plant communities actually performing a vital role in absorbing and cleaning stormwater.” 

According to Weiss/Manfredi, the 20,000 square-foot building itself, which houses “interpretive exhibits,” event spaces, and a store selling garden products and plants, is designed to be as sustainable as the landscape. They write about the building’s sensitivity to its environment: “The curved glass walls of the visitor center offer veiled views into the garden; there is fritted glass filtering light and deterring bird strikes. Its clerestory glazing—along with the fritted glass on the south walls—minimizes heat gain and maximizes natural illumination. A geoexchange system heats and cools the interior spaces.” The team is hoping for LEED Gold certification (and perhaps SITES certification?)


Stay tuned: More cutting-edge landscape architecture is coming. Weiss/Manfredi tells us a new ”herb garden, woodland garden, and an expanded native flora garden” are in the works for the north side, while at the southern end, there will also be a new water garden (a water conservation education project), a new children’s discovery garden (designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates), along with an “expanded and redesigned public entrance at Flatbush Avenue by Architecture Research Office.”

Explore the Brooklyn Botanic Garden when next in NYC.

Image credits: (1-2) Weiss/Manfredi, (3) Ksenia Kagner / HM White, (4-5) Aaron Booher / HM White (6) Weiss/Manfredi 

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Plants Are Retreating North

Posted in Climate Change, Environment, Gardens on 03/06/2012 | 5 Comments »

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) finally listened to what landscape architects, researchers, and gardeners have been saying for some time: plant hardiness zones are retreating north across the country. While the USDA argues that its new plant hardiness map, the first update since 1990, doesn’t show a clear connection with climate change, some experts disagree.

An article by The Washington Post quotes David Wolfe, a professor of plant and soil ecology at Cornell, who argues that the USDA is being “too cautious in laying off the climate change connection.” He said: “at a time when the ‘normal’ climate has become a moving target, this revision of the hardiness zone map gives us a clear picture of the ‘new normal.’” The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) seems to agree, posting signs in gardens affiliated with the American Public Gardens Association saying that a shifting climate has led to changes in the areas where many plants can survive.

USDA explains that plant hardiness zone designations indicate the “average annual extreme minimum temperatures at a given location during a particular time period.” As an example, if a plant is “hardy to zone 10,” it can sustain a “minimum temperature of -1°C,” writes Wikipedia. “A more resilient plant that is ‘hardy to zone 9′ can tolerate a minimum temperature of -7°C.” Just to note, though: USDA’s map doesn’t reflect the coldest it will ever be at a location, but simply the average wintertime temperature, given “low temperature during the winter is a crucial factor in the survival of plants.”

The updated map now offers 13 zones, with the addition of two new higher temperature zones: zone 12 (50-60 degrees Fahrenheit) and 13 (60-70 degrees Fahrenheit). USDA writes that each zone has a 10-degree Fahrenheit “band,” which is further separated into 5-degree Fahrenheit zones “A” and “B.”

There have also been shifts in zone boundaries, which indicate a half-degree upward turn in all zones across the U.S. “The new map is generally one 5-degree Fahrenheit half-zone warmer than the previous map throughout much of the United States.” However, in other instances, new temperature data, more sophisticated measurement technologies, and improved accuracy have resulted in changes that make some zones cooler as well. 

While not well-known among the general public, a big chunk of the U.S. economy relies on the map. Plant hardiness zones underpin crop insurance standards so farmers rely on the data. Landscape architects, horticulturalists, ecologists, and other scientists who create or restore landscapes need the data to ensure their constructed landscapes survive. There are also some 80 million home gardeners who regularly use the map.

For Catherine Woteki, USDA Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics, the new map, which offers a GIS-based interactive format designed to be more Web friendly, “is the most sophisticated Plant Hardiness Zone Map yet.” (The map was jointly developed by USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Oregon State University’s (OSU) PRISM Climate Group, with the input of teams of climate and horticultural experts from around the country). Indeed, for the first time, the map enables users to search by zip code.

Still, while the new system has lots of benefits, there are also some remaining limitations. Wikipedia argues that the zones only help so much because they don’t indicate how resilient plants need to be to heat. “The zones do not incorporate summer heat levels into the zone determination. Thus sites which may have the same mean winter minimal temperatures, but markedly different summer temperatures, will be accorded the same hardiness zone.” So, those using hardiness zones will also need to check out local heat zones, along with other factors like humidity, day length, and soil moisture, to ensure a plant can survive.

Alternatives to hardiness zones include using “indicator zones” or Sunset Books’ climate zones, which identify 45 distinct areas in the U.S.

Explore the updated map.

Image credit: USDA

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