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Temporary Can Still Be Valuable

Posted in Gardens, Public Spaces, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization on 04/16/2013 | Leave a Comment »

Richard Florida, the innovative thinker about cities, once said that economic development is about the hundreds and thousands of small things done at the local level. In a few examples of those small things that together have a big impact, Marisa Novara, Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC), brought out a set of fascinating temporary projects that show how to make vibrant, valuable places in the left-over spaces in between buildings, in all those vacant, abandoned lots that dot cities. At the American Planning Association (APA) conference in Chicago, winners of MPC’s “Placemaking Chicago” contest explained their approaches to DIY urbanism.

Novara learned that rehabilitating buildings “takes a long time. There are lots of professionals involved. Lots of financing is needed.” So, given all the hassle, there must be better options. Novara said that “just because there’s a vacant space, it doesn’t mean there has to be a building there.” She believes that those space in between buildings, particularly those with iffy property ownership situations, can be used as temporary public spaces. “Temporary can still be valuable.”

To find out how communities in the broader Chicagoland are using spaces in a temporary fashion, her group launched a contest. Submissions could be projects that just popped-up over a weekend, or could be semi-permanent. Some 46 entries were received, with the majority from Chicago. Navaro said the broad categories of projects sent in were vacant building transformations, “vacant concrete transformations,” programming, and community gardens / farms. A jury picked winning projects, while more than 11,000 public voters picked the people’s choice award.

One project turned a vacant Border’s store into a writers’ workshop and local gallery. Another turned vacant concrete into a parklet. Lots and lots of community gardens were created. Interestingly, Novara said some went “far beyond getting together to grow vegetables. There was a continuum of engagement.” A few examples were explored in detail, by the actual people who put together the gardens.

Avers Community Garden

Karen Trout said the Avers Community Garden (see video above), which received an honorable mention in the competition, has transformed an “impoverished neighborhood.” In a dead-end street filled with lots of “bad activities,” Trout and her group reclaimed the block with a new community space cherished by all its neighbors. The church-owned space had been vacant for more than 20 years. Exploring how to purchase the space, Trout found there was no one to be found so they “ventured out with the idea that if we turn the space into something productive, perhaps we can own it later.” This is because Chicago actually has a program that turns over vacant land to people who maintain it and use it productively. Her team found a fence on Craigslist, added flower beds, and a track for bikes for the neighborhood’s kids. Removing garbage, they also added mulch, a pavilion, and picnic tables. The space is now used for “parties, family get-togethers, and gardening.” A wall was painted with the text, “Something good grows in the ‘Hood.” Trout said the idea behind the sign, and really the garden overall, was to “reclaim the space with positive energy. This helps displace all the negative energy.”

An adorable local middle schooler, Deanna Shields, showed a photo of herself playing and said “this was me 6 years ago.” Last summer, she became one of the guidance counselors, helped in the garden, and took training classes. She took compost and planting workshops (8 hour classes). She made the point that “children don’t like to see vacant unproductive spaces either.”

Laura Michel, Lawndale Christian Health Center, another garden founder, said the community garden has gotten a lot of positive attention from other blocks in the neighborhood. “Everyone wants to know about it.” But, perhaps counter-intuitively, once the garden got into the press, including local TV, “bad activities,” including drug dealing and late-night trysts, started to happen in the garden. To fight criminals in the garden, the whole block came out and met there for an emergency meeting in “the dark and rain.” Some 30-40 people decided to take turns watching the space, day and night. A fence donated by Home Depot also helped secure the space. Slowly, over time the neighborhood reclaimed the space, once again.

Altgeld Sawyer Corner Farm

The Altgeld Sawyer Corner Farm in Logan Square won the popular vote, said Margaret Hartmann, the force of nature behind the project. She said the lot had been vacant for 30 years, but found that the owner was open to using the space for art and food (at least, until he moves to Florida, which he threatens to do every year). Hartmann said the organic food movement is great but “not everyone can afford to go to Whole Foods.” So to access to healthy foods, they decided to create a “corner” garden because they believe every community should have a corner garden like they have a corner store. Opening the garden also boosted the amount of public green space in a place with nearly the lowest per-capita green space in Chicago. Bringing in local activists and artists, Hartmann’s team created big sweeping forms — berms — along with raised planting beds to avoid the lead in the existing soils. They purposefully left it “open access,” without fences, so anyone in the neighborhood can gain entry.

The garden itself has evolved over time. Gardeners grow vegetables collectively, which are then turned over to the local food pantry. Herb gardens are available to all, because “Whole Foods charges a ridiculous prices for herbs.” There’s an educational program for kids, with treasure hunts to “find the sunflowers.” Their goal is to bridge “social, cultural, generational gaps.”

Brienne Callahan, a co-creator of Altgeld farm, said gang activity was a big problem in the neighborhood in the past, but the garden has helped end the problem, at least in their block. Citing the “broken windows” theory of crime prevention, which posits that “if something doesn’t look well cared for, people won’t care about it,” she said adding green space people do care about has made the community safer. “It’s open 24 hours a day and there are no drug dealers there.” Still, the neighborhood, which has one of the hottest real estate markets in the U.S., is gentrifying, so there are other issues: rents are rising and a growing share of the community faces daily food insecurity.

Since winning the popular vote, there’s been rapid growth in the number of volunteers, particularly among those 6-8 blocks from the garden, and the team is scaling up and starting other temporary gardens on other sites (some of which they hope will become permanent). In another garden they’ve set up, they are exploring a new model: gardeners get to grow vegetables in one plot for themselves if they also grow one for the food pantry.

Climb, Jump, Leap, Imagine

This amazing project won best in show from MPC. This is because this model really should be replicated in as many other places as possible. According to Stephanie Morris, a local high school student who was involved in putting it together, “we got to use power tools.” Smiling, she said, “we built a table.” Stephanie wasn’t alone in this work. A team of middle and high school girls were collected by Katherine Darnstadt, a Chicago architect and urban designer, and set loose on the community to gather feedback about what to do about an abandoned, derelict lot between some buildings in south side Chicago. Morris said “lots of people gave opinions. Hundreds of people gave input on slips of paper.”

Based on the community feedback, Darnstadt and the girls decided to create a playground called “Switzerland in Chicago,” a peaceful, “neutral” space where everyone can come. “It’s a place where people can relax.” In a community with a lot of drugs and violence, more neutral spaces are what’s needed. The girls used their “science and math skills” to create the playground design, with mountain peaks made of rope, and decks around the site. “Someone gave us $20 dollars so we decided to do a fundraiser.” The girls eventually brought in $250 for new benches. Morris said this was quite a feat since “people in this neighborhood have to hustle to make $2 a day.”

Once the neighborhood saw that the girls were out there designing and building something, word got around. Harold, a local out-of-work carpenter, provided advice, while the aptly named Big Ron “helped with the muscle work.” Roy helped “because he could.”

Darnstadt said the project helped change perceptions about what youth can do. “Teenage girls with power tools can do that.” Given the sight of girls asking for feedback on a vacant lot must have seemed so wild, the project stimulated a lot of community engagement and got many participating in the design process. Darnstadt laughed and said “wherever there are girls that age, there are boys.” The boys later brought it men to help. Given “there were all sorts of egos, with people aged 13 to 80 participating, everyone became a great psychologist.” The “soft sell” from the girls worked, with the labor done by the community. The result: a fantastic space built to withstand Chicago’s winters and that can be easily moved to a new abandoned lot.

Just to note: Darnstadt actually put her girls through an intensive two-week urban design “bootcamp,” with courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, public health, and design-build. Each day, a different professional came in and explained their role in the design process, starting with a researcher and moving all the way through the process. Darnstadt also recommended using IDEO’s Human centered design toolkit to teach “empathy and how to capture authentic input.”

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Flower Power: The Phipps Conservatory’s New Center for Sustainable Landscapes

Posted in Gardens, Green Buildings, Landscape Architecture, Sustainable Design, Sustainable Materials on 04/09/2013 | Leave a Comment »

Heralded as one of the Earth’s greenest buildings, the Center for Sustainable Landscapes (CSL) is the latest addition to the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Housed in a Victorian-era glasshouse presented to the city by industrialist Henry Phipps in 1893, the gardens have always strived to lead the country in “green gardening.” Since transforming into a non-profit, Phipps has also been dedicated to building sustainable facilities, including the first LEED-certified visitor center in a public garden; a new tropical forest conservatory, which is the most energy efficient in the world; and the first production greenhouses to be LEED certified, achieving the highest rating of Platinum. Richard V. Piacentini, the Executive Director of Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, recently visited New York City to discuss the garden’s role in the future of sustainable architecture and living.

The primary drive behind the Center for Sustainable Landscapes, as Piacentini puts it, is to function “as elegantly and efficiently as a flower.” While the merits of this approach can be questioned, the pure essentials of this poetic gesture are there. The building serves to use every drop of water that lands on its surface and is technically constructed to physically react to various elements of nature. Phipps decided to pursue all three of the highest green architecture and landscape standards: the Living Building Challenge, LEED Platinum, and Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) 4-star certification. Meeting these standards is “extremely intense,” as Piacentini put it, but is part of the “Phipps philosophy” that he feels is necessary to retain Phipps’ reputation as stewards of the earth.

The Living Building Challenge is a philosophy, advocacy tool, and certification program that addresses development at all scales. The seven performance areas are comprised Site, Water, Energy, Health, Materials, Equity and Beauty. These goals, as well as those laid out by SITES and LEED were mainly met in conjunction with one another. The CSL is designed to interact with its surroundings as a vital part of its daily operation. As one of the original 150 pilot projects of SITES, it features a “restorative landscape, highlighting native plants and a permaculture demonstration rooftop garden.” Other site features include a stormwater lagoon, a solar powered water distillation system, five rain gardens, porous paving and constructed wetlands that use plants and natural processes to clean wastewater.

Some 14 geothermal wells, earth tubes, locally sourced material and solar orientation are just a handful of the features that make this construction so well executed. However, in obtaining points for LEED certification, Piacentini was not satisfied with simply scoring. After having discussed the virtues of the CSL, Piacentini nearly forgot to add one of his most proud achievements of the project. In line with the idea of locally sourced materials, Phipps decided that all of the labor, design, and execution would come from locally sourced talent. Phipps looked within Pennsylvania to select the lead design team. The architect, the Design Alliance, is from Pittsburgh and the landscape architect, Andropogon Associates, hails from Philadelphia.

After the selection of local horticulturists, permaculturists, engineers, contractors and architects, a number of design charettes ensued with representatives of the Phipps organization. The idea of the charettes was to produce a dialogue among the talented pool of professionals selected to work on the project. The result: today, the CSL offers demonstration gardens, environmental education, interpretive signage, interactive kiosks, a green gallery, classrooms, and various outdoor environs for visitors and staff to enjoy. These ideas were products of the early discussions between the designers and, according to Piacentini, are at the “core of [the Phipps] philosophy.”

“A facilitated, integrative design approach” is how Phipps approaches the challenges of building in today’s environment. “The CSL is the ultimate expression of our systems-based way of thinking and acting, to blur the lines between the built and natural environments.”

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

Image credits: Phipps Center for Sustainable Landscapes / Alexander Denmarsh Photography

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Great Gardens Get Their Own Tours

Posted in Gardens, Landscape Architecture, Opportunities on 03/04/2013 | Leave a Comment »

“How do garden owners and their landscape architects or designers work together to create a great garden?” This is the question that gets answered in fascinating ways during each one of The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s Garden Dialogues. For every in-depth garden tour, TCLF asks the patrons and designers to de-mistify the creative process and explain how the collaboration led to a “great garden.”

This year, the What’s Out There Garden dialogue has expanded, providing opportunities to learn about more than three dozen contemporary and historic gardens across the U.S. The series kicks-off March 23-24 in several locations around Miami, Houston, and New Orleans. The series continues through August. Here are key dates and locations:

March 23-24 – Miami-area & Gulf Coast, FL; New Orleans, LA; and Houston, TX
April 6-7 – Phoenix, AZ
April 13-14 – Southern California
April 27-28 – Southern California; Connecticut
April dates TBD– New York; Portland, OR; Virginia; and Washington, DC
May 4-5 – Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
June 1-2 – New York City
June 15-16 – Kentucky
June, July and August dates TBD – Aspen, CO; San Francisco Bay-area, CA; the Hamptons, NY; New York State; Massachusetts; Minneapolis, MN; and Seattle, WA.

There are 10 tours available in the first set in March. Many look great, but here are a few highlights. In the Miami-area, there’s a tour of the Bacardi Estate. TCLF writes: “This garden features elegantly combined formal and informal elements, hints of English and French garden styles, and a lush, complex plant palette. The geometry of a central rectilinear pool radiates outward through the exquisite use of paving materials, steps and botanical colonnades.” Mario Nievera, ASLA, Nievera Williams, is giving two tours of luxurious residences: Casa de Miel and Magical Mediterranean Garden. In Houston, Texas, there’s a tour of the Weber Estate, a “heavily-wooded, 185-acre estate” that features a 20-acre Japanese-style garden. And in New Orleans, Louisiana, there’s a tour of Lemann Residence, which “fuses traditional New Orleans architecture with mid-century California Modernism.”

These tours are intimate, enlightening affairs. A tour last year of a newly-designed Modern landscape framing a Richard Neutra house in the Hollywood Hills was a memorable experience.

Space is limited. Tickets are $35.00 each. Register Now.

Also, check out TCLF’s upcoming day-long Civic Horticulture conference in Philadelphia, May 17. TCLF writes that the event will “take a look at Philadelphia’s use of horticulture and what that portends for the future of Philadelphia and elsewhere. We will examine issues through multiple lenses – health/lifestyle, environment, economy and sense of place – but this conference will be unique in putting plants first in developing criteria for holistic stewardship.” As always, TCLF offers a great line-up of landscape architects and designers. For this conference, watch presentations by Raymond Jungles, FASLA, Raymond Jungles, Inc; Mia Lehrer, FASLA, Mia Lehrer + Associates; Susan Weilier, FASLA, OLIN; Thomas Woltz, FASLA, Nelson Byrd Woltz; and more.

Image credit: The Bacardi Garden. Sanchez and Maddux, Inc / Photo copyright Robin Hill. Courtesy of TCLF

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A Garden Fades Back into Nature

Posted in Gardens, Land Art, Landscape Architecture on 12/18/2012 | 3 Comments »

As part of the International Festival des Jardins de Metis, which is held annually in Quebec, Berlin-based landscape architect Thilo Folkerts, 100 Landschaftsarchitektur, and Canadian artist Rodney LaTourelle created a fascinating 250-square-meter garden using about 40,000 books to show how “culture fades back into nature.”

The Jardin de la connaissance, which was actually installed in 2010, was designed to change and decay. According to Dezeen, old books were piled up to create walls, rooms, and seats. Books laid on the forest floor created platforms.

Then, eight varieties of mushrooms were introduced and “cultivated on select books” in order to spur the decay of the book landscape.

The mushrooms include: Coprinus comatus (Shaggy Mane); Grifola frondosa (Hen of the Woods, Maitake); Pleurotus citrinopileatus (Yellow Oyster); Pleurotus columbinus (Blue Oyster); Pleurotus djamor (Pink Oyster); Pleurotus ostreatus (Pearl Oyster); Pleurotus pulmonarius ((Phoenix) Indian Oyster); and Stropharia rugoso-annulata (Wine Cap).

In addition to being philosophically interesting, the garden creates “micro-environments for a range of local creatures,” writes Folkerts. “Seedlings and insects have activated the walls, carpets, and benches.”

Recently, to update the piece, the designers amplified the sense of decay by applying “sampled moss from the forest” to the walls of the garden as a “paint mixture.” They call this “moss graffiti.” Folkerts writes: “The cover of moss material will aesthetically expedite the slow disappearance of the garden back into the forest.”

See a 360 degree tour of the site and more photos.

Another artist who explores nature and decay is the ceramicist Christopher David White.

Image credits: Thilo Folkerts / Dezeen

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Interview with Jinny Blom on the Therapeutic Effect of Gardens

Posted in Gardens, Land Art, Residential Design, Wildlife on 10/17/2012 | 2 Comments »

Jinny Blom is one of the leading garden designers in the United Kingdom. Her work has been featured in The Guardian, The Telegraph, Gardens Illustrated, House & Gardens, Vogue, and other publications. Blom is on the board of the U.S. Therapeutic Landscapes Network.

You’re just about a household name in the UK for your gardens, which go from the seemingly wildly romantic to somewhat intellectual and contemporary. You’ve said design is “more a matter of intelligence and appropriateness than reflecting a style.” So there is no Jinny Blom style? And if not, is there a set of principles or ethics that guide your work?

I don’t think I have a style. I am me and I like certain things. They’re probably all things that repeat like certain plants but I wouldn’t say that was a style. I think it is much more about having a philosophy. It sounds terrible when you say it, but it’s about local appropriateness. In England, certainly in British Isles, we’ve got very strong architectural precedent in each county. The land changes so distinctively as you move around from flint to limestone to clay. I like to use the materials that come up out of the ground. Things feel comfortable if they look as though they’ve been generated from their point of origin. In London or in other cities, you can do something more contemporary and abstract, but it would still follow those principles. I always think: good materials, good thinking. I’m a real sucker for good thinking.

In an interview with Garden Design Journal, you said, “it’s vital to my own happiness that birds, insects, mammals, fish, and humans can coexist in the environment I’m creating.” How do you design spaces to ensure this will happen?

That’s just linking what one does with the surrounding environment. If you feel like you’re blocking animals, don’t do it. I live right in central London and we’ve got a huge fox population. Animals have very specific routes that they like to take. They were taking a route that I didn’t really want them to take across my garden. So, I just redesigned the garden to accommodate the fox route and then it seems to work. Instead of like, oh the foxes, they’re driving me crazy running through my flower beds, you go, there goes the fox on his little fox route.

You can use that principle if you study the landscape reasonably well. I plant a lot of hedges so that animals can conduit their way easily from one way place to another. Nobody would know that I was doing it. It’s a subliminal thing. I always put water in if I can. I just think it’s rude not to allow space for other creatures to be. If they can be, then everybody’s happy. A lot of my clients will say things like, look the birds are back. They notice. If you take away where the birds can live, then they won’t come.

For one of your large-scale projects, Corrour in the Scottish Highlands, you created an “anti-garden,” an “experimental approach to non-interventionist gardening.” What does that entail? How did that work at that site?

The Highlands of Scotland are really interesting. That particular estate is 1,300-foot above sea level. It’s completely overpopulated with deer because people mainly go up there to hunt. The deer management has taken a turn for the worst so there are more deer than there is land to support them. It’s a very fragile land so they just graze everything off. When I first went up there, people said nothing will grow here. And I thought, well, of course, it will grow. The first thing we have to do is really release grazing pressure to see what would happen.

The whole project was interesting. I was working with the architect on the project, a guy called Moshe Safdie, who’s very well known over here or all over the world perhaps. He built such a strong Moshe building in this landscape. In a way, that made me want to rebel against doing anymore landscaping — hard landscaping. So, it was a combination of studying the land and this over-grazing issue and how to address a response to this really anachronistic building in that environment. The best way to do it was to maroon the building in pure landscape, pure highland landscape. So, that’s really how it came about. And then my client and I just thought it was hilarious because we’re both women and instead of growing a set of balls to compete with Moshe’s house, we just decided to subvert it.

You’ve done lots of memorable public projects, which appear at garden shows and even as temporary installations. One I was really struck by was the Laurent-Perrier Garden, which is actually really deep, too. How does the garden represent the journey of life?

I made that for Chelsea Flower Show for Lauren Perrier in 2007. Apparently everybody’s sick of gardens having a journey theme now. I didn’t realize I’d tapped into some zeitgeist there. I’m a transpersonal psychotherapist so I’m interested in people’s evolution and growth. The thing is we’re all on a one way trip. At that point my niece had just become very ill and nearly died, and then she didn’t die, and then she got pregnant and had a baby. It was all just very, very quick. I just thought this is amazing. There are these highs and lows in life, literally.

I love the architecture of Carlo Scarpa. I just thought I’m going to swipe one of his nice details. He did a very nice gallery in Venice and just made these panels that allow the canal waters to rise and fall. So I made the journey quite solid. It was travertine marble on concrete bases. All the planting is more emotional, intuitive, perceptive, with a moving aspect. Our journey is really sort of structured by huge events that sort of change your direction, so the panels all flip direction. One of them was a dead end, so it was like a maze. It was also a metaphor for my marriage (laughs). We went down the dead end bit. You have to retrace your steps and go down the other bit.

One of your small scale projects I really like is the Notting Hill Garden. How did you make this small space work?

City gardens are really a discipline. It’s like designing jewelry. I always think they’re like jewelry. My client had just put in some beautiful glazed doors that ran the full width of the house. The garden is probably 30 by 30 foot. They’re Australian and entertain a lot and wanted to cook outside. And I said, “yeah but you don’t want to be sitting in your beautiful house looking out at a kitchen.” I just found a way making a very simple language of blocks that I built up. I found a barbecue that is amazingly discreet. It’s very high tech and very beautiful but it’s very discreet. It can disappear. It has no profile because normally they have huge great hoods, wheels and tongs, and god knows what. So, I just turned it around so it didn’t face the house. If you’re sitting inside and you’re looking out, you don’t want to be looking at it. So, really, the whole garden is a series of monolithic blocks, one of which, hey presto, has a fridge and plate rack.

You’re now on the board of the Therapeutic Landscapes Network. In one of your past lives, you were actually a psychologist. How are the practices of landscape architecture and psychology converging? What can landscape architects and designers learn from the latest psychological research? Conversely, what can the psychological community learn from landscape architects and designers?

Well, this is a subject very close to my heart, but I wouldn’t say I’m the go to person for the technical information. I think the Therapeutic Landscape Network web site itself has incredibly good research. Naomi Sachs, ASLA, who set it up, has just put together such a good board and such a good collection of contributors that I just point people to look at the site for those specific answers. But there’s no question in my mind that good landscaping has a good effect on human beings. A lot of urban architecture, landscape architecture needs to soften up. We’re still building too much.

The half French side of me says look at the Jardin des Tulieries in the middle of Paris. Paris is a very, very built up city, but the fact that they use soft finishes changes everything about the feel of the place. You know, it’s graveled throughout instead of paving. You look anywhere in the Mediterranean, in Europe: they’re much softer in their approaches to urban space. That just has an effect on how one feels. You feel like you’re on holiday. You feel more relaxed. I just feel that we could soften it all up again. Make urban landscapes gentler and more human. Less stuff, less product.

You’ve also said gardens and gardening should be described as being therapeutic as opposed to healing. What’s the difference? How are these gardens therapeutic for war veterans and those suffering from post traumatic stress disorders?

Therapeutic doesn’t imply that you can fix it. It implies that you can make some environmental improvements and give somebody an engagement that’s going to bring them some benefit. Whereas the word healing kind of implies that you’re going to put on your long white robe and touch somebody with a wand and make everything better. I just think there’s a big difference in assumption about what you can do with somebody who’s very damaged. I worked for a long time with very damaged people and know that environmental engagement has a huge benefit.

I’m trying to work at the moment with a colleague of mine on setting up a maintenance company using guys coming back from Afghanistan. Well, for purely mercenary reasons because it’s so hard to find good workers! They’re trained. They’re competent. They know how to follow orders. They know how to turn up on time. They know how to tidy up after themselves. They want to work. And they’re not all suffering post traumatic stress, but they are nevertheless traumatized by their experience. It’s very difficult to leave the army, which is an incredibly structured environment, and go into an unstructured civilian environment. The great thing about gardening is that you’ll become sucked into the diurnal motion of the earth. If you’re having to dig and dig and dig, you have to be connected to earth and seasons. If you’re growing food for yourself, you want your potatoes to do well, so you create a relationship with your potatoes. You might not be able to have a relationship with your wife or your kids, but you can create a relationship with your spuds because you want to eat them at the end of the week and you don’t want to see them shriveling up in the sun. It’s a different emotional bonding.

There’s a really, really good book by Kenneth Helphand, FASLA, an American professor of landscape architecture, about war trauma and gardens. He did a whole thesis on it. It’s very interesting reading because people garden. They garden at the front in first World War. They garden in Chechnya now. There are people gardening in the ruins of that town just shot to bits. It’s a very primal urge somehow. The earth does neutralize a lot of human anxiety.

And I used to do it myself in my past. It’s worked for me. I was very troubled when I was younger and I’m not now. I’m a gardener so I do know about it firsthand as well. I know through working with the schizophrenics I used to work with, when I was director of the charity, that gardening was a massive help. Massive. I don’t say help in an over-weaning sort of way. It just made a difference. I don’t overstate it. I just think, go, and do it. It’s a simple thing that you can do on your own to alter the balance of your life.

Interview conducted by Jared Green.

Image credits: (1) Jinny Blom / N. Jouan, (2) Temple-Guiting / copyright Andrew Lawson, (3-4) Corrour / copyright Allan Pollock-Morris, (5) Laurent-Perrier Garden / copyright Gary Rogers, (6-7) Notting Hill Garden / copyright Robert Straver

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Metropolitan Agriculture at All Scales

Posted in Agriculture, Gardens, Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization on 10/11/2012 | 2 Comments »

S, M, L, or XL-sized metropolitan agriculture? Mia Lehrer, FASLA, Mia Lehrer + Associates, said it’s not just about one size, which definitely doesn’t fit all when it comes to cities, in a session at the ASLA 2012 Annual Meeting. In an era where it seems like any school or community can start a garden, perhaps it’s time to step back and think about the bigger picture. What’s the goal? Lehrer thinks it’s comprehensive urban agricultural systems that are relevant to the unique cultural, social, and environmental conditions of a city. Metro-region agriculture, if planned, designed, and supported financially at all scales, can address issues related to social equity and health issues like diabetes and obesity, while building regional agricultural communities and economies.

In California, where Lehrer lives, she said the agriculture system is completely out of whack. While the state grows some 50 percent of America’s fruit and vegetables, just 2 percent is kept and eaten locally. About 98 percent is imported from Chile or elsewhere. Unfortunately, California isn’t alone: “These issues also go way beyond the North American continent.”

In an effort to build and sustain urban metropolitan systems at the XL and L-scales, Sibella Kraus, Sustainable Agriculture Education (SAGE), made the case for “New Ruralism,” a place and systems-based approach to farming and smart growth that seeks to “preserve and enhance the rural and urban edge.” She said these places at the edge are counter-intuitively “indispensable to the vitality of cities.” This is because the footprint of any city really reaches far beyond the core — to the edges, to the suburban and rural communities and economies that make the whole metropolis work.

In the San Francisco Bay area, Kraus explained that she’s been working on metropolitan agriculture planning, including a San Francisco foodshed assessment. She said that project came out of the question, “could San Francisco survive on food grown within a 100-mile range?” Not likely for now, but perhaps more so in the future. In justifying the program, Kraus said like any other planning effort, urban agriculture also needs its own “nuanced, detailed planning” effort.

At the sub-regional scale, another project on the Coyote Valley agricultural region, a 7,000 acre valley near San Jose, focuses on creating a vision plan, with layers outlining how farmland, nature habitat, and development can better coincide. Over the next 25 years, $50 million will be spent to make the plan a reality, purchasing easements and land to make sure development happens in a way that protects the vital cultural landscape of the agricultural region.

Kraus said one of the ultimate goals of SAGE’s work was to “promote rural and urban placemaking” while linking sustainability at those two different scales. In the European Union, the places where the rural and urban meet, “urban edge agricultural parks,” are completely valued — people understand the need to protect and even cherish these historical agricultural landscapes. She pointed to a 1,000-acre agricultural park outside Milan, Italy, where there are recreational, farming, and cultural opportunities combined.

At the M and S-scales, Glen Dake, ASLA, GDML, former green deputy for the city of Los Angeles and a landscape architect, described his innovative “community development-based approach” to metropolitan agriculture in Los Angeles. Dake said he’s averaging about 3-6 gardens per year, and has worked on more than 50 in total. As an example, he pointed to his work with Crenshaw Gardens, where he’s been helping them access local community development block grants.

Dake called for a “public health approach” that leverages local city programs. In Los Angeles, that has meant working with and tapping resources available through a range of federal, state, and non-profit programs like L.A. Sprout, L.A. County Renew, and Little Green Fingers programs.

In a rapid-fire survey of research, Dake argued that at least indirect evidence demonstrates that urban agriculture does help boost positive health outcomes. With 2/3 of adults in the U.S. expected to be obese by 2050 if nothing is done, just getting people outdoors exercising, eating healthy produce matters. What particularly works: doubling gardening with nutrition education. When kids and adults alike learn that you can eat “lots of processed foods and not feel full,” they also learn that fresh, unprocessed food helps reduce weight if coupled with exercise.

The little green fingers program is also important because there “obstacles to having kids in gardens.” Parents worry that they will get dirty; they also worry about supervision. In a new design Dake worked on, the gardens had areas that made supervision easier. Interestingly, Dake said in his work setting up these projects, he has actually found that a lack of bathrooms wasn’t an impediment to making these gardens work.

Another speaker delved into Detroit, where there’s a real grassroots effort underway to turn the city around. A big part of that effort, which runs from XL through S scales, said Charles Cross, Detroit Collaborative Design Center, is producing food. He said all the locally-grown produce at Detroit’s Eastern Market is “amazing.”

At it’s height, Detroit, which comes in at a gargantuan 13,859-square miles, had a population of 2 million. Now, it’s about 715,000. The population started to drop in the 1950s, with the collapse of manufacturing. Now, there are around 105,000 vacant lots. About 125 schools have closed. One neighborhood that used to have nearly 90,000 people now just has 5,000.

Working with landscape architecture firm Stoss and Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD), Cross’ group developed a plan that connects all the scales, from the “personal to the neighborhood to the non-profit to the commercial scales.” Talking to the mayor, Cross made the case for making the plan a reality, saying all the city’s local farmers needed better “distribution, infrastructure, and facilities.” One proposal they’ve pitched even calls for large-scale urban forestry within the city limits. Christmas trees or wood products from Detroit could be coming to a city near you.

Cross said companies are also getting involved in this bottom-up agriculture-driven revitalization effort. In fact, Compuware, which is headquartered in Detroit, just won an ASLA professional design award for their remarkable urban garden called Lafayette Greens. A lush garden and public space, Lafayette Greens provides access to all local residents who can come help harvest the produce, which is then donated to food banks. Other local bottom-up programs include Detroit School gardens and the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. Recovery Park, an amazing program, provides former felons and addicts with self-help and rehabilitation services, while creating “productive landscapes” within the city. This ambitious project is working on unearthing a creek, developing a horticultural center, and converting 2,000 inner-city acres into farmland.

In a nice finale, Kraus said that all these examples show that “agriculture is the new golf.” Lehrer went one step further, calling for cities to convert their existing water-hogging golf courses into farmland. L.A. golfers beware: She may be aiming for your courses soon.

Image credit: (1) ASLA 2012 Professional Award Winner. Lafayette Greens. Kenneth Weikal Landscape Architecture / Beth Hagenbuch BLA, (2) San Francisco Bay Are Foodshed /San Francisco Chronicle. Stephen Joseph, (3) Crenshaw Garden, (4-5) Recovery Park

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With SITES, Regenerative Design Moves Forward

Posted in Ecosystem Restoration, Gardens, Green Buildings, Green Roofs, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Sustainable Design, Waste, Water Management on 10/09/2012 | Leave a Comment »

In a session on measuring regenerative design at the ASLA 2012 Annual Meeting, Danielle Pieranunzi, Affil. ASLA, LEED AP, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas at Austin; Joel Perkovich, ASLA, Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Gardens; Jose Almiñana, RLA, FASLA, Andropogon Associates; and Michael Takacs, ASLA, Civil & Environmental Consultants, Inc., discussed recent developments in the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) pilot program.

Pieranunzi began the session by describing the development of sustainable landscape metrics for the SITES rating system. Aiming to improve ecosystem services while bolstering natural systems that we typically view as free, the SITES program is envisioned as a stand-alone rating system, operating on a 250-point scale with 4 levels of certification. This certification system could be applied to projects ranging form small-scale residential sites to parks and streetscapes.

The 2-year pilot program, which ended last June, tested the program metrics on locations spread across the U.S. Of course, developing a landscape sustainability metric is not easy, and the SITES program must define measures for hydrology, soils, vegetation, and materials. The pilot program allowed for critical testing of these measures, which can now be adjusted and refined.

Perkovich discussed one pilot project: the Phipps Center for Sustainable Landscapes (CSL) in Pittsburgh. The CSL grounds are located on the 15-acre Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden campus. Opened in 1893, the initial plant collection for the conservatory came from the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The Phipps Conservatory touts itself as the world’s “greenest” public gardens and it was the first to become LEED certified.

The new CSL headquarters is on a 2.65-acre site, the former location of a City of Pittsburgh Department of Public Works salt storage facility. The new design includes a 24,350 square foot building and is designed to be net-zero energy and water. In fact, the building is expected to be 80 percent more energy efficient than a conventional building.

Almiñana explained CSL’s design. The integrated design process included nine months of design charrettes with the local community and local designers. This process established a need for the site to be both an extension of the Phipps campus and to fit into the larger landscape. Almiñana discussed how the design offers natural air circulation by connecting the building design into the site, zero-waste energy through the deployment of interventions to generate energy and moderate temperature, and net-zero water by exploring the potential of every site surface.

Takacs talked about the hydrological design of the CSL site. To achieve a 100 percent, net-zero water level, 100 percent of water on the site must be captured or reused. Therefore, the design used pervious paving, bioretention areas, an open water lagoon, underground storage, a green roof, and rain gardens to dramatically reduce runoff. This system even captures runoff from the upper campus Botanical Gardens, which requires a tremendous amount of water to function.

For sanitary water treatment, the CSL design uses an array of tools including a septic tank, constructed wetlands, sand filters, and a solar distillation system. By employing these treatment elements, the CSL site generally doesn’t release anything back into the public sewage system.

As more landscapes like the Phipps Center for Sustainable Landscapes are designed, built, and monitored, the more refined and sophisticated the SITES rating system will become. Each SITES project provides vital knowledge and creates incentives for the construction of future regenerative sites. The session ended with this thought: “What if every single act of design and construction made the world a better place?”

This guest post is by Ben Wellington, Student ASLA, Master’s of Landscape Architecture Candidate, Louisiana State University and ASLA 2012 summer associate.

Image credits: (1, 3, 4, 6) Landscape Voice, (2, 5) Andropogon Associates

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Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ode to the Desert

Posted in Gardens, Historic Preservation, Landscape Architecture, Sustainable Design, Wildlife on 09/29/2012 | 1 Comment »

Beginning in 1937, Frank Lloyd Wright began creating his winter studio and architectural campus Taliesin West, his ode to the majestic Sonoran desert. Still a working architectural college to this day, the place is dramatically different from his urban masterpieces like the Guggenheim Museum in New York City and Robie House in Chicago. The buildings are unassuming and seem to purposefully nestle into the cacti-filled landscape.

The campus’ main buildings took four years to build. During that time, Wright, his 3rd wife, and 25 apprentices all slept in tents under the stars. During the first years, there was no well, so water had to be brought in from miles away. On the 640 acre site, Wright left his tent to first build a document vault, then the studio, kitchen, dining and bedrooms. Using wood from local trees to build the frames and quartzite boulders to establish the foundation, the buildings are very low to the ground, and were originally filled with open window frames covered only in canvas. It was only after many years of protest by his wife that glass windows were put in.

Wright thought the glass wasn’t needed because he oriented the spaces to maximize solar and heat gain in the winter and minimize the sun’s glare in the summer. However, he eventually discovered that the glass windows only enhanced the passive solar capabilities of the buildings. Ever careful about how light interacted with interior spaces, Wright used his windows and canvas shades to further control the interplay of light and dark in the interior spaces, diffusing light and bouncing it off the interiors to create more comfortable spaces. So Wright was not only an early innovator in the use of solar passive technologies but also controlling light through shades.

The patios, gardens, building were all set in patterns of 16-foot-square grids, said our tour guide. The interior frames are also all standard sizes so once a visitor figures out the size of the grid and frames, they can quickly figure out total square footage.

Outside, the gardens were meant to deeply complement the buildings and work together as one. Like Richard Neutra’s work, Taliesin West is rooted in its native landscape. You can’t really imagine it elsewhere.

In the gardens that provide middle-grounds between the home and the desert and mountains, Wright’s original landscape architecture, one of his few works of landscape, has been faithfully preserved. In between the view of the home and Papago mountains, there’s a triangular pool, which was created as an amenity, source of comfort in the hot months, and security measure in case of fires. The triangular pool, which also mirrors the triangular shapes of the mountains, is dramatically juxtaposed with a bright red door into the studio and 75-year old Joshua trees. In this space in the early 1950s, the gravel came out in favor of grass.

The desert views Wright, his wife, and workers enjoyed are made even better by the flora and fauna: grand Sagauro cacti and fuzzy Jumping cacti make a dramatic statement and we even saw wild Gambel’s quails running together in the campus. But this landscape is no cultural desert either – it’s been used for thousands of years by the Hohokam indians. Their dense network of canals were basically copied by the settlers who took over their lands.

Wright also oriented the home so that there were distinct breezeways, which provided comfort for those living there. The breezeways double as spaces to enjoy certain perspectives of the mountains. Wright set up a few views of the mountain peaks he loved best.

Moving through one of those breezeways, there’s a central plaza, with gardens filled with native cacti set out on grids. While the space seem designed to be moved through as opposed to inhabited, the guide said Wright constantly used the space for events, reconfiguring the outdoor spaces for garden parties. The guide said Frances Nemtin, one of Wright’s original apprentices from the 1940s is still managing the gardens in keeping with Wright’s original design. The only major change: there had been a set of palm trees but they grew so large architects in residence thought they were messing with the proportions of the site. They were dug up and given to a nearby resort.

According to our tour guide, Wright knew that sprawl would eventually surround his beloved Taleisin West. Until the 1960s, they managed to keep development at bay. Now it’s basically found at the end of a cul-de-sac. Sadly, it’s one of the few remaining intact desert habitats in the broader Phoenix region, which sprawls out some to a gargantuan 1,650 square miles. Our guide said developers are ever swarming over their parcel of nature but always let down when they hear that the entire 550 remaining acres are a National Historic Landmark. Let’s hope it stays that way forever.

Image credits: Ben Wellington, Student ASLA

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With Gardens by the Bay, Singapore Aims to Become the “Botanical Capital of the World”

Posted in Gardens, Landscape Architecture, Renewable Energy on 06/27/2012 | Leave a Comment »

Singapore’s national flower is the orchid. So UK-based team Grant Associates, a landscape architecture firm, and Wilkinson Eyre, an architecture firm, decided to use the structure of this epiphytic plant to model their new $545 million, 54-hectare Gardens by the Bay project in that city-state’s Marina South Gardens, which is just the first piece of a much bigger project (two more gigantic garden parks are coming). The design team explains: “First, the garden takes root on a piece of new garden infrastructure and grows out towards the city. Leaves (earthworks) and roots (water, energy, communication systems) and shoots (paths, roads and links) create an integrated network across the space and beautiful flowers (feature/theme gardens) occur at key intersections or nodes.”

With this massive project, which was built on reclaimed, restored land, wealthy Singapore aims to become the “botanical capital of the world.” There are many elements (almost too many to go through), which include more than 225,000 plants. Just a few are new theme gardens that ”showcase the best of tropical horticulture and garden artistry.” Within these gardens, there are multiple horticultural collections, including the “Heritage Gardens” and “World of Plants.”

In the Heritage Gardens, there’s a range of garden collections that reflect the unique cultures that make up diverse Singapore, along with the city-state’s colonial heritage (It was a British base for many years). A new Malay Garden “tells the story of life in a traditional ‘kampong’ (village),” while the Indian Garden’s layout “echoes a traditional illustrated flower motif.” The Chinese Garden illustrates the role of gardens as places of “inspiration for writers, poets, and artists” – places of tranquility — in Chinese culture. The Colonial Garden tells the story of plants as “Engines of Empire,” featuring the many spices and other crops that served as a foundation for regional, British-controlled trade.

The “World of Plants” Garden then showcases the rich plant biodiversity of Southeast Asia. There are gardens dedicated to ancient plants, fruits and flowers, trees, tropical palms, and the understory, which looks at the “forest root zone,” the plant species that make up the forest floor.

Perhaps the iconic element of the new super-park are the 18 “supertrees,” ranging from 25-50 meters high, which Grant Associates describe as a “fusion of nature, art, and technology.” These multifunctional engineered structures act like, well, trees, except they also create power for the park and light up at night. According to the design team, “they are at one level spectacular vertical gardens and landmark features, at another they are the environmental engines for the cooled conservatories, incorporating devices for water harvesting and storage, air intake, cooling and exhaust, photovoltaic arrays, and solar collectors.”

During the daytime, the trees provide shelter and shade, like any tree. But at night, says Grant Associates, the trees ”come alive with lighting and projected media that activate the city skyline.” Built into the supertree line is a 128-meter aerial walkway. The biggest supertree has a bar, offering a treetop view to go with your cocktails. Grant Associates seem to say that they needed to get large trees up fast and couldn’t wait for real ones to grow: “Given the relatively short time span to create a garden from reclaimed land, the Supertrees provide an immediate scale and dimension to the Gardens while marrying the form and function of mature trees.”

Working together with the outdoor gardens and supertrees are ”cooled conservatories” that use “sustainable energy sources” (from the supertrees) to create new micro-climates indoors. ”The Flower Dome replicates the cool-dry climate of Mediterranean and semi-arid sub-tropical regions such as South Africa and parts of Europe like Spain and Italy. The Cloud Forest Dome replicates the cool-moist climate found in tropical montane regions between 1,000 to 3,500 metres above sea level, such as Mt Kinabalu in Sabah, Malaysia, and high elevation areas in South America.” The Cloud Forest alone has some 130,000 plants.

Sounds like a lot of energy and air conditioning for those cooled conservatories. But Grant Associates argues that the “suite of technologies used” actually means about 30 percent energy savings on a conventional (if there is one?) climate-controlled conservatory. The design team used “spectrally selective glass and light sensor-operated shadings” to reduce solar heat gain and maximize sun exposure for the plants. There are more complex systems like “thermal stratification, an efficient de-humidification cooling process, and a Combined Heat Power (CHP) biomass steam turbine” to control the indoor climate and create electricity.

As a final note, the signage by Thomas Mathews graphic design is really fun. The design team used the colors of the local Mangosteen fruit as the palette, with a dark purple as the unifying color.

We would have liked to hear more from Grant Associates about how they will harvest Singapore’s heavy rainfall to water the garden year round. Will there be cisterns to store some of that water for drier periods? Also, there is little info about the biodiversity benefits they are expecting, beyond the plants. What kind of insects and birds can be supported by the new park?

Still, the gardens are expected to be a huge tourist draw. The Wall Street Journal writes that tickets will be $28 Singapore dolllars for tourists and $20 for locals. Restaurants, bands, bars will also help draw people in late into the night.

Image credits: (1) Grant Associates (2) Chinese Garden / Craig Sheppard Photography, (3-4) Supertrees / Robert Such Photography, (5-6) Cooled Conservatory / Craig Sheppard Photography, (7) Branding design / Thomas Mathews, (8) Signage / Craig Sheppard Photography

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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.”