In a lecture at the National Building Museum (NBM), Kim Mathews, RLA, ASLA, a founding principal of Mathews Nielsen, discussed resiliency and renewal through her firm’s “Cinderella projects.” The lecture was hosted in celebration of National Landscape Architecture Month (NLAM) and as part of NBM’s Smart Growth lecture series.
“Many of our projects are, in fact, true Cinderella stories,” Mathews explained. “They are stories of perseverance, adaptation, and sometimes just plain good luck. They are landscapes that have been working all their life, often forgotten or out of view of the general public, but given the opportunity to be re-imagined.”
The presentation featured five Cinderella stories, all located in New York City riverfronts, and focus on the physical connections to the community. Here are three of the five projects:
Hunts Point Landing
Hunts Point Landing is one of twenty projects in New York City’s South Bronx Greenway master plan initiative. Mathews Nielsen is leading this major, multi-year planning and design effort. The master plan provides practical strategies for greening the Bronx, environmentally and financially. Hunts Points Landing provides new connections to the river for community residents as well as a host of waterfront activities.
Once a fully paved industrial site overlooking the river, Hunts Point Landing was transformed and now offers panoramic views (see image above). “The circulation and topography within the site were calibrated to ensure that a visitor sees the water and is led to the shoreline upon entering the park,” Mathews exlpained.
Leading to the river, the site transitions smoothly between urban and natural environments. At one end of the park, the Hunts Point extension connects to the greenway. There are sidewalks to enter into the park, the fish market, and some parking. The pathway into the park smoothly becomes more densely populated with trees, grasses, and other native plants, leading into the restored shoreline with natural wetland and tidal pools.
Weehawken Waterfront Park
Located just north of the Lincoln Tunnel in Hudson County, New Jersey, this 12-acre park is the new public centerpiece of the Weehawken restored riverfront. Previously, this area was rail yard and industrial park, a gray, desolate piece of the public esplanade around the river.
The township wanted the park to become a living environment that enables active recreation by visitors. It’s a challenge to identify locations for large play fields within waterfront settings, but Mathews explained that “through careful design, we were able to locate the large fields along the water’s edge, while keeping the sweeping views to the river.”
The fields and courts are now embedded within the landscape. Additionally, the park features a rolling terrain with high points, sloping lawns, wildflower meadows, and grassy berms. For many who live in the area, this is the only available place for play.
Shoelace Park Master Plan
In Shoelace Park, the natural line of the river was straightened due to a now inactive roadway, leaving the Bronx River more susceptible to flooding. Also, nearly 40 percent of the park flows through a 100-year flood plain. In this new master plan, the Bronx River, with both soft and armored edges, will now meander through a revitalized Shoelace Park.
Through a public design workshop, the firm and the Bronx River Alliance were able to identify what features were necessary to turn this park into a community landmark. The features desired by the community would then be combined with water management systems. Key components would include a play area, vegetated swales, and a large, 17-foot promenade with a shared pedestrian lane and two bike and skating lanes.
These case studies show how to renew communities with sustainable strategies. “These are urban edges that have come a bit unraveled, but through smart design and perseverance, they have been stitched back together.”
Given the cost and complexities involved in purchasing and setting aside green, open space, no one type of organization can go it alone. Local governments, land trusts, non-profits, and private sector developers must forge public-private partnerships (PPPs) to make the big deals happen that can preserve the natural character of places. In a session at the American Planning Association (APA) conference in Chicago, Richard Pruetz, Planning & Implementation Strategies; Ole Amundsen, The Conservation Fund; and Dr. Tom Daniels, University of Pennsylvania, explained how some communities have made PPPs work.
Pruetz said any good smart growth strategy has to include preservation. “Preservation promotes environmental quality, disaster mitigation, local food production, and compact communities.” One prime example of how to promote smart growth while setting aside land for the benefit of the entire community is the plan created by Marin County in California, which was developed in 2007 to guide “preservation and restore the natural environment.” The plan’s ambitious goals were entirely due to “the participation of non-profits.”
Back in the early ’70s, local non-profits like Save the Seashore and the Sierra Club started to agitate, asking policymakers, “will the last open space last?” They wanted to keep development out of Pt. Reyes seashore, the Golden Gate area, and other green belts and farmlands. With 500,000 signatures in their petitions the seashore groups won broad political support that turned into action. The government acquired 70,000 acres of the Pt. Reyes seashore in 1972, making it a “national seashore.” In the same vein, a collection of 65 or more non-profits, including the Nature Conservancy, Trust for Public Land, Sierra Club, formed a coalition to push for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. They also achieved their goals, with that area now one of the most beautiful and well-visited places on the west coast. Other campaigns worked to keep farmland and other green spaces undeveloped by partnering with private farmers’ groups and using private financing. The end result today: roughly 160,000 acres, or nearly one-half of Marin county, is “permanently preserved.”
In another example, Boulder, Colorado decided to keep to Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.’s original 1910 open space plan, which called for a green belt all the way around the city. FLO, Jr. had said “this is a wonderful place, don’t spoil it.” So in the ’60s, as development could have started to sprawl out, community debate led to a process of creating a open space plan. Local conservation groups persuaded the city government to “create urban growth boundaries.” To make this a reality, Boulder created an “open space bond,” which the voters approved. The bond required all community members, including the private sector, to pay for the privilege of not developing outside the growth zones. This way the community could still finance all the services it needed to provide without sprawling out. Now, Boulder uses those funds to acquire land and expand its great open space.
King County, Washington, the county around Seattle, provides another model, said Pruetz. There, King country government and the Trust for Public Land created a vision for protecting 500,000 acres from development. The non-profit, Forterra, which led a coalition of more than 100 businesses, non-profits, and government organizations, put on a sort of planning conference that was even more ambitious, calling for one million acres to be preserved. But shooting for the stars was a good plan: the end result was a plan to acquire 265,000 acres at a cost of $7 billion. Some $4 billion is to be financed through the transfer of development rights (TDR), which is a powerful tool for transferring development from protected areas to acceptable ones.
Pruetz called King County’s approach to TDRs the most successful in the country, in part because it also spurred the development of a “regional TDR alliance,” which enabled neighboring communities to join in a broader regional development vision. While most TDRs can only be used in the jurisdiction that creates them, in this regional group, TDRs can be used across jurisdictions in a TDR exchange. To date, King County has preserved nearly 142,000 acres of nature with its TDR program. The private sector also benefits in this innovative PPP scheme.
Amundsen then discussed how communities can work with land trusts like his, The Conservation Fund. He said land trusts, in contrast to other non-profits and government agencies, are highly “action oriented.” But still, land trusts need to partner with the government and private sector groups because “partnerships increase the odds of full plans and implementation.” The Conservation Fund has been active in communities across the U.S., including Nashville and Davidson county, where it helped create an open space plan that preserved a 27,000-acre natural area. Within this preserve, efforts are underway to clean the water in streams and restore the habitat for the native crayfish populations. A broader plan aims to set aside 1,500 acres for local food production and make Nashville a “leader in urban agriculture.” The private sector has largely bought into these goals as the whole community seems to understand that “creative people are a city’s brightest asset and they want a place where they can walk and breath clean air.”
Indianapolis is also seeking to preserve hundreds of thousands of acres for green infrastructure plans. These projects involve replanting river corridors with native plants and cleaning up streams so they can better function as stormwater management systems and natural habitat. All these projects have benefited from the Conservation Fund’s revolving loan trust fund. “Money is cheap. Now’s a good time to borrow money to buy land.”
Professor Daniels added that land trusts have only proliferated because the government, with $16 trillion in debt, can’t afford to buy up lots of land and set it aside as open space. They also grew up because “local planning was so bad,” so in many places they have become “proxy planners.” In the ’80s, there were about 400 land trusts; now there’s are about 1,200. Together, they’ve ensured that some 50 million acres has been preserved.
Daniels said PPPs are a smart way to go with land preservation because “there’s more money” and these deals “better respond to individual community’s needs.” In Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, where Daniels was planner and still lives, permanent growth boundaries were established to ensure the pastoral agricultural character of the area is preserved. Lancaster is home to the Amish, and all together the county’s farmers produce $1 billion in crops and livestock each year. In the late ’80s, Lancaster set up a farmland trust with a mix of local private and government money that preserved 25,000 acres of farmland and protected hundreds of farms from sprawling-out residential homes. Now, Lancaster is number-one in terms of locally operated farmland preservation, which means there will always be a long-term supply of farmland.
Also, more land is preserved each year than developed upon. While it took time, “the development community has made peace with this.” In the Warwick Township, developers buy TDRs to build on to increasingly dense communities. Interestingly, Daniels said “you have to pay for density, but only a nominal fee.”
Image credit: (1) Marin County / Frog City Cheese, (2)Boulder Open Space / City of Boulder, Colorado, (3)Lancaster County / Lancaster Online
Based on a tour and then a closer look at the nearly-finished designs for Chicago’s Bloomingdale Trail, the 3-mile elevated rail park may give the High Line park in New York City a run for its money. The $91 million project co-designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Collins Engineers, local Chicago artist Frances Whitehead, and others will transform an abandoned freight rail line into a wonderful, green, public-art filled elevated park for both walkers and bicyclists. What makes the park really different from the High Line? It’s in a residential area on the west side of Chicago and it’s much lower to the ground (around 18 feet high on average). There will be a set of six ramps leading up to the Trail from streets and another six from nearby parks, in effect creating seamless access between the old rail-line and the greater green tissue of the four neighborhoods it transects. In contrast, the High Line is in a dense commercial area, much higher off the ground, and only accessible via stairs and elevators.
During a tour of the Trail organized by the American Planning Association (APA), Jamie Simone, who is managing the Bloomingdale Project at the Trust for Public Land (TPL), said the park will have two paths. One will be a 14-feet-wide trail with a “soft shoulder, and landscaping, water fountains, and benches.” The other will be a meandering “nature path, an informal space for exploration.” In a unique arrangement with the city of Chicago, TPL is actually coralling all the local non-profits, city agencies, donors, and railroad companies involved. The organization, which usually functions simply as a land trust, is also becoming the “agent” that manages the park over the long-term.
The story of the Bloomingdale Trail starts around 100 years ago, with the Great Fire, which is “the beginning of so many things in Chicago,” said Ben Helphand, Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail. After the fire, the city gave the Canadian Pacific Railroad permission to build a railroad, but over time the neighborhood around the line became “very dense,” so “there were lots of crashes.” Helphand said “people were losing limbs every other day,” so a coalition of groups came together to demand that “something be done.” A city ordinance was passed that forced the rail company to raise the line, with earthen embankments on the sides. The line continued to be used through the ’70s and ’80s, at least until factories began to move out with the decline of manufacturing in the Midwest. By the ’90s, the rail line was largely silent. The result: “within a couple of seasons, a dense little forest appeared.” The prairie also came back, with snakes, frogs, birds, and other animals making their home on the long path. Helphand said he stumbled upon the Trail not soon after and “fell in love with it.”
In the early ’00s, the city began an open space plan. Through input from lots of local organizations, the city discovered that Logan Square, one of the neighborhoods the Trail runs through, had the second least amount of green space of any neighborhood in Chicago. A community planning process struggled to find new opportunities. They were focused on creating community gardens or skateboard parks until someone recommended the Bloomingdale Trail. So, fast-forwarding, in 2004, the Friends of Bloomingdale Trail was formed and the City Council gave the go-ahead to turn the elevated line into a park.
At the first stop in the tour at Walsh Park, which forms the eastern-most end of the Trail, Gia Biagi, Chicago Parks District, said the Trail isn’t just a linear park, but part of a broader system. “How long it takes you to get to the Trail and access it is as important as the park itself.” Her goal is to remove impediments that will limit use. So the Trust and the city together are demolishing some nearby buildings, and totally revamping Walsh Park, taking down part of the embankment that separates the Trail from the ground plane and adding ADA-accessible paths that will slope from the ground up into the elevated park. Walsh Park will also get a new performance space and skate park to draw people in.
All of these fantastic ideas for Walsh Park and the other “access parks” came out of a preliminary comprehensive planning process, which resulted in a rich framework plan. Simone said that process wrapped up about a year ago, after lots of public feedback. Neighbors of the Trail were really concerned about “how to protect pedestrians” with all the bicyclists. The design team found that given the Trail is only 3-miles long, there won’t be people racing, but the designers still added in pit-stops at access points so people can pause before entering the main trail stream. “It’s really now just about trail etiquette,” said Simone, who said a public education campaign about how to bike with people will be launched with the park opening.
As the bus moved around the Trail, we caught glimpses of the existing infrastructure, which is crumbling in spots, but in pretty good shape and largely structurally sound. Simone said that in phase two of the planning and design process, which just wrapped up, “we decided we’re going to accept it as it is and not clean it up too much.” She asked, “who would want to see cleaned-up ruins in Rome?” The Trail is Chicago’s Roman ruin, so the cosmetic issues will be left alone, while the structural issues will be addressed, really for safety reasons.
On top of the trail, the two paths and soft landscape architecture will provide a vivid contrast with the public art installations. Frances Whitehead, the artist involved in the design process, created a map where “art would exist and then worked with the landscape architect and engineers” to make sure the structures and landscape would hold large pieces. From the get-go, Whitehead was integrated into the design process, not just an add-on at the end. Simone said this was also necessary because some of the art requires water and electricity so all that infrastructure had to be planned out early on.
At the western-most end point of the Trail, Angel Ysaguirre, Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, City of Chicago, said the artist commissioning process was “very fast.” Whitehead shepherded a commissioning process and a panel of artists selected the final work. There will be a whole set of permanent installations as well as some spaces for rotating outdoor galleries. One piece will leverage research done on the Trail about climate change, displaying the data collected in artful ways. Others will make use of spaces without natural light by adding in light and noise art. Materials taken from the site during reconstruction — cement and dirt — will be available to artists for reuse.
Perhaps the only dismaying parts of the tour was that many of the 100-plus murals lining the Trail infrastructure are going to go, largely because of the construction process. Some of them are really amazing. Ysaguirre said through the Bloomingdale Trail work, the city of Chicago has actually had to rethink its “mural policies.” It now views them as “temporary pieces of art” that aren’t meant to be there long-term, largely, perhaps because they are difficult to maintain in Chicago’s harsh weather. Still, efforts are being made to spare some, as they are a mark of the existing community and are really valuable in themselves.
At the end of the multi-hour tour, Simone said there has been “no community opposition to the plans or designs.” Some neighbors are concerned about privacy so trellises with vines will be set up in some areas to block views from the Trail into apartments. Rail lighting will also point down to the bottom of paths so there will be “minimal light pollution.”
One of the best things about the new park, said Kathy Dickhut, Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Housing and Economic Development, is that it will be “grounded to the earth. People on top of the Trail can have conversations with people on the ground.”
Dogs will be allowed. The park will be open from 6am to 11pm to allow bicyclists to use the trail during their daily commutes. The park’s crowd will change slowly during the day.
Before the bare-bones trail opens in fall 2014 (Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s deadline), there’s a ton of stuff to do. Parts of the site are contaminated and require environmental remediation, so soils will need to be dealt with. In one spot, the Trail structure will actually be elevated with new bridges put in in order to let trucks pass underneath (currently, the clearance is very low and our bus had to go all the way around the Trail).
A number of existing bridges and other structural components will need to be repaired. Then, all the ramps will need to be built along with the new public spaces in the access parks. Much of this work will continue over the next few years, long after the park opens next fall.
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.”
“I didn’t enter the landscape architecture profession in the normal way,” said M. Paul Friedberg, FASLA, one of the most innovative, even “radical,” landscape architects, at a lecture at the National Building Museum. “I bypassed the traditional education. I came to it as a layperson. I have seen landscape architecture as a journey of ideas.” An interesting statement for a designer who is known for his bold, designed forms. But it turns out Friedberg thinks these forms “have no intrinsic value in themselves, it’s just about what they make us feel.” He has always been interested in the social side of design — how people use his spaces. As he explained, “everyone has a bit of a spectator and actor in them.” The key is to make spaces where these daily plays can be performed.
“Every morning I get up and look at my blank computer screen. I have no notion where ideas come from. I can’t wait to see what will manifest itself. I don’t go in with any preconceived notions.” Friedberg treats his creative process with such respect because he believes that “ideas have power, they can create beauty and content, and they can affect our lives.” The process of coming up with new ideas about how people will use spaces is “an endless and enjoyable process.”
Friedberg studied ornamental horticulture at Cornell University (because his dad made him). Moving to NYC in the late 1950s for a “romantic attachment,” he had no idea what landscape architecture was but heard that was a way to get a job. “Being uneducated, uninitiated, un-introduced to any profession was a great opportunity.” This is because a “massive redefinition of urban America” was about to happen in the early ’60s. That era was the “perfect platform for change.” After World War II, people had “lots of money, mobility with the car, free time. People had choice.” Manufacturing was leaving cities, and urban cores were transforming into service centers. Young people were moving into the cities because “they couldn’t take the passivity of the countryside.”
Having “no predispositions,” Friedberg took his slim portfolio, which featured a tennis court, around with him to potential employers. “They must have thought I had dementia,” he laughed. He was eventually hired over the phone, sight unseen, by a landscape architecture firm in Hartford, Connecticut. The best work around then was with the New York city housing authority, but there were many rules about getting gigs so he eventually partnered with an architect to bid and win some early social housing projects. That work tee-ed him up for his Riis Plaza project, where he really made his name. The project, which made it on to the cover of Time magazine in the mid-60s, was financed by the Astors’ foundation. Brooke Astor wanted to break the mold on public housing projects by creating spaces for the community. Financing this city housing authority project, she told the city the designers had to have total free reign to experiment.
Friedberg said prior to Riis plaza, social housing developments were characterized by their fences. “People living there were treated like criminals. They had to stay within their boundaries.” He treated his plaza as a “self-education project.” Fences were taken down in favor of a series of human-scale areas where both old and young could hang out.
A new playground was created as a “whole environment,” not just “a set of swings.” He put benches near the playground so parents and caretakers could watch the kids playing, “creating an audience” for their antics. Play was transformed into an “interconnected series of events.”
Looking back on the Riis playground, Friedberg said it was “static,” given “the most enjoyable environments for kids are the ones they can shape,” but it was a crucial learning experience for the landscape architect who basically invented play environments and went on to found one of the first play set companies. “There, I discovered that linkages to play are key. Going to play spaces is as important as being there.” For example, an igloo form was accessible via tunnels underneath, which were special for kids because they were their “own domain.” (Unfortunately, that igloo was later closed because older teens were using it for “trysts.” Riis plaza was eventually demolished).
Following this project, Friedberg created the Central Park playground, another wondrous play environment, and, much later, a new play space on top of the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. He said the key lessons from that project was to “expand play beyond segregated areas” and to really incorporate play into all aspects of design. A hand rail is also a sound tube. Sundials are built into benches. Walls display the metric system. “There are tons of opportunities to teach through the environment.”
Friedberg is also know for his urban park plazas, hybrid spaces that are both park and plaza. One well-known example is Peavey Plaza in Minneapolis, which is still under threat — despite a recent lawsuit to prevent its destruction by Minneapolis city and the nearby symphony and the fact it just made it on to the National Register of Historic Places. “The city didn’t want a traditional European plaza,” so Friedberg created a “bowl, with the exterior lip of the bowl green space.” It’s both a park and plaza because the center pool of water was designed to be drainable. The space can then easily transform into a hard plaza space.
In a similar way, Pershing Park in Washington, D.C., has bold forms, stair-step patterns that lead down to a central pool, with surrounding trees, but that central pool also becomes an ice-rink in the winter. A fountain hides the “Zamboni’s inner sanctum.” There are also underground changing rooms accessible via a pavilion. While Friedberg admitted that the park isn’t in great shape these days, it’s one of the more memorable spaces in D.C. (and hopefully someone will form that “Friends of Pershing Park” group and get the restoration going).
Moving through other projects like Battery Park City Park, which was the first “urban plaza in New York City,” a fascinating canal project in Arizona, and a sculpture park and amphitheatre for the employees at Honeywell in Minneapolis, Friedberg came to his recent work at the Yards Park in Washington, D.C., which has gotten all-around great reviews. In fact, it kick-started a total transformation of a derelict area around D.C.’s Navy Yard. There, his firm “packed as many activities as we could” into four acres without “being chaotic.” The bridge that is one of the signature elements of the space is the result of a “collaboration with engineers.” Under the bridge, Friedberg symbolically brought the Anacostia River into the park, creating another vibrant watery play space in the process.
Brad McKee, editor of Landscape Architecture Magazine then ably drew Friedberg out with a set of questions about his life and career that show how many things have changed since the ’50s, but some issues remain. Asked why he started the landscape architecture program at City College in NYC and eventually ran it for 20 years, Friedberg said in the ’60s, the landscape architecture profession was “very white. There were a few Asians, no blacks.” At the time, ASLA wanted to boost diversity so they formed a committee focusing on the issue. Friedberg thought that the field lacked diversity because “there were no landscape architecture schools in major cities.” City College was basically a “free school” then, so he asked to start a program and got it through. Though he soon wondered, “Why would African Americans want to become landscape architects when they could become lawyers or doctors?” The program attracted some diverse students but mostly “second-degree women.” Friedberg ended up making it a dual-degree program. Now, landscape architecture is a profession that basically requires a “graduate degree,” so the issue perhaps remains the same. “Why would minorities do this — spend four years and then two years in a graduate degree program — only to make $30,000 when they graduate, when they could be a lawyer or doctor? We’re down there with social work. We’re at the bottom of the ladder.”
On all the controversy surrounding Peavey Plaza — whether it should stay or replaced with something new — Friedberg complained that “we don’t have a mechanism for determining the value of a landscape. We don’t have an intelligent mechanism.” The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), which has done an “amazing job,” is one of the few groups that step in and defend Modern landscapes from the wrecking ball. If not them, “we’ve left it up to functionaries to make decisions.” Friedberg argued that he wasn’t being self-serving and just focusing on his legacy — “that’s the farthest thing from my mind” — but believes that “elements of Peavey have value.” These elements “serve as reference points. They have educational value. Students can see and observe how people use them. They are markers for the future, for progress.” Peavey Plaza isn’t “the greatest thing that ever happened,” but “new isn’t always better. Let’s save what’s left.” McKee added that the National Register of Historic Places has a “dismally low number of landscapes,” so it’s a major win that Peavey made it. Efforts by Friedberg and Charles Birnbaum, FASLA, head of TCLF, to prevent the destruction of the site through a lawsuit and presenting options for updating the design, continue.
On the future? Friedberg is worried about “our increasingly conservative culture.” The landscape architecture profession is “paying homage to marketability, sellability.” Landscape architects are “losing some of the values of the ’60s.” In the same vein, Friedberg said his Yards Park, which was financed with a $20 million grant by the District of Columbia and created a key amenity that spurred hundreds of millions in residential and commercial development, wasn’t an example of this. There, “the developer had a willingness to experiment with the economics of the space and improve use instead of income.” Still, he believes that “landscape has no intrinsic economic value. Its social value accrues over time.”
Technology is also something he’s really interested in, despite the fact that he “can barely use a cell phone.” Social media is “reconfiguring our relationships. No one talks anymore. It’s all text messages.” How to design for social interaction in public spaces in an era when park-goers are all sitting there with their iPhones or iPads is “the next big challenge.” Friedberg, wisely, said, “it will take more than one generation” of technology-enabled designers to find a solution. This progressive, open-minded designer says he wants to leave that one for the next generation.
Image credits: (1) M. Paul Friedberg / M. Paul Friedberg and Partners, (2) Riis Plaza / The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), (3-4) Riis Plaza / James Trainor, (5) Peavey Plaza / M. Paul Friedberg Partners, (6) Peavey Plaza / TCLF, (7-8) Pershing Square Park / TCLF, (9-10) Yards Park / Carol Joynter
The nearly mile-long Superkilen park in Denmark is a bold attempt to create a new identity for an “ethnically diverse and socially challenged” neighborhood in Copenhagen, Denmark. An in-depth community outreach process organized by the city has led to a place like no other, with a sequence of plazas that honor different ethnics groups living in the area. Designed by Bjarke Ingels’ firm, BIG, landscape architecture firm, Topotek 1, and artists’ group, Superflex, the massive project also accomplished a lot with a little budget: at just $34 per square foot, the landscape “packs a lot of bang for the buck.” The project, which has recently been all over the design press, also just took home the AIA Institute Honor Award for urban and regional design and an annual design award from Architect Magazine in the “play” category.
The AIA jury, which included Ellen Dunham Jones, author of Retrofitting Suburbia, Mark Shapiro, Mithun, and Tom Luebke, U.S. Fine Arts Commission, wrote: “This is not only original, but stunning to behold. It is noteworthy for its aesthetic approach, which is straightforwardly artificial rather than pretending to be natural. One of the project’s most exciting dimensions is its inclusion of the diverse community of users. Its bold use of color and public art in spaces that promote social interaction and engagement all exude a high level of excitement and energy through what once looked like residual space. Superkilen shows what can be done with an open, inventive approach within severe cost limitations. It demonstrates the value of powerful visual and spatial moves while keeping connected to the realities of a contemporary multicultural context: the condition of many European cities.”
AIA writes that the design of Superkilen was driven by two over-arching ideas: “First, that the park would become a vehicle for celebrating the neighborhood’s multicultural heritage, and, second, that it would serve as a giant exhibition of urban best practice.” Beyond this, the park would also work for the neighborhood, with new trails for pedestrians and bikers, local transportation connections, outdoor recreation areas and playgrounds, and space for markets.
Three zones provide both hard plazas and green areas: the red square, the black market, and the green park, which serves as a “giant exhibition of urban best practice,” writes AIA. Urban best practices are defined as a “global collection of found objects” that come from the groups represented in the residential areas surrounding the park, some 60 nationalities. Arch Daily says these objects range from “exercise gear from muscle beach L.A. to sewage drains from Israel, to palm trees from China and neon signs from Qatar and Russia.” All the urban objects are identified by small stainless plates.
The objects, they write, are a “sort of surrealist collection of global urban diversity that in fact reflects the true nature of the local neighborhood – rather than perpetuating a petrified image of homogenous Denmark.”
Local diversity is also represented in the landscape architecture that frames all the unique objects. “Superkilen re-attributes motifs from garden history. In the garden, the trans-location of an ideal, the reproduction of another place, such as a far off landscape, is a common theme through time. As the Chinese reference the mountain ranges with the miniature rocks, the Japanese the ocean with their rippled gravel, or how the Greek ruins are showcased as replicas in the English gardens. Superkilen is a contemporary, urban version of a universal garden.”
Apparently BIG and team started with three different colored zones as their starting point, but ended up expanding the green section due to community demand. “The desire for more nature is met through a significant increase of vegetation and plants throughout the whole neighborhood.” Nature is found in “small islands of diverse tree,” sorted by color, type, and bloom period. The origins of the plants also match those of the found objects nearby.
To extend the sports and cultural activities at the Norrebrohall outward, a new Red Square, which looks a bit fascist or playful depending on your mood, was created. “A range of recreational offers and the large central square allows the local residents to meet each other through physical activity and games.” A large section of the square is covered in “multifunctional rubber” to enable ball games, parades, and farmer’s markets.
Also included is an outdoor fitness area that is also a global mix-up, with Thai boxing equipment; a playground that includes a slide from Chernobyl, Iraqi swings, and Indian climbing playground; a sound system from Jamaica; and benches from Brazil, Iran, and Switzerland. Of course, the trees in the neighborhood all bloom red, too.
Mimers Plads, the black component of Superkilen, offers the main gathering spot. This is “where the locals meet around the Moroccan fountain, the Turkish bench, and under Japanese Cherry trees.” There are tables, benches, and tables for backgammon, chess, BBQing, and hanging out. Humorously, there’s a big dentist’s sign from Qatar, “Brazilian bar chairs under the Chinese palm trees, a Japanese octopus playground next to the long row of Bulgarian picnic tables and Argentinean BBQ’s.”
Lastly, there’s the Green Park, where everyone can speak the language of games. There, BIG and team built a hockey field with an integrated basketball court but surrounded these spaces in green. “The activities of the Green Park with its soft hills and surfaces appeals to children, young people, and families.”
The neighbors has asked for more green so BIG and team ended up making the green park completely green, “not only by keeping and exaggerating the curvy landscape, but also painting all bike- and pedestrian paths green.” Monochromatic landscape in three colors.
Sustainable urban transportation — sidewalks, bike lanes, and public transit like subways, buses, and street cars — are all central to successful urban development, but no one size fits all. Smart cities large and small are using different approaches, but all are focused on improving the quality of urban mobility. At the Innovative Metropolis conference organized by the Brookings Institution and Washington University in St. Louis, Oliver Schulze, Schulze + Grassov; Jonathan Solomon, Associate Dean, Syracuse University School of Architecture; and Chandra Brown, President, United Streetcar, Portland, Oregon, explained how three very different cities — Copenhagen, Hong Kong, and Portland — have created world-class sustainable transportation systems.
Copenhagen is a “micro-metropolis, filled with tall, good-looking people,” said Schulze. Copenhageners “get up every day at 6.30am and eat oatmeal.” There is a real sense of continuity in the Danish culture. Almost everyone gets on their bike to commute to work. “There’s no lycra, we just use our bikes.”
Copenhagen has mastered the “art of soft ways of getting around” — walking, biking, and public transit. He said these “slow means of transportation actually allow you to engage the city.” Biking also builds autonomy and individual development, particularly among kids. “Half of kids bicycle to school every day.” This mobility is a form of emancipation.
But beyond the broader benefits, people there bike so much “because it’s fast, efficient, and cheap. We do it because it’s an efficient way to get around.”
Copenhagen has only increased the share of people walking and biking, which, interestingly, is counter to national trends in Denmark (they, too, fight the rise of the car). The city has an ambitious plan to become “number one in walking and biking worldwide.” To accomplish this, Schulze said the city is already “making biking more competitive with other forms of transportation — by making it more comfortable and safer.” Cycling is seen as a key tool for helping Denmark achieve its goal of becoming carbon-neutral by 2025 (never mind all the oil it exports).
In Portland, “the European capital of the United States,” carbon emissions are down 6 percent below 1990 levels and down a further 26 percent on a per-capita basis, even though the population has grown 26 percent, said Brown. A big share of this success story is due to the sustainable transportation options the city provides. Portland was the first American city to do “modern street cars.”
These street cars are “modern circulation systems, not commuter systems.” They are designed so people can jump on and off at will. While the environmental and health benefits of street cars are clear, they’ve been an economic boon as well. In the blocks surrounding the street car line, there’s been more than $3.5 billion in private sector investment. Brown said these successes were due to “changes made through policy and planning. There’s a 20 year street car plan.”
Brown said due to Portland’s successes — both in policy and practice — many more cities in the U.S. and elsewhere are looking at putting in street cars to boost economic development. Washington, D.C. will use Brown’s street cars for its new H street line, putting back in modern street cars where the original creaky ones were a long time ago.
Hong Kong, the one megalopolis discussed, provides yet another approach, with thick “masses of pedestrian networks” at the base of skyscrapers. Combined with “great public transportation system” comprised of buses, subways, and ferries, there is a truly inter-modal transportation system, said Solomon, who spent six years studying the system and eventually wrote a book on it. It’s easy to “take a taxi to a ferry to a bus and have every type of transportation waiting for you on your journey.” Among the buses alone, there are multiple, competing private companies, which means there are always buses available (and some that unfortunately may be idling, giving off emissions and air pollution).
While Hong Kong’s system is planned, there’s also a sense of “happenstance.” Hong Kong’s intense “3-D multi-modality” is the result of an “aformal urbanism” that takes advantage of both “formal” top-down rules and “informal” bottom-up, “extra-legal or illegal systems.” As an example, public right of ways seem to meander right through privately-owned malls and hotel lobbies. Shopping centers can provide vital public space. “Public activities bleed through these networks.”
The HK equivalent of the Occupy Wall Street movement actually hosted protests on foot bridges and set up camp under a major bank. Solomon said these public-private hybrid public spaces “prove that public spaces don’t need to look like a typical park or plaza.”
Beyond the fact that the combined public-private transit and pedestrian system works, Hong Kong’s public transit system actually makes money, one of the two such systems in the world to do so (the other is Tokyo’s). This is because many subway stations also function as malls. The retail opportunities pay for the infrastructure and maintenance. Private developers take part in the system designed to boost foot traffic. Now, the new planning model is “podium structures,” which maximize foot traffic, with stations, shopping malls, and residential towers built as a single piece.
Hong Kong also uses sticks to push people to use their walking and transit systems: there’s a 100 percent tax on new cars.
Image credits: (1) Copenhagen bicyclists / Streets blog DC, (2) Copenhagen children bike carriage / A bit of that, (3) Kids bicycling / Storbrittannien, (4) Portland Street Car / CPM Associates, (5) Portland Street Car Condos and Development / Metro Jackson, (6) Hong Kong Foot bridge / Bus Station, Torontoist, (7) Shopping Mall signage / Travel blog, (8) Landmark Mall in Central, HK / The HK Shopper
2013 is the Year of Public Service at ASLA. The goal is to highlight the wide-reaching public service activities performed by landscape architects and advocate for a deeper commitment by all to community service. ASLA invites current members to submit 2013 projects. Selected projects will be highlighted in the campaign’s Web site and outreach materials. Descriptions, quotes, and multimedia content may be used – with proper credit – on the YPS2013 web site, blog and The Understory Facebook page.Here are three recent public service projects just submitted by ASLA members:
Melissa Evans, ASLA: Members in Arkansas coordinated a one-day charrette as part of the year of public service to determine the best location, size, and form of a green wall to be installed this year at the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks. The garden received a donation for a green wall and reached out to ASLA for help. The landscape architects involved in this charrette were able to use their expertise to design two potential green wall installations for potential installation later this year.
The first solution is elegant and simple, allowing the garden staff to implement the design as soon as their schedule permits. The charrette team provided a section, elevation and a perspective view of the proposed wall design. This particular design would be integrated into the entrance to the event room at the garden with two small green walls situated at the edge of the covered entry.
The second wall design is larger in scale and would be constructed north of the butterfly house and west of the garden shed. It consists of two sweeping walls with the path between. Designers provided a perspective view of this wall and will continue to work on more detailed drawings in the next few weeks.
Kim Douglas, ASLA, Philadelphia University: In West Allegheny, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia University landscape architecture and architecture students presented design concepts for a neighborhood to a group of interested government officials. Among the attendees were Councilman Curtis Jones; Richard Redding, Director of Comprehensive Planning Division at Philadelphia City Planning Commission; SEPTA officials; ward leaders of the West Allegheny neighborhood; and community members.
The students outlined design initiatives for sites in the neighborhood that ranged from a new community center to redesigning Allegheny Avenue. All the initiatives were part of a bigger planning effort in the studio to treat the neighborhood as an EcoDistrict. The concept illustrates the opportunities for shared resources, performance goals and measures that “scale up” the sustainability initiatives. The designs all considered the need for a comprehensive framework plan that provided opportunities for shared stormwater, waste and energy management, healthy food options, economic endeavors, open space and park systems as well as social gathering spaces, all at the grass-root level.
The students’ work gathered quite a bit of attention from the city agencies as well as private developers and community organizations. Among the initiatives being explored based on the student work are a retrofit of a bus turnaround that includes rain gardens, permeable paving, new street furniture and lighting; a new gateway park that provides farmers markets, gathering areas, stormwater mitigation and signage; and a streetscape design for Allegheny Avenue including bike lanes, stormwater bump-outs, street trees, seating, bus shelters and pocket parks. All of these initiatives have prompted City agencies to work together to pool resources and expertise.
This project illustrates the University’s commitment to its neighbor, the West Allegheny community, as well as the City of Philadelphia, to use its knowledge and expertise to help with the many issues of urban areas. We are also providing our students with hands on learning for “real work with real people with real impact.”
Lastly, a project started in 2009 is finally being completed during the year of public service. Brian Templeton, ASLA: In the Spring of 2009 design students in the landscape architecture department at Mississippi State University developed concepts for the re-development of the Oktibbeha County Heritage Museum’s site. The result of the effort was a refined 5-phase plan which could be designed and implemented over several years by students.
The plan had three overall goals: improve the museum’s landscape to create a community-wide amenity; implement sustainable site and stormwater management techniques to create a regional model for good site design practices; and provide hands-on design-build opportunities for landscape architecture students.
Two of the efforts were multi-disciplinary efforts where landscape architecture students worked with graphic design and architecture students to work in a real world working environment. In total, the efforts have involved six separate landscape architecture classes, two graphic design classes, and an architecture studio.
The five phases of the site’s development called for a rain garden, a sand filter and outdoor amphitheater, a new entryway and porch, a cistern and educational kiosks, and a green roof pavilion.
Over the past four years the projects have received 3 major design awards, raised over $50,000 in private donations, and been described in dozens of publications. Though this project has run for many years, the final construction phase will be completed during the year of public service.
After years of controversy and lawsuits, and then a judge’s ruling in 2004 that allowed the Barnes Foundation to move out of Merion, Pennsylvania, and into the heart of Philadelphia, the new home of one of the world’s finest museums finally opened on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway last May. The effect of the new building and landscape on Philadelphia is significant. The new 4.5-acre museum seems to raise the quality of the parkway and the city’s cultural offerings almost single-handedly. While the museum building by Todd Williams and Billie Tsien has rightfully received almost universal rave reviews, the landscape architecture got short rift in the major press (as always), perhaps with the exception of the The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s coverage. Their loss: the story about the new landscape architecture by Philadelphia-base landscape architecture firm OLIN is about as fascinating as the story about the new building.
The original home of the amazing art collection assembled by Dr. Albert Barnes, and obsessively arranged and rearranged by the doctor in his final years, was his summer estate, which was later turned into a museum and arboretum. While much has been made of how Barnes’ precise arrangements of art — which involve mixing French modern masters with Asian and African works — were exactly replicated in the new museum, and set against the same canvas background, in rooms with the same proportions, little was discussed about how the original grounds and arboretum guided the new landscape architecture that now provides a frame for the new museum and art. OLIN writes that “it’s impossible to replicate the expanse and full character of a suburban estate on a relatively small urban parcel of land in the heart of Philadelphia, yet the landscape design for the new Barnes Foundation has created a group of spaces of varying size and character that are planted in contrasting and complimentary manner to the institution’s location and to each other so as to offer rich sensory experiences that recall aspects of the historic Merion campus.”
Both architects and Laurie Olin, FASLA, saw this approach as the way to respect the site, while also creating a vital contemporary design for the new spot, which was once the site of a children’s jail. In a work session with Williams, Tsien, and Laurie Olin in Rome, a new plan was developed to offer a “modern geometric structure inside and out, a sequence of spaces moving first one way and then another, that flowed into and through each other, that were large and ample, even stretched, were alternated with smaller, more compressed spaces, then back to spaces that give release.” While creating a new sense of harmony and movement through the site, the team also wanted to make sure they paid “homage to the earlier work of Paul Philippe Cret and the Barnes’s without aping the style and habits of that earlier period.”
Trees found in the original arboretum were then used in the new landscape design. “The planting openly recalls that of Merion and any number of private gardens in the Delaware Valley. Here the trees are a Japanese Cryptomeria, Star Magnolia, and Korean Dogwood along with a number of broadleaf evergreen shrubs, such as Winterberry, English Laurel, Oak Leaf Hydrangea, Summersweet, Viburnum, Mountain Laurel — all found in the earlier Arboretum — along with Astilbe, Vinca, Fothergilla, Spirea, Sweetspire, and other ground covers and perennials.” Beyond finding ways to recall the actual landscape design of the original grounds in the new museum, OLIN also looked to the art for inspiration. “Planting selections were made to reflect some of the flora frequently seen in the Impressionist paintings of which Dr. Barnes was such a significant collector.”
Now, the way in. One of the nicest features of the new landscape architecture is the entryway, which feels like a small, contemporary piece of Europe just landed in Philly. As you walk off the parkway, you are greeted by a unique black granite fountain, sleek and contemporary, offset by benches.
Past this fountain terrace, you move either towards a small pavilion, which provides a coat check and service entrance, or meander along a path over a river bedded with rocks to the actual doorway.
The door itself is almost hidden, with the sign for the museum at hip level. Within this entry zone are small trees, with plinths as a backdrop hiding the parking lot beyond.
At the front of the building (facing the parkway), one piece that didn’t seem to fit at first was the raised bed. While it helps break up the building so it doesn’t provide a monotonous facade to the parkway, it seemed jutting, out of place. Upon learning that it’s there to provide a view of greenery for visitors looking out the window and also serve as a visual break so that art gazers don’t just see cars, it did make sense though. As OLIN explains, “this plinth and its planting fulfills several roles. One is to provide a buffer between the multistory tall windows of the south-facing main gallery with its important collection of art and the busy pedestrian and vehicle circulation and events of the Parkway, so as to preserve a desirable calm atmosphere for those in the room with the, allowing them to concentrate on the art without distraction. The other motive is to supply as much green as possible outside the windows without constructing high barriers. Matisse is known to have remarked that the color palette he chose for his now famous Lunette murals of The Dance that were above the south facing windows of Cret’s original structure was in part a response to the green of the garden beyond in the sun.”
Within, the materials are enticing, making the building feel like it can last hundreds of years and not look dated even then. Williams and Tsien incorporated African patterns in the furniture, referring to pieces of Barnes’ collection. Limestone walls seem to begged to be touched. There’s also reclaimed Ipe wood floors — from the old Coney Island boardwalks that were ripped up, no less. This is perhaps the only acceptable use of Ipe given what we now know about how wood is harvested from the Brazilian rainforests. (Designers: try the just-as-good domestic Black Locust). Outdoors, OLIN pays close attention to materials, as always, so the experience feels rich. “Paving in the site is composed either of cut granite or decomposed granite, a natural material that has been selected for its remarkable life cycle cost benefit – the longest that is known or achievable if well detailed and installed.”
All of this was accomplished while also creating a highly sustainable LEED Platinum museum and landscape. The building roofs either have skylights to let in light, solar panels to create energy, or green roofs filled sedum to catch rainwater and insulate the buildings. Around the buildings is a landscape purposefully designed to capture stormwater. Any excess water is steered towards a cistern, which captures stormwater for later irrigation on the site. “Water is directed through planted areas and granular materials to aid in filtering and cleaning it.” And even within the building, there’s a new interior courtyard filled with trees and enclosed in glass. While not accessible to people, the green space provides a glimpse of nature, a brief respite from room after room of art. Even during a tour of the museum in January, the courtyard was bright, refreshing.
There’s also a sheltered outdoor space next to the museum cafe, which is easy to imagine as a swanky event space on a summer night. The space is enlivened by a trio of trees set within a wooden bench and other plantings.
Upon leaving, one of the memorable experiences is actually walking all the way around the building, and seeing how all the new grading, series of trees, and street designs come together for pedestrians. The connection to OLIN’s Rodin museum landscape is especially welcoming, as there seem to be multiple paths leading from the edge of the Barnes into Rodin if that museum’s gates are open.
Towards the south, Logan Circle has also been revitalized. The new Sister Cities park by Studio Bryan Hayes with its fun watery playground and a green roof-covered angular pavilion by Digsau bring a burst of contemporary design to the fairway. The new pavilion with its much-needed cafe is great right next to an old church.
The revitalized fairway then is Philly at its best. The streetscape seems to have gotten as much attention as the new museum and its landscape. Next time you visit, walk from the new Sister Cities Park to the new Barnes Foundation, through it and then around it, and then have a coffee before heading to the Rodin Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Fairmount Park. You may find that you just end up doing this anyway. This what you’ve been asked to do — through the design.
Image credits: (1-8) barnes Foundation / OLIN, (9) Sister Cities Park Pavilion / Philly Visitor’s Center
Designed Ecologies: The Landscape Architecture of Kongjian Yu, a new book on the ideas and work of Kongjian Yu, FASLA, put together by former Harvard Design Magazine editor William Saunders really enriches our understanding of a landscape architect many consider to be China’s Frederick Law Olmsted. Unlike some other design monographs, there’s a lot to read and understand here because Yu’s life has been so rich and his journey so interesting. Nestled among 21 case studies of projects by Yu and his firm Turenscape across China and the U.S. are a set of essays by leading Western landscape architecture practitioners and thinkers like Peter Walker, FASLA; Professor Frederick Steiner, FASLA, at University of Texas, Austin; Professor Kristina Hill, Affiliate ASLA, PhD, at the University of Berkeley; Harvard University landscape architecture department chair Charles Waldheim, Affiliate ASLA; and Dumbarton Oaks’ John Beardsley, who each examine an aspect of this world-changing designer and place Yu’s work and ideas in global contexts.
The most personal (and perhaps finest) article in the book is by Saunders himself. He interviews Yu, tracking his path from life in a small village to university in China to Harvard Graduate School of Design (where he did his PhD) to teaching and starting his own firm, which now has more than 600 employees. It’s an amazing story that Saunders relays beautifully. Yu was born in 1963, “growing up communally raising crops and livestock.” As a boy, Saunders writes, Yu saw his parents stripped of their dignity and possessions during the Great Cultural Revolution, which Mao Ze Dong unleashed on China in an effort to upend the traditional patterns in Chinese society and instill collectivism. Yu parents had been a “well-off, land-owning” family — exactly the kind of family Mao targeted. Saunders says seeing his family undone gave Yu a powerful ambition.
Coupled with this ambition was a deep love of nature. Within the poverty of rural China, there was also natural splendor. Yu grew up in a kind of Arcadia, with a “an enchanting forest and a fish-filled creek.” He spent his time away from his farming duties exploring nature. Over the years, he saw the forest cut down and the river totally polluted. “This explains the depth of his commitment to recreating and protecting natural abundance.” In fact, Yu is now one of the most potent advocates for the environment in China. Like Olmsted, he’s also a prolific writer, creating books aimed at convincing both policymakers and the public about the dangers of environmental degradation.
Yu beat incredible odds just to make it to high school. He had to overcome the political stigma associated with his family. Riding a water buffalo, tending his duties in the fields, Yu studied hard and passed the national entrance exam to get into high school. Then, he had to walk 6 miles to get to his high school and then back, each week. Yu moved from the bottom of the class to the top, eventually beating out 600 of his class mates to become the only one in his district to get into university. In comparison, getting into Harvard years later must have been a walk in the park.
At university in Beijing, Yu was a “country bumpkin,” but he quickly got over the shock and buckled down, learning how to speak and draw for the design courses he wanted to take. He ended up studying forestry and then completing a master’s degree in landscape architecture. With great English language skills, which opened many doors for him, he became a translator for a series of speeches by Carl Steinitz at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD). In 1992, he began the PhD program there. He once again felt like a bumpkin, having never interacted with computers. He became a GIS master. Upon graduation, he worked at SWA Group for two years in California before returning to China in 1997, where “his confidence and sense of personal mission emerged full blown.” Seeing how China was destroying its environment with its rapid urbanization, Yu started a firm and won his first design competition in 1999. More than ten years later, he has an amazing body of work, winning ASLA professional design awards year after year. He is now among the top tier of landscape architects in the world.
Yu’s work is based in a deep-rooted philosophy about nature and society. His essay, “The Big Foot Revolution,” explains how ornamental gardens are about as useful as binding a woman’s feet. These ornamental approaches were created by an urban elite that saw sophistication in a lack of functionality, in rebelling against nature’s “inherent goals of health, survival, and productivity.” Yu instead offers a new landscape aesthetic based in incorporating the rural, the messy, the functional landscape into the urban realm. Yu says he’s not opposed to beautiful art that doesn’t really have a productive function — like art, dance, or music — but “that in our resource-depleted and ecologically damaged and threatened era, the built environment must and will adapt a new aesthetic grounded in the appreciation of the beauty of productive, ecologically-supporting, survival-enhancing things.” This is revolutionary landscape architecture, rooted in part in Communist ideas about elevating practicality and productivity for the common good, even though, in practice, the Communists themselves were the ones who have wrecked havoc on nature (see the current state of nature in China, Russia, the former Soviet Union states, and North Korea).
The rural, peasant aesthetic is now center stage. “We need a new aesthetics of big feet — beautiful big feet.” Productive rural landscapes (like those productive big feet) are what’s needed to fight today’s problems. There are ecological reasons for doing this, too. Those old-school rural landscapes, while productive, are highly in tune with nature and reflect a farmer’s sense of balance with the environment.
Yu sees the extent of China’s massive urbanization as a form of excess, with all those big gaudy new buildings in Beijing as “meaninglessly wild forms with exotic grandeur.” China and the rest of the planet can’t afford things like these while “anthropogenic climate change” brings “additional floods, storms, droughts, and diseases, along with the extinction of many plant and animal species and other threats to survival.” Yu then translates this ethos into an ambitious, ecologically-minded program for remaking the whole of China, and guiding cities still in the wilds of explosive and often destructive development. This is because “the Chinese urban landscape must not repeat the mistakes of past European and American methods of city beautification.” Beautification for beautification’s sake alone is a crime in today’s world, with all our problems.
In other places, Yu remakes what is past its prime, degraded into new landscapes. This may involve remaking degraded environments into new ecologically-sound ones, but also making them publicly accessible so that people benefit, too. Yu was also one of the first in China to see the beauty in modern Chinese ruins — remaking a shipyard park built by the Communists into a park, creating an urban haven out of the revolution’s past.
His other projects certainly weave in aspects of Chinese culture, creating contemporary works that also feel classic, timeless.
The fine contributions by the Western practitioners and thinkers add another interesting layer to the book. Most zoom in on a few projects; others offer multifaceted critiques of Yu’s ideas and work. They all show how Yu was also inspired by ideas he found in the West, and how his work can be appreciated in a global context. Peter Walker writes that Yu “frequently integrates sculptural references in ways reminiscent of Andre Le Notre’s huge Baroque seventeenth century gardens, which were also based in agricultural images.” John Beardsley notes that “Yu’s approach might be challenging in any context. But in the West, there is a precedent for his messy aesthetics in the tradition of the wild garden, which date back to at least William Robinson. Moreover, there are contemporary designers with whom he shares some notions of nurtured wildness.” Frederick Steiner explains Yu’s equally important role as an educator in China, how his research to “identify nationwide ecological patterns with GIS technology” is rooted in work by Ian McHarg and other Americans in the 1990s to create a “prototype database for a US national ecological inventory,” which was based on an earlier effort by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) in the 1970s. Kristina Hill, a fellow PhD student with Yu at Harvard GSD, delves into how landscape planner Carl Steinitz’s approach to spatial analysis also influenced Yu. “In Yu’s plans for metropolitan Beijing’s ecological infrastructure, several patterns emerge directly from Yu’s exposure to the ideas of Steinitz and [landscape ecologist Richard] Forman.” Other essays by Kelly Shannon, Peter Rowe, and Antje Stokman also examine his approaches to urban ecological design.
It’s Hill in the end who also writes that “Yu’s practice model and ideas have a historical analog in the exemplary writings and practices of Frederick Law Olmsted.” And as Charles Waldheim writes in the afterword, Yu takes on the mantle of publicly promoting a sophisticated approach to landscape planning at not a moment too soon: “The first generation of Chinese professionals trained in landscape ecology and planning in the United States now embody the greatest hope for the renewed relevance of of a tradition of planning that has all but been eclipsed in the United States.”
