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Making an Ambitious Sustainability Plan a Reality

Posted in Policy and Regulation, Renewable Energy, Residential Design, Sustainable Design, Water Management, Wildlife on 07/03/2012 | 1 Comment »

In the race to be greenest among the more progressive cities in the country, Washington, D.C. is no laggard. According to a recent Economist Intelligence Unit report, the city ranks eighth among all North American cities. Impressive as that is, D.C. still remains far behind top performers like San Francisco and Vancouver so the city government under Mayor Vincent Gray has initiated an ambitious new plan, SustainableDC, with the goal of becoming number one in a generation.

After months of public review sessions and advisory committee meetings (your blogger was involved in the climate change committee), Mayor Vincent Gray is trying to make many good ideas more concrete, turning them into regulations and laws. In a hearing held this week, seven bills were considered by the City Council, while two related to energy efficiency have already passed. Here’s a run-down of what Gray and his able team at the Planning office and District Department of the Environment (DDOE) are hoping move forward now.

Boosting Energy Efficiency:

The “Energy Efficiency Financing Amendment Act of 2012” would increase access to private capital for energy efficiency. The Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) pilot program, which is a “$30 million energy retrofit pilot backed by private capital,” would serve as the down payment on a $250 million program. New rules being proposed would enable water and stormwater infrastructure — what we assume to mean green roofs and the strategic use of trees for energy efficiency — to be eligible for PACE financing. This is really smart because as an ASLA animation demonstrates, green roofs and trees can be very effective at reducing energy consumption. The D.C. government says PACE could “inject hundreds of millions of dollars into the District economy each year,” creating tons of green jobs. Those incentives could also make the city greener, literally.

The “Clean and Affordable Energy Benchmarking Amendment Act of 2012” will establish a green building benchmarking program. ”This program, one of the first of its type in the nation, requires disclosure of EnergyStar portfolio manager scores for all private buildings over 50,000 square feet.” Rolling out in 2012, the program will require “industry education support, data management, and enforcement” – efforts all geared towards improving D.C.’s already substantial progress on green buildings.

As noted above, the District has already passed two other measures related to energy efficiency. These are the “Low-Income Weatherization Plus Program Amendment Act of 2012,” which provides “essential weatherization services” to low-income District residents, and the “Heating System Repair, Replacement, or Tune-up Program Amendment Act of 2012,” which allows DDOE to restart a ”successful program to repair, replace, or tune up heating systems and hot water heaters in low-income households.”

Spurring Renewable Energy Production:

The city seems to realize it needs to get more serious about removing the obstacles limiting renewable energy production, which has taken off elsewhere in the U.S. far faster. The “Renewable Energy Incentive Program Amendment Act of 2012” would allow the DDOE to continue to offer rebates to District businesses and residences that install renewable energy systems.

On the same front, separate from SustainableDC initiatives, the City Council also debated new measures to boost both residential and industrial-scale solar power and co-generation energy and heat plants (mostly geothermal systems) by making regulations clearer and reducing property taxes. The “Energy Innovation and Savings Amendment Act of 2012,” would enable excuse 3rd party vendors — the firms that provide low-cost financing and installation of renewable energy systems — from paying nearly 3.5 percent in property taxes. As Councilwoman Mary Cheh (and interim Chairwoman of the City Council) noted, “this may be needed to become more competitive with Maryland and level the playing field.” By giving up the extra taxes, more renewable energy investment could come, creating more valuable properties and therefore more property taxes. Right now, the District only has a few large-scale solar plants, totalling 5 mega-watts. Two of the biggest plants creating some 900 kilo-watts of power are on the campuses of American and Catholic universities.

Promoting Electric Vehicles:

In the hearing we attended, we also heard how the City Council is considering bills that would give electric vehicles a fighting chance in the District, which is great news. So few cities have incentivized the development of electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure — the charging stations — really needed to make EVs a reality. NRG Energy’s EV-Go system, which is a subscription model that “reduces up-front costs,” could be a good fit for the District. The city seems to be responsive to that firm’s interest in rolling out charging stations and serious about removing any regulatory obstacles that could limit the range of sites.

Still, Cheh asked pointed questions about EV demand, the cost of these charging stations, and the fees each EV owner would need to pay to use the stations. The NRG representative said that “these stations would cost a fraction of the price of gasoline, about less than half.” To tap the “regional ecosystem,” the stations would be put along key routes for commuters, taking up spaces in shopping malls (“retail hosts”) and parking spaces along streets. Exciting stuff.

Protecting the Rivers:

Another bill would tax-exempt RiverSmart programs aimed at the conservation and protection of natural resources, which in turn protect the rivers. The city says residents need clarity on the “rebates, grants, subsidies, in-kind services, and other such incentives.”

A related program, the “Anacostia River Clean Up and Protection Fertilizer Amendment Act of 2012,” would specifically take aim at the fertilizers used by homeowners and businesses that dirty the District’s waterways, “accelerating the growth of algae and damaging aquatic ecosystems, fisheries, and water quality.” DDOE explains: “Algal blooms have a strong negative impact on fisheries, degrade fishing and boating activities, and harm tourism and property values. Controlling fertilizer use in general — and especially by reducing phosphorous and nitrogen use in fertilizers — will greatly aid the District to meet federal Clean Water Act requirements.” We have to see the details — for instance, will fertilizer use will actually be restricted? – but this may be long overdue considering the Anacostia still ranks as one of the filthiest waterways in the U.S.

Helping the Bees and Promoting Urban Agriculture:

Bees are in trouble so the District seems to be moving on this critical issue. In the “Sustainable Urban Agriculture Apiculture Act of 2012,” homeowners will now be allowed to legally raise honeyebees, which play a symbiotic role in home gardens and help produce fruit and vegetables in the District. All that wax and honey could help fuel the growth of new local industries, too.

Reducing Toxic Exposure Among Kids:

Lastly, the “Child-occupied Facility Healthy Air Amendment Act of 2012” says that ”child-occupied facilities and dry-cleaning facilities that use perchloroethlyene or n-propyl bromide as a cleaning agent for clothes or other fabrics” can’t be in the same place. ”The prohibition would extend through 2029, when perchloroethlyene will be outlawed in the District. The bill requires that owners of dry-cleaning facilities be educated about the dangers of perchloroethylene and n-propyl bromide, about their proper handling, and about less-toxic alternatives. The bill was drafted in response to an incident of serious PERC contamination next door to a District daycare center.”

Even if all of these measures pass the Council, D.C. will need to do much more to be number one. Hopefully this is just a good start.

Explore D.C.’s Sustainability vision and the legislative proposals before the council.

Also, check out an interesting article in The Architect’s Newspaper on recent urban planning innovations in D.C., like the Southwest eco-district.

Image credit: Rooftop Solar Installation / Eco-friend

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Designing the Sustainable Site

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the book.

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

Image credit: Wiley & Sons

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It’s Definitely Time to Rethink the Parking Lot

Posted in Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture, Public Spaces, Sustainable Design, Sustainable Transportation, Water Management on 05/24/2012 | 4 Comments »

In a fascinating new book, Rethinking a Lot, M.I.T landscape architecture and planning professor Eran Ben-Joseph tells us there are now 600 million cars worldwide, and more than 500 million surface parking lots in the U.S. alone. In some cities, parking lots take up one-third of all land area, “becoming the single most salient landscape feature of our built environment.” Given cars are immobile 95 percent of the time, Ben-Joseph argues that it doesn’t matter whether you have a Prius or a Hummer, you have the same environmental impact, taking up the same 9-by-18 foot paved rectangle. All of those paved spaces “increase runoff and affect watersheds,” create heat islands, increase glare and light pollution, and impact the “character” of our cities. But, to this day, Ben-Joseph writes, “parking lots are considered a necessary evil; unsightly, but essential to the market success of most developments.” Unfortunately, the story goes that the parking lot hasn’t really changed much since the 1950s. So, the time is definitely ripe to redesign the lot and turn it into multi-use infrastructure that offers communities both environmental and social benefits.

Ben-Joseph’s book is so clearly written and designed and includes such great photos you find yourself interested in what could be a really dull subject. In a bit more than 130 pages, he explores the “planning and design approaches to the parking lot” along with commentary on “cultural and artistic attitudes and uses,” the actual history of the lot (how it formed, developed, and evolved), and “lots of excellence,” paradigm-changing examples that demonstrate how ecologically-sustainable and flexible a parking lot can be if it’s well-designed.

To start, he argues that too little attention is paid to how parking lots are designed and their impact upon the land. “They influence the way we drive, the destinations we chose, and the way we behave while looking for a parking space. They can breed feelings of both danger and dependency.” Communities fail to spend much time designing their parking infrastructure. The result is many places must now contend with oceans of these ”generic, ordinary spaces.”

Still, these unexciting spaces aren’t ”no-places;” they are actually imbued with social, cultural values, no matter if the primary value is “mediocrity.” The idea that a parking lot could win design awards, as Peter Walker, FASLA, predicted in a planning magazine in the early 90s, just hasn’t taken off. Only one parking lot by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates for the Herman Miller furniture and manufacturing plant in Georgia has won an ASLA design award since 1990. Parking lots reflect a culture that doesn’t take one its central public spaces seriously, yet there’s something still there and they do serve a crucial function.

Back in 705 BC, Assyrian King Sennacherib posted signs on his highway to ensure it was cleared of parked chariots. The signs read: “Royal Road — let no man decrease it.” Whereas nowadays, you’d just get a ticket, then an improperly parked chariot could result in death by beheading. Later, the Romans actually implemented parking laws. Julius Caesar instituted rules preventing chariots from entering busy commercial zones during peak hours to limit congestion. Two millennia later, as cars, the “horseless chariots,” overtook horse-drawn carriages, they started to consume too much road space so needed to be stored somewhere. To “ease this ever-growing need,” municipalities and entrepreneurs started to offer off-street parking.

Beginning in the 1930s, off-street parking began to appear in planning and urban zoning strategies. Guidelines were produced over the years, culminating in the Institute for Transportation Engineer’s handbooks Trip Generation and Parking Generation in the 1980s, which Ben-Joseph says are still the go-to guidelines for many transportation and community planners. The guides helps communities estimate the number of parking spaces needed for a particular development. The only problem: a simplistic use of these guides alone has resulted in masses of under-utilized parking lots.

The aesthetics of a parking lot were considered important back in the 1920s to 1940s, but over the years, the design of these spaces was increasingly left up to developers. Even very progressive cities like Cambridge, Massachusetts offer over 30 pages of regulations on parking lots size and organization, but no rules about how they should look. The result was that many developers simply cut corners, creating the most basic parking lot possible. Many communities now treat these spaces as something to be mitigated as opposed to using them as opportunities to create something attractive that improves the quality of life.

Much of the rest of the world has simply followed the very poor model created by the U.S. While this country still leads with the highest numbers of cars per capita (814 per 1,000), Qatar and Australia are close behind. The Netherlands has the highest density of cars per square kilometer, with 246 vehicles per kilometer, followed by Japan and Belgium. China is the biggest concern, though. It’s estimated that in 2010 China had some 60 million cars occupying parking lots.

All of those parking lots are not only expensive but represent an opportunity lost. The average per-space parking lot cost is $4,000, with a lot in an above-grade structure costing $20,000 and a lot in an underground garage, $30,000-$40,000. To give us some sense of the opportunity lost, Ben-Joseph says 1,713 square miles (the estimated size of all surface parking lots in the U.S. put together) could instead be used for spaces that generate one billion KWH of solar power. With just 50 percent of that space covered with trees, this space could handle 2 billion cubic meters of stormwater runoff, generate 822,264 tons of oxygen, and remove 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Still, so few communities impose even basic landscape requirements to make these places just a bit more green and permeable. He points to many well-designed examples created by landscape architects and architects but, unfortunately, they remain very rare birds. In Turin, Renzo Piano created a beautiful parking lot without parking islands and curbs, just rows of trees in dense grids inter-mingled among the spaces. Other high-performing parking lots incorporate solar panels or wind turbines, add new trees or even preserve old ones, and incorporate bioswales and permeable pavement. One parking lot in Duck, North Carolina, is even designed to serve as a detention pond during minor flooding. Ben-Joseph says a well-designed parking lot can accomodate a changing environment. To make this happen, more communities need to redevelop their parking regulations so that more creative landscape design is allowed, even required, and these spaces can become more flexible. In the future, he wonders whether parking lots could even become regenerative. Imagine phytoremediation used to turn a brownfield into a living, restorative parking space.

Beyond the environmental benefits, more flexible parking spaces help communities build social connections. Already, as Ben-Joseph notes, in parking lots, children learn how to ride bicycles, teenagers learn how to drive cars, and high school students hang out after school “where the drama of youth plays out.” In many communities, farmer’s markets and flea markets take over lots on weekends. In Manhattan’s Lower East Side, there’s Shakespeare in a Parking Lot. Outside of stadiums, there are tailgaiting parties. In Wal-Mart lots, you can find RVs ”boon-docking.” In a number of cities, festivals of food trucks turn a sad parking lot into a space for food, beer, and bands. What’s important is that community leaders and planners actually enable these activities and remake regulations so that parking areas can provide multiple social functions.

Parking lots can also become sites for activism. One landscape architect, John Bela, ASLA, created REBAR and launched their annual Park(ing) Day, which has become a global movement. In 2009, some 700 parking spaces were designed as mini-parks in 21 countries and 140 cities. Some have even been made permanent in San Francisco, Vancouver, and other cities. These spaces can also become sites for art. Martha Schwartz, FASLA, created a funky parking lot for an amusement park, while artist Toshihiro Katayama and landscape architecture firm Halvorson Design created a stunning shared space for cars and pedestrians in Boston. Ben-Joseph seems to love the parking lot for the Dia art center. For him, it may be a work of art in itself.

Read the book.

Image credit: MIT Press

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Biophilic Building Design Held Back by Lack of Data

Posted in Public Spaces, Sustainable Design, Water Management, Wildlife on 05/23/2012 | 9 Comments »

Biophilic design is still at the bleeding-edge of green building design and hasn’t taken off yet. The obstacle may be the lack of data on the impact of biophilic design on health and well-being. Or perhaps it’s because there still hasn’t been that one model site that makes current practice irrelevant. Other possible reasons: “collective ignorance” or a ”lack of imagination.” At a session at the American Institute of Architects (AIA) conference in Washington, D.C., some of early innovators in this field, Bill Browning, Founder, Terrapin Bright Green, Jason McClennan, CEO, International Living Future Institute / Cascadia Green Building Council, and Bob Berkebile, a principal at BNIM and an early green building innovator, discussed the many obstacles preventing more widespread use of these approaches and argued for rapidly stepping up research and promotion efforts.

Biophilia, which has been defined in earlier posts, is “the innate emotional affiliation of humans with all living things.” Defined by famed biologist, E.O. Wilson, the concept of biophilia has kicked off rich areas of research and practice in the fields of biophilic and bio- or eco-mimetic design among all kinds of designers.

To make the case for biophilic building design, Browning repeated arguments he has made at other conferences, but also highlighted some interesting example projects. Administrators at a U.S. post office building where people sorted mail kept careful records of how many pieces were actually sorted per hour. With the redesign of the building to let in natural sunlight, a biophilic design enhancement, ”levels of productivity went up dramatically.” In another project, Walmart tested the impact of sunlight, creating a store with one half with a regular roof, and the other half with a skylight. The sky-lit side had “much higher sales.”

He described how our opioid receptors tell us when we are having a biophilic reaction. For example, when we see a plain grey background, we don’t get much excitement. However, when we see a lush garden under a clear sky, with a foreground and background, paths, and water, our brain says “I like, I like, I like,” with our opioid receptors firing full blast.

Fractal patterns are something we also like. The dense organic network of forests, waves rippling on the ocean, or a roaring fire can be stared at for hours. And looking at these things may actually be not only interesting for our brains, but also soothing, emotionally. In Japan, there’s Shinri-yoku or “forest bathing,” which involves sitting out in a fractal-rich forest for a few hours to simply soak in the natural environment. In one Japanese study, stress hormones were found to simply “drop away in the forest.”

But despite these few interesting studies, the International Living Future Institute still isn’t sure about how to research the effects of biophilic design, said Jason McClennan. Which types of design are most critical? Through one of his initiatives, the Cascadia Green Building Council, McClennan started the Living Building Challenge, a very tough rating system now in it’s second iteration. The Living Building Challenge now has 140 projects under its belt worldwide, with a few hundred more in different stages of development. In comparison with LEED, these are tiny numbers, but each one of those projects serves as a model because it’s nearly-impossible to get through their rating system, which calls for net-zero energy and water use and no waste. The first projects were small, but now they are more complex and diverse. In Seattle, one project by architect Peter Bohlin will use a full-roof photovoltaic system that looks like the top of a tree canopy to create all the building’s energy needs. Another school project in Seattle actually has a wonderful biophilic design element: a small encased river flowing through the science classroom’s floor. The Omega Center for Sustainable Living, now famous in regenerative design circles, recycles all wastewater into a lobby pond where it’s cleansed by a “Living Machine,” bringing nature right into the heart of the center.

For McClennan, biophilic design, which his team is now carefully studying to determine how to best incorporate into the Living Building Challenge, will need to be scaled up to the city level. Biophilic design needs to be embedded in the fabric of cities, with “ecotones brought into communities.” The idea is to “reconnect people to nature.” Inspired by Richard Louv’s book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, McClennan said kids in urban areas particularly need to be the focus of these efforts.

“Before, my designs may have been sophisticated but had no connection to deeper ecological context. They were clumsy, ignorant of the function of a place,” said Bob Berkebile, one of the leading sustainable architects around. A man in tune with nature, his firm, BNIM, has won a whopping 8 AIA COTE Top 10 awards, but he still isn’t happy with his work. Perhaps it’s because he believes that “all natural systems worldwide are in decline” and we still haven’t “built biophilia into our designs in any meaningful way.” For Berkebile, biophilic design is key to smarter resource use. If, through a smart biophilic design, you come to love nature, you will be more likely to protect it. In fact, humans may need to do this for selfish reasons: Without functioning natural systems and more sustainable resource use, people won’t last.

BNIM’s projects range from more sustainable models for golf courses to a highly sustainable headquarters for Applebee’s (see image at top). The firm worked on the Omega Center for International Living’s Living Machine. In all projects, he tries to “recapture the synergistic relationship with nature and enhance the landscape.” He said if more urban projects were designed with nature, fewer people would move out to the countryside. This will help because “if people continue to flood the countryside, nature there will be degraded.”

Browning, interestingly, noted that all the landscapes people want — parks, lawns, golf courses — are really just savannahs, the earliest human landscape. So, to encourage people to live in denser cities that are more sustainable, more of these mock savannahs are needed to fullfil those biophilic connections. He added that biophilia was also why people immediately “got” Patrick LeBlanc’s green walls and Herbert Dreiseitl’s artistic water treatment facilities. To add, the design work of the majority of landscape architects is innately biophilic, given parks and gardens, as Browning noted, create connections to nature, and the many plants used essentially grow in fractal formations. Architects may simply be starting to catch up to landscape architects in this regard. Crucially, though, data is still needed for all design professionals to make the case to their clients.

To dig deeper into this field: Read Biophilia, the book by E.O. Wilson that started the theoretical understanding of what many lansdcape architects may have known all along. Explore the work of Stephen Kellert and others who are bringing biophilic design to buildings in Biophilic Design: The Theory, Science, and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life and Timothy Beatley, who wants to scale up biophilic design to the city scale, in Taking Nature to the City. For those interested in regenerative landscape design, check out The Sustainable SITES Handbook by Meg Calkins, ASLA. And listen to Bjork’s latest album, Biophilia, her startling homage to everything from viruses to the solar system.

In other news, another early sustainable design innovator, Sam Rashkin, the driving force behind the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star for Homes program, deservedly won a $50,000 prize from the Hanley Foundation for Vision and Leadership. Rashkin, an architect and urban planner, used a tiny staff (around 6 people) and budget (just a few million) to overcome some serious early opposition from builders and create a program that would eventually bring in 9,000 building industry partners. Rashkin has also been instrumental in USGBC’s LEED for Homes, NAHB’s Green Building Guidelines, and the EPA’s WaterSense program. Learn more about Rashkin’s work in Ecohome magazine.

Image credit: (1) Applebee’s Restaurant Support Center / BNIM, (2) ASLA 2011 Professional General Design Honor Award. Jon Piasecki, ASLA, Housatonic / Jon Dolan, (3) Living Machine / LiveModern, (4) Biophilia / Bjork

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ONE Prize: Blight to Might

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Opportunities, Sustainable Design, Urban Revitalization on 05/15/2012 | Leave a Comment »

Terreform ONE, a think tank focused on ecological design led by innovator Mitchell Joachim, announced its call for entries for the third annual ONE Prize competition. This year’s competition, Blight to Might, seeks to “put design in the service of disenfranchised communities” by seeking out bold new design ideas that regenerate the underused post-industrial parts of our built environment and create jobs in the process. “This is a call for action to convert vacant buildings, abandoned factories and deindustrialized cities into the building blocks of creativity and entrepreneurship, and to empower the next generation of innovators to reinvigorate communities on both a local and global scale.”

The organizers write: “In the U.S., years of deindustrialization have accompanied increased incidences of unemployment and a decline in innovative capacity; 42,400 factories have closed since 2001, 425,000 industrial sites have been abandoned and 5,500,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost.” In their mind, repurposing all this aging industrial infrastructure left over by the mass exodus of manufacturing jobs could help pave the way for a new wave of “domestic job creation.”

U.S. and international landscape architects, architects, urban designers, planners, engineers, scientists, artists, students and individuals of all backgrounds are invited to submit concepts. Over the past two years, the competition has drawn 1,200 contestants from 25 countries.

This year’s high-profile jury includes Julie Bargmann, ASLA, founder of D.I.R.T Studio; Robert Hammond, Co-Founder of the High Line; and William Moggridge, Director, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, among others.

The winner will get $5,000 and coverage by ONE Prize media sponsors. The winning designs will be presented in lectures and exhibititions, and featured on the awards Web site.

In other news, for those in the D.C. area this weekend, be sure to check out The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s series of free tours: What’s Out There. This year’s D.C. What’s Out There offers a ”spotlight on Italian Design,” with tours of Tregaron; Hillwood Estate, Museum & Garden; the National Cathedral; Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land, and others.

Image credit: Terraform ONE

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A Robust, Sustainable Reference

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the book.

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

Image credit: Wiley & Sons

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The National Mall Wins with These Designs

Posted in Landscape Architecture, National Mall, Public Spaces, Sustainable Design on 05/03/2012 | Leave a Comment »

The Trust for the National Mall announced the winners of the national design competition for three distinct sites on the National Mall today. While the competition was stiff, the jury went with Rogers Marvel Architects & landscape architecture firm Peter Walker and Partners for Constitution Gardens, landscape architecture firm Gustafson Guthrie Nichol and architecture firm Davis Brody Bond for Union Square, and landscape architecture firm OLIN and architecture firm Weiss/Manfredi for the Sylvan Theatre at the Washington Monument Grounds. Each team is a collaboration between a landscape architecture and architecture firm, a joint 50-50 effort.

A number of winners have already done beautiful work in D.C. OLIN redesigned the Washington Monument grounds, a project defined by its subtle and elegant approach to security, and the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, one of D.C.’s most beloved spaces. Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, which won the National Design Award for landscape design last year, recently broke ground on the new landscape design for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, expected to open on the Mall in 2015. They also created one of the most unique public spaces in the city: the Kogod Courtyard at the National Portrait Gallery.

Former First Lady Laura Bush, Honor Chair of the Campaign for the National Mall (and lead fundraiser for the new landscapes and buildings, which are expected to cost hundreds of millions), said: “The design competition produced beautiful, thoughtful solutions to improve this iconic space.” Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Hon. ASLA, added: “The National Mall Design Competition concepts are grand, respectful, sustainable, and beautiful; in short, they are worthy to be a part of this important and iconic space.” Caroline Cunningham, President of the Trust for the National Mall, sees these projects as not only best practices in urban park design but also “models of sustainability.”

Indeed, the mall needs some models of sustainability. It has taken a long time for sustainable landscape design to come to the nation’s capital, but Susan Spain, ASLA, project executive for the National Mall at the National Park Service, has publicly committed to using Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) guidelines to revitalize the landscapes in the federal zone. In fact, right now, much of the National Mall is being dug up and restructured with highly sustainable soils, grasses, and water management systems that will not only better cope with the 25 million visitors and thousands of events that occur there each year, but also provide the foundation for a more ecological system. We hope the three winning design teams will also use SITES best practices in these high-profile projects.

The next step: raise the money. Half of the $700 million will need to come from the private sector. For this big job, the Trust for the National Mall will continue to host fundraisers, which all philanthropists interested in the built environment and the shape of the capital should attend. The Trust will then starting working with the designers and the National Park Service to implement the designs for Constitution Gardens and the Sylvan Theatre at the Washington Monument Grounds. We can only assume that the Architect of the Capitol is also moving forward with the Union Square redesign as there have been no public announcements taking that piece out of contention.

Explore the winning designs by OLIN + Weiss/Manfredi, Gustafson Guthrie Nichol + David Brody Bond, and Rogers Marvel Architects + PWP Landscape Architecture

Other news for landscape architects: Boston-based Stoss Landscape Urbanism, led by Chris Reed, ASLA, won the National Design Award in landscape design this year. The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum said: “Stoss has distinguished itself for a hybridized approach rooted in infrastructure, functionality, and ecology.” Stoss’ projects include the CityDeck in Green Bay, WI; Erie Street Plaza in Milwaukee, WI; The Plaza at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA; and Bass River Park on Cape Cod. Also worth noting: Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, and co-founder of the Biomimicry Guild, won the “design mind” award.

Image credits: (1) OLIN + Weiss / Manfredi, (2) Gustafson Guthrie Nichol + Davis Brody Bond, (3) Rogers Marvel Architects + Peter Walker and Partners

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In a Harsh Economic Climate, New Opportunities for Designers

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation, Sustainable Design on 04/26/2012 | 3 Comments »

The three presidents of the major design organizations shaping the built environment – the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), American Institute of Architects (AIA), and American Planning Association (APA) – discussed the challenges facing the design professions as well as the opportunities at the American Planning Association (APA) conference in Los Angeles. They also outlined paths for the future direction of their organizations.

ASLA: “Adversity can make us fearless.”

Susan Hatchell, FASLA, president of ASLA, who said she often works with planners, designs parks, sustainable transportation infrastructure, and recreation areas in North Carolina. She believes that while the professions are facing severe economic conditions, there’s “opportunity in adversity.” She presented numbers showing how “really long periods of economic growth often come after periods of recession.” In this climate, “adversity can make us fearless” for when the next round of growth comes.

There are a number of key opportunities for landscape architects. Population growth, expected to be 9 percent in the U.S., will lead to new work for landscape architects. Hatchell said: ”These people will need to live somewhere. Many more communities will be looking for ‘live, work, play’ experiences.” The rise of the millennial generation, which is more “collaborative, technologically-advanced and socially-engaged,” along with the aging of the baby boomers, will mean new types of public spaces and housing development will be in demand. “Baby boomers will redefine old age and will need new types of housing, transportation, and recreation. They aren’t going to go lying down.”

Urbanization, which is a trend not only in the U.S. but around the world, will create opportunities for new public spaces and urban design work. “Cities are an emerging market for landscape architects.” Transportation currently sucks up 19 percent of people’s incomes on average. This expense is increasingly a burden for low-income residents who, like many other groups, are demanding public transportation systems. The demand for more sustainable transportation system will only grow as gas prices rise.

Landscape architects also have a major role to play in transforming the built environment into an enabler of good health. “Currently 66 percent of the population is overweight or obese, and by 2015, 75 percent will be.” Hatchell added that this health crisis is not only very damaging to our collective health, but also very expensive, with $117 billion being spent on diabetes and obesity-related conditions annually.

Turning redfields, underperforming real estate, into greenfields is another growth area. Hatchell said $700 billion in loans still have to “go negative” before 2014. These unproductive assets can be bought cheap and redeveloped as green space. As an example, she said some 40 “dead malls” are now revitalization projects.

Lastly, green infrastructure offers great opportunities. NYC is investing $1.5 billion in green infrastructure systems over the next 20 years, which is still much cheaper than the $2.9 billion they would needed to have spend on old grey infrastructure, sewage and stormwater conveyance pipes and other things made of concrete. Philadelphia also has a $2 billion 20 year plan in the works.

On unemployment among landscape architects, which Hatchell said was a serious issue, she said ASLA is seeing some positive trends. However, too few landscape firms, even the ones that are doing well, are hiring. She encouraged young out of work LAs to “stay in the game” by volunteering on projects and networking.

She discussed how ASLA, with 16,000 members in the U.S. and abroad, has launched a public awareness campaign to highlight the value of landscape architects. “It’s important that people understand what we do.”

In addition, there was a common theme running through all presentations: the need to improve collaboration among landscape architects, planners, and architects. Hatchell said: “It takes a village to make a good design. We all need to be at the table. When we come together, with our greater collective numbers, we can succeed.” In her mind, landscape architects play a central role in making this collaboration work and ”weave together engineering and architecture using the foundation and guidelines provided by planners.”

AIA: “We need to better tell our story, how architecture improves our lives.”

AIA President Jeffrey Potter, FAIA, said he’s “passionate about communicating the value of design to the public,” while also improving the perception of architects among the public. With 75,000 members, AIA is more than “just a pin, an accreditation you can wear.” The organization has 18 regional components and 284 local chapters, with 23 “communities of knowledge.” An office with 200 staff is led by Robert Ivy, former editor of Architectural Record.

“Architects are under siege by competitors,” said Potter. And “the economic unpleasantness hit us hard.” On top of this, the “transition to the digital world has been costly for firms.” The BIM approach requires heavy up-front investment by architects. But for Potter the major challenge is the “deterioration of our culture. Beauty seems to no longer matter.”

Potter said architects may be to blame for some of their predicament, in part, because “of our jargon and tendency to look inward.” The membership, overall, seems to be of two minds on how to move forward. “About one half want to become the prominent master builder of the past. But the master builder model went out in the 14th century. The other half of the membership wants to the master collaborator.” Potter sees greater collaboration with planners and landscape architects as the only real way forward.

A major focus is getting emerging professionals jobs. Young architects starting out are being bludgeoned by the recession, which “may never have left the design fields,” but it’s important that “young people stay in our community.” Other key programs focus on disaster-resilient designs and rolling out green building codes worldwide.

AIA is also now working on a ”repositioning initiative” because “we are unhappy” about how the public perceives us. “The public doesn’t understand what we do. We need to better tell our stories and demonstrate how architecture improves our lives.”

APA: “Multidisciplinary teams lead to better, richer designs.”

For Mitchell Silver, AICP, it’s a shame that landscape architecture and planning went in different directions back in 1909; they used to be the same thing. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., the son of the designer of Central Park and the father of landscape architecture, wanted “cities to be more efficient, attractive, livable, and less chaotic.” So landscape architects began to focus on the physical form of cities while planners moved towards spatial form and the policy and regulatory side of things. Still, he said, “our professions have a common DNA,” rooted in “scientific efficiency, civic beauty, and social equity.”

The APA, with its 40,000 members worldwide, is now very focused on sustainability and climate change. Another major focus is on “sustaining places.” Taskforces were set up in this area, yielding 8 new principles. APA wants to enhance the “value of comprehensive plans,” (possibly by looking into certification for them), and creating quality spaces for the long-term. A new “rebuilding America” initiative created recommendations to strengthen the ” place-making” focus of the organization.

Pointing to the successful Mayor’s Institute of City Design (MICD), a group Silver is involved in, he said “multidisciplinary teams” now need to be the way to go with projects of all scales. They are necessary because they ”lead to better, richer designs.” Silver, who is the director of planning for the City of Raleigh, now forces his planning department to work in multidisciplinary teams and issues RFPs that demand those teams. He said, while planners can offer the vision and “plan for experiences that we want people to have,” it’s landscape architects and architects “who are critical to creating that experience.”

Still, Silver sees planners as providing broad leadership among the design professions. APA’s key goals are to “lead America to a more just and sustainable future, while growing the next generation of leaders.” On collaboration, Silver reiterated the points made by Hatchell, arguing that “we need to reforge our partnerships.”

All presidents said their organizations “don’t have jobs to hand out,” but are working hard (in unison) on Capitol Hill to save programs that create work for design professionals, while also creating opportunities at the state and local levels. Silver liked the idea of moving past the state-level bottle-necks and getting the federal government to provide funds directly to cities, who have many “shovel-ready projects.”

Depending on who you talk to, it’s the worst time to get a design degree, or, perhaps, the best given the growing number of problems that will require a design professional to fix. Plus, all the heads of the organizations seemed to believe the economy will come back.

Image credit: ASLA 2011 General Design Honor Award. Citygarden, St. Louis / Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects

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Pierscape, a Wild Vision for Chicago’s Navy Pier

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Sustainable Design, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization on 03/22/2012 | 1 Comment »

Just off the release of the new design concepts for the third segment of the High Line, James Corner, ASLA, and his talented team at Field Operations, who have done more than their share to raise the profile of landscape architects, now have another big win under their belts: The Chicago Navy Pier. The organizers of the international design competition, which brought in more than 50 submissions, said James Corner Field Operations (JCFO) is a “leading edge landscape architecture and urban design practice,” and a firm that can make “the people’s pier a truly iconic and world-class destination” as it approaches its 100th anniversity in 2016. The project is a central part of the city’s broader Centennial Vision, which will involve developing new entertainment spaces and asking local museums to create new cultural spaces on the pier.

Recently-elected Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel basically said Chicago is hoping for a new public space as successful as the High Line: “Public spaces do not only help define a city – they are the heart and soul of a city. We have a remarkable opportunity to make Navy Pier one of those unique public spaces. Having an internationally renowned design firm like James Corner Field Operations working with one of our city’s greatest icons demonstrates that Chicago has the energy and vision to continue to lead on the world stage.”

Governor Pat Quinn added that the Navy Pier is already a top draw but could be better: “More families visit Navy Pier every year than any other site in Illinois, and, for many, it is one of their first impressions of our state.” As a result, the Navy Pier needs to be great. “We have a responsibility to make Navy Pier a modern, appealing and sustainable attraction that takes advantage of one of our state’s most valuable natural resources – Lake Michigan.”

Corner’s team has lots of work to do for this $155 million project, but they don’t seem afraid of monster-sized spaces, given their on-going work on FreshKills Park in Staten Island. The multidisciplinary team led by Corner and Lisa Switkin (the lead landscape architect on the High Line), which also includes architects, engineers, artists, lighting designers, will re-design Gateway Park, the west entrance of the pier, Crystal Gardens, Pier Park, East End Park and the South Dock, in addition to the smaller public spaces along the pier’s length. All the streetscape will be revamped, featuring new water elements, public art by multimedia artist Leo Villareal, lighting by L’Observatoire International, along with vivid planting schemes by Patrick Blanc, who’s famous in some circles for his green walls.

Sarah Garvey, chair of Navy Pier Inc, the development group, said choosing Corner’s team over other competitors was hard but Field Operations distinguished themselves in a few ways. The board said JCFO offered ”an interesting and appropriate balance between creativity and practicality; a thorough understanding of the complexity of Navy Pier; relevant experience with several successful high profile, large-scale and complex projects; and a strong sense of flexibility and collaboration.”

The early design proposals will certainly transform what is now a sometimes icky outdoor mall packed with tourists and mediocre restaurants into a rich and varied set of public spaces, all with different functions.

A grand entryway will serve as a “front-door porch,” a space for hosting festivals, events, and cultural programs. The centerpiece of an area filled with lawns and places to walk and bike is a fountain that can shape-shift, enabling water play or simply sitting still for market days.

JCFO and team seem to be forging connections between the pier and Lake Michigan wherever possible. A new set of Lake pavilions bring people down to the water where they can access boats.

The wildest part of this wild vision is a new “living sensorium” set in the Crystal Palace. JCFO proposes a “series of large-scale vegetal pods that hang from an elevated structure.” The pods will be able to move up out of the way for events. Another idea is to include a waterfall and lots of birds. Designed to be a “must-see” attraction in Chicago, the garden will provide “magical” sensory experiences for both adults and kids. You can already imagine the lines.

The Ferris Wheel and other rides will be renovated, updated with a fresher, more contemporary look, and will be set within lush vegetation.

At the end of the pier are spaces for interacting with nature, but in different ways. Way at the end, there’s a space for contemplation, providing an unadulterated view of Lake Michigan. In this concept, it almost looks like a clear platform visitors can walk out on.

At the south-west end, there’s a vast pool that leads up to the edge of the lake for swimming in the summer and ice-skating in the winter.

Lastly, JCFO says sustainability is also a key element running through the design proposals. Given the firm is among the first landscape architecture firms to have a SITES-certified project, this will most likely be the case, but one can only hope the designers redoing this iconic showcase will delve into all its complexities while keeping one eye on SITES benchmarks and guidelines.

While the final designs are bound to look different from these early visions given fundraising hasn’t even started yet, you can explore the design concepts more in depth in this hefty power point presentation (15 MB) or watch Corner’s video presentation below:

Image credits: Pierscape / JCFO

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A New Life for an Industrial Landscape in California

Posted in Landscape Architecture, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Design, Sustainable Materials, Water Management on 02/06/2012 | Leave a Comment »

California’s Burbank Water and Power (BWP), one of the first power companies in the U.S. to procure a major chunk of its power from renewable energy sources and develop an ambitious carbon reduction plan, is transforming its main campus from an ”industrial relic” into a “regenerative green space,” bringing the utility to the forefront of sustainable landscape design. The new landscape is among the 150 sites selected around the country to participate in the Sustainable Site Initiative (SITES) pilot program. Los Angeles-based landscape architecture firm AHBE Landscape Architects was hired by BWP to create an ambitious ”EcoCampus.”

Already, the new campus has three of the 50 LEED Platinum buildings found in California, including its first super-sustainable warehouse. Beyond the buildings, though, the campus offers green roofs, which were designed to “reduce the urban heat island effect, help channel and filter storm water, and reduce the building’s air conditioning requirements;” water reclamation and filtration systems, and new employee green spaces carved out of a reclaimed substation.

The green roofs were installed across three buildings in the BWP campus. According to the utility, “the timing was perfect as our aging roof needed to be replaced.” Adding green roofs also saved the company, which is promoting energy conservation as a key cost savings measure, a bit of money themselves, some $14,000 annually.

AHBE Landscape Architects designed a number of filtration and stormwater capture systems that compliment each other. Green streets with permeable pavers and ”infiltration bump outs” along three city streets filter runoff before it enters the campus’ stormwater system, where it’s then captured by the built planters and trees set within silva cells, which enable the trees to grow taller. Roof runoff is filtered down to the landscape, where it’s used up by the greenery. “By California law, all projects are required to mitigate at least the first ¾ inches of rainfall. Thanks to the innovative technologies that AHBE has integrated into the design, the BWP EcoCampus already mitigates the first inch.” The end goal is zero runoff on site.

A substation structure was left in place, providing a repurposed outdoor meeting room. “The skeletal remains of the substation will soon be covered in living vines, creating a poignant juxtaposition of industry and environment.”

Calvin Abe, FASLA, President, of AHBE, made the case for transforming the utility’s industrial landscape into a productive one: “Landscape has a key role to play in the regeneration of our cities. Beyond the aesthetics, it can proactively counteract many of the problems that we face in urban environments.”

But their job was made a lot easier because their client’s vision is a bold one. Ron Davis, BWP General Manager, said: “BWP chose to do this to show that sustainability is not just about a single action or decision; it’s about the ripple effect that consistent, sustainable decisions can make. BWP’s EcoCampus is literally powered by innovation. We want this to cause a ripple.”