Central Park, New York, NY, 2015. Photo by Barrett Doherty. Image Courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation
Celebrating the bicentennial of the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., known as "the father of landscape architecture", the Cultural Landscape Foundation has created an ever-growing digital guide of Olmsted’s most notable works. The illustrated guide features more than 300 landscapes throughout North America, including Canada and 30 U.S. States, along with stories by practitioners who worked for, with, or were otherwise associated with Olmsted, Sr. and his successor firms.
Presidio Tunnel Tops is San Francisco’s upcoming national park destination, set to welcome visitors starting July 17th. The project reconnects the park formerly split in two by the Doyle Drive by creating new landscaped land over the highway now moved underground. Designed by James Corner Field Operations, the firm behind New York’s High Line, the project brings 5.6 hectares (14 acres) of new parkland to the Bay Area, featuring trails, picnic areas, and scenic views over the city as well as a nature play area for kids.
Hayden Library. Image Courtesy of Ayers Saint Gross
Architecture and planning centers on human experience and bringing people together. Few firms have structured their office around these ideas like Ayers Saint Gross. Founded in 1912, the firm has over a century of experience, including a majority of their work in support of colleges, universities, and cultural facilities. Today, the 185-person firm has offices around the country, including in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Tempe, AZ.
The side setbacks configure the distance that must be between the building and the side boundary of the land. Master plans, building codes or zoning laws determine the minimum clearance that must be observed to ensure that the building takes advantage of better aeration, sunlight and permeability. Although this feature brings several qualities to the built environment, many people do not know how to take advantage of the space given by the setback and, often, it becomes just a passageway.
Dequindre Cut, Detroit / The High Line Network, SmithGroup. Image Courtesy of The Dirt
Decades of redlining and urban renewal, rooted in racist planning and design policies, created the conditions for gentrification to occur in American cities. But the primary concern with gentrification today is displacement, which primarily impacts marginalized communities shaped by a history of being denied access to mortgages. At the ASLA 2021 Conference on Landscape Architecture in Nashville, Matthew Williams, ASLA, with the City of Detroit’s planning department, said in his city there are concerns that new green spaces will increase the market value of homes and “price out marginalized communities.” But investment in green space doesn’t necessarily need to lead to displacement. If these projects are led by marginalized communities, they can be embraced.
A project for the Commemorative Landmark Pehuenche Commission carried out by the recently graduated Chilean architect Antonia Ossa, is part of the series of small-scale interventions built in the Andean sector of the Maule Region, Chile, as part of the certification process of the School of Architecture of the University of Talca.
If “nature” and “architecture” are commonly conceived as opposing entities, representative of human encroachment on the primordially physical image of the world, under which conditions do these two fundamental factors form a strong liaison and which is the ensuing by product? Can this often ignored bond between culture and nature be unearthed and put to light by the use of photography?
The degree to which a building engages with the culture or the landscape of a place is primarily controlled by the design intent i.e. the architectural concept and the success of its implementation. Photography reveals relations but it does not build them in the first place. Even in the extreme case where a structure is consciously designed to differentiate and separate itself from any sort of environment, cultural or natural, it is still inevitably situated into a context and perceived as part of it.
For the Cosmos Foundation, environmental conscience, ecological conservation, and community focus form the foundations of land planning and landscape design within public infrastructure projects. We sat down with the foundation's project director, Felipe Correa, as well as foundation architects Valentina Schmidt and Consuelo Roldán, as they went in depth on the benefits, objectives, and motivations behind the Healing Gardens initiative.
Between rising water levels and global migration to cities, architects and designers need to critically reimagine the relationship between coastal landscapes and public space. Cities are facing entirely new risks and environmental conditions. Resiliency, infrastructure, and ecology are increasingly common terms, reflecting the growing demand to address the spatial and formal challenges faced by cities worldwide. Rethinking boundaries and edges, designers have unique opportunities to help shape public understanding of these conditions through waterfront parks.
In its new exhibition Peter Cook: City Landscapes, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art showcases drawings by the influential architect, best known for his architectural theories and visionary concepts. Curated by Kjeld Kjeldsen and Mette Marie Kallehauge, the event is part of the exhibition series Louisiana on Paper, which presented the work of various artists over the years and is now debuting its first show featuring drawings by an architect.
Batlleiroig is an architecture firm based in the city of Barcelona, whose extensive portfolio encompasses urban projects, landscaping, buildings, and interior design. We spoke with Joan Batlle Blay, Architect & Landscape Architect and partner at the firm, about the innovations and challenges in his work. According to him, “In our office, we think that R+D (research and development) is the company’s main tool to innovate and evolve our work method into an absolute creed for the planet.” See the full interview below:
A future flood map of Mastic, New York. Right: A plan for densifying the town’s high, dry ground and retreating from the shoreline. . Image Courtesy of Rafi Segal And Susannah Drake
A lot can happen in the space between a book’s title and subtitle, as A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation: Uniting Design, Economics, and Policy (Island Press, 2021) demonstrates. Here, in a reversal from the norm, the subtitle assumes the more evocative bent by elevating design to the same status as economics and policy. To some, this might seem a spurious move, but the volume lives its creed: Its editors include two design academics and a business school professor, to say nothing about the myriad backgrounds of its contributors.
Blueprint goes deep into the policy decisions that have shaped the brittle condition of coastal infrastructure. It coalesces into a convincing picture of the wider context in which design operates, with the aim of making the built environment more equitable for those caught on the front lines of certain climate change cataclysm.
When examining the world of African cinema, there are few names more prominent than that of Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène. His films ‘La Noire de…’ and ‘Mandabi’, released in 1966 and 1968 respectively, are films that tell evocative stories on the legacies of colonialism, identity, and immigration. And whilst these two films are relatively slow-spaced, ‘slice-of-life stories, they also offer a valuable spatial critique of the setting where the films are based, providing a helpful framework to understand the intricacies of the post-colonial African city, and the contrast between the African and European metropolises.
Within the Andes Mountains, the San Pedro Hot Springs is a place to press pause and contemplate, which interrupts a transnational highway between Chile and Argentina. Although these natural pools became a public landmark within the route, they eventually fell over time into a state of abandonment and deterioration as a result of the constant seismic movements in the region.
In response to this situation, Chilean architect Pia Montero sought to highlight the baths for her built-project thesis at the University of Talca in order to consolidate it as a landmark of tourist potential and symbol of the territorial identity of the Maule Region. Moreover, the project is a wake-up call to rediscover and rescue the value of the natural and cultural heritage of the area from the gradual abandonment into which it fell over the years.
Since before the first industrial revolution, sociologists, historians, and urban planners have been addressing the relationship between the city and the countryside, but this debate has become more pressing nowadays with the spread of megacities, typically with a population of more than 10 million people. With more and more people living in urban areas, it is imperative to think of solutions for food production within cities, thereby making cities more independent from rural areas, which have historically been responsible for the supply of food to the entire planet.
The idea that cities will become self-sufficient in food production in the near future is both unrealistic and naive. Nevertheless, small initiatives such as urban gardens, either at home or public gardens run by the community, might be a good starting point for a much bigger change in the future. Or perhaps they simply represent a desire to return to one's roots and achieve a slightly slower lifestyle.
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