Landscape+Urbanism

Category: criticism

  • Reading the Landscape: The Emergence of Landscape Urbanism

    The next essay from the Landscape Urbanism Reader is by David Grahame Shane, entitled ‘The Emergence of Landscape Urbanism’.  This essay builds on Waldheim’s essay and further elaborates on the origins of the theory – with a broad take on the historical foundations and precedents around landscape urbanism as mentioned in the introductory text: “Shane…

  • Reading the Landscape: Landscape as Urbanism

    The next essay in the Landscape Urbanism Reader, following ‘Terra Fluxus‘ and the initial ‘Reference Manifesto‘ is a longer essay by Waldheim exploring the idea that landscape is most suited to the modern metropolis, being “uniquely capable of responding to temporal change, transformation, adaptation, and succession… a medium uniquely suited to the open-endedness, indeterminacy, and…

  • Reading the Landscape: LU Reader broken down

    Our previous excursion into online readings was sort of disjointed, sparsely commented, and for the most part not terribly fruitful.   There was some good discussion, but I think a combination of format, content, and time constraints added to the difficulty in exploring the Landscape Urbanism Reader to the degree I would have liked to…

  • Kunstler on Landscape Urbanism

    James Howard Kunstler joins the LU/NU ‘debate’ with a completely Kunstlerian commentary with some rhertorical tidbids like LU displaying “a complete lack of interest in the basic components of urban design”… “incorporates lots of high tech ‘magic’ infrastructure for directing water flows and requires massive, costly, complex site interventions” and is “…against density and vehemently…

  • Reading the Landscape: A Reference Manifesto

    As mentioned previously we are fully engaged in a group reading of the Landscape Urbanism Reader, edited by Charles Waldheim, and as promised, are providing some brief synopses of what transpired in the previous weeks dialogue are regular intervals.  Our first week was a soft launch, allowing folks to introduce themselves to the group, and…

  • Brief Thoughts on Binary Thinking

    The on-going debate on LU/NU is interesting less for any content (of which there has been little beyond posturing and uninformed rhetoric), and more than its continuation of a history of binary discussions between oppositional actors that has occurred in many arenas, including a long history within urbanism and design.  Lest we think there is…

  • The Urbanism Wars: AD v. CW

    Turns out you have to read and write a bit in doctoral studies – which sometimes cuts down on the time for blogging… who knew?  But glean and collect I still do, and lots of good reading since the last dispatch on the ongoing dispute/feud/discussion/turf-war on who controls urbanism – aka the LU/NU debates (which…

  • Reading the Landscape

    LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN ON‐LINE READING GROUP SEEKINGMEMBERS. LETTERS OF INTEREST DEADLINE FEBRUARY 1ST. READING THE LANDSCAPE is an on‐line reading group dedicated to fostering engaging dialogue about the shaping of our built environment. The inaugural group will begin reading The Landscape Urbanism Reader edit by Charles Waldheim the week of February 21st. The group will include…

  • Environmental Urbanism Panel Discussion

    As an addenda to the previous post, on Chris Reed’s lecture, a round-about summary of the panel discussion that followed. Panel Discussion – Environmental Urbanism:  Ecological Design for Healthy Cities The panel was moderated by Peter Steinbrueck, with Reed joined by additional panelists including Randy Hester (who lectured the previous evening on Design for Ecological Democracy) and…

  • Parsley On the Building

    A great overview on Urban Omnibus features some of the recent site specific events in the 50th Anniversary of the GSD celebrating the half century of urban design (which at least in a modern perspective evolved from Harvard and mid-twentieth century theorists).  While the author seems to incorrectly equate concepts ecological urbanism and landscape urbanism,…