Category: ecological urbanism
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Why Cities Need More Green Roofs
Nice video from NPR on Why Cities Need More Green Roofs. From the summary. “We took a field trip to the largest green roof in New York City. Then we imagined what the city could be like if all of its roof space was green.”
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International Urban Wildlife Conference
In early June I was in San Diego for the 2017 International Urban Wildlife Conference. This was my first time at this particular conference, and it was fascinating to experience the breadth of ideas, and the urban focus on wildlife. It’s something that we as designers care about, but struggle with implementation that truly…
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Introducing Hidden Hydrology
Regular readers of the blog know of my long-time passions of both Vegitecture and Hidden Hydrology, which both dovetail nicely into the larger themes of Landscape+Urbanism. While the L+U blog has been relatively intermittent, I’ve been hard at work developing a new website and blog for the Hidden Hydrology project. The goal is to culminate…
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Fantasy Island
Excited to see the announcement of a new global design ideas competition from LA+ Journal, entitled Imagination. “Paradisiacal, utopian, dystopian, heterotopian – islands hold an especially enigmatic and beguiling place in our geographical imagination. Existing in juxtaposition to what’s around them, islands are figures of otherness and difference. Differentiated from their contexts and as much…
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Water and Cities
Interesting exploration from Architect’s Newspaper from October covering a range of water specific projects and proposals in the urban realm. A short description: “For landscape architects today, urbanism and water go hand in hand. Whether dealing with issues of sea level rise, groundwater retention, or just plain old water supply infrastructure, landscape architects are working…
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PA35: Going Live
I was really excited to receive the latest version of Pamphlet Architecture, published by Princeton Architectural Press. While I’ve not seen all of them, i do have at least a dozen, and they offer focused snapshots of theory and practice both as well as a longitudinal section of though spanning decades. My first experience was…
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Block’Hood
An interesting link via the A/N Blog on a game development from the Plethora Project called Block’Hood. Taking a cue from SimCity, this game explores simulation at a bit finer grain. From their site: “Block’hood is a neighborhood-building simulator that celebrates the diversity and experimentation of cities. You will have full access to 90+ building…
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Treescrapers
A recent post from CityLab delves into an on-going. Entitled ‘Are ‘Treescrapers the Future of Dense Urban Living?’, explores the concept beyond the fantastical and thinks about this type of work in terms of reality and the more pragamatic elements. Weird Dune references about Passive House designers (?) aside, having some critical evaluation the points…
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LA+ Journal
A fine addition to the ranks of landscape architecture journals that recently emerged is LA+, The Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture, from the Penn. From the website, the journal is billed as the “…the first truly interdisciplinary journal of landscape architecture. Within its pages you will hear not only from designers, but also from historians,…
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Vegetal Cities
Continuing the theme, I spotted this post on Treehugger, showcasing the amazing work of Luc Schuiten, a Belgian architect who offers “…a visionary approach to rethinking cities, in a biomimetic fashion. In his lush and fantastical renderings of what he calls “vegetal cities,” urban centers are transformed into living, responsive architectures that merge nature with…