Category: ecology
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New Light on No Man’s Land
Joyce van den Berg, a Dutch landscape architect, has some interesting plans to memorialize the thin strip of land that divided East and West Germany. From Spiegel Online: “The “death strip” or No Man’s Land was the ground between the two Germanys. In the inner city the border consisted of an actual concrete wall, the…
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Interim Vacancy – Pt 2
A followup to the idea of interim use of vacant lands, the SF Chronicle surprised with expanded coverage of some ideas for these sites… and they are all pretty fun. King continues: “…a quartet of local designers see something else: a site that could become a sculpted realm of green folds spiked by artistic birdhouses…
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Seeing Daylight
The idea of daylighting streams is compelling as an urban intervention – unearthing the natural drainage from the buried pipes and. A new project from Seattle offers a unique vision of the potential in action. Some background: “A large, paved lot once devoted to overflow mall traffic and RV parking has been replaced with a…
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Plant Power
We often discuss the types of ways vegetation can be of benefit to humans – for instance phytoremediation. A few posts that loosely collect into a narrative regarding some unique opportunities to engage plants in our social and environmental structures in inventive ways. The benefits are myriad and wonderful. Read on. Crime PreventionVia Treehugger: “Suginami,…
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Local Flavor: Oregon Sustainability Center
Based in Portland, Oregon I sometimes forget the fact that what we consider everyday is often innovative in the larger global scale. My blog reaches beyond to interject many global ideas into our local work, but also to place what we are doing within a larger ecological design concept. One project worth noting is the…
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A River Runs Through It…
A kind reader named Chris Keller alerted me to a very cool project in California called Kaweah Falls. From his email: “We just finished a house renovation at the base of the Sequoia National Park in central California that I thought might interest you. A river flows underneath our dining room. Literally, you can watch…
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DailyLand: Flowing Garden
Flowing Garden: Xi’an World Horticultural ExpoPlasma Studio> more at Arch Daily, Bustler, SpaceInvading, Inhabitat :: images via Arch Daily Some description: “Although the buildings are experienced as individual elements, they are connected through the relationship they each have with the landscape. The buildings are specifically situated into the site at certain points to illustrate specific…
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Meadow Spotted Runing Amok in NYC: Film @ 11
I’m a big fan of the Onion, so loved the semi-hyperbolic headlines reporting this, okay, I’ll say it, ‘cute’ installation NYC showing a snippet of meadow captured for the viewing: “Coupling urban restoration and indigenous plants, Julie Farris and Sarah Wayland-Smith, both landscape designers, were commissioned by the Public Art Fund to design and construct…
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DailyLand: Crack Garden
Crack Garden CMG Landscape Architecture > See and read more at Pruned and Inhabitat > 2009 ASLA Honor Award Winner – Residential Design :: image via Pruned :: image via Inhabitat Text excerpt from ASLA: “The Crack Garden is an exploration of the identity of site and the clarity of intervention. Pre-existing places have an…
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Biophilic v. Technophilic Solutions
As part of an ongoing mapping project of green building and sites being conducted through a group of local architectural and environmental groups, a small side-committee of Oregon ASLA members is looking at dissecting the idea of sustainable sites. To this end, we are using the Sustainable Sites Initiative (as well as some other systems)…