Category: ecology
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The Shape of Water
An amazing resource posted on ASLA’s The Dirt (here) focuses on Design Guidelines for Urban Wetlands, specifically what shapes are optimal for performance. Using simulations and physical testing to investigate hydraulic performance the team from the Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU) at MIT. Led by Heidi Nepf, Alan Berger and Celina Balderas Guzman along with a team…
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Living Nature
I seem to be attracted to compelling pavilion installations this month, as this interesting proposal (via Archinect)for a project ‘Living Nature’ by Carlo Ratti Associati definitely caught my eye with it’s interesting take on climate and seasons. A short description from the CRA site: “International design and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati has unveiled “Living Nature. La Natura…
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Got Moss?
A cool vegitectural proposal from Sam Biroscak in collaboration with Gina Dyches, Stephanie Borchers, Annick Lang, and Anneli Rice is “Mossgrove is a proposal for an architectural pavilion to be built in Times Square during NYCxDESIGN from May 12-20, 2018. It highlights the possibilities of two under-appreciated urban elements: scaffolding and moss. Individually, scaffolding and moss…
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Resilience Matters
Fans of Island Press (myself included) know of that, beyond their publication of a great diversity of books, the non-profit has a mission, to “provide the best ideas and information to those seeking to understand and protect the environment and create solutions to its complex problems”. In this regard, beyond publication around these themes, they have…
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Ecologists on Urban Ecology
A great roundtable going on right now from The Nature of Cites asking ecologists “What is one thing every ecologist should know about urban ecology?” Consisting of a range of voices from all over the globe, the conversation discusses the larger contributions of ecology, as well as some of the challenges, as mentioned by David Maddox in…
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Living Shorelines
Amidst the political crazy we like to call our United States government, and specifically what seems like a daily dismantling of environmental policies, there’s at least some folks at work on alternatives. Per a recent ASLA Advocacy brief: “On December 1, 2017, Congressman Frank Pallone Jr. (NJ) introduced H.R. 4525, the Living Shorelines Act of 2017.…
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The Peregrine
While not specifically urban, some reading worth your time is JA Baker‘s slim volume, The Peregrine. Written in 1967, it was one The cover of the 2004 edition I own features an introduction by Robert Macfarlane (who I learned about the book from via his readings). Seemingly simple in format, a short blurb from Amazon gives…
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Landscape Observatory: The Work of Terence Harkness
I was really excited to learn about the publication of this book Landscape Observatory: The Work of Terence Harkness (2017, Applied Research & Design). Having earned my undergraduate degree in Landscape Architecture at North Dakota State University, our design milieu often focused on the sprawling plains, with design exercises that took us into the realms…
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Urban Ecology Reading List 2: Landscape Ecology
URBAN ECOLOGY READING LIST – 2 Beyond some of the specific books focusing on the science of Urban Ecology, there are subsets of literature that support this study. This is the first of three posts to expand the reading list that investigate these other, related disciplinary alignments, including landscape ecology, the hybrid books on planning…
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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…