Category: resources

  • Vertical Agriculture + Solar Access

    It’s been a bit since I’ve posted on Vertical Agriculture – but an architecture studio I’m helping with at Portland State has a number of students pursuing food production as part of their buildings relating to urban ecology – and has me again thinking of the practicality of these building-based growth modules. While intrigued by…

  • Sunday Parkways

    I thought it apt to post something about Portland’s Sunday Parkways, as today the route leads right in front of our house in Northeast. This concept, inspired by the Bogota, Colombia concept of Ciclovía – which is the temporary event or permanent closure of a street to automobile traffic. This is the third year that…

  • Living System Design

    A great video with a lecture on ‘The Practice of Living System Design” (via Arch Daily): “William Reed AIA, a nationally recognized sustainability expert and architect at the Integrative Design Collaborative, Regenesis and Delving Deeper, spoke on developing a whole-systems design process that lifts building and community planning into full integration and co-evolution with living…

  • Green Engines

    I stumbled upon the site for Green Engines, a project of StudioMEB, which is a “… research platform that explores the potentialities of productive landscapes to generate a self-sustainable territory.” I was immediately struck by their notion of productive landscapes and the focus of the research on landscape urbanism principles. The interest in defining productive…

  • you hold the gun!

    A call from submissions for a student-run architecture journal KTISMA from the University of Oregon,with a focus on the temporal, changing, and dynamic nature of architecture, landscape and urbanism. ktismaκτίσμαktis’-mah: thing founded; thing created a publication edited by graduate students at the university of oregon’s department of architecture. a focused forum of discussion about environments;…

  • Landcast by Christian Barnard

    Dubbed with simple terms as ‘the voice of contemporary landscape culture’ – LANDCAST is a new series of podcasts from fellow landscape architect and blogger Christian Barnard that approaches landscape media in a brand new way. With the help of radio documentarian Adrien Sala, the podcasts aim to be an irreverent and informative way to…

  • Reading Owens Lake

    One of my favorite chapters of the great Infrastructural City (read my review here) is the chapter by Barry Lehrman entitled ‘Reconstructing the Void: Owens Lake’ which delves into the ‘accidental preservation’ of the Owens Lake basin due to the depletion of water resources as they were diverted to Los Angeles. As part of the…

  • The Beauty of Dirt!

    I caught a screening of the documentary Dirt! The Movie last week on Oregon Public Broadcasting as part of their Earth Day series. Worth checking out for a number of reasons – those with some background will be inspired by some of their eco-heroes like Wes Jackson, Majora Carter and Alice Waters. Others will be…

  • Earth Day Humor

    As a staunch advocate of Earth Day Every Day – the actual date of the big historic 40th anniversary is somewhat unimportant. Much like volunteers rushing to soup kitchens on Thanksgiving – then leaving them abandoned the remainder of the year – the day (or week) offers myriad opportunities for getting out to do service…

  • [Fill in the Blank] Urbanism

    I attended a pow-wow recently – aimed at discussing the state of landscape urbanism theory and it’s past, present, and future implications for planning, urban design and landscape architecture. Amongst many other interesting thoughts (more to come on this), one aspect of the conversation that stuck in my brain stuck was the recent (maybe?) upswing…