Category: science
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Flower: Gaming Urban Flight
A link from the ASLA blog The Dirt offered word of a landscape-oriented game from Playstation 3 entitled ‘Flower’. The gist: “Sony will soon release a new game “Flower,” which explores the path of an urban flower that seeks to escape to the countryside. Sony’s designer says the game is an interactive poem, which uses…
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Veg.itecture: VIA I’m Lost in Paris
Arch Daily offered some juicy pics of the project by R&Sie(n) in Paris, France entitled ‘I’m Lost in Paris’ – which sported some vertical hydroponics, rainwater harvesting, and blown glass features in this private laboratory. Interesting system of mesh and plant containers – utilizing hydroponic principles. :: images via Arch Daily Some info about the…
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Garden Ratings Made Easy
There has been a number of posts from landscape blogs in the past two days regarding the NY Times article related to the Sustainable Sites Initiative, the initiative to broaden the scope of site issues related to green building and design. It’s great that the initiative is getting ink, and definitely take the time to…
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PHRWEE Urbanism
Coming from a childhood of tiptoeing through Air Force Bases around the world, I’m actually a big fan of random and overwrought acronyms (which I believe may have switched in my adult years to a new found love of clever portmanteau). In this regard, I am impressed with urb – and the fantastic and thought-provoking…
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Green Plot Ratio
A recent link from World Landscape Architect uncovered a short but interesting post from The Daily Star by Faysal Kabir Shuvo on a concept called the Green Plot Ratio (GPR). It is interesting in reinforcing the idea of vegetated architecture and the need for greenery in cities and buildings in combating the effects of urban…
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Agro-Urban Resources
A recurring theme for sure… both on the web and media at large and within the confines of Landscape+Urbanism, urban agriculture has received short shrift lately (here) due to other ideas and concepts on the front burner. I have recently been delving through my new copy of CPULs (Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes) and will be…
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The Notorious H2O
Blue is the New Green – runs the headlines in last weeks NY Times blog, and not a moment too soon for that. Allison Arieff give an explanation: “A range of alternative energy technologies are available to us today; there is, however, no substitute for water. But there are new ways of thinking about water…
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Tree Manipulation
It’s always amazing how malleable plant materials can be, particularly as we manipulate them and bend them to our varieties of will. Not content to just allow plants to grow into their natural form, we do all sorts of madness to them – chopping, topping, pleaching, espalier, trimming, bosques, poodling, topiary, arborsculture – in addition…
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Revisiting the Strip
Following a post regarding the Flip A Strip competition sponsored by SMOCA (see Flip this Strip, 10.20.08) I got word from students Nils Havelka and Nicolas Zimmerman from the ETH Zürich – and the similarities of the winning entry ‘urban battery’ by MOS to their entry Living House in the Holcim Foundation Student Poster Competition…
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The ‘Bill Gates of Sustainability’
There is little doubt that the reputation of William McDonough (WMD) and that of green design are somewhat synonymous. As one of the fore-fathers of this modern ‘green boom’ we are in the midst of, and one of the thought leaders of our time, WMD has occupied a spot near the apex of this architectural…