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Local Color: Portland
Ah, I do spend time looking around the world for precedents and interesting projects. There is no shortage of amazing innovation and imagery around the globe and the web. Sometimes I forget to look in my own backyard (so to speak). I’ve previously picked up on some great coverage of a few GreenWorks projects, as…
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Reading List: (AD) Landscape Architecture: Site/Non-Site
This fusion of magazine sized pamphlet/paperback book from Architecutural Design is entitled ‘Landscape Architecture: Site/Non-Site’ (Wiley, May 2007), and is a really quality investigation into some of the very themes in which I hold dear. I loaned this out and had not had an opportunity to delve into it until now and I was pleased…
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History: Learn, Plan + Re-plan
Ecological planning is not new. In fact elements of the ideaology we often speak about with such fresh energy has been part of the dialogue for some time – but it seems to be constantly reinventied in new and old ways around the world. This post is on the heels of recent projects by OMA…
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Eco-Planning: Squared
Some interesting new ecologically planning community examples via the wire(s), pushing the boundaries of what is possible on a large-scale, as well as looking at new opportunities for redevelopment of polluted or marginal lands. Overall these offer some interesting precedents to round out the previous examples on L+U. A trio of recent examples by (one…
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Burning Down the House
The Pacific Northwest has no shortage of eco-saboteurs in the midst, doing innocuous pranks that make us aware of some outstanding issues or going further and relying on major destruction to get their point across. This hit home recently with the torching of McMansions in a new Woodinville, Washington rural cluster development (RCD). I’m a…
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Veg.itecture @ 16
I may have finally tapped out the well in creative titles for Vegetated Architecture. A few times warrant some more significant coverage of one project, but for the most part the groups are a someone random assortment of projects that are given a little thread of narrative to tie them loosely together. There have been…
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Landscape Architecture without LAs
A recent reference on Treehugger pointed me to Bernard Rudolfsky’s 1964 book Architecture without Architects led me to direct this line of inquiry to the landscape profession. Rudolfsky reconnected building with the stability of traditional, ‘non-pedigreed’, design (quoted via Treehugger): “…vernacular architecture does not go through fashion cycles. It is nearly immutable, indeed, unimprovable, since…
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From the Rooftop: Varietals
Along with walls, rooftops are the logical frontier of landscape intervention, and although many terms are thrown around to both tantalize and confuse the novice and expert alike. For instance, you will notice my own use of the terms ‘ecoroof’ and ‘green roof’ almost interchangably. In my mind they are the same, although ‘eco-‘ is…
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Inhabitat: Façadism
I love new (or old) terms that are evocative of the changing face of architecture. A post in Adaptive Reuse dropped the term facadism, which was new to me. Wikipedia explains: “Façadism (also façadism or façadomy) is the practice of renovating old buildings leaving the facade of a building intact while demolishing and rebuilding its…
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Landscape Urbanism at Shelby Farms
The announcement for the Shelby Farms competition was forwarded to the firm I work for a mere couple of weeks before the due date, which was disappointing as it seemed like a great one. Judging from the finalists, we were not wrong, with strong submittals from Field Operations, Hargreaves Associates, and Tom Leader Studio. Here’s…