Happy Birthday - Frederick Law Olmsted Sr.

In honor of Frederick Law Olmsted Sr's birthday today, April 26 (1822, so let's call it a round 190!), I would remind folks to go out and read more about the man in the great 2011 biography 'Genius of Place' by Justin Martin  (Da Capo Press, 2011). Genius of Place traces Olmsted from his beginnings in 1822 up until his death in 1903.  While most well known as the creator of Central Park and in some circles as the father of landscape architecture, it's telling that much of Olmsted's life was spent in pursuits aside from park-making and design - in areas of farming, public health, journalism and the literary arts.  Martin does a solid job of showing the quirks and uncommon path that Olmsted took through his varied life - captured in the subtitle "Abolitionist, Conservationist, and Designer of Central Park".

Also worthy of reading is the 2000 biography by Rybczynski  'A Clearing in the Distance' and Erik Larson's more fantastical page-turner on the 1893 Worlds Columbian Exposion in Chicago in 'The Devil in the White City'.  Olmsted, as the father of the profession is featured in any manner of great landscape history books (i read a good portion of the entire 7? Volume 'Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted' in college) - but for the less nerdy and bibliophilic there's plenty of summary material and locations to delve into.

While we often question is pastoral scenic aesthetic sensibilities (he was a man of his time), there is much to learn in his tireless work ethic, social sensibility, and focus on ecological as well as public health -- providing models for issues that we still grapple with today.  We should also emulate his shrewdness in navigating messy politics to further his agenda and get things done, which is something we could use a lot more of these days in our somewhat timid, politically safe professional bunkers.

Celebrate the man and the profession, first by spelling the name correctly, and justly honoring his contribution to our profession, our cities, and our imagination.

Going viral: Blurred Borders

I'm pleased to announce that Landscape+Urbanism will be featured along with some great company as part of the Voices Going Viral Exhibition and event developed by AIANY.   More information below.

The AIANY Global Dialogues committee has dedicated 2012 to “uncovered connections” with the intention to investigate issues that are similarly impacting multiple regions, cultures and individuals. Going Viral: Blurred Borders explores the impact that social media, technology and device culture are having on our design process, and ultimately the way we practice. How do we shape a global conversation? How are we changing the relationships between academia and the profession? What is the impact of hyper information sharing and critique? Throughout the evening, the topics of communication, research, collaboration, and data distribution will be addressed and debated.

Bjarke Ingels of BIG, Toru Hasegawa of Morpholio and Columbia University Cloud Lab, Carlo Aiello of eVolo, and David Basulto with David Assael of ArchDaily will come together for a lecture and panel discussion moderated by Ned Cramer, editor-in-chief of Architect. In addition, selected game changing blogs and websites will be exhibited as Voices Going Viral on the evening of the event. Please join us at the NY Center for Architecture on May 21st at 6:00 pm and online for further information and to RSVP.

The exhibit will feature a ton of great design blogs, so good company to share - and thanks to the curators for the inclusion, and of course thanks to all of you for reading.  Check out the full list in alphabetical order:

Apartment Therapy created by Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan and Janel Laban
ArchDaily created by David Basulto and David Assael 
Archidose created by John Hill
Archinect created by Paul Petrunia 
Architect’s Newspaper created by William Menking 
ArchitectureMNP created by Ryan McClain, co-founded by Kiye Apreala
Architizer created by Matthias Hollwich, Marc Kushner, and Benjamin Prosky
Archive of Affinities created by Andrew Kovacs
BLDGBLOG created by Geoff Manaugh
Blurr created by Ahmed Elhusseiny 
But Does It Float created by Folkert Gorter, Atley Kasky, & Will Schofield
Cooking Architecture created by Claire Shafer and Juan Jofre
The Cool Hunter created by Bill Tikos
Core 77 created by Eric Ludlum, Stuart Constantine, & Allan Chochinov
Culture Now created by Abby Suckle, Ann Marie Baranowski, Susan Chin, Diana Pardue, and Nina Rappaport
Curbed created by Lockhart Steele
Death by Architecture created by Mario Cipresso 
DesignBoom created by Birgit Lohmann & Massimo Mini
Design Sponge created by Grace Bonney
DesignReform created by CASE designreform.net Dezeen created by Marcus Fairs
e-Oculus created by the AIA New York Chapter 
eVolo created by Carlo Aiello
Inhabitat blog created by Jill Fehrenbacher
Landscape + Urbanism created by Jason King 
Mammoth created by Stephen Becker and Rob Holmes
Morpholio created by Mark Collins, Toru Hasegawa, & Anna Kenoff
Places Journal online created by Nancy Levinson, Harrison Fraker, William Drenttel, Jessica Helfand and Michael Bierut
Post Post created by David Jaubert
Project created by Alfie Koetter, Daniel Markiewicz, Jonah Rowen, & Emmett Zeifman

Credits: Global Dialogue Chairs: Bruce E. Fisher AIA and Jeffrey A. Kenoff AIA Event Co-Chairs: Elie Gamburg, Diane Chehab Design and Curatorial Team: James Kehl, Rebecca Pasternack, Ciara Seymour, Sarah E. Smith, Andy Vann 

Essay in 'Atlantis' Magazine

I am happy to report that a recent essay was published in 'Atlantis' Magazine, which is published by Polis and collects writings that make "...the link between students, academics and professionals besides the Polis activities. This magazine is our medium to keep you as member up to date about everything going on in the urbanism & landscape architecture world.  The issue 22.4 discusses concepts around the 'Urban Landscape' and features contributions from a wide range of authors.

The essay "Land- 'scape' / Land- 'space':  Pedantic, Semantic or just Anagrammatic" is a tongue-in-cheek play on words that carries with it a more serious message.  The dialogue around landscape urbanism has been called pedantic, and the splitting of hairs could be dismissed, particularly by those uninformed and who disagree with the concepts, as mere semantics.  The anagrammatic is purely a place on words.  The content, revolving around an exploration of the terms 'landscape' and 'urbanism', and more specifically the parallels of the anagrammatic terms 'space' and 'scape' begin the discussion. 

 

Using definitions from JB Jackson's essay 'The Word Itself', the parallels between space and scape are delineated, as Jackson's cultural reading of landscape as "...a composition of man-made or man-modified spaces to serve as infrastructure or background for our collective existence.” (Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, 1984)  This expands our idea of landscape beyond scenery and greenery to encompass a more broad understanding of 'context'. 

Urbanism is also investigated, starting with Wirth's 1938 essay 'Urbanism as a Way of Life' and tracing the divergence of urbanism as 'study' to that of action.  I claim we need to differentiate between the study of urban areas and the design and planning activities. This will allow us to operate in a shared space for dialogue:

"Thus study equates to urbanism (of which there can be many types of study), and practice equates to disciplinary modes and interdisciplinary contexts, such as urban design, architecture, landscape architecture and planning (of which there can be many types of solution). The distinction allows us to avoid binary argument because there are infinite types of study and methods of solving problems – each driven by the unique context. Dialogue and critique can still operate – but there will more transparency and it won’t be summed in an either/or proposition. The complexity of urban areas in our contemporary world is too immense for only one of two solutions"

The end along with a call for more clarity in writing about these terms, specifically the need for clear definitions when discussing terms.  We are too loose with terminology today, and the overall impact and reach of our discussion suffers from this. Whichever way you choose to interpret and intervene the urban conditions, there needs to be shared understanding of fundamental issues, because, as I mention: "In the end, no discussion or argument (binary or otherwise) is worth much if it happening around vague language..."

Comments and discussion, with clear definitions, always welcome.

Check out the entire magazine online here, or click to download a PDF of the article here.

Kerb 20 Seeking Submissions

Kerb is one of best journals out there for landscape architecture - and you can be part of their next issue around the topic 'speculative narrative'.  Here's the call for submissions:

KERB 20 IS SEEKING SUBMISSIONS OF ESSAYS/PROJECTS/ 
ARTWORKS/ STORIES ETC

Speculative narrative and the potential of imagination are important factors in creative production. It is considered that a multitude of small stories are the “quintessential form of imaginative invention” (source). 

Speculation through narrative offers an apparatus through which we may investigate the concept of ‘reality’. Immersed within our current understandings, speculation is influenced by our contemporary condition. In these fictional dispositions, the variables and constraints of ‘reality’ can be controlled, omitted completely or utilized as key motives for the foundations of new territories.

Speculative Narrative can be an exploration of idealistic scenarios, the fossilization of information, or the creation of fantastical realms.

This allows the model of design to move beyond problem solving, crisis management and project liberation from the constraints of our existence. The augmentation through speculative narrative, enables the reshaping of current processes, understandings and disciplines.

Speculative Narrative makes it possible to redefine ‘present’ and ‘future’. Kerb is an annual cross-disciplinary design publication produced by the RMIT University School of Architecture and Design in Melbourne, Australia.

Kerb is a progressive design journal focused on contemporary landscape architecture issues from an international and national perspective. Submit to:  kerb@ems.rmit.edu.auby 4 May, 2012 and for more information regarding submission requirements please visit our website at www.kerbjournal.com or our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/kerbjournal

Science of Pedestrian Movements

 An interesting article from the Economist on 'The Wisdom of Crowds' echoes much of the seminal research of William Whyte (City), Edward T. Hall (The Hidden Dimension), and others that have closely studied the behavior of pedestrians and other users of public spaces. The interplay of cultural habits that tells us to step right or left to avoid collisions on a busy street can lead to a certain inherent poetic 'choreography' when viewed. There are different theories on how these actions are coordinated, and the article focuses on new scientific methods for predicting and studying pedestrian movements. 

:: image via The Economist

 As Jane Jacobs mentioned in The Death and Life of Great American Cities this urban realm is likened to a ballet:

"It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations.”

It was interesting, in this context, to remember my recent travels to Europe, namely London, where traffic on the roads occupies the left lane, but as mentioned in the article, there is not a correlation between this and pedestrian movement. While they mention that London follows pedestrians on the right, that is an oversimplification, as it doesn't necessarily follow, at least in my experience. Many people follow the walking to the left, which is culturally learned in the UK, mirroring the driving, but the influx on many non-locals that have their own rules often leads this to degenerate into chaos. Thus there is not a typical rule of thumb - and you are therefore required to be much more actively engaged in the surroundings to navigate successfully.

London Pavement Parkings - (image by Jason King)

As mentioned in the originally referenced article, culture is less important in this process as is habit and repetition: "Mehdi Moussaid of the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, this is a behaviour brought about by probabilities. If two opposing people guess each other’s intentions correctly, each moving to one side and allowing the other past, then they are likely to choose to move the same way the next time they need to avoid a collision. The probability of a successful manoeuvre increases as more and more people adopt a bias in one direction, until the tendency sticks. Whether it’s right or left does not matter; what does is that it is the unspoken will of the majority."

The importance of this sort of study (sorry thought, as mentioned, this not a 'youngish field') has long been known in urban realms. It is being rediscovered by other sciences and disciplines (seems like everyone wants to study the city now!) such as physics, who are using modeling in the context of crowd safety, particularly in a more multi-cultural world, to better understand what has long been studied the old-fashioned way - by watching people in person or through video.

While thinking of people in similar terms of particles may be helpful, as people are governed by many rules - there is somewhat of a wildcard element in human behavoir as people act as "particles with a 'will'", doing sometimes unpredictable things and non-linear behaviors. The issues with modeling are obvious, when you take into account the sheer number of variables at play even in the most simple pedestrian-to-pedestrian interaction. The article mentions this in the context of a study between Indian and German pedestrians, where the direction is also complicated by cultural spatial rules as well:

"Trying to capture every element of pedestrian movement in an equation is horribly complex, however. One problem is allowing for cultural biases, such as whether people step to the left or the right, or their willingness to get close to fellow pedestrians. Trying to capture every element of pedestrian movement in an equation is horribly complex, however. One problem is allowing for cultural biases, such as whether people step to the left or the right, or their willingness to get close to fellow pedestrians. An experiment in 2009 tested the walking speeds of Germans and Indians by getting volunteers in each country to walk in single file around an elliptical, makeshift corridor of ropes and chairs. At low densities the speeds of each nationality are similar; but once the numbers increase, Indians walk faster than Germans. This won’t be news to anyone familiar with Munich and Mumbai, but Indians are just less bothered about bumping into other people."

It would be interesting to do a lit review of cultural spatial studies, building on the work of Hall, to see if these have been updated, and if we have learned anything new in the past 20 years, since The Hidden Dimension was published in 1990. The world has changed dramatically and is much more global, thus it makes sense that even this sort of revolutionary study, while still somewhat applicable, will have changed due to a changed world. This goes as well to updating Whyte's classic video studies of public spaces (i.e. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces), which are great but extremely dated and not reflective of a much more culturally rich society. A screen shot of one of the videos shows a different environment than what exists even 20 to 30 years later. This doesn't mean his data are any less relevant, but that we must continue to engage in further study to learn more.



A research agenda that looks at these phenomena, how we use spaces, how we react and incorporate multiple cultural viewpoints, and more is vital to our continual understanding of proxemics, pedestrian movement, crowd dynamics, and more. This can be done by incorporation of more scientific modeling of typically non-urban disciplines, such as the complex modeling processes in physics. It is, to me, much more interesting to envision this study through updates of the seminal urban research studies, which would be a worthy endeavor in our ever globalizing world and our constantly diversifying cities.

This post originally appeared on THINK.urban on January 05, 2012.

Anne Whiston Spirn Lecture in Portland

An upcoming lecture by Anne Whiston Spirn entitled Restoring an Urban Watershed: Ecology, Equity, and Design will be happening on Monday, January 23rd, from Noon to 1pm at the Portland Building, 1120 SW Fifth Avenue - Second Floor, Room C.  The brownbag is free and open to all.  Here's a synopsis.

The West Philadelphia Landscape Project is a landmark of urban design, watershed management, environmental and design education, and community engagement. Anne Whiston Spirn, who has directed the project for 25 years, will describe the story of the restoration of the Mill Creek watershed as a model for how to unite ecology, design, and community engagement to address social and environmental problems in low-income communities. Anne will also discuss her book, Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field.
 
Anne Whiston Spirn is an award-winning author and distinguished landscape architect, photographer, teacher, and scholar whose work is devoted to promoting life-sustaining communities.  

Sponsored by:  
Urban Greenspaces Institute
Audubon Society of Portland
Portland Bureau of Environmental Services
Portland Office of Healthy Working Rivers.

Siftings: 01.11.12

"“All great art is born of the metropolis.” - Ezra Pound

 :: image via NY Times


A great little snapshot on urban serendipity from the NY Times that looks at the accidental 'curation' of spaces that the urban environment yields, such as the framed view from the subway to the Brooklyn Bridge.  Perhaps the uniformity of the grid is part of the magic, as the NYT also talks about the 200th Anniversary of the Manhattan Grid, along with the exhibition at the Museum of the City.  And speaking of paving here in Portland, local group Depave got some nice coverage on OPB for their continued work on rolling back pavement in the city.  As for making money on the urban agriculture and gardens - a study in Vancouver, BC finds that it is still a challenge to make a living wage farming, even in the city.  Perhaps we can lobby for urban farm subsidies?

:: image via Museum of the City

Nate Berg at the Atlantic Cities sums up Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne's year-long project to explore his city through its literature, and some of his conclusions on where we stand.  As quoted in the Atlantic article:

"“What the books have suggested to me,” Hawthorne argues, “is that we really don’t have – and need – a new framework for understanding the city at this moment in its history as it undergoes this transition.”

A review of his most recent reading of 'Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space' can be found here - which is an interested exploration of the role of space, and the role of social status, on the way we interpret urban histories.  Related, and probably not big news, but people are less enamored with the suburbs, and are re-urbanizing, in this case, Philadelphia along with living in more dense types of housing. 

:: image via Philly.com

More on Occupy, with the recent flurry of Global and US occupations bringing into question the 'limits' of how public spaces are.  As mentioned in the story:

"The Occupy Wall Street movement showed there are often limits to how long one can stay in the town square of a “free” state to express one’s opinion. Various kinds of force were used to get people out of New York’s Zuccotti Park."

An interesting article from The Dirt on the $50 million!!!!! dollars of planning documents and designs for the Orange County Great Park, which has failed to yield much in terms of output.  It brings into question the time-scale on these massive endeavors, and how much needs to happen to create a 'park' in a traditional sense to satisfy some - while allowing space (and budgets) to evolve over decades.

:: image via The Dirt

Finally, a new competition from the Land Art Generator Initiative asks how renewable energy can be beautiful with a planned site at the Freshkills Park - which has a similar time-scale to the Great Park above.  And Freshkills may be an apt model for Mexico City, who is planning to close their massive landfill... And for the squeamish, a new report from the National Research Council changes the tune of reclaimed wastewater (aka toilet to tap) from a 'option of last resort' to a viable strategy that poses no more health risks than other sources.  Drink up!

Siftings 01.06.12

Another round of Siftings from the past couple of days.  Starting off with a couple of Occupy-related posts, including a great article from Saskia Sassen and Hans Haacke from Artforum entitled 'Imminent Domain'.  The first sentence - "OCCUPYING IS NOT THE SAME as demonstrating..." points out a recent and annoying trend of calling any sort of protest an occupation.  It diminishes the act of occupying to do so.  Worth reading, but a snippet I will include:

"To occupy is to remake, even if temporarily, territory’s embedded and often deeply undemocratic logics of power, and to redefine the role of citizens, mostly weakened and fatigued after decades of growing inequality and injustice. Indeed, the occupations have revealed to what extent the reality of territory goes beyond its dominant meaning throughout the twentieth century, when the term was flattened to denote national sovereign territory."

The National discusses a competition for Egypt's Tahrir Square, particularly to provide a monument that is a "memorial competition to commemorate the actions of the revolution."  Particularly, the article mentions, is to remember the estimated 846 people who died in the protests (yes, that was a real occupation).  It points out also, that while in the US, we can claim public space, and also claim a measure of shared atrocity with the liberal use of baton and pepper spray to disperse crowds, we're still along way from bullets and grenades as a typical strategy, as is found in many parts of the world. 

On a different note, Richard Florida, if anyone is still listening to him, has an article in the Atlantic on 'How the Crash Will Reshape America' which is worth a read, along with an interesting exploration on 'The Case for Congestion' - which argues for some slow-ness, but perhaps not to the degree of the scenarios that imagined a "City Without Its Public Transportation" and what that would mean for automobile gridlock. 

An article from the NY Times 'Taking Parking Lots Seriously, as Public Spaces' includes some study from Eran Ben-Joseph, including some startling stats, such as that there are: "...500 million parking spaces in the country, occupying some 3,590 square miles, or an area larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined." 

The article and slideshow (thanks NY Times for not allowing pic downloads!!!) - also yielded a gem from Lewis Mumford, which has definitely made the rounds on Twitter and Facebook:

"“As the critic Lewis Mumford wrote half a century ago, ‘The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is the right to destroy the city.’"

 And finally, from 'Growing Your Greens', an interesting Incredible Edible Public Garden in Irvine, California (with apologies for the host yelling all the time)... The title is a bit misleading, as it would be quite a feat to feed 200k of people with 7.5 acres.  Enjoy.

Siftings 01.04.12

A veritable log-jam of links worth checking out, so I thought I'd drop a few of them on folks - worth checking out for sure.  To start, John King of the Chronicle takes us on a tour of 'parklets' in San Francisco, or what is essentially Rebar's Parking Day in a more permanent iteration... I'd show you a pic but the SF Gate has them under lock and key so you should check out the slideshow, good stuff!  

Beautiful 3D maps by artist Matthew Picton, made from a range of media - such as "Lower Manhattan created from headlines that accompanied the 2001 world Trade center bombing and DVD covers of the film “Towering Inferno” also book covers of the novel “The Plot Against America” by Philip Roth"

Listen to an NPR story about Leonardo Da Vinci and the inherent wisdom of trees - a branching pattern where, "...when trees branch, smaller branches have a precise, mathematical relationship to the branch from which they sprang."

Map-nerds, see what my favorite christmas present, Derek Hayes' 'Historical Atlas of Oregon and Washington', or check out the 'Best American Wall Map' and find out what makes a good map better than a bad one...

In tandem with the lecture by Timothy Beatley here in Portland, check out the Biophilic Cities website...see a video about Rain Gardens, and find out how to be a hardcore locavore and make Squirrel Risotto.

You can also find out 'Things Architects Love', a somewhat tongue-in-cheek take which includes some standards like 'slatted timber' and 'drawings with birds in the sky', which seem to have become a staple of contemporary design language. 

And speaking of contemporary design, I'm not sure if I'd totally agree these were the most notable events, but Birnbaum lists 2011's 10 Notable Developments in Landscape Architecture, which includes the hopefully tongue and cheek comment that "...if we do not write about landscape, it will not endure," which i take means his obligation to the Huffington Post :)

More to come.

Gardner Museum Fellowship

An interesting opportunity for the Gardner Museum Fellowship in Landscape Studies for 2012, which is open to a broad definition of "...an emerging design talent whose work articulates the potential for landscape as a medium of design in the public realm. This new initiative is intended to recognize and foster emerging design talent from across the design disciplines whose work embodies the potentials for landscape as a medium of public works."

Check out the all-star jury that will review applications, under the guidance of Charles Waldheim, Consulting Curator of Landscape, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Julie Bargmann, University of Virginia
Alan Berger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Anita Berrizbeitia, Harvard University
Julia Czerniak, Syracuse University
Walter Hood, University of California, Berkeley
Anuradha Mathur, University of Pennsylvania
Jane Wolff, University of Toronto

Start working today, as deadlines are due December 15th.

Europe Journal: Diana Memorial Fountain

Located at one of the far ends of Hyde Park in London is the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain, an elegantly curved ring of water opened in 2004 (design by Kathryn Gustafson  from her London office of Gustafson Porter).  Although somewhat controversial, I found the feature quite engaging, even experiencing it late in the day in somewhat rainy weather.  The flattened perspective gives subtle hints to the overall shape, but invites exploration.

Simple pathways were added after the fact due to some issues with sogginess, but are done pretty well.  You can never really see the entire feature in one view due to some subtle berming of the interior areas as well.

The movement and sound of water is subtle as well, with a variety of textures and smooth falls that glide along - not rushing rapids, but a trickling and bubbling that is peaceful.

Some details show the different water flow characteristics, and you see the construction technique of the individual computer-cut pieces of granite connected together at intervals - a sort of sculptural feat in it's own right.

 

The aerial shows the overall configuration of the oval, with some of the context of the adjacent Serpentine Lake.

Unfortunately, videos of the features didn't make it back from Europe with me - so there is the missing experiential aspects and the sound and movement of water - which is really part of the experience.  If you are in the area, definitely worth a side trip to check it out for yourself

Unlocking Landscape Urbanism

Right before I took off on my travels, the brand new Landscape Urbanism website launched with its first issue.  Due to the rigors of travel (you know, scenic vistas, wine, great food, etc.) I was not able to dig into the content before I left - but finally did manage to get all of it absorbed. And there's a ton of great content, as founder and editor-in-chief Sarah Kathleen Peck has assembled a wonderful group of editors, advisors, and amassed a great initial take on LU on this issue.

A bit about the overall concept of the site.

"Landscape urbanism (dot) com is a website for and about landscape, architecture, and urbanism—a resource and ongoing publication for people interested in cities, landscape, and design.  Landscape urbanism is an idea that process matters in design, that collaboration between disciplines is critical, and that complexity should be embraced as part of urbanism and landscape architecture. While many have argued that the ideas of landscape urbanism are too undefined or complicated, we think that through this publication and website, we can better explain and explore the ideas of landscape urbanism."

I think the key to this site, and perhaps it's most engaging idea, is the concept of a forum for understanding the concepts around landscape urbanism.  The ongoing debate varies widely, and to date there hasn't been an attempt to collect and more importantly engage with some of the key issues that make up the foundations of LU theory and practice.  It has the potential to provide a more systematic methodology (than a singularly authored blog) - proposing to explain all of the varying modes of thinking and the connections within - rather than to promote a particular ideology.  It also has the ability for ongoing dialogue and debate (not possible in print media).  The multiplicity of voices, some not typically heard until now, is another strength, in addition to the inclusive approach and interactivity - seen in this initial offering that is definitely exciting.

The focus of Issue #1 is fundamental to understanding of landscape urbanism, talking the concepts of indeterminacy and multiplicity, with a wide range of contributors including "...Christopher Gray and Shanti Levy illuminating the antecedents and legacies of landscape urbanism, SWA president Gerdo Aquino calls for more built works to bolster its role. Editor Eliza Valk haunts New York City’s parks puzzling terms and definitions, while Laura Tepper scurries across Dutch highways wondering what happened to a West 8 installation. Finally, website founder Sarah Peck interviews longtime blogger and landscape advocate Jason King; while further south, architects Thom Mayne and Karen Lohrmann and a UCLA design studio examine the future of America’s regional cities." 


In addition to the issues and an on-going blog, another aspect of the site in its initial phase is the section on 'Strategies' which aims to amass "a collection of built projects + conceptual work advancing the ideas and practice of landscape architecture and landscape urbanism."    The realization of work related to landscape urbanism has definitely been an ongoing topic of conversation, and a collection and critical dialogue related to works, if they do in fact exist, is long overdue.

I will provide some review of the content (maybe even a somewhat self-referential meta-review of my own interview on the site) in subsequent posts, so check out the articles and be ready with comments - as it is some thought-provoking stuff.

To everyone involved - a well-deserved thank you and congratulations!

L+U Travels - The Prelude

England, Spain, Italy.  While a couple of weeks is not long enough to spend in any one of these countries (or cities for that matter), the agenda is set.  Thus I'm considering an upcoming trip to Europe and actual vacation (what the hell is that?) and a scouting trip for further visits.  The itinerary starts in London, where my sister recently moved to  so definitely no shortage of things to see.

:: image via Boston magazine


I definitely want to check out some of the early green spaces such as Hyde Park (below) as well as some of the newer public spaces but mostly, as with many of the destinations, not trying to see the sights but rather experience the place.  That said, any ideas for some more contemporary must-see public space, urbanism, open spaces - drop a line.

::  image via Fanpop


A off-the-beaten path highlight we will travelling to our birthplace in Mildenhall (near RAF Lakenheath where our father was stationed in the early 1970s).  I alas, spent my first six weeks there prior to be shipped back to the states, so this is a long-awaited homecoming and should be a wonderful part of the trip.

:: image via England Road Ways

A quintessential English town north of London, a google search yields more photos of uniforms and jets than the actual character of the town - but this one gives you a bit of the flavor.

:: image via Pfann Photography

London and family hang-out will lead to Barcelona, a city that has held fascination for me for many years.  The significance of the city has been reinforced in some recent readings discussing the transformation of the old city into the more modern gridded perimeter by Ildefons Cerdà in the 1850s.  His plan shows the application of the grid on the more organic old town.

:: image via Wikipedia

Any trip to Barcelona must of course include Gaudi's Sagrada Familia and Parc Guell, some of the amazing urban design built for the 1992 Olympic Games and and I particularly fascinated by the Catalan 'modernisme' from the late 19th to early 20th century.  And of course a wander down Las Ramblas is definitely in order...

:: image via here in van nuys

Finally, a hop over to Rome where one could spend months without making a dent in - so some of the main sights of course... what to see, is the problem.  Villas, Vatican, Colosseum, Pantheon... uh, yep, its rome.

 :: image via zoodoo's world

Although maybe not a problem, as I am perfectly content to do some sight-seeing by let vacation-mode take over I feel like sitting and drinking along a cafe and taking in some of the street life.

:: image via Life by Days

For a little variety, we are staying in two different neighborhoods in Rome as bookends with a trip up to Tuscany to see Florence and Siena in the middle.  Florence to me says art and the Ponte Vecchio - with some chill time that will perhaps include a bottle of wine, or two.

:: image via Wikipedia

While Florence is amazing - my heart is in Siena - most likely standing in the Piazza del Campo... thinking of the wonder's of history... (and why public space is so different in Europe than the US)...

:: image via Wikipedia

Or maybe just absorbing the adjacent hillsides from the top of the campanile...

:: image via Wikipedia

Either way, for all of these cities and countries, I will be looking forward to replacing guidebooks, historical records and internet images with good actual imagery and experiences... stay tuned mid-late September for some posts - infusing landscape, urbanism, history and more in these amazingly rich areas of the world.  A taste perhaps, part vacation, part urban studies, part landscape architecture research.  What could be better.

Reading the Landscape: The Emergence of Landscape Urbanism

The next essay from the Landscape Urbanism Reader is by David Grahame Shane, entitled 'The Emergence of Landscape Urbanism'.  This essay builds on Waldheim's essay and further elaborates on the origins of the theory - with a broad take on the historical foundations and precedents around landscape urbanism as mentioned in the introductory text: “Shane surveys the growing body of literature attendant to landscape urbanism, while tracing the institutions and individuals implicated in the discourse, especially as they relate to the disciplinary formations and discourses of urban design.” (17)


As far as defining landscape urbanism, Shane mentions that the concept "has recently emerged as a rubric to describe the design strategies resulting in the wake of traditional urban forms.” (58) and echoes Waldheim in describing it as encompassing: "the practices of many designers for who landscape had replaced architectural form as the primary medium of citymaking.  This understanding of decentralized post-industrial urban form highlighted the leftover void spaces of the city as potential commons.” (57-58) Furthering this defintiion that provides a way out of the current methodologies of urban design practice.

“Landscape urbanists want to continue the search for a new basis of a performative urbanism that emerges from the bottom up, geared to the technological and ecological realities of the postindustrial world… implies an opportunity open urban design out beyond the current rigid and polarized situation to a world where the past building systems and landscape can be included as systems within urban design.” (65)

Shane mentions this in terms of creating new "recombinations and hybridizations, liberating the urban design discipline from the current, hopeless, binary opposition of past and present, town and country, in and out." (65)  but does mention that although filled with potential as noted above, "All of landscape urbanism’s triumphs so far have been in such marginal and ‘unbuilt’ locations.” (62)  This is another common refrain from critics of landscape urbanism, and it is worth noting that the ideas of contemporary urbanism and its potential solutions are very different in distant open spaces as opposed to dense urban fabric, which is valid, but also misses the point that the theory is attempting to address this situation, not, as many posit, blindly accepting sprawl as a given and deciding to operate within the residual post-industrial or generic Koolhaasian fields of landscape within the periphery.  Rather there is a residual fabric of corridors, edges, and other surfaces that can be re-engaged within this ideology.

:: Louisville Waterfront Park - image via LouisvilleKY.gov

The precise operational dynamic of works of landscape urbanism is one thing - but to move beyond this and think of ways in which the concepts that interweave into practice is a different approach altogether.  The landscape urbanist project, if you would call it such, is addressing all of this (hence the term distiguished from the suburban), and Shane does explain that “The recent discourse surrounding landscape urbanism does not yet begin to address the issue of urban morphologies or the emergence of settlement patterns over time. The problems of this approach is its amnesia and blindness to preexisting structures, urban ecologies, and morphological patterns.” and concludes that “Landscape urbanists are just beginning to battle with the thorny issue of how dense urban forms emerge from landscape and how urban ecologies support performance spaces.” (63)


This essay is way to dense to capture in any detail, but does offer some thought provoking historical origins of theory spanning the last century.   The change in urban form and dynamics through this time period are exp
ressed by 'decompression', evolving from the ideas of Post-Fordist modes of production, deindustrialization leading to shrinking cities, and the resultant postmodern organization that "became obvious in the 1990s with the proliferation of sprawling cities, gated enclaves, residential communities, megamalls, and theme parks.” (59)

This context of contemporary urbanism is best captured by the provocatively wonderful 'City as an Egg' diagram from Cedric Price, which contrast three city morphologies "traditional, dense, ‘hard-boiled egg’ city fixed in concentric rings of development… the ‘fried egg’ city, where railways stretched the city’s perimeter in accelerated linear space-time corridors out into the landscape, resulting in a star shape… and the postmodern ‘scrambled egg city,’ where everything is distributed evenly in small granules or pavilions across the landscape in a continuous network.” (64)

:: City as an Egg - image via Archiable

A wide array of projects are included as examples.  Some are more obvious or oft-mentioned, such as the Parc de la Villette, Downsview, and Freshkills competitions, and also the East River Competition conducted by the Van Alen Institute.  There are some new ones, includingWest Market Square by West 8 (1994) which is a space owned, maintained and programmed by the city, but " which is also free at times to be occupied by local people of all ages, under the surveillance of cameras and local police.” (60) marking a new example of heterotropic space.  The New Town Competition entry from Koolhaas/OMA from 1987 is another precedent where the residential form is shaped by, in the words of Corner, "linear voids of nondevelopment." (60) hinting at the concept of privileged site over architectural form.


Other examples include the unbuilt Greenport Harborfront project in Long Island (1997), which is an example of  “the concept of ‘performative’ urbanism based on preparing the setting for programmed and unprogrammed activities on common land.” (59) which is reflective of some of the later work from Field Operations as well.  A built example of the idea, in a more architectural and site scale context, is the sculptural Osaka Ocean Liner Terminal by FOA, where the architects "turn the concept of the green roof into a dynamic, flowing, baroque parkland setting… Pier and park, two previously separate urban morphologies, are hybridized so as to become inseparable.” (65)

:: Yokahama Terminal - FOA - image via Matt Kingstreet

Shane references an even more extensive list of references, which provide some great historical precedents.   Many of these cover basic historical urbanism, such as the work of Kostof (The City Shaped, The City Assembled), history of the Western/US landscape by Slater and Conzen, and early 20th century writings on garden cities from Howard and regionalism, specifically 'Cities in Evolution' by Patrick Geddes from 1915.  Other writings include later writings of Lynch, Rowe, as well as McHarg's 'Design with Nature' and shifts to more contemporary discussions from Harvey and Soja for exploration of postmodern urbanism, writings from Guy Debord 'The Society of the Spectacle' from 1995 and the explorations by Garreau of the edge-city phenomenon from 1991.

::  Tyson's Corner Edge City

A fundamental aspect discussed by Shane is the connection to landscape ecology, specifically the work of Forman (Landscape Mosaics) and Forman & Godron (Landscape Ecology) and mentioning that its strength "is the consideration of the geographical landscape and the ecological cause-effect network in the landscape.”(61)  The connections of landscape ecology and its roots in Europe are important due to the differing relations between nature and culture (rather than just dealing with landscape sans humans).  As Shane elaborates:

"European land management principles merged with post-Darwinian research on island biogeography and diversity to create a systematic methodology for studying ecological flows, local biospheres, and plant and species migrations conditioned by shifting climatic and environmental factors (including human settlements.” (61)

Finally, the essays captures some of the more recent writings tied closely to LU theory, mentioning 'Stalking Detroit' (2001), 'Mississippi Floods' by Mathur & da Cunha (2000), 'Reclaiming the American West' by Berger (2002), 'Sub-urbanism and the Art of Memory' by Marot (2003), and 'Recovering Landscape' edited by Corner and published in 1999 - which i would consider a close precedent to the currrent discussion.  Stalking Detroit is also an important contribution, offering essays by Waldheim and Corner and provides context, within the prominent shrinking city model of Detroit for a changing city typology.  "After Ford' by Schumacher and Rogner, “provides a most convincing explanation for the relation between modern urbanism and Fordist economic imperatives, as well as the surreal spectacle of decay and abandonment found today in many North American industrial cities.” (57)

:: Shrinking Detroit - image via VIA Architecture

The work in Stalking Detroit, although unbuilt, provides some examples of potential operational methods of landscape urbanism.  One project discussed was Waldheim's 'Decamping Detroit', which illustrates a four stage process for recolonization of space in the shrinking city, including "Dislocation (disconnection of services); erasure (demolition and jumpstarting the native landscape ecology by dropping appropriate seeds from the air ); absorption (ecological reconstitution of part of the Zone with woods, marshes, and streams); and infiltration (the recolonization of the landscape with heteropic, villagelike enclaves.” (59)

 :: Decamping Detroit (Waldheim) - image via detroit disurbanism project

This context of deindustrialization and surburban sprawl is a consistent theme, moving away by necessity from the modernist planning ideology and including a different reading of the city, focus on urban morphology, activated with new strains of thinking from landscape ecology with a goal, as explained by Shane:  “A determination not to accept the readymade formulas of urban design, whether ‘New Urbanist’ or ‘generic’ urbanist megaforms a la Koolhaas.” (64)  The key this is a reversal of normal processes, which "opens the way for a new hybrid urbanism, with dense clusters of activity and the reconstitution of the natural ecology, starting a more ecologically balanced, inner-city urban form in the void.”(59)

Check out as well a longer version of this article from the Harvard Design Magazine (pdf) and I would highly recommend 'Recombinant Urbanism' from 2005 for an exhaustive study of urban modelling processes.