Tags: landscape architecture

The aim of Dwell Magazine and Inhabitat’s recent ReBurbia design competition was to reimagine the American suburbs in the context of the current home foreclosure crisis and rising energy costs.  The competition’s cheeky winning entry posits the transformation of abandoned suburban mansions into wetlands and water purification systems for urban centers: the buildings become machines housing micro-ecosystems, and the front yards become micro-wetlands, providing habitat for wildlife. 

The Hudson River Park Trust has selected a winning design for its reimagining of Pier 57, near Chelsea on Manhattan’s west side.  LOT-EK‘s design makes use of disused shipping containers in the construction of a mixed-use community facility on the 375,000 square-foot pier. 

A recent history of relative marginalization by design and construction professions is being overturned, according to an article in Architectural Record, by landscape architecture’s ability to weave sustainability into the built environment.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of landscape architects is expected to increase 18% to 26% through 2014, faster than the average of all U.S.

A consortium of scientists is at work compiling a Global Digital Soil Properties Map–an up-to-date, spatially-referenced soil information tool that can communicate clearly across a range of users and technologies–with the support of an $18 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

The WRT/Marpillero Pollak-designed infrastructure and public space project that we wrote about in June has broken ground in Long Island City, Queens.

There are a handful of skate parks built from recycled materials these days, but generally, these massive concrete installations have been as environmentally friendly as golf courses.  The Ed Benedict Skate Park in Portland, Oregon is trying to revise that image by managing storm water run-off more responsibly, absorbing it through integrated ‘biofiltration islands’ that have been incorporated as design elements.

We really enjoyed last Friday’s tour of the green roof atop the Parks Department’s Five Borough Technical Services Complex.  The roof is gorgeous and inspiring, and it’s worth checking out our flickr photos (and videos) of the tour if you weren’t able to make it. 

For our Freshkills Park Talk two weeks back, Dr. Steven Handel shared insights into the emerging field of urban restoration ecology, which focuses on the challenge of bringing ecological diversity back to degraded lands like brownfields and landfills.  He discussed his research at the Freshkills Park site and others in the region and went on to describe how his expertise has informed the design of Orange County, CA’s Great Park.

Another constructed wetland system, this time at the Sidwell Friend’s School in Washington D.C.  The Wetland Machine by Andropogon Associates, Kieran Timberlake Associates and Natural Systems International incorporates two self-contained systems to recycle water, one for wastewater and one for stormwater. 

Urban Omnibus interviews designers Margie Ruddick, Sandro Marpillero and Linda Pollak about the Queens Plaza Bicycle and Pedestrian Landscape Improvement Project.  Some good discussion about the potential of the urban park, salvaging industrial history in the making of green spaces and the question of “How can something hard, urban and harsh operate ecologically?” 

The Hiriya landfill in Tel Aviv, a 2,000-acre site adjacent to the city’s airport, has a lot in common with the Freshkills Park site.  From 1952 to 1999, the landfill was Israel’s largest garbage disposal site, at one point receiving one third of the country’s waste. 

Our big thanks to Jerome Chou and Grace Tang from Field Operations for last Thursday’s Freshkills Park Talk on designing the park. Jerome delivered a great primer on landscape architecture (including a history in two slides!) and talked about the mandate for new model of practice given the nature of the site and the enormity of the project, both in space and time scale.

Just a reminder about this evening’s talk at the Staten Island Museum.  Jerome Chou and Grace Tang from landscape architecture and urban design firm Field Operations will be discussing the ideas behind the design of Freshkills Park and their work on upcoming projects. 

The Forum for Urban Design’s 21^stCentury Park & the Contemporary City conference ended yesterday.  Wednesday’s panel of brand-name landscape architects included James Corner, George Hargreaves, and Michael Van Valkenburgh and focused on the need to renew post-industrial landscapes and brownfields as opportunities for creating new parks.

The Freshkills Park Talks series continues this month with Jerome Chou and Grace Tang from landscape architecture and urban design firm Field Operations.  They’ll be discussing the ideas behind the Freshkills Park design and the process of transforming a landfill into a 21st century park, including their work on projects scheduled for construction over the next two years.

The MoMA is kicking off  a new exhibit today, “In Situ: Architecture and Landscape,” an exploration of the relationship between the built environment and its surrounding landscape.  Exhibited 20th century works of architecture and landscape will highlight  “spatial, social, and environmental aspects of human life and how they had profound reverberations in both architecture and landscape design.” 

This awesome 200-hectare public park in Duisburg Nord, Germany was transformed from a coal-fired steel production plant into a giant industrial playground. Latz + Partner’s design emphasized the value of memory: the goal was to create a space former mill workers could explore with their grandchildren and still be able to identify the form and function of the old machinery. 

A series of wowzers: the largest green roof in the US!  Which doubles as a driving range!  And sits atop a water treatment facility!  The $2.1 billion dollar Croton Water Filtration Plant in the Bronx was designed by  Grimshaw Architects, landscape architect Ken Smith and green roof gurus Rana Creek. 

Just found this on Where: a critical response to the Freshkills Park plan prompted by last November’s New York Magazine feature.  The thrust of the critique is that the Field Operations’ design of Freshkills Park will create a landscape that can be falsely “consumed without guilt:”

All the capping and veiling and the sealing tight are carried out not only to elude dealing with material run-off of the waste, but also to distract from what that waste means and implies and reflects (the architects and the city want to avoid any leaks, physical or moral).

Freshkills Park and landscape architect James Corner, principal of Field Operations, have been featured in a huge story in the current issue of New York Magazine. We’re happy to get this kind of exposure, though the story does seem to incorrectly suggest that when you visit the site you see a heap of trash.