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The 15th International Garden Festival | Grand-Métis, Canada

Pink Punch | Nicholas Croft & Michaela MacLeod, USA | Image Credit Louise Tanguay

Recently, the 15th edition of the International Garden Festival opened presenting 22 contemporary gardens at Les Jardins de Métis / Reford Gardens. Imagined by sixty-five designers from Seoul, Santiago de Compostela, New York, Philadelphia, Basel, Amsterdam, Paris and Montreal, these installations invite visitors to enter and contemplate new ways of seeing the landscape and the world.

Continue reading The 15th International Garden Festival | Grand-Métis, Canada

This Week In Landscape | 1 June 2014 | News & Upcoming Events

Construction began this week on Phase 2 of the Chicago Riverwalk | Credit ©Sasaki

Chicago Riverwalk Construction Underway | Sasaki
Phase 2 construction for our Chicago Riverwalk project is currently underway between State Street and La Salle Street.

Celebration marks reopening of Pittsburgh’s Mellon Square | Diana Nelson Jones | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Mellon Square reopens after restoration finishes of the plaza originally designed by Landscape architects Simonds and Simonds and architects Mitchell and Ritchey.

Finding Space for the Living at a Memorial | New York Times | Michael Kimmelman
Michael Kimmelman critiques the 9/11 Memorial “The place doesn’t feel like New York. It feels like a swath of the National Mall plunked in downtown Manhattan…”

Sue Illman celebrates ‘exciting two years’ in President’s Review | Landscape Institute
“Sue Illman introduces her President’s Review in the latest issue of Landscape by saying, ‘This has been an exciting two years for the Landscape Institute and also a great period for public appreciation of landscape architecture in general.’”

ReSITE festival is gearing up | Prague Post
On June 19-20, the reSITE festival and professional conference, which will take place in the new spaces of Forum Karlín in Prague, will offer countless possibilities for addressing these phenomena. The organizers have again managed to attract from around the world outstanding speakers who will share their experience not only at the conference, but also in the course of several concurrent workshops.

Sydney needs a plan for future population | SBS
“New figures predict Sydney’s population will be six million by 2031, so action needs to be taken now says Minister for Planning Pru Goward.”

Continue reading This Week In Landscape | 1 June 2014 | News & Upcoming Events

Tree Houses Project | Hot Springs Arkansas | The Portico Group

T-GarvanWoodlandGardens-Towers_05-15-2013

The Tree Houses Project, designed by The Portico Group, represents a plan to provide children and their families with unique experiences at the Evans Children’s Adventure Garden within Garvan Woodland Gardens in Hot Springs, AR. The conceptual organizational approach for new encounter stations will encourage kids to “Look, Find and Discover that the Woods are Alive!”

Continue reading Tree Houses Project | Hot Springs Arkansas | The Portico Group

Work commences on carbon-zero community park and school: Grontmij

Grontmij announced that work has commenced on the Crouch Hill Park and Ashmount Primary School development, in the London Borough of Islington.

The Crouch Hill development is a highly sensitive scheme and comprises Metropolitan Open Land, a Site of Metropolitan Significance for Nature Conservation and a local park. The site is adjacent to the Parkland Walk, a disused railway and a popular North London walking route between Finsbury Park and Highgate.

A new central green space will give the public access to out-of-hours community activities in the school including, a shared games court. New paths will link local housing and the Parkland Walk to attract visitors and improve safety. The whole site will become more permeable and accessible, with easy-access routes for wheelchairs, young children and parents with pushchairs. Paths through existing trees are designed as raised boardwalks, to ‘tread lightly’ through the site and a sensitive lighting strategy will improve community safety in key areas, while respecting bat foraging corridors.

Continue reading Work commences on carbon-zero community park and school: Grontmij

UNStudio win Beijing Creative Zone competition

UNStudio has been awarded 1st prize in the recent competition for the masterplan of the Beijing River Creative Zone, located in Yanqing, 200km from Beijing. From the nine projects presented (Foster+Partners (UK), Zaha Hadid (UK), Atelier d’Architecture Christian de Portzamparc (FR), AS. Architecture-Studio (FR), Beijing Tsinghua Urban Planning &Design Institute (CN), Beijing Institute of Architectural Design (CN), NPS (US) and KCAP (NL)), UNStudio’s design was selected as the winning entry.

The Beijing Creative Zone represents the urban typology needed for a new open learning environment in ‘Urbanity in Nature’. The design for the Creative Zone encompasses compression on a dual scale; the greenbelt and the urban fabric. The urban fabric of the edge is formed by the interweaving of two distinct yet highly interconnected strips. In the creation of an Architectural Park, ateliers and pavilions are organised on the basis of the Chinese garden’s emphasis of “一步一景” (“One View Per Step”).. The parkland becomes an international showcase of experimental projects and emerging design practices. By implementing the four clusters of a products life cycle ‘Think, Develop, Produce and Sell’ as a continuous loop of activity, one creates a platform for all steps of the process towards product sales.

[SOURCE: UNStudio]