JUST ARRIVED | Landscape | Spring Edition


The spring edition of Landscape – The Journal of the Landscape Institute has arrived in the WLA mailbox with some great articles covering the impact of heritage on park design, practical articles on spotting disease in trees and selection and nurturing trees. This edition also includes some great information on BIM for landscape architects, changes in UK legislation and some featured projects. Best of all was a great pull out poster(see below) of urban parks from 1839 to 2012. Another good read available from the Landscape Institute.

Landscape | Spring Edition
IMAGE CREDIT | WLA

This Week In Landscape | 6 January 2013

The first “This Week In Landscape” for 2013 with weekly links from around the world

Virginia Tech: Light pollution from virginiatech on Vimeo. Short Video (1min 48s).

Exploring Philadelphia’s New “Penn Park” | Sarah Kathleen Peck | landscape urbanism
“A few weeks ago, I had the chance to stop by Philadelphia and the University of Pennsvylania’s new Penn Park, a 23-acre waterfront park woven in between more than five different infrastructural systems and multiple-level land locks.”

Will Biomimicry Offer a Way Forward, Post-Sandy? | Sarah Amandolare | NY Times
“Kapok trees, honeycombs and mangroves are just a few of the naturally occurring features or processes that have informed the designs of buildings from Haiti to South Korea to New York City in recent years.”

ADAPTATION – How can cities be “climate-proofed”? | Eric Klinenberg | New Yorker
PLANNING about “climate-proofing.” For the past decade and a half, governments around the world have been investing in elaborate plans to “climate-proof” their cities

For America’s Cities, The Future can be found in the past | Manuel Cadrecha | ideas+buildings (Perkins Will)
“The city belongs to me long after I left and moved away, and it exists as my home, alive in my imagination.”

Have We Lost the Peace of Park Spaces? | Stephen Plunkard | Stantec is…
“My sense is that, today, we are rarely incorporating quiet spaces into our rural and urban parks. We often program active areas for tots, adolescents, teenagers and now adult/senior playgrounds, but we rarely seem to plan for quiet and contemplative spaces in public, secular venues.”

The Case for Walkability as an Economic Development Tool | Kaid Benfield | Atlantic Cities
“A terrific street redesign is assisting economic development in a southern California community that has suffered from changing economic conditions but is nevertheless seeing significant population growth…”

Top 12 Blogs from Landscape, Architecture and Planning Firms | Walter Communication
A few blogs of landscape architecture and architecture planning firms.

Guide to using Pinterest to curate images in design offices and schools


Pinterest is a great way to curate images for the office image library and projects. Starting is as easy as setting up a user account and then creating ‘Boards‘ which are like categories for your images so for landscape office you might start with ‘Boards’ like trees, plants, urban parks, squares, stone, and so on and then start collating images by uploading from your computer, phone or ‘pinning’ images from websites. You just need to remember that the images you are ‘pinning’ are public for everyone on the web to see which can be good for publicising your work or what your working on, but you might want to keep it in-house which I’ll cover later.

Continue reading Guide to using Pinterest to curate images in design offices and schools

This Week in Landscape – 22 April 2012

This weeks round-up of landscape news from around the web.

The new revolutionaries: Landscape architects reinvent urban parks | Rebecca Messner | Grist
The present generation of landscape architects is doing truly groundbreaking work, building parks like the High Line in places nobody expects them.

The Invention and Reinvention of the City: An Interview with Rem Koolhaas – World Policy Blog
“….creative flexibility allows us to design buildings that are more versatile, which can be successful in new economies and in new contexts.”

Sustainability saves landscape architecture | Brad Kane | Hartford Business
“The whole idea of sustainability is out there,” Tavella said. “Now it is cool to be green again.”

Park among the trees: Pittsburgh should require parking lots to plant trees — lots of trees | Thomas Hylton | Post Gazette
Nearly all the new trees have been planted in parks and along streets, the traditional location for shade trees in densely populated cities. But there’s another vitally important urban habitat for trees: parking lots.

Brooklyn Bridge Park Gets $40 Million Gift to Build Field House | Lisa W. Foderaro | NY Times
The field house is to be giant — 115,000 square feet near Pier 5, with a 200-meter inclined cycling track with up to 2,500 seats and a 22,000-square-foot infield that can accommodate other sports, including basketball, tennis, volleyball and gymnastics.

From LAND Reader (sister site to World Landscape Architecture)

Critics come out against Brooklyn Bridge Park

City Pulls Plug on Waste-to-Energy Site at Fresh Kills

Send us your links during the week to [email protected]

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This Week in Landscape | 5 February 2012

This weeks round-up of landscape news and views from around the web

Emotional Landscapes: Interview with landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh | Gideon Fink Shapiro | BMW Guggenheim Lab
Michael Van Valkenburgh interview about urban landscapes and what they can do

The architecture meltdown | Scott Timberg | Salon
With the economy still in the doldrums where does architecture go from here?

How should we design urban parks? | The Urban Portal | University of Chicago
A social science look at parks, the important differences and the costs of parks in cities.

Building green cities using public/private partnerships | Matthew Kahn | Christian Science Monitor
Public funding for environmentally friendly urban centers benefits private investors, too

Re-greening the Plateau |Michelle Lalonde | Montreal Gazette
Residents are fighting to save their street trees, even if it means removing parking spots

For more news during the week become a World Landscape Architecture fan on Facebook,  Join our LinkedIN group,  Follow us on Twitter @wlandscapearch or Weibo and then  Circle us on Google+
Send your links to [email protected]