The Original Green is all about architecture and urbanism. But it’s also about reflection, living, inspiration, and delight. We can achieve sustainable living only when we “want to” or “love to” instead of feeling that we “have to” or “ought to” balance the needs of our society, economy and environment. 

Miami architect Steve Mouzon’s new book looks carefully at the building blocks of…

Our firm, Craig Design Group, Inc. has been selected to design the Site Plan and Lanscape Plan for the Extreme Makeover Home Edition which is coming to Chattanooga Tennessee.

We have been feverishly designing the project and all the ammenities in secrecy until the press release yesterday, and today our phone is ringing off the hook with volunteers.

This should be a fun project.  You can check us out on our website at…

A few weeks ago I posted a blog asking for critiques on some 3D models components I had made.  I posted it on IGN, Wordpress, and Land8Lounge.  The response was fairly low, and I tried posting it as a…

Land8 will be there....will you?

It is getting close to that time of the year again when landscape architecture students from across the globe throw down their pencils and eraser shields (do…

 …

In the economic development world, we’re always trying to grow our economic base. And by that we mean goods and services that we export, not just what we use in our local markets. That might include university services, tourism, and any products that we pack and ship, or regional retail that we steal from our neighbors.



We see economic development in conventional terms, and we seek only to perpetuate the model, adding more of the same to the end of the chain. Another monkey from the…

Today marks the first day of my last semester of Design School. Several things went through my head upon entering today they were: will I ever find a job? (I have since spent the past two hours looking for jobs in both landscape architecture and related fields where I believe I have skills such as GIS, planning, stormwater, and the environment. The other issue that was weighing on my mind is my capstone project. My masters capstone project is on the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. I gathered a…

The new requirements for anyone working on obtaining your LEED-AP have gotten tougher.  I have been approached by many colleagues looking for project work that involves a LEED project with specific tasks.  Are you one of those people? 

Please post your experiences, your needs for sustainable landscape design, and if you would like to work on a LEED project. 

The second Land8 New York Get Together at Gossip Bar & Restaurant on Thursday, 1/13 was a great success - huge thanks to Henry Cohen for organizing the event! Good conversation and networking were afoot, plus lots of women named Amy showed up so fun was had all around. We are planning to do this on a bi-monthly basis, with the next one in March. See pics below and stay tuned to the…

PlaceShakers takes a very literal step off our comfortably beaten paths of urban design, zoning reform and community resiliency today to focus on, as the software industry calls it, the “end-user experience.” Despite, or perhaps because of, having no vocational connection to placemaking at all, explorer / spelunker / observer John Watts offers up some poignant reminders of why our work towards…

I'd like to share news of a new design we've just finished. We've just poured our first bronze castings of the bird bath sundial www.birdbathsundial.com, based on our first piece, the Porter Garden Telescope. www.gardentelescopes.com.  The defining feature of the bird bath is that it can customized for any client, for newlyweds, a property, a memorial, etc. 

As Landscape Architects are best…

The much awaited redesign of LAM is finally here.  This is the first major redesign in 15 years and they are marking the occasion by offering access to its online version…

The first step in picking what components you want in your computer, whether you are building a custom setup, or buying one off the shelf, is looking at what software you expect to use.  I was looking for a rig that would work for Photoshop, AutoCAD, SketchUp, Thea Render (3D-Rendering Engine), and of course, games from time to time.  The next thing is to figure out what each one of these software packages rely on most heavily- Processor, RAM, or Graphics…

What happens when we've had all the human connection we can stand? Scott Doyon explores our dual nature and suggests the next wave of urban developers ignore the equally rewarding need for retreat at their peril.

"To understand the challenges ahead of us, it’s necessary to take a look back at why we fled the cities to begin with. There’s little argument that we were served up all kinds of Federally-driven inducements to do so—summarized beautifully in…

Today’s Therapeutic Landscapes Network Blog guest post is by Amy Lindemuth, author of “Beyond the Bars: Landscapes for Health and Healing in Corrections,” a chapter in the forthcoming…

Landscape Architecture Publications you should have or at least check out:…

Winner of the UK Landscape Award, Durham Heritage Coast is now on its way to Europe with a chance of becoming European Landscape of the Year 2011.  Below is a video of the winning entry:

In…

Here is a URL for all of you looking for a "job."

Did you Know? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY

You will find this interesting and/or disheartening. To me it looks like opportunity is at…