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The Environmental Design Research Association recently announced the winners of its 16th annual Great Places Award. This year, six exemplary projects in landscape architecture, architecture, planning, and urban design were recognized for their interdisciplinary approach blending human-centered and sustainable design with environmental research and expertise. The winners of the 2014 Great Places Awards were displayed at EDRA’s recently held 45th annual conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. Image credit: Claude Cormier et Associés “Sugar Beach” by Claude Cormier et Associés | Toronto, Canada 2014 Place Design Award Landscape architecture firm Claude Cormier et Associés transformed a former desolate parking lot into Sugar Beach, a thriving sugar-themed park. Located on the e...Read More

Designer Amir Schlezinger creates a stylish garden at Regent’s Park. When I first arrived to look at the space, the living room had just been extended into the garden by the client, creating an opportunity to connect the two spaces and adding a roof terrace on top. The site was a dark dumping yard, with large surrounding trees overhanging, sloping topography and an ugly fence all around. As the interior was in place when I first visited, I was able to take inspiration from a few key elements that led to quite an instinctive response. The first idea was to recreate the shape of the indoor fireplace with 2 benches featuring a void. The benches are a focal point from the living space and offer ambient lighting. The second feature is the granite waterfall, which is offset to the right si...Read More

LAN writer Lisa Tierney went to Bloom 2014 to find out what all the fuss was about. This past bank holiday weekend, Dublin’s Phoenix Park hosted the 8th Annual Bloom Festival. It brought huge crowds, and I was lucky enough to experience the elusive Irish summer during the day I attended. It housed beautiful planting schemes with a stunning display of Irish crafts alongside. It was an incredible gathering for plant enthusiasts and an interesting day out for families. The site was filled with show gardens, food, Irish craft stands, and family favorites, all balanced to create an ideal atmosphere. The gardens were separated into four categories — concepts, large gardens, medium gardens, and small gardens. This gave different types of designers a chance to enter and gave the younger desi...Read More

Drawing is a great tool for recording and analyzing spaces. Sometimes such a drawing also needs to capture the depth of space. I’m going to show you some tricks that will help you achieve this in a drawing. As usual, I begin the drawing with an outline of all the elements in the image. In a many layered drawing like this, it is important to distinguish between front and back layers for the sake of understanding the image. By graphically differentiating the layers we create the illusion of depth. One way of achieving this is to add more textures and detail up front and reduce them in more distant layers. I draw roof tiles on the front buildings, windows, tree branches and other detail such as texture of the raised within the gardens. In the back layers, I use less and less detail, and...Read More

TED has certainly been an inspirational platform for anybody looking for insights into how do we things, live and develop the world around us, delving into psychology, scientific breakthroughs, pioneering thinking and much much more. With so many topics covered TED was bound to touch on landscape architecture related topics, such as cities, biodiversity, social integration and world of design. We’ve filtered through the impressive, stimulating and always intriguing world of TED to bring you 9 Unmissable TED talks for Landscape Architects; of course we don’t expect you to watch all of these TED talks at once, so take our LAN 9 Day TED Challenge and watch one a day for the next 9 days; easy, entertaining and you may even be inspired! 1. Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Ce...Read More

Landscape architecture is an amazing profession, covering the design, specification, and management of the built environment, as well as the analysis, preservation, and enhancement of the natural environment. Here we look at nine interesting facts about landscape architecture that you might not know. 1. Origin of Landscape Architecture Many people credit the likes of Capability Brown (1716-1783) and Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) as being the “godfathers” of landscape architecture. But it is in fact a little known Scotsman by the name of Gilbert Laing Meason who first coined the term “landscape architecture” in his little-known 1828 book “Landscape Architecture of the Great Painters of Italy”. Thankfully, this is now available on Google Books, for all to read. 2. Origin of the Word “Lan...Read More

It’s time for another one of our famous Sketchy Saturdays, where we round up all the sketches you send into us and select what we feel are the top 10. We always try to keep it as fair as possible however we are getting to a point now where we have some artists featuring regularly, really cementing their place in the Sketchy Saturday hall of fame! This week we had some really unique styles with a special contribution all the way from Brazil. Enjoy this week’s top 10! 10. by Maria Rochowiak, studying landscape architecture in Agricultural University of Kraków ” I was inspired by my neighbourhood. There is a big forest near by the river Wisła, where there are a lot of ponds. This place is called Nazieleńce and is a protected area. I like very much to take photos and do drawi...Read More

The Cultural Landscape Foundation just launched their newest Pioneers of American Landscape Design video oral history project featuring Richard Haag, one of the nation’s most important Postwar landscape architects. Now in its 11th installment, TCLF’s ongoing Pioneers series documents and preserves first-hand information from leading landscape architects such as Cornelia Hahn Oberlander and Laurie Olin. The Pioneer’s latest oral history volume consists of approximately 25 bite-sized video clips that chronicle Haag’s life and career from his founding of University of Washington’s landscape architecture department in the late 1950s to the present day. The clips are organized under the themes of biography, design, and projects.  (Related Article: TCLF Spotlights Life and Work of La...Read More

Here is the final part of the three part series on How to Design a Landscape for Extreme Workouts. This time, we are going to explore the exciting world of bouldering. We have gathered a number of examples from around the world to demonstrate that designing for bouldering can have many aesthetic and physical benefits for our landscapes. Whether you are interested in the sport or not, you are going to want to see what we have lined up for you! What is bouldering? Bouldering is a form of climbing that is done without the use of harnesses. Climbing is an art that starts from an early stage for many human beings — children love to climb anything, from trees to rocks to walls! However, as we get older, our participation in what was once a natural desire is often superseded by the needs an...Read More

SWA Group design Sands Bethwork at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA. We have seen how landscape design can create an oasis in the desert and how a temporal landscape installation can promote consciousness about the constant exploitation of the land. Landscape design can also be used in recovery. This type of project, such as the recovery of the Thames River, is responsible not only for the natural recovery of a land mass, river, or mountain, but also can be a catalyst to regenerate societies, economic markets, and social roles. Human activities can be harmful to the Earth; many times we have seen how places once occupied by factories or houses are abandoned and become sites without any living organism. The Sands Bethworks, a project consisting of a new casino, hotel, museum, and mixed-use reta...Read More

The Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground at Chelsea College of Art and Design Our modern cities desperately need great public spaces, which allow for large public gatherings; encourage people to meet, socializes, and participate in cultural life; and provide space for various public events. The Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London provides all this and more – a great design that enriches the area and creates a multifunctional, large space so badly needed in any city. Location The Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground is a 3,500-square-meter square adjacent on three sides to the buildings of Chelsea College of Art and Design and also open onto Atterbury Street. It is special in many ways: It is situated right in the center of London, in the very heart of Westm...Read More

Across the East River from Manhattan, Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park showcases impressive views of the iconic New York City skyline.  In addition to the sweeping views, the park also successfully demonstrates strategies for resiliency and aesthetic appeal in a complex urban environment. Although the project just opened last year, its reputation as a leading model of urban resiliency has already stretched far beyond NYC.  Hunter’s Point South from the north.  The elliptical lawn, with its flexible program, serves as the focus point of the park. Image credit: Albert Vecerka, Esto. Designed by Thomas Balsley Associates, Weiss/Manfredi, and ARUP, the 11-acre waterfront park in Queens was created as part of a much larger Hunter’s Point South redevelopment of an old industrial sector...Read More