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Short Youtube videos have to be one of modern day life’s little perks, information at your fingertips, instant gratification and if you’re lucky you may just discover something! However if we’re being totally honest, how often are we watching these short flashes of entertainment out of procrastination as opposed to learning something? We’ve complied a list of Youtube’s finest videos that will keep the landscape architect inside you entertained without the guilt of procrastination! 1. Tiger Stone Road Paving Machine  You can’t help but look at this video and be in awe of the sheer awesomeness of it’s engineering prowess, how many countless hours would it save, how much back breaking labor could be avoided and how much faster would they get quality r...Read More

Aspire Public Art Lighting Project by Warren Langley Public art is an essential ingredient in creating a city’s built environment. It can often be inspirational and joyous — or sometimes just downright annoying and painful to look at. Regardless, public art should make us stop, or at least slow down, and take in our surroundings. But most importantly, the pieces should make us think. Public art can provide a design narrative and promote a range of educational, environmental, and social messages that would otherwise go unnoticed by the visually inept. Best of all, it’s free to view! No tickets, no queuing, and no screaming kids (not as many, anyway). Sydney’s public art scene is a bit of a mixed bag, with its sometimes-dire installations attracting all kinds of criticism. One permanen...Read More

We always have a blast with our weekly edition of Sketchy Saturday, we love getting to know you all on another level and offering a platform to the world for you to express your talent and help get your work the recognition it deserves. Well done to all of those who made it into the top 10 this week, with so many entries and so much incredible drawing skills out there, this is no easy feat. Thank you so much for making Sketchy Saturday what it is, here’s this week’s top 10! 10. by Kevin O’Neil, independent artist “I am an independent artist in the U.S.A. This drawing is graphite pencil and represents a style that I have been developing over the last several years. It is inspired by an attempt to fuse traditional styles such as “Beaux-Arts ” and “Ar...Read More

Landscape architecture is a multidisciplinary field of study where if you are not provided with some basic guidelines, you might find yourself confused and frustrated. Working long hours on a computer can be fruitful, but you can sometimes get bogged down. Here are some tips to make life as a landscape architecture student a little bit easier! 1. Don’t forget this button combination: Ctrl + S Make it a ritual to save your work when finishing an element from a drawing, or hit Ctrl + S at set intervals, such as every 10 minutes. This habit will pay off many times over. A great life hack is to put a sticky note on the side of your computer with the reminder “Don’t forget Ctrl + S”. 2. Don’t depend only on the Internet for inspiration and references.  There are great landscape architectu...Read More

So far, we’ve visited Italy’s volcano-shaped green roofs and learned about Washington D.C.’s major push to green its barren rooftops. To round out this week’s green roof coverage, Filmtastic Fridays transports us to Vancouver, where a gorgeous six acre living roof grows overtop its Convention Center. Rich with native species, the lush green roof overlooks the Vancouver Harbor and mountainous surroundings. Landscape architect Bruce Hemstock takes us behind the scenes of the design process, public engagement, and habitat creation.  (Related Story: Top 5 Green Roofs from Switzerland Tour) From the description: “The roof of the Vancouver BC Convention Centre is covered with over 2.5 hectares (6 acres) of native grassland. Usually closed to the public, we were able...Read More

I remember the freedom I felt when I first learned to swing and the exhilaration I experienced when my stomach was tickled flying skyward with my friends.  We would often launch ourselves, then run to the monkey bars to race through an obstacle course we created for ourselves.  We would swing and laugh for hours.  It was imaginative, fun, and creative.  I never assumed that the availability of safe play equipment was a luxury or even a privilege.  Play was simply a part of being a kid – our primary occupation. Remember those days? Allow me to introduce you to Michael Aguas and his latest project at Swings for Dreams – Landscape Architecture without Borders.  Swings for Dreams is a grassroots nonprofit that believes safe play should be accessible for kids worldwide. Unfortunatel...Read More

Designer Amir Schlezinger creates a stunning urban contemporary garden design. This 39-square-meter private garden is situated at the back of a terrace modern house near the Arsenal football stadium and Highbury Fields in north London, an incredibly dense urban area in the central part of the city. The owners, an Italian family, had recently moved in and wanted to modernize the outdoor space so that it was on par with the architecture of the house and their rich interior style of modern furniture and contemporary art. There was a great mutual understanding between the clients and myself right from the outset – I love walking into a space for the first time and leaving after a couple of hours encouraged by not only a clear vision of what needs to be done, but also the full support of an ins...Read More

AutoCAD is one of the core programs used by landscape architects when creating schemes; it lets us accurately draw on an infinite board. For me, learning CAD was on a trial-and-error basis, but certain tips (learned through the help of tutors and on my own) aided me in improving my CAD abilities. In this article, I look at a few of the CAD hacks I use and share what I find to be most important when creating a drawing. 1. Naming layers – shortcut LA Layers are the base of any CAD plan and are imperative to CAD drafting. Just as you should keep your desk organized when drawing, it is just as important to keep your virtual workspace organized through the naming of layers. Categorizing and naming layers into titles that you understand and can keep track of is vital when drawing, and will...Read More

Green roofs are sprouting all across North America, replacing bare rooftops with lush, environmentally friendly gardens. According to Green Roofs for Healthy Cities (GRHC), the green roof trend experienced a 10 percent growth rate in 2013. The green roof and wall industry association’s annual green roof survey showed Washington D.C. leading by a wide margin, in a trend that if continued, could dethrone Chicago’s title as the green roof capital of the United States. “We are pleased to see the continued expansion of the green roof market,” said GRHC founder & president Steven W. Peck, GRP in a press release. “The industry’s continued growth is fueled by the multiple public and private benefits green roofs bring, such as stormwater management, reducing the urban heat island, energy ...Read More

If someone were to ask me who is the best contemporary landscape architect, artist and ecologist – I would immediately reply, Steve Martino! His works caught my eye many years ago, when I bought my first book about gardens. For a long time his thinking was totally out of step with the landscape profession, he had to struggle to get projects built using native plants. Over the years he has gone from being a heretic to a hero without doing anything different: society and the profession finally came around to his point of view. When I first talked to Steve, his philosophy sounded so simple, almost too obvious. But isn’t this the value of any great work of art? Here are just a few fragments of our conversations on sustainability, his style and design approach: On sustainability In order ...Read More

Last week, London designer Thomas Heatherwick revealed an extraordinary design vision for a new urban park in Abu Dhabi, United Emirates. Located on the site of a former city park, the new design has been almost three years in the making. Called “Al Fayah”, the shaded and almost entirely covered greenway was commissioned by the Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation, a local non-profit group.    Confronted with the challenge of constructing a green, oasis-like park in a desert climate, Heatherwick decided to embrace the vernacular topology of a cracked desert floor, setting the park’s green space 20 meters (65 feet) underneath a series of fractal-shaped roof structures supported by large columns.  “The project evolved as a series of cracked pieces of the desert sur...Read More

The City-County Building (CCB) Plaza Design Competition is accepting stage one submissions until May 28, 2014. Please follow this link to download the complete briefing booklet. Opportunity The Central Indiana Community Foundation (sponsor), Indianapolis-Marion County Building Authority (facilitator), and the City of Indianapolis (advisor) are proud to announce the CCB Plaza Design Competition. In the wake of this tremendous opportunity, the CCB Plaza Design Competition invites interdisciplinary teams from around the globe to submit their ideas, which if selected, would be implemented on an existing 1.94 acre (0.79 hectare) open space on the City-County Building property in downtown Indianapolis (200 East Washington Street). Prize money The design team whose winning design is selected will...Read More