Blog

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHS) Chelsea Flower Show. At LAN we are extremely excited to have secured a press pass for this prestigious event. On Monday the 20th of May I shall be roving ‘back stage’ getting all the top stories and gossip about the show prior to the doors opening to guests on Tuesday. But what can we look forward to this year, and how has the show changed in its long history? Origins There has been an RHS flower show on the grounds of the Royal Hospital at Chelsea for 100 years, but the roots of the show date back even further to 1862. Originally called the ‘Great Spring Show’, the RHS originally held their flower show in their own gardens at Kensington. After the RHS Kensington garden was closed...Read More

The Lo Schiavo Center for Science & Innovation at the University of San Francisco officially broke ground in December of 2010 and is scheduled to open in fall of 2013.  Designed by NBBJ, the objective was to create a “New Campus Heart” that “augments the campus’ spirit of intellectual curiosity and social engagement” while encouraging strong interdisciplinary discourse and connections within the community.   The new CSI building will dramatically transform the campus core and create a vibrant hub of activity and collaboration by incorporating a new plaza and 15,000 square feet of public gathering spaces.  Plans also include a living roof and bio pond as well as restoring green space and native plantings in the adjacent Harney Plaza.     Check out the fly-t...Read More

We review Freehand Drawing & Discovery by Jame Richards. Hand drawing vs. Digital Technology – James Richards says “is not either/ or but both/and “ When I received Freehand Drawing and Discovery I had no idea how it would change my perspective and understanding of the skills we acquire as designers and the way they can influence our development as professionals on a daily basis. This book is an astonishing guide to learning a new language of expression and relationship to the surrounding world of freehand drawing! Freehand Drawing & Discovery Who is the book for? If you have anything to do with design, architecture or landscape architecture, and you don’t use sketching in your design routine this book is for you! I would say it is absolutely compulsory for students, but also...Read More

Are you a design or planning student seeking to attend a dynamic conference, but don’t know where to begin? Look no further – LABash is the quintessential adventure! Having attended three times in my undergraduate years I assure you that it’s a rewarding experience. Still uncertain? That is fair, but why would you miss three invigorating, fun-filled days of guest speakers, workshops, design charrettes, expos, and did I mention social events! I had the pleasure of interviewing the LABash 2014 Committee Chair, Jake Wievel, and it appears that next year’s attendees are in store for a treat at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. When did LABash originate, can you speak about its history?  LABash began as a student run conference founded by three landscape architecture students from the ...Read More

We have all seen the girdling effects that can be caused by abandoned tree stakes and ties, metal clamps, string lights, and bike locks.  (If you haven’t yet, look around.)  They are not only an eye-sore, they cause girdling and can weaken the integrity of the tree.  That is where Rob Birdsong’s mission began.  He noticed an old chain on the trunk of a Japanese Zelkova on his block in Brooklyn and decided to do something about it.  He borrowed a bolt cutter from his local hardware store and, with the help of a friend, he cut it off.  The Treedom Project was born. Birdsong and his small team of six arborists and carpenters set out on a quest to liberate street trees from their chains, literally, with the hope of raising awareness of the importance of protecting the urban forest....Read More

In Part One of this series we covered the surface of what big data is and its role in our daily lives. Part Two will start to look more closely at big data and its plethora of applications, most notably in the world of design. The above image is a design being printed on a 3D printer at Autodesk Gallery Design Night. An example of the design process becoming increasingly digital.  What do the cash register at the local grocery store, your friendly ATM machine, and your smart phone have in common, besides being electronic (and nonexistent as little as 20 years ago)? They are collectors of big data–and they usually do it without you even knowing. This data increasingly benefits the process of design. Design, from product design to landscape architecture, is quickly becoming a digital e...Read More

I’ve got networking on the brain.  Despite increasingly digital interfacing, personal connections still rule, so here we are.  Of course, everyone uses the word “networking,” and whether you’re looking for work or not, having a network to leverage – for whatever – is a very good thing. Last post, I mentioned the contact cards that emerging professionals were handing around at ASLA.  I was so impressed with the savvy students and recent grads I met!  People at ASLA’s national conference (waaay back last fall) were chatting in the lines for coffee, beer, books, vendor tables, and in the lecture halls. Everywhere you looked were people who were likely interested in something you liked too.  Anywhere at a conference you can be standing near someone, re...Read More

Planting: A New Perspective, Piet Oudolf and Dr. Noel Kingsbury  The famous Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf and the designer and writer Dr. Noel Kingsbury have created this wonderful and inspiring book, Planting: A New Perspective, which includes a number of breathtaking pictures of Oudolf’s gardens, highly integrated plant schemes, and useful tables and plant charts. The book is easy to follow and intriguing–in exactly the same way Oudolf’s spectacular gardens are. It is essential reading for anyone interested in creating rich gardens that support biodiversity and lure with beauty. Oudolf is famous for his unique artistic skills in garden designing. He covers a wide range of gardens in the book, from private yards to wide public spaces. Among his projects are the High Line in New ...Read More

  In recent years, Esri, publishers of the ArcGIS suite of software, has been promoting a concept called geodesign in an attempt to meld the geographic disciplines withe the design disciplines. So far, the results have been mixed, at least in terms of how well it has caught on. While it has yielded a certain amount of attention in the design disciplines, many have held that geodesign is simply repackaging existing ideas and practices and is not offering anything new.   So is geodesign something new or is it simply old wine in a new bottle? The answer, according to two recent books published by Esri Press, is a little of both. Shannon McElvaney’s Geodesign is something of a “best practices” book that provides an overview of some recent/cutting edge projects in which Arc software has been us...Read More

View of entry gardens leading up to the rock fortress of Sigiriya, Sri Lanka. Photo by Barnard Gagnon. Source: Wikipedia. Image used under the GNU Free Documentation License. In 2003, I visited Sigiriya while on a field study abroad in grad school. At the time, I was struck by the formal similarities between it and the Renaissance gardens I was learning about in landscape history classes, despite Sigiriya having been built more than a millennium earlier. I was also struck by the apparent ingenuity and technical ability of these ancient builders in shaping the land and hydrologic systems. The gardens not only feature fountains that function to this day, but the surrounding area, which is located on the highlands in the central part of the island, features ancient aqueducts used to capture w...Read More

“If architecture is our playground, its sizes and openness are the limits we want to overcome. Seen from outside and outwards, architecture acquires multiple meanings.” This is the main aim of this year’s Zilele Arhitecturii — or Architecture Days — organized by the Architect’s Student Association in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The event takes place May 15-18 and encompasses exhibitions, workshops, conferences, and more. What makes ZA 2013 unique is the venue: an organically flowing, wooden pavilion constructed by the architecture students themselves. Set in the heart of the historic city center, the four days are about “an architecture that approaches uncomfortable topics about close social architecture, about subtle interventions and depth studied proposals.” ZA 2013 will hold six ...Read More

Were it not for its honor award in the 2012 ASLA General Design Awards, I might not have ever heard of the Quarry Garden, much less been willing to make the trip out to visit its rather remote location in Songjiang District–it took me over two hours on public transportation to get there from Pudong (foreign tourists are thus a rare sight here)–but I’m so glad that I did. The Quarry Garden, as well as the surrounding sights in Chenshan Botanical Garden, are highlights in my trip to Shanghai. The Chenshan Botanical Garden is the largest botanical garden in Shanghai and, in addition to the famous Quarry Garden, it also impressively boasts 26 themed gardens, over 9,000 different species of plants and flowers, and beautifully integrates research, education, and landscape appre...Read More