Blog

THE LANDSCAPE CHANGES OVER TIME…….. When a landscape design is initially installed, is is sometimes hard for the homeowner to envision how it will drastically change over time. Trees and shrubs will grow, stone and other hardscape items will weather and new shade patterns will be introduced by the larger trees. In this Lexington Hills Project (Eagle, Idaho), large amounts of Table Rock Sandstone was used to build a  privacy wall / water feature for a new sunken patio. Initially the stone was bright, but over time it weathered, and the plants started to soften the stone. This project was installed by Franz Witte Landscape in 2004 with the shade structured being phased in 2005. The following pictures were taken right after the installation in 2004 and in 2011 to show how the land...Read More

Tonight is my fifth and final night here in Seattle. Early tomorrow morning we will depart for Enumclaw and begin to make our way towards Washington, D.C. My time in the west coast city has been short lived but I can definitely say that I have learned a lot and taken in even more. It is so hard sometimes to sit back and enjoy one’s surroundings but I believe that is something that a landscape architect has to be able to do best. In this profession one truly has to be a jack-of-all-trades and be able to take everything into account, and sometimes is starts in the places that people see everyday but just don’t know how to look at it. The main difference that I can point out between Seattle and the midwest is the way that roadways are constructed. Washington obviously has a lot mo...Read More

  The aim of the competition is to promote discussion and research through which to generate insights and visions, ideas and proposals that help us envisage what the city and the habitat of the 21st century will be like. The competition is open to architects, engineers, planners, designers and artists who want to contribute to progress in making the world more habitable by developing a proposal capable of responding to emerging challenges in areas such as ecology, information technology, architecture, and urban planning, with the purpose of balancing the impact real-time data collection might have on sensor-driven cities.   Via Arq4design  

As I flew over the rockies today I felt as if I was being teased with what I am going to be right in the middle of within the next couple weeks. The clouds would add to the suspense because the gaps between the very thick blanket would show bits and pieces of the snow-capped mountain tops. I was reminded of the Karesansui Sand and Stone Garden of Portland, Oregon. That garden was designed to be the mountain tops peaking over the clouds, a truly fantastic design. While the plane was making its decent I made the comparison in my mind to the same feeling as diving into a pool. Above and below the surface of cumulus is two totally different worlds, just as submerging one’s self in water. It was a great inspiration to an above and lower level design, I will for sure be taking this idea an...Read More

As the British government prepares to invest more than £400 billion in major infrastructure projects including High Speed 2, the building of new nuclear power stations and the creation of renewable energy plant, BIG LANDSCAPE 2020 looks to the future both for landscape schemes and for today’s students who as tomorrow’s professionals will be shaping that future. Starting on Friday evening with seminars and a reception, the programme on Saturday looks at a wide range of themes affecting students over the next twenty years.   Speakers include John Hopkins from the Olympic Development Authority who commissioned the soon-to-be-completed Olympic Park. Sunday is devoted to a street-wide event in conjunction with Living Streets. The conference is open to all students and  is an excelle...Read More

http://www.landreader.com/2011/04/17/thomas-church-remembering-influence-career/

This week was busier than I would have liked, what with tax day and Portal 2.  I did want to give you a quick progress update however.  I tweaked some of the major areas in my deck and public turf area, refining shapes, and moving the parking slightly.  The combination of the changes create spaces that are more vibrant, draw your eye towards the areas you want to look, and have good spaces created for gardening and herbs (Sea Foam Green).   I then set about working on the back yard area.  I knew I wanted a path leading out to my private space and to the river edge.  I also wanted to include screening and a place for flood water to be cleaned, infiltrated, or at least slowed down.  I also wanted it to be something visually striking.  I have created a raised decking path and small deck area,...Read More

Now that I have a site and a client, the first thing to do is to walk the site, and create a site analysis based on what the client needs and what the site and borrowed landscape provides.  My first cut at the site analysis stayed at a large scale and was somewhat bold. This analysis was made with Sharpies on a trace sheet laid over the base map, and serves as a first step to get the big issues onto the page.  I then stepped down to a more detailed analysis using a wacom tablet on my PC.  This allowed me to work on top of both the base map, satellite photo, and my first analysis map, all with variable opacity, while still having the control/feel of a pen. This analysis map is what I used for my conceptual design phase on a site scale.    This would still be for internal use in general, and...Read More

Recently, as I have continued my search for full-time employment, I’ve forced myself to take another look at myself in terms of what I can do to improve my chances in the hyper-competitive job market of today.  Without boring you with the full list, I’ll just say that I figured out a way to kill two birds with one stone. Starting today, I am going to run my own design studios.  I’m going to run it similar to how some of my MLA studios were.  I have 6 weeks to go from site visit to presentation.  The presentation style will vary with the project, from Competition Boards to small presentations for home owners.  I will always assume an unlimited budget.  If there is interest, I may ask readers to act as clients, giving the basic programmatic desires, etc.  I’ll be maki...Read More

Yuanye or The Craft Of Garden is a great treatise on gardening done by Ji Cheng during the late Ming Dynasty around 1631. It is the first monograph dedicated to landscape architecture in the world. Yuanye is composed by two Chinese characters, they are “Yuan” and “ye” and each means gardening and cultivate or educate. Combining them together, Yuanye means cultivating people to design and build gardens. Instead of giving step-by-step instructions, Ji Cheng summarized the Chinese gardening tradition. The author, Ji Cheng was a professional gardener at that time, but he lived at a time when poor scholars had to entertain the upper higher cultivated class to get their appreciations and patronage for a living. As a result  this book is written in an highly archaic style with a great many of cla...Read More

A trend appearing across the nation in cities big and small is the development or redevelopment of downtowns. These areas are gaining clout as a kind of “blank canvas”, ready to be rejuvenated in the name of economic development. They are also gaining popularity amongst luxury loft and condo developers, who are rapidly buying up old office buildings and warehouses in the downtowns of some of North America’s biggest cities. But while this recent revival of interest in often ignored and abandoned city centers is providing needed economic growth for their cities, the low-income residents of this formerly-unwanted real estate are seeing rents shoot far out of their price range. Gentrification has pushed thousands of downtown residents out of their low-rent housing, such as ol...Read More

What is Landscape Infrastructure? What types of infrastructure will this book delve into? Will it extend beyond tired conversations on sustainable water management?   Those were my initial questions, or perhaps even skepticisms, when I picked up this book. I was happy to find that the well written, succinct prose of the Preface by Gerdo Aquino quickly answered those questions and in fact piqued my interest further to see exactly what ideas would be explored through this book.   The authors’ intention is clear:   ‘…to question the ongoing viability of these single-purpose corridors by proposing that a multifunctional approach is more in tune with contemporary society”. In order to achieve the goals set out, a book of topical essays exploring the different principles, which they define as La...Read More