Blog

Memorial to Victims of Violence, by Gaeta-Springall Arquitectos, Mexico City, Mexico. The power and importance of storytelling is a largely unrecognized force in landscape architecture. But it can be used to bring people together, learn about each other, and exchange experiences. Not all stories are easy to tell, however, and stories about violence might be some of the most unpleasant. Why would someone want to hear or tell stories about violence? How can such stories be told? Violence is one of the most important issues facing Mexico City, where it plays a role in Mexican society and in the daily life of the city’s people. Violence in the city has to be processed and discussed. Gaeta-Springall Arquitectos chose to address this theme by telling a story through a successful landscape design...Read More

Martin Luther King Park, by Atelier Jacqueline Osty & associés., in Paris, France. One of the most important things in landscape architecture design is making a clear assessment that can be accessible in the future. The method to get a successful result is to divide a proposal into parts in order to develop it stage by stage, providing a visualized target. Once the proposal is phased in years, it is easier for us to estimate the future situation as precisely as possible. Here is an excellent example that tells us how to process a project in phases and what we should take into account when designing in this way. Martin Luther King Park Martin Luther King Park is located in the Clichy Batignolles area of Paris, which was chosen to host the Olympic Village as part of the city’s bid for th...Read More

The Key Sathorn-Ratchapreuk Bangkok, by XSiTE Design, in Bangkok, Thailand. Living in Bangkok´s luxury residential condominiums at The Key Sathorn-Ratchapreuk seems absolutely tempting: great apartments equipped with the latest amenities, great views, and facilities available to help you switch off after work. How could that list of strengths be even more attractive? By including an elegant, open landscape designed for the neighbors to enjoy. Providing a relaxing green space is important, given the fact that the complex includes about 800 homes in four massive buildings. One of the most consistent design teams in Thailand took on the challenge. XSiTE Design Studio, with expertise in developing high-quality gardens, proposed contemporary and unadorned community areas at the ground level tha...Read More

Hill Square, by Buro Sant en Co Landscape Architecture, Tilburg, The Netherlands. Tilburg is a thriving Dutch city with an extremely diverse population, including almost one-quarter of foreign descent, as well as being home to many students. Historically speaking, the Hill has long been one of the most important public squares in the city, serving as a landmark and gathering area for locals. However, over the years, the square has been slowly becoming less and less relevant, as a rapidly changing population dynamic has transformed the needs of residents. Ultimately, this diverse and evolving community needed a new space, one that still offered the functions of a traditional public square, but which also could address some new needs. Hill Square A Refreshing Change: The Oasis in the City Du...Read More

In this article, we go into the eight most common mistakes people make when specifying paving and offer creative ways to avoid them. Have you ever wondered how you know where to go in the park? We’re not talking about the well-known places where you can walk with your eyes shut. We want to direct your attention to the cases in which you don’t know which way to go, but somehow find the right direction. Our challenge to you is this: How do you do that? Is it because of your sixth sense? Or is it because the path network is designed in a logical way? Alleys, platforms, and their pavements are fundamental elements of composition in landscape architecture. Their design is the skeleton of the overall landscape and serves as a basis that has a crucial effect on the final result. Designing your pa...Read More

10 Mediterranean plants you should never use in your design, and some that you should. Landscape design is about satisfying human needs. It is an intervention that refers and adapts to human presence. Planting always plays an important role in the whole scheme. However, there are plants that exist harmoniously in nature, but struggle to become functional in a man-made landscape. This article focuses on those less useful plants in landscape design. It also intends to provide a set of parameters we should consider before choosing plants for a design scheme. The trees and plants mentioned below are mostly found in the Mediterranean Landscape. However, there are also many other plants from other climates which share similar characteristics, making them difficult to use in landscape design. The...Read More

As a landscape architect I love the aspects of modernist architecture that allow a house to embrace and co-exist with the garden around it. One feature of a house that can instantly achieve this is a courtyard. The room without a ceiling. A courtyard is a landscaped private area within or next to the house that integrates with the living and private spaces of the building.  Australian landscape architect Ellis Stones described courtyards as ‘a room without a ceiling’ and in this way he defined the essential link between these spaces and the architecture of a house. In Robin Boyd’s Walsh Street (Melbourne, Australia) the courtyard is the central feature of the architecture and while providing a break between the separated parent’s and children’s wings it is also the main p...Read More

Stadtpark Papenburg, by RMP Landschaftsarchitekten, Papenburg, Germany. Have you asked yourself what a garden show is or what the transformative effects of it are? Since becoming popular in Germany and Austria in the 1980s, garden shows have aimed to improve the quality of life and the urban climate of cities. They also work toward regional-political development objectives. Regional garden shows are developed on disadvantaged sites, transforming them into attractive and pleasant locations. RMP Landscape Architects have extended the benefits and advantages of a regional garden show into a functional adaptation to meet the current requirements of the city park in Papenburg, Germany. Embedded in a larger context of city development, the implemented regional garden show in Stadtpark Papenburg ...Read More

Annenberg Center for Information, Science, and Technology, by OJB, in Pasadena, California. There is a source of pride for researchers and students of the prestigious California Institute of Technology. They are talented, hardworking and lead advances in their fields of investigation, but for those who are placed in Annenberg Center for Information, Science and Technology, there is an additional source of pride. Their daily life occurs in an environment which applies sustainable principles so successfully that the building in which they work has even gotten a gold certification from LEED due to its water and energy efficiency. However, it has always been the garden in front of the building which delighted the community of academics. Annenberg Center As a design requirement of the brief, th...Read More

Royal Neighbour, by ADEPT and Mandawork, in Stockholm, Sweden. One might say that the first Global Environmental Conference was not Rio+20 in 1992, but The United Nations Conference on The Human Environment (UNCHE), which took place in 1972 in Stockholm. Although some people may disagree with this affirmation, there is no doubt that the UNCHE, whose main goal was to reduce human impact on the environment, was the first attempt at making society aware of the potential negative consequences of our existing development model on our living and to preserve the environment for coming generations. Since then, the city of Stockholm has focused on sustainable development alternatives and is still trying to maintain this reputation. Nowadays, according to the City of Stockholm, the Environment Progr...Read More