Blog

Qian’an Sanlihe Greenway, by Turenscape, Qian’an, Hebei Province, China. As children, we grow up listening to fairy tales in which the main character goes through a series of adventures until reaching the top of the mountain. These stories teach us that many things are possible in life; all you have to do is believe. When talking about Sanlihe Greenway, it is practically impossible not to be reminded of Cinderella and her final happily-ever-after ending. Bearing the trademark signature of Turenscape, the Sanlihe Greenway went from a landscape that had lost its purpose to an amazing green infrastructure, demonstrating once more that landscape architecture is capable of genuine miracles. Qian’an Sanlihe Greenway From Pauper to Prince: A Space Revived to Perfection When the team of talented l...Read More

A book review of Ecodesign for Cities and Suburbs, by Jonathan Barnett and Larry Beasley. In their new book, “Ecodesign for Cities and Suburbs”, co-authors Jonathan Barnett and Larry Beasley use real-world examples to show how ecodesign can be combined with generally accepted business practices and standard development regulations to create successful city planning designs. They prove that our built environment can be designed to adapt to a changing climate and to a rapidly expanding world population while also creating places that are more desirable for living and working Ecodesign for Cities and Suburbs The book is comprised of six chapters, all of which are filled with illustrations that help to explain and back up the easy-to-follow text. Each chapter also contains real-world examples ...Read More

Agodi Park and Gardens, by Earthworks Landscape Architects, in Ibadan, Nigeria. When we think of large, inner-city parks, we immediately visualize scenes such as New York City’s Central Park, with its rolling lawns, park benches, manmade lakes, and sporting venues. The purpose of these parks is to create an escape from the city and an ideal sense of nature. While these sorts of parks succeed in providing function and green beauty in an urban context, they often fail to place themselves in a specific cultural context. In Africa, one cannot afford to separate culture from the natural environment. In Africa, parks need to provide recreational green space, but also address multiple community and environmental concerns. These projects are not about prescriptive design, but rather involve workin...Read More

Place Lazare Goujon, by In Situ, in Villeurbanne, France. The renovation project of the Place Lazare Goujon square is located at the entrance of the “Gratte-ciel” (skyscraper) district. Some of you already imagine a project in the heart of New York City amid its many towers, but it is far away from that. Place Lazare Goujon is located in France, in the town of Villeurbanne. It’s in the neighborhood called “Gratte-ciel” that we discover a large pedestrian square at the end of a street leading to two towers of 18 floors. These two towers give their name to the district and create the entryway. Extending away from the towers is a series of buildings, ranging from nine to 11 floors and arranged in a graduated manner. Designed by architect Morice Leroux, the buildings’ design ...Read More

Cities around the world are striving to improve the quality of life for their citizens, creating great places to live where people can feel safe, healthy, happy and engaged in the community. Urban and regional planning plays a vital role in this effort as design of spaces, comprehensive planning, zoning regulations, creation and monitoring of special districts, multi-modal transit, enhancement of the public realm, historic preservation, permitting and overall design factors impact a community’s sense of place. These all affect the city’s vibrancy, sustainability and ability to flourish with changes over time. Planning has become complex and multi-layered, resulting in the need for multiple design programs and strategies. As designers of the built environment, we are faced with new challeng...Read More

The New St.Petersburg Pier, Rogers Partners, ASD and Ken Smith Landscape Architect, St. Petersburg, Florida. Rogers Partners Architects & Urban Designers, in partnership with ASD and Ken Smith Landscape Architect, have been chosen as the team to redesign the iconic pier of St. Petersburg, Florida. Each town has its famous landmarks, and the pier is certainly a central element of St. Petersburg. Throughout its history, it has been known as the Railroad Pier, Electric Pier, Municipal Pier, Million-Dollar Pier, and simply The Pier. The pier, which is so essential to the identity of the city, is going to benefit from a redesign process that bears the trademark signature of a talented team. The New St.Petersburg Pier What is the Vision Behind the Project? In choosing the elements of the new...Read More

Baan Ladprao private residence, by Landscape Architects 49 Ltd., in Wang Thonglang District, Bangkok. As one of Thailand’s premier landscape architecture firms, Landscape Architects 49, a subgroup of Architects 49 Ltd., has been designing unique and innovative spaces since first opening in 1989. According to its website, the firm’s philosophy is to “apply its knowledge of urban design, landscape architecture, site planning and environmental analysis to solve design and planning problems, as well as to create innovative and workable environments.” Baan Ladprao, a stunning private residence in Bangkok, is an award-winning example of this philosophy. According to the design team, the client — the owner of Baan Ladprao and an artist — asked for a clubhouse to be situated among exis...Read More

Peak Experience, by Atlas Lab, Market Street, San Francisco. What does a main street in your city or town look like? A streetscape is typically a stretched linear entity that encourages circulation and has common elements such as street lighting; lanes paved in an orderly fashion for cars, bicycles and pedestrians; landscape planting; and some street furniture. One finds great diversity in a streetscape, and every street has a separate identity. However, we don’t always find streets that encourage us to partake in any activity besides fast-paced walking. As part of the Market Street Prototyping Festival, the unique streetscape prototype installation of the Peak Experience is driven by a desire to integrate play into traditional street models and provide opportunities for connection with ot...Read More

Central garden block B4, by TN Plus, in Boulogne Billancourt, suburbs of Paris, France. Located at Boulogne Billancourt, (suburbs of Paris, France, near the La Seine River) the Boulogne project, designed by TN Plus architects and also called “Central Garden Block B4”, is a landscape project whose leading idea is “to create an undulating green plinth stretching from facade to facade through the garden,” in the words of project manager Andras Jambor. The project integrates public spaces by using a central concrete plateau and proposing a sinuous topography aside the buildings to promote privacy. Because of its form and geometry, the concrete plateau becomes a green plinth that undulates from facade to facade through the open space. The green areas were proposed by considering the preservatio...Read More

A run through of 10 ways to be a top Landscape Architecture student. College is a hard time when you have to focus amongst many distractions. Everyone wants to do well and make his or her time in university worth it. But most of us are so busy either procrastinating or neck deep in our work that we forget to stop, breath, look around and see that there may be a better way of doing things. Ways to make us more efficient at getting things done and achieving better results. While some of these tips may be obvious to some of you, we can all use a little reminder from time to time, and ultimately the real question is, why aren’t you doing them? Top Landscape Architecture Student Here are 10 top tips to help you get there: 10. Ask Questions One of the most important aspects of learning is ...Read More

This week’s Sketchy Saturday top 10. Welcome to the internet’s biggest melting pot of sketchy talent. Each week you guys send us in your best handy work and the LA Team go through it, carefully selecting who should make it into the top 10. It’s no easy task, for two main reasons; one it’s hard to establish a criteria for selection when there are such a diversity of styles on display. Secondly a lot of you are so enthusiastic about Sketchy Saturday that you send in several sketches and as a Sketchy Saturday policy we only select a maximum of one sketch per artist to be featured, this does make things fair but it also means a lot if incredible work does not get featured. Enjoy this week’s Sketchy Saturday top 10! 10. by Kyle Schellhorn, Student at Iowa State University, Uni...Read More