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Pardon Our Disruption x The Urban Studio
As we approach the end of 2020, we celebrate the people and movements that are driving change to achieve more just futures for ALL. From the people who have been hard at work mobilizing voters—to our steadfast community leaders and their everyday work to cultivate communities of care. Like these change-makers who inspire us, The Urban Studio also strives to be the change we want to see in the world. We do this through projects and programs that leverage art and design tools to ensure that those communities who are most affected by design are seen and heard as critical stakeholders in shaping their OWN neighborhoods and their OWN futures. The Urban Studio (US) is thrilled to announce Pardon Our Disruption, a three-part-virtual event series kick-off to our end-of-year fundraising campaign. E...Read More
Design Competition Winner Brings Ideas from Kenya
The onset of COVID-19 in cities throughout the world led to cities shutting down, becoming ghosts of their former selves. What followed in the ensuing weeks was a metamorphosis within our streets and parks on a scale that was previously unimaginable. The pandemic precipitated a utopian glimpse into urban centers around the globe where streets have been closed to accommodate al fresco dining, bike lanes have been expanded, parks are full, the air quality is improved, and more pedestrians are seen walking the streets and trails of their neighborhoods daily. Dig Studio’s mission and culture is to teach, mentor, and support equity and diversity within the practice of Landscape Architecture. Exploring an urban trend that was being played out in real time seemed like the perfect opportunity to...Read More
Silver Linings Found in Virtual Internships
The month of March marks the end of our campus recruiting season each year. We wrap up our visits to universities across the country and prepare for an incoming class of student interns. We dust off our teaching skills and look forward to the fresh perspective students offer. This year, planning quickly changed course when COVID-19 prompted all 120 of our professionals to begin working safely from home. While many firms were forced to pull the plug on internships altogether, the challenging circumstances fueled our drive to find a way to provide a meaningful internship experience. Fortunately, we were able to double down on our commitment to putting our people first and advocating for the profession by hosting 8 students from across the country in a nine-week virtual internship program. It...Read More
Creating Binge-Worthy Nature: Rediscovering How Children Play in Nature [Video]
When you think back on your happiest childhood memories, you probably think about playing outside. Those long summer nights camping in the backyard, catching fireflies, and climbing trees are among my most vivid adolescent memories. Not only did these experiences create happy memories, more and more studies show that they provided countless mental and physical health benefits too. Nature creates a unique sense of wonder for kids that no other environment can provide. However, in part due to the influx of technology, there has been a recent shift in how children spend their free time, often replacing outdoor time with screen time. The average American child is said to spend 4 to 7 minutes a day in unstructured play outdoors, and over 7 hours a day in front of a screen. How can we create “bi...Read More
Why Landscape Architects Choose Vectorworks Landmark
In landscape architecture, many of the available software options seem to specialize in individual areas, requiring an investment in add-ons to enable more holistic workflows. This comes as a sticking point for many landscape architecture firms whose work spans beyond 2D drawings and plans. Vectorworks Landmark is known for being an all-in-one solution, which means landscape architects can work without having to invest in additional software. In this article, you’ll hear from three landscape architects who’ve switched to Vectorworks Landmark and are now benefiting from more streamlined workflows. The first firm is SiteWorks, who are based in New York City and provide a variety of landscape architecture services, including project scheduling/budgeting and construction implementation. Next i...Read More
Changes in the Online LARE Prep Landscape
In August 2013, Land8 featured a column announcing my first LARE prep webinar. This event eventually grew to become Corson Learning. Since that first webinar, over a thousand Corson Learning members across the US and Canada have participated and gone on to become licensed landscape architects. This is the professional project of which I am most proud, so it is with mixed emotions that in this same forum I am announcing that Corson Learning will begin to phase out at the end of this year. Live support, except for existing members, will end in December. Pre-recorded content will remain available throughout 2021 at a reduced price. If no one steps up to take the project over, the website will be taken down at the end of 2021. CLARB will conduct its next periodic Task Analysis in 2021, resulti...Read More
Middlebrook Farm: Designing a Healthy and Resilient Agrihood
This year has certainly been unprecedented. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to change the way we conduct our daily lives and interact with one another. Work has shifted to home offices, kids are learning online and mask wearing, sanitizing and social distancing are all new practices integrated into our daily routines. During this time of disruption and uncertainty, people are re-evaluating where they live and re-defining what ‘quality of life’ means to them and their families. The concept of an Agrihood, which is a blend of town and farm, is starting to become a more relevant idea throughout America. While the idea of an Agrihood may be new to some, the ideas was actually created long ago, in a time when people lived off the land and relied on each other for their sustenance, happines...Read More
How to Avoid Social Segregation in Play Spaces
Built environment professionals have an opportunity to influence not only the physical environment but also the societies that use the spaces we create. Much has been written in recent popular media regarding social segregation of play spaces in developments. Developers have been accused of creating play spaces that exclude certain portions of residents in their designs. In this article, we look at what landscape architects and architects can do to increase social integration through play provision. Social segregation in the past Arguably, segregation has been a significant problem for a long time. Who can forget the appalling racial segregation in South Africa under apartheid that lead to whole urban areas being declared off-limits to black South Africans? While such stark examples may be...Read More
Feeling the Weather [Video]
The weather affects us every day, but rarely receives the attention it deserves. Often relegated to small talk conversation, we downplay the many ways weather influences our daily life, culture, and health. The weather – the day-to-day state of the atmosphere generally perceived as a combination of temperature, humidity, precipitation, cloudiness, visibility, and wind – is a moment in time. However, when we move beyond a single weather event and study the weather of a place averaged over time, a pattern can be established. The climate, or the pattern of weather moments, is not as easy to perceive, but greatly affects ecosystems and communities around the world. Falon Mihalic, founder of landscape architecture and public art firm Falon Land Studio, seeks to give form to this in...Read More
LAF Innovation + Leadership Symposium Goes Virtual: Part 2
This year’s annual LAF Innovation + Leadership Symposium showcased leading-edge thinking in landscape architecture to address a breadth of pressing issues. During this two-part virtual event, the six 2019-2020 LAF Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership recipients presented their projects as the culmination of their year-long fellowship. The symposium is a celebration of the fellows’ journey to develop their leadership capacity and work on ideas that have the potential to create positive and profound change in the profession, the environment, and humanity. < RELATED: LAF Innovation + Leadership Symposium Goes Virtual: Part 1 > Established in 2016, the Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership was created to “foster transformational leadership capacity and support innovations to adva...Read More
Recreation as Part of Complete Streets Definition
The COVID-19 public health and economic crisis has allowed and, in some instance, forced cities to experiment with the use of streets for temporary accommodation of recreation, events, dining, protest, school, and as spaces for the public to enjoy time outdoors. But over the course of history, many U.S. cities have designed and used some streets for park and civic gathering purposes and not just moving people. We suggest we can learn from both history and these recent experiments in street uses so that these temporary experiments can become more permanent and high-quality long-term solutions. In 2014, landscape architects and planners from Design Workshop authored an article in Planning Magazine titled “Recreation in the Right-of-Way”, which made a case for including recreation as a ...Read More
Landscape Architect Todd McCurdy and Vectorworks: Doing BIM Before It Was Cool
Todd McCurdy, FASLA is a vice-president and director of landscape architecture and planning at the Orlando office of Huitt-Zollars, Inc. The multi-disciplinary firm has a large international portfolio featuring projects in the entertainment and hospitality sectors, among others. Although designers at HZ use other software tools as well, Todd’s department is firmly rooted in Vectorworks Landmark. Its ability to clearly show intricate spatial relationships affecting the firm’s other disciplines has even convinced some of the architects to switch to Vectorworks. An Early Adopter Todd is no newcomer to Vectorworks. A true early adopter, he picked up MiniCAD Plus, v 2.0, in 1989. Back then, working in a smaller firm, McCurdy used this proto-version of Vectorworks to create custom planting detai...Read More