Cover Story

Here are the winners of the 5th Annual Social Media Awards in Landscape Architecture presented by Land8 and the American Society of Landscape Architects! Social media has the power to significantly increase the awareness and importance of the profession of landscape architecture, and Land8 and ASLA believe industry leaders in social media should be recognized and promoted. Be sure to follow the winners to help grow and promote the profession! Top 10 Social Media Accounts – LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE FIRMS 1. TBG Partners – Instagram At TBG, we use our Instagram to promote the practice of landscape architecture by sharing a behind the scenes look at our design process. With a mix of hand-drawings, diagrams, renderings, and built photos, we believe it’s important to showcase each phase of our wo...Read More

Sponsored Post Get on the BIM Wagon Now, or Forever Remain a Bystander Environment for Revit®, unlocking the power of BIM for landscape architecture. By Nehama Shechter-Baraban and Oren Ben-Ner For no fault of their own, landscape architects have been slow to adopt the Building Information Modeling (BIM) approach to project design. Consequently, in an AEC industry where BIM is the norm, landscape architecture isn’t given the place or significance it deserves, resulting not only in greater expense and delays, but in poorer design and execution outcomes. Environment for Revit® has removed the obstacles to transitioning to BIM, creating an unparalleled BIM for landscape architecture experience. Sitting on the BIM fence is now a matter of choice, and we would do best to choose otherwise. Let’s...Read More

On January 6, the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) announced LAF Ignite, a transformative new program that promises to have long-lasting impacts on the landscape architecture discipline and the communities we serve. LAF Ignite is a comprehensive scholarship-internship-mentorship program created to help BIPOC landscape architecture students overcome barriers to staying in school, graduating, and entering practice. Student participants receive an annual $10,000 scholarship, paid summer internships, and three types of mentorships throughout their academic journey. The program is the result of a concerted, years-long effort by LAF, a dedicated group of stakeholders, and more than 100 donors to accelerate the pace and scale at which the discipline takes action to address underrepresentat...Read More

In the same week that the Nature-Based Solutions Roadmap was announced by the U.S. Federal Government, the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) released its official Climate Action Plan. This document provides a roadmap for how the organization can achieve zero emissions by 2040, partnered with a companion field guide, listing tools for landscape architecture firms, organizations, and designers to follow suit. Seeds of hope, sown long ago, are sprouting. Landscape architects are systems designers who plan and design with living soils, water, plants, trees, and people – with life. Landscape Architects acknowledge that the climate and biodiversity crises are interconnected challenges of our time. Acting with the tools we know how, landscape architects are uniquely positioned to se...Read More

Mastering plants as a design material is a life-long challenge. Learn the names, qualities, and ecological preferences of any of the hundreds of potential species you could use and – guess what? – you’re only halfway there.  As a landscape architect, you probably won’t have direct control over the plants that go into your project – instead you create instructions (a plan, a plant list, maybe some notes) that will enable someone else to build the landscape and achieve the outcomes that you have envisioned. The better you get at creating those instructions, the more likely you are to end up with design outcomes that match your intent. I’m going to introduce you to the basics of how we think about specifying plants at Coastal Vista Design, as well as some of the common issue...Read More

America has an obsession with lush, green manicured lawns. Thomas Jefferson introduced lawns to Monticello after spending five years abroad and taking note of the large, neatly groomed, green swaths at various estates, such as Versailles. At that time, lawns became a symbol of stateliness and wealth due to the demand of resources required for upkeep. Lawns did not become a homesite fixture to the middle class until well after the Civil War. Fredrick Law Olmstead’s public park movement is partially credited with the explosion of lawns into suburban America. Many of the first east coast master planned communities were modeled after parks with shared and individual green spaces. The federal housing boom after World War II further propelled lawns into the mainstream. Homes were built away from...Read More

By Corey Dodd and Tarana Hafiz In the fall of 2021, the City of Philadelphia embarked on a project to Reimagine Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Along with other iconic, historic cities around the world, Philadelphia is following suit with reinvestment in the public realm, featuring a more pedestrian-friendly approach to the historic corridor. Today the Parkway serves as the city’s hub for cultural institutions, a venue for large- and small-scale events, a destination for exercise, play, and social activities, and as a promenade for peaceful civic demonstration. A goal of the project includes honoring the historic design intent of the Parkway which stems from the City Beautiful Movement that claimed design could not be separated from social issues and should help facilitate civic pride and engag...Read More

Every year, the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) welcomes nearly 100 up-and-coming students into our LAF Olmsted Scholars Program – an initiative designed to grow and support the next generation of landscape architects. This month, we inducted 89 new Scholars from accredited college landscape architecture programs across the U.S. and Canada into the program, including two National Olmsted Scholars and six finalists. To say these Scholars are inspiring would be an understatement. The 2022 graduate LAF National Olmsted Scholar is Katie Finnigan, from the University of Colorado Denver. Katie plans to use her $25,000 award to undertake community-engaged research on design interventions that can create acoustically and sensorially supportive outdoor environments for neurodivergent popula...Read More

As landscape architects and planting designers, most of us have been trained in basic practices of site analysis. We map and analyze site features such as topography, circulation, views, and existing site elements. The scale of detail that we document depends on what we are tasked to do on the site. When you’re planning to use plants as your primary design medium, you will need to pay attention to the aspects of a site that affect their thriving and survival. Small-scale differences in topography and aspect can have a significant influence on what species thrive. If you’re planning to use a lot of herbaceous plants, you need to observe at an especially detailed scale – on a meter by meter (even foot by foot) basis. Identifying where those differences occur and how they interact will ...Read More