Featured

Posts to be featured on the Main Page.

Contact us if you are interested in joining our team as a writer on the subject of landscape architecture.

Updating Denver’s Urban Drainage Systems to Handle the Impacts of Development, Population Growth and Climate Change

Since its founding in 1858, Denver, Colo. has been a city marked by periods of rapid growth and expansion. During once such period in the late 1800s, over three square miles of land to the northeast of downtown was completely urbanized in less than a decade. Unfortunately, in their haste developers failed to recognize the importance of a vital drainageway that collected stormwater from the Montclair and Park Hill drainage basins, a watershed covering over 17 square miles. As the area transitioned from natural rolling plains to a grid of paved streets and rooftops, an insufficient piped stormwater system soon led to floodwaters lapping at the doors of the residents who had settled in the working-class neighborhoods of Cole and Clayton. Reporting on this flooding dates back to the early 1900...Read More

LAF Innovation + Leadership Symposium: Emerging Ideas for the Future of the Profession

At the annual LAF Innovation + Leadership Symposium in Washington, DC, seven emergent voices in landscape architecture shared their ideas that will drive the future of the profession. These seven voices were the 2018-2019 cohort of the LAF Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership. Each of the fellowship recipients engaged in a yearlong 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. LAF established the Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership in 2016 to “foster transformational leadership capacity and support innovations to advance the field of landscape architecture”. This $25,000 fellowship is an opportunity for professionals to dedicate 12 weeks of time over th...Read More

Inform/Engage/Collaborate [Land8x8 Video]

Landscape architects and urban planners are frequently tasked with translating the unique desires of a community into a meaningful public space that seamlessly integrates into the existing community fabric. In order to ensure the long-term success of such a project, sincere and intentional community engagement efforts must be made to understand the community’s needs and incorporate their values. Understanding how to best engage community stakeholders in the design process is critical to ensuring a high level of community investment and pride. During the Land8x8 Lightning Talks in Seattle, Tim Slazinik, landscape architect at GGLO Design, discussed how his firm is looking for ways to engage the public in a deeper, more impactful way. Community engagement strategies take on many different fo...Read More

How One City is Designing for Climate Change

As the City of Boston grapples with climate change and sea level rise, teams comprised of Landscape Architects, Urban Planners, and Engineers have been collaborating to truly understand the scale of the impact, and propose innovative solutions that incorporate natural systems. Recognizing the Challenges of Climate Change Coastal Resilience Solutions for East Boston and Charlestown, a project led by Kleinfelder Engineering and Stoss, was a direct response to recommendations in the Climate Ready Boston report (2016) that the city ‘prioritize and study the feasibility of district-scale flood protection’ and ‘develop local climate resilience plans in vulnerable areas to support district-scale climate adaptation’. The City of Boston chose to address East Boston and Charlestown first because the...Read More

Uniting People Across the Development Transect

In the world of design and planning, one of our biggest challenges lies in the placemaking endeavor — creating a sense of community in a new or unremarkable development lacking notable history or existing bonds among people. How can we create anew an identity, a sense of belonging, and pride of ownership in a setting in which those aspects are nonexistent? These characteristics are cornerstones of a successful development — whether a residential community or the proverbial third place — in contexts spanning the urban to rural transect, and their foundation lies in establishing planning and design principles focused on connectedness, diversity and flexibility. The notion of connectedness includes not only physical connections between people and their environment, but also social and emotion...Read More

Assuming Beauty [Land8x8 Video]

During the Land8x8 Lightning Talks in Seattle, Laura Rose, Principal at the landscape architecture and planning firm Walker Macy, contemplated the role of beauty in design. At a time when landscape architects are leading the discourse on mitigating climate change, fostering community, and enacting social change, it is peculiar for Rose to center her discussion on beauty. While the art of design is still very central to what we do, the work of landscape architects has evolved beyond the romantic ideals of landscape being solely something to look at. Yet, after listening to her presentation, it becomes clear that the term “beauty” describes much more than just aesthetic appeal or artistic whimsy. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines beauty as “the quality or aggregate of qualit...Read More

A Landscape Approach for Territorial Development

Available for free download, a new book promotes a landscape approach for territorial development in response to today’s environmental challenges and socio-political transformations. “From the South: Global Perspectives on Landscape and Territory” is the first book of the International Landscape Collaborative (ILC), published by Ediciones Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago, Chile in bilingual form with Spanish translations. The book contains eighteen essays written by authors from eight different nations and five continents that offer a diversity of perspectives on contemporary models of landscape planning, management and design across scales. Rather than viewing the landscape through the lens of a singular discipline, the ILC promotes with the now published volume an inter...Read More

Portfolio Secrets for New Landscape Architects and Designers

A design portfolio, especially for the young and less experienced designer, is an intimidating document to create. We’ve all heard rumors of older students with silver bullet portfolios that secure them endless job offers from prestigious firms. Who doesn’t want to be fought over for employment? The ideal portfolio represents the breadth of your skills and abilities. It demonstrates that you can communicate verbally and visually. It proves that you can think critically. That’s a lot of pressure on one document, which you preferably want to keep to no more than 10-12 spreads (5MB). Design portfolios are useful tools. They demonstrate prospective employees’ aesthetic sensibilities, problem solving skills, communication styles, and technical abilities. But no 12-spread document can fully repr...Read More

Improve Your Drawing Skills: Perspective and Proportions

CAD has been a standard in the profession for decades, planing in virtual reality is around the corner and everyone can take snapshots of views they want to remember with their smartphones. But we want to talk to you about drawing, sketchbooks, and tips for constructing a perspective. Why is that? Let’s make one thing clear: all of the new digital tools bring amazing value to our professional work and we’re not suggesting going back to the drawing boards and rulers. But being able to transfer one’s thoughts from the mind to paper in a quick and confident way can be very beneficial for a number of reasons. First, a quick sketch is still worth a lot as a design tool. The lightness of the free-hand drawing enables us to think with it and explore different variants and possibilities without be...Read More

Drone Applications for Landscape Architecture

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s or drones) have multiple applications for landscape architects, from early efforts like site analysis to creating awareness and excitement for a completed project. Although semi-professional drones are now readily available and inexpensive, there can be a heavy investment of time needed to create a quality product. Landscape Architects will need to evaluate the resources necessary to perform drone operations directly or consider hiring professional drone pilots for their projects. Either way it’s important to understand safety requirements and regulations related to flying drones on a project site. Rules for hobbyist differ from those operating commercially, and it’s critical to understand these differences before implementing drone use in your practice. Per...Read More

How Landscape Architecture and Urban Design Can Reduce Crime

Crime is a perennial problem facing many inner-city areas. Antisocial behaviour and crime are major factors affecting urban decay, property prices, and quality of life. In this article, we investigate how landscape architecture and urban design can mitigate, reduce, and control crime in the urban environment. Crime vs antisocial behaviour Crime can relatively easily be defined as acts contrary to the governing law of that area. For example, the same act of recreational smoking of marijuana is legal in the US state of Massachusetts but is currently illegal in the state of New Jersey. Antisocial behaviour, on the other hand, is less easily defined. The Home Office in the UK recognises that the definition of anti-social behaviour is influenced by context, location, community tolerance, and qu...Read More

A Different Way of Thinking: Pacific Coast Land Design and Vectorworks Landmark

Eric Berg, landscape architect and senior associate at Pacific Coast Land Design, Inc. (PCLD) in Ventura, California, took some time to chat before his talk, “From Concept to Completion: How PCLD Leverages the Power of Vectorworks in Landscape Architecture Practice” at the 2018 Vectorworks Design Summit in Phoenix last November. Berg and PCLD Principal Mike Zielsdorf showed how the 6-person firm uses Vectorworks Landmark from early conceptual graphics to renderings and CDs. CC: Can you think of a project you were awarded with the help of Vectorworks’ visualization capabilities? EB: We were awarded a veteran’s housing project in Ventura for which we did a preliminary design in Vectorworks, in part to test the site modeling. Showing the early design in 3D convinced the city’s planning direct...Read More

Lost Password

Register