Andrew Garulay, RLA

There always seems to be an expectation that a landscape is (1.) permanent and (2.) natural. This is not the case. Maintenance, human needs, and integration with nature are criteria that good design would address to the degree warranted by the project. There should never be an assumption of criteria. Good design starts by fleshing out the criteria…[Read more]

Oh yes, I see, it happens with me as well. It is not just your computer.

I think it is just an image. The link is in the pulldown menu at the top of the page.

…I know that I am not the Andrew that you were addressing.

Good design starts from the general and works toward the specific. First you have to address the general concept of the project and make sure you understand client/budget/regulation/end user/and the site to do so. Good design takes care of the macro as it works toward the micro. The micro should always support the macro. Great details mean nothing…[Read more]

Cost of living does affect pay scale. No one anywhere wants to pay more than they have to for employees or anything else. When the cost of living is high, it takes more to get employees to come and work for you if they have any other choices. It is not because someone says “we should pay more because the cost of living is high”, but because when…[Read more]

+ There are lots of firms in Boston and Cambridge, not to mention several suburbs (can I use that word?).

The cost of living is not anywhere close to low – especially housing in Boston (lots of students). … not a plus or minus, but since others assume that it is low it should be mentioned.

– There are lots of recent graduates available from…[Read more]

Landscape architecture is design on the land. It is such a broad topic that anyone can cruise around it and pick things out in just about any subject or philosophy and make points that try to sway things this way or that way. None of it defines the profession or the state of the profession because it simply is “design on the land”. It is always…[Read more]

I was laughing when I read it. I felt the stress of the current situation, his and the overall, as well. It is one way of many diverse ways to look at what is going on. You don’t have to be against something to point out the irony of situations. Let’s face it.

There is irony all over the place. … urban renewal cleans up dilapidated…[Read more]

I found them both critical and humorous while appreciating your frustration at the same time. There is nothing wrong with a good rant mixing some bitter reality with humor, and pointing out absurdity as you see it. Not everyone has to agree with you on all of it, but I think we can all agree with a lot of it. I happen to agree with most of it, but…[Read more]

@ TJ

It is nice to have someone drinking coffee instead of Kool-Aide. Well said and well grounded.

It is an assumption on your part that it has been improperly graded at this point. Perhaps it was, but perhaps it was not.

I don’t mean to pick on you, but you may need to think this through a little more, so I’ll play Devil’s advocate.

“For example, the stated grading criteria for the written portion of the exam said the candidate’s written…[Read more]

You have to match your equipment to your business plan. Part of that plan should consider gross sales, existing skill sets, investment in education and/or human resources, overhead, deliverables in keeping with the market you are working within,…. This is going to be different for everyone and every situation.

Also, you can’t treat it as a one…[Read more]

I mean that if the energy captured for our use was not captured, it would do something. Whether that means heating the ground or air, reflected, causing wind to blow, …. I don’t know. It is hard for me to fathom the idea that the earth would notice it at all, but with all the stuff you read about the effects of different crop covers it has to be…[Read more]

Perhaps the word “suburban” has become synonymous with “sprawl” when they are actually not synonyms.

I have to wonder if using the sun’s energy that is currently going somewhere else is going to effect the climate. I would think it is a drop in the bucket, but if we are indeed headed for impending doom using fossil fuels, it stands to reason that it could have an effect.

I hear you, Ben. It is a great option.

My office is a mile away in one direction. Across the strett from my office is a local grocery/liquor/fish market with a big chain drug store next to it. There are doctor’s offices adjacent to my office and a barber shop in the same Cape Cod version of an office condo (clapboard with jogs and varying roof…[Read more]

Author’s views of the future are all interesting, but we have hundreds, if not thousands of people in Land8Lounge alone that are making decision and commitments that will shape their lives. Many are takiing on debt to ensure a better future while adding a lot of burden to it at the same time. Only ideas certain theoretical ideas of where the…[Read more]

My point is not that we should stop alternative energy and that oil is all well and good.

It is simply that there is not a lot of coat tails that will pick up the economy from these projects when they do occur, especially for landscape architecture. I’ve worked on a few wind turbine projects. They have a small footprint on the ground as far as…[Read more]

You could look at urban areas as being necessary for the sustainable exploitation of people. No where is the gap between the haves and the have nots more noticible than in urban areas. You have the well to do in their high rise apartments and your poor in their humongous affordable housing complexes or getting their babies shot out of their arms…[Read more]

Transportation enabled suburbia. One could enjoy the benefits of humanity without the burden of it. There seems to ba a philosophy that this must be stopped. While there are and has been an ability to let it just do its thing and become stereotypic strip mall sprawl, that can and is much more under control in communities that want to address it.…[Read more]