J. Robert (Bob) Wainner

We sure don’t have any inside track to design playgrounds around my region; I think when you see the product assembly approach it is in fact most likely put together by the product makers’ draftsmen.

It’s strange, their firm website says they have a large multidisciplinary team, but it doesn’t even mention landscape architecture or design, and almost all the photos are interior focused.

I brought this up a few months ago when I heard of my first one. I think it is a misnomer and misleading students, and don’t see how it could be that beneficial unless a 4-year school coordinated to accept some transfer credits. But then someone answered that one he knew was headed by a licensed LA, so that might help although it still would be…[Read more]

All rendering is abstract representation but it has always been a bit baffling and amusing to me how that type of software is so enthralling to design/build firms (one I know of mixes it within a design package that still has hand-drawn plans). What a good description with the cards analogy lol!  I think it’s because although nothing will ever…[Read more]

I’ll hadn’t been aware of that one but it seems you need the enhanced version to work on Mac, and it says ask for quote. Anyone have a quote? (I don’t like to send email and end up on company contact lists).
Meanwhile, like Laurent I have found Autocad-WS all I need for opening and grading student work or viewing outside files for discussions. 

Yep to both comments. It did strike me as HIS IDEAL for humanity. Neat and hive-like with everybody going back to their “bee cells” when not strolling around work-less, and writing all those plays. No recognition of how work is a source of, not only threat to, meaning in life. As for recreation….no place for the guy in his pickup who wants to go…[Read more]

Actually a fuller story with video is here (talk about your lax local permits process!):

http://www.3news.co.nz/Beijing-cracks-down-on-bizarre-apartment-top…

4th paragraph of story: this is another building operated by the same corporation (not the one I knew of in the earlier post which was in another city). Still, what a bad pattern.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100946015

I thought you might have some responses by now, but I think everybody said a lot already on this thread, which you might not have seen:

https://land8.com/forum/topics/designing-natural-play-spaces-for-children?xg_source=activity

pre-emptive location reinforced concrete volcanoes?

There was a main street “beautification” in the 70’s in a NC downtown set up like this (only difference: square boxes). I later heard the explanation that the merchants didn’t want trees in the ground as they might “hide” the stores. ??? (which the huge boxes actually did to an extent and cost more than putting the trees in sidewalk…[Read more]

I guess I was the first one to drop the word “passion,” but I didn’t mean because the field was “artsy,” quite the opposite….it can be technically challenging and if you have visions that don’t take that into account, you may not make a good fit (hence all the advice to visit firms from others posting). Maybe I should have said “commitment, “…[Read more]

I have to admit that my native skepticism of “big glorious movements” kicked in some time ago on this whole thing, and it wasn’t helped by having heard from a relative who has to go to work in one of these, and people can’t stand it so badly that the workforce has shrunken with preference for just working from home instead. Of course, even valid…[Read more]

My employers were more often straining to find work than overworking us, so sometimes late pay was the condition. I also should have said I worked on campus projects, (not whole master plans) and the best projects came up while working for multi-disciplinary firms, not small solely-LA offices. But in that “big” realm expect to be one of the first…[Read more]

I had a book of inspirational gardens I kept by my side my first year of college at a school of liberal arts that I had to stay in while arranging for a transfer (because I became aware of the field my senior year in high school, too late to go where I should have in the first place). I also dreamed of designing public gardens.

In looking back…[Read more]

The chance that they looked at other sources and accumulated material isn’t so much a deal breaker but attempting to pass off word for word is pretty amazing. Couldn’t they find anything a little more obscure than Wikipedia? That’s a bad precedent not only for the one course but anything else they might also offer becomes suspect. Even companies…[Read more]

I liked the weird climbing domes of what seemed like natural branch forms. I suppose they’re not rocket science to construct, but what about the dreaded “liabilities” as they age etc.?

Meanwhile here is a page on some fascinating water features that don’t quote price but I imagine are very expensive (also look at other uses in the overall…[Read more]

I’ve worked in a planning department and in teaching also, but if I think back and confine my answer to what I saw working in 2 very small LA firms and 2 medium sized architecture firms, along with being a consultant to a third in that category, here goes: 
1) The amount of concentration on a type of project or client sought by the office…[Read more]

I just wanted to add another link to a nice big whopper of a document I discovered on this topic:
http://naturalplay.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/naturalplay_infopacket_small.pdf

There is a central blog type site here
http://www.healinglandscapes.org/gardens/
But I have been confused myself on how the terms “healing,””meditation,” and “therapeutic” are used. ASLA seems to imply that the latter are more active and associated with a facility. I think it would depend a lot on what the staff of the place would want, and be…[Read more]