Thomas J. Johnson

Maybe somebody should do a Woody Allen memorial bench in his favorite spot under the Brooklyn Bridge but they should dedicate it while he’s still with us, so he can enjoy it…
A good bench is a great thing. A bad bench (poorly designed/poorly sited) is an insult to humanity…
Seat walls are good for grungy teenagers and hobos…
Nice benches, in…[Read more]

The Design process has started for the Bloomingdale Trail in Chicago (http://www.bloomingdaletrail.org/). To attempt to recreate High Line would be a mistake. It is not the same site. Rather, it should set an example as a modern multi-modal connection between chicago’s neighborhoods and ultimately, the loop, it’s downtown district. The opportunity…[Read more]

If the sandbox is 10’x10′ and there are 5 toys and 50 kids packed in the the sandbox it gets ugly real quick. If there are two kids in that same sandbox with those 5 toys, a wonderful time can be had by all…
Or another way of saying it; in a world of finite resources, an exponentially increasing population causes everyone to become poorer. It’s…[Read more]

When it all goes bad I’m going to survive on a steady diet of tight pant hipsters… they have their heads so far up their iphones they won’t even know what hit them… they don’t have much meat on their bones but they are all apathetic so they will be nice and tender. Plus, there is an abundance of them in urban areas…
After observing homeless…[Read more]

“Obviously people were fascinated by the particulars of this ‘progressive collapse’, in the same way there is something mesmerizing about any form of demolition.”
 

Very cool! Thanks for sharing. Looks like a neat adventure!
 

1. Do they have craigslist in the Philippines?
2. I can guarantee the successful establishment of a landscape design studio anywhere in SE Asia if you can provide me with government clearance to poses small amounts of hashish, bi-monthly all-expense-paid trips to Bangkok and a 2.5 million dollar advance in order to properly research suitable…[Read more]

yeah, yeah, yeah… and wood mulch needs to be reapplied every year, encourages fungus/mold/insects, has a tendency to float away when it rains, looks like 1980 and the good stuff is not so good for the environment… It’s an imperfect world…

Cedar – not good trees to cut down… especially for the sole purpose of shredding and spreading…
Pine is ugly and breaks down quickly… acidic?
The mixed stuff from municipalities isn’t worth mentioning…
The dyed stuff is best reserved for miniature golf courses…
Cocoa shells are cool (sustainable) but tend to float away…
The best stuff…[Read more]

Trees, rain gardens (where appropriate, IE around the perimeter so the plows can push snow into them during the winter… raised islands in the middle, so the plows won’t dig up your plants), massing of grasses/sedges… low hardy ground covers… If you do rocks, do river stones 3-4″ min… wood mulch is becoming outdated and the good stuff is…[Read more]

Thanks for the link! Love the classic furniture…

Single family homes probably built by an Apple owned developer on Apple land… for Apple employees to live in… corporate towns are nothing new… they’ve been around since the dawn of organized labor. You own the company, you build the housing and sell/rent to your employees, you own the grocery store where they buy their food, the gas station,…[Read more]

My grade school was a big circle (classrooms around the outside, sunken library in the middle). It was interesting to walk around because it was constantly revealing itself… you can never see around the bend, but it was horribly inefficient to move through. If you want to go from one side to the other you can’t walk a straight line to get there,…[Read more]

HEY HEY HEY!
CRAZY STEVE HERE FROM CRAZY STEVE’S LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURETHIS WEEKEND ONLY WE’RE SLASHING PRICES ON ALL OUR DESIGN SERVICESPATIOS, POOLS, GAZEBOSPATHS, DRIVEWAYS & PLANTING
IT’S ALL ON SALE!
THERE’S ONLY 3 MONTHS LEFT BEFORE THIS PLACE TURNS INTO A FROZEN TUNDRA FOR THE NEXT 6 MONTHS, SO HURRY DOWN AND GET YOUR DESIGN DONE WHILE WE…[Read more]

MauiBert – I generally agree with your “do the opposite of what everyone else is doing” but I don’t know why you couldn’t see today’s slide coming from a mile away. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to predict that when the US gets downgraded, it’s gonna take the market with it…
Where it goes from here is anybodies guess. I think most people are…[Read more]

Scatological! I might have to borrow that…
Nothing is worse than a material pretending to be something it’s not. A girlfriend once took me to see a waterfall in Vegas. It was big and brown and looked like painted concrete. She asked me what I thought… I told her, “I prefer the real thing” which I guess summarizes my opinion on Vegas in…[Read more]

Worst case scenario: you stop maintaining it and it becomes a more rustic / naturalized version… a hybrid of it’s former and current self.

Thanks for the link Jason! It’s really neat to get to see what’s under High Line (something I hadn’t really considered) and what goes into maintaining it…
It looks like the park is holding up really well and it’s attracting a lot of users… what a great space to have in NY! Hopefully I’ll get to see it in person some day… 
I’m not so sure…[Read more]

Right, but you want to buy after the downgrade, not before… if you bought on Friday, there is a good chance it’s going to go down further on Monday…
I don’t have any money either but it’s fun to follow and pretend “what if…”
 

I hope you didn’t buy yet… the S&P just downgraded the US’s credit worthiness from AAA to AA+. Monday morning is going to be interesting…
My guess-timate: Monday the market takes a dive followed by turbulence (while the gov’t scrambles to cover its butt and reassure people). It will then stabilize but not return to levels prior to last week……[Read more]