Thomas J. Johnson

Check out James Burnett’s “The Park at Lakeshore East” – It’s just North of Millennium Park.
http://www.ojb.com/projects/#/the-park-at-lakeshore-east
If you guys don’t mind walking, a great full-day hike would be:Park at Millennium Park (underground parking garage). Check out the park. Get your picture with the bean. Walk across the bridge to the…[Read more]

War? What war…? I would consider what’s going on right now “operations”. We haven’t seen war since Vietnam or WWII.Historically speaking, major wars are the only thing that get us out of the kind of “recession” we’re in… blow up the world and then sell them the goods/services to rebuild, oh, and take their resources and overthrow their…[Read more]

You guys are ridiculous…

The first principal I worked for despised papyrus. The second LA I worked for insisted on using nothing but papyrus. I found this distinction to be quite humorous.
Personally, I think papyrus looks like a third grade font from 1983, the kind of thing you’d use on a homework assignment to make an aged pirate map stained with tea and burnt edges,…[Read more]

If you don’t need a full time job for a few months then you should be looking now (which is what you are really doing anyway)… it’s going to take you more than a few months to find one…It’s OK to admit you’re looking for work… Anybody with half a brain will see through your too cool coy ploy of, “I’m not really looking for work… I just…[Read more]

Ah, I’m with you now… Sorry, a bit slow on the up take… my Floyd knowledge is a bit limited but I did enjoy the video…
 

 
It’s a good thing he didn’t try and use a hatchet. It would have taken him a lot longer…

Plus a broad leaf killer works on turf because it kills weeds and not the grass. If you put broad leaf killer on a thyme lawn you’d have a very dead lawn…

<—– Scratching head… Whiskey Tango Foxtrot are you guys talking about…?

You have to give the one guy credit for repeatedly attempting to stop the axe wielding mad-man, even going as far as getting physical with him. I think I’d stay clear of someone with an axe… even if he was murdering a Ginko.
What a fool! Who does that? Oh, wait, yeah…

Christopher, you can’t be that naive. Landscape Architects spew touchy feely, social equality jargon to SELL parks. Public parks are built with tax dollars so in order to get the public’s approval, everyone needs to feel welcome. What happens after the park is built is a very different story. Do you think it’s any coincidence that some of the most…[Read more]

I have back packed in national and state parks… never in the local park… (well, except carrying a weighted pack for training) though when I did some solo-bicycle touring in Europe, I definitely stopped in local parks, used the water fountain, enjoyed a bench seat in the shade of a tree… and then I moved on. I guess that’s how you…[Read more]

Um, yeah, I live in Chicago. Being elitist scum I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Lincoln Park and Millennium Park, as well as less desirable public parks (Garfield, Jackson). I’ve observed the differences in trash, graffiti, drug paraphernalia, demographics, etc. etc.
Do you really think Central Park “incorporates” all social classes or is the…[Read more]

I’ve played with VizTerra a bit… The finished product looks nice but if you’re using AutoCAD then you’ve got some redundancy. I never figured out how to import a CAD drawing without having to redraw a bunch of stuff (stairs/walls) or modify the way I draw them in CAD.
What would be really nice, would be a product that allows you to draw plans in…[Read more]

I don’t “dis” the homeless or go to church on Sunday. I’m also not an intolerant nazi. My opinion, based on observation and experience, is that parks should not be designed to accomodate the needs of the homeless and that by doing so, you encourage their presence. Their presence in turn introduces unwanted elements such as drugs, theft and…[Read more]

I like most of G’s response but I have to politely disagree with the last bit.
1. You do not want to save the survey plan under a new name. Keep all consultants file names the same as you received them, that way, if there is an issue, you can communicate with them. You don’t want to go, “um, well, I think it was Site_1011 but I changed it to…[Read more]

Hard to say… The CAD drawings in my folio generally took 3 days 24 hours. They are pretty detailed, have a lot of elevation changes, walls, stairs, etc. Those same plans with CDs took another week to 2 weeks, depending on the degree of custom features. Most of the built projects were in the $500k – $1mil, so a few weeks is not an unreasonable…[Read more]

Yeah, Irvine California has virtually no homeless because they don’t tolerate them. Laguna Beach, an arguably nicer area 10 minutes away, feeds and shelters the homeless and has a serious problem with drugs, theft and violence. Coincidence? I think not.

Thank you. I hope I never end up homeless also… it’s certainly not outside of the realm of possibilities (considering the economy and my choice of profession) but I still wouldn’t expect people to design parks for my needs as a homeless person. Given the opportunity, I would definitely bath under the whale tail though. Who wouldn’t want to use…[Read more]

There is a very cool fountain at the nursery I worked at this spring. Picture a 5′ half sphere, flat/dish side up, nested in a cube base. Water fills the dish, rolls over the edge, clings to the sphere and disappears into a gap between the sphere and cube. Short story long, kids and adults alike can’t resist touching the water as it rolls down the…[Read more]

um… huh? what?