Trace One

I thought green roofs were more about recycling stormwater, rather than reducing temps..i think there is no argument the the green roof affect on temps is negligable… link from previous poster very interesting…worth checking out..

How about very high fencing with those flashy streamers tied on in intervals, Rob – do they help at all? One of the guys at work had fencing that had a gap at about 5 -6′, and the deer sailed neatly through the gap. But according to  him, the flashy streamers tied to the fence seem to be of help..
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I went to Penn, but it was a long time ago, when Ian McHarg was there. I loved it. But if I were you I would go to school on the coast you want to work on. I am on the ‘left’ coast now, after having grown up on the ‘right’ coast (east), and left coasters have not even heard of UPenn, could care less, and could care less about any of the design…[Read more]

I would look at huge government agencies like State Transportation departments or environmental protection divisions or planning divisions – state agencies often have budgets that can absorb interns, have lots of really intense work, and would love to have some cheap labor for a few months – we hire interns where I work, a huge state…[Read more]

@Nigel, here in calif. my experience is quite different – a passion for plants is all these guys are trained in, to the point that they act like painters rather than architects. Layering, contrast, that is all they talk about, all they have been taught to understand, like painters with paint. Here in Ca., we are taught to just irrigate everything,…[Read more]

@Nigel, thanks for the Kevin Lynch reminder – he IS an excellent thinker, his Site Planning definitely a standard. But sorry, I beg to differ with your statement  that ” for an LA plants are your most important media.”
I see plants as secondary to the real bones of the site – the ground plane, and the earth sculpting  the LA will be doing in w…[Read more]

“Landscape Architecture Graphic Standards” is what I meant, actually, I think it is pretty much the same as Time-saver standards. Big expensive tomes you can spend hours leafing through. Great books..! Have fun!

Thank you for your reply, very interesting. Don’t you feel bad about encroaching on forest lands with human development? (Not to make you feel bad, just curious..) You are not frustrated with the foregone conclusions of a VIA (visual impact statements), that continuously allow development, that have no way to say  no to human encroachment? I find…[Read more]

@LLauren, my experience is all in public, also. I am interested – do you not deal with CEQR or NPDES, or vast irrigation plans? How is your experience different? I am prob ably asking for trouble, but I am too old to really care. So what do you mean, Lauren – if you care to elucidate..

Oh, and PS, I should also add that as you assemble the vast…[Read more]

As someone who got an MLA from UPenn when McHarg was there, (read, major idealist!)  I can tell you to please measure your ideals against reality. Number one, try specification writing and road alignment, for the discliplines of crunching endless numbers and balancing them with massive spec packages – do you enjoy massive quantification of…[Read more]

DG is not for driving on, as far as i know. Wonderful for pedestrian traffic, not working for cars. 

oh, that is interesting. Legal protections for biodiversity is not what she presents in this piece.
Starting with that thought, i can imagine an artwork comparing new York (a bio-diverse population of humans if there ever was one!) to the teeming masses in a native ‘scape.. Or something like that..Can go anywhere from ‘it’s political art’ starting…[Read more]

Interesting post, Rob, thank you. The photos of the forest in the video, with that lovely mature forest floor,  big roots, the feeling of layers of organic material hardened by weathering, pretty funny to try to recreate that in a week. Plus, New yorkers don’t appreciate the green spaces? i don’ t think so. new yorkers love their green spaces,…[Read more]

thank you for posting this, tosh K, very interesting piece.
I just wish the writers  would spend less time chasing vacuous golden oldies (‘the spirit of the place” !!oooh! How profound and novel – NOT) and more time just describing the designs. It is like they have forgotten how to review. I think a greater level of detail would be appropriate…[Read more]

you still didn’t answer – where do you set the number, andrew?

This does not seem high, 150$ an hour. Computer is not rocket science, it is pretty cut and dried, so i disagree with the need for a reputation to charge that, it seems pretty standard. If he finds he is in huge demand, then he can go up from there.
Where would you put an initial rate, Andrew? And perhaps it matters where you live.  

I agree, Richard Elliott. $150 an hour or so, sounds like a good range; $25 to $50 I said above is too low.

Ask Mike and Brian Lin. They made a career of their drawing school, as far as I can tell – at Penn they did not teach drafting, so we as a class hired Mike Lin during the summer – it was $300 to $400, class size was about 20,and it was a terrific class, we all loved it. I have heard they have a teaching studio set up also, so students can go…[Read more]

Design With Nature by Ian McHarg, Wjiley 1995 (reprint of 1971 original..)