Trace One

tried laying down on a seatwall at lunch..Bums came around and told me I wouldn’t make it through the night, and I better join them on the benches..
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Nice picture of a lovely seatwall, Ben!

Thank you Jason, can I forward your reply to my fellow LA’s here at work..!! I think you are exactly right..

the 18″ referred to width, not height. But I like the idea of making seat-walls generally a bit higher than seat-height – I like that..!.

http://inhabitat.com/2010/05/12/frank-gehry-slams-sustainability-criticizes-leed/

There ya go Bob – that’s the link! sorry about that..!

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/05/obama_issues_h…

Don’t read Dan Brown! People tried to make maps from his tales – it is all fiction!
How about Roman Holiday, with Audrey the most elegant woman in the world Hepburn..that should put you in the mood..Or anything by Fellini…
and DON’T stand around in the Coliseum.
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rick, I agree with your perspective that the complaints are same old same old..I agree completely..BUT I do not agree with you about grammer..Twitter, texting, and e-mail have caused grammer and spelling to be transformed..sorry, old man. u cn sy wht u thnk, i be dnebck tu hzy..
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Yes, 4D is to include ‘time’, Nick, but how does showing a mature landscape not show ‘time” – except you get some flashy shrubs growing, to the full mature picture..Or perhaps by time, you would show the decay of the earth from pollution and overpopulation, and how it affects your garden…just kidding..

So if 4D shows time, my question is, how…[Read more]

How is ‘4D’ any different than the normal hand-drawn perspective one would draw showing the mature landscape? Is 4D any more ‘real’ than your hand-drawn perspective, because this is of course one of the classic and easiest ways to lie with maps, as they say – the cell-phone tower a faded blue, behind the clouds and trees, etc..
What is the point…[Read more]

I have stayed on the ‘old strip’ at Binyions, and I think that is a great vegas experience, compared to the new strip..betting and gambling going on 24 hours, you loose track of the world, the outdoors..To me that is vegas..Although that MAY not be the kind of recommendation you are looking for in a landscape site!
good luck!
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I could not believe the High Line didn’t win..A lot of the US teams were same ones as usual – Warren Byrd in Virginia, Wlm. McDonough, Val Valkenburg and Oehme Van Sweden….Some good new names, though.. – oh, yeah, the Beirut one was exciting..Why is china winning? What do you think? Better computer graphics? (no, I’m not snarky! 🙂

I absolutely loved the giant chess boards with giant chess pieces in a public park in Frankfurt I used to live close to..Chess board was on the ground, giant scale..Was very popular with the Germans, also, lots of open-air chess playing going on..Maybe not right dimensions..

How about some kind of stage-space for improv performances, ‘speakers’…[Read more]

ps congratulations, always nce to be wanted!
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roland, there was an extensive article on LA in China in the New York times a few weeks ago – LA in China is very hot, and they are doing an enourmous amount of construction..It did quote to Chinese LA’s as saying that foreigners would be hired at higher salaries but would be stuck there , and would not be able to advance, due to lack of local…[Read more]

Nick, It reminds me of the ‘required agricultural preserve’ in the Town of Southampton, a guideline that was required for residential subdivisions in the entire Town. An eleven lot residential subdivision, for example, (1-5 ac. lots) would preserve 20-30 acres of the site for agriculture, to retain the agricultural nature of the community…[Read more]

James Corner’s book of photos he did with Alex MacLean has some gorgeous aerial photos of the center pivoted irrigation agriculature on the large scale..You are probably familiar with that – it may not have the suburban juxtaposition you are looking for..

I’m glad you are running into ‘sustainable’ so much, Jason – I’m not..I have trouble getting low-water projects to fly, much less sustainable..For me, the word is descriptive of a goal, much more so than ‘green.’ People give it many definitions because it involves the vast array of human experience. I see it as a goal, for just about everything.…[Read more]

sustainable is quite real, the difference between sustainable and traditional design is thousands of gallons of water, kilowatts of electricity, non-poisonous building products, porous landscape that infiltrates instead of adding to stormwater – I can’t relate to your cycnicism, Jason.
My only problem with sustainable is that to me the ‘no-build’…[Read more]

nice concrete advice, Tanya! Interesting, Megan..Weren’t the Indians drawing their circles to keep spirits out? And the squares of the europeans provided for ‘transition spaces’ like parks, where man and nature could co-mingle, eventually bleeding out to true countryside, and on the opposite side, dense city, the checkered pattern of Broadway…[Read more]

I have to qualify my statement – I found, while teaching, that men certain types of men can get STUCK in the curve design mode, with every plan having the same curves, all over it…I think if one finds oneself stuck in curve mode, it is your responsibiltiy as a designer to investigate other things, just as an excercize – perhaps you will come…[Read more]