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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..

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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 professionals (James Corner) who have come out of Penn. Grad school will introduce you to local professionals, and that is a great way to get hired.

Additionally, the plant communities are really different, and it would behoove you to get really good at one palette, native landscapes, etc. I still can’t get a handle on California plants, but what is worse, I could care less about California biomes.

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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 transportation agency, and they are put to work drafting in microstation or AutoCad, photoshop help, counting irrigation heads or calculating pressure – you will see how the sausages really get made, and be part of it.

Warning to  you – it is not easy work.!

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@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, and the plants are your medium. I find no-one in Calif. really thinks about the systems they are working upon, because of the abundant sunshine and all pervasive irrigation systems. So now, with the drought. the landscapers have to  pay the piper. Their designs mean nothing because they do not respect the underlying ecology, the ground plain, the earth. I find designing only with plants so boring – plants change constantly, their color, their forms…it is the earth that we have to first respect. Perhaps it is different where you come from, I hope so. 

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@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 working with  the ecological niche your site occupies. Then comes circulation, how will the site be acted upon by humans/animals/users..

 And the plants come after that!.

IHMO! (and I do like to argue..!)

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“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!

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“Time-saver Standards for Landscape Architects” a must-have, “A Pattern Language” to make you happy, “Design with Nature” so you can aspire to understand what the heck McHarg was talking about.

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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 the CEQR process to be absolutely absurd and useless. All I see is more and more development, less and less nature. CEQR, VIA’s do not help at all.

Some of my friends say any little bit of mitigation is a help, but I don’t see how decorated or planted sound walls improve a view, or how a historically designed McDonalds is better than NO McDonalds.  but to me there seems to be  no mechanism  to just say NO.

It’s my german manicheistic nature,, I geuss. .

And I can see if you only work at a policy level you may not be impacted by actual design work. i wish I could get there. 

Erosion control has made some progress, I geuss, our ‘gizzards’ to sort out plastic from the storm drains are good, but San Diego, with ZERO TMDL for plastic in the bay, every rain, ends up with massive floats of plastic, all throughout the bay. So once again, i just want to say, it would be better NOT to build, than to mitigate with erosion control, better not to use plastic at all…

Any thoughts in that direction, lauren? And thank you for taking the time. 

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@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 packages to get a design  done, it is usually something far frrom any  ideal at all, Far far from any ideal at all…

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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  detail, with numerical precision, in AutoCad or Microstation? Try a 1,000 string sequence for a curve, in a road alignment, or a 1,000 head irrigation system, each head having it’s own set of numbers, as usual. Then try 2,000.

Number two, please aquaint yourself with the governmental laws that control our professions – namely NPDES and CEQR.  Do you like adhering to rigid guidelines, and writing 500 page reports (I  suppose writing grant applications is probably the most immediate comparison,  for most people), and meeting senseless deadlines for these massive documents? (All of this, is, of course, in persuit of a good design., which will take about a second to arrive at. Maybe two seconds.) 

Finally, do you enjoy presenting contentious issues at public hearings – like a lawyer, without the ability to voice your own opinion at any time?

This is landscape architecture. And Urban Design. 

I recommend you intern with a city planning agency, if you can, ASAP, if all of this is news to you.

cheers, and good luck!

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

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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 point..

hm.

🙂

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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, can’t live without them. 

I agree, silly idea.  Production costs would far outweigh forest value for green credits, seems like. Provide wildlife habitat? Really? that is a pretty silly claim.

But she seems sincere. Shows how green credits have to be really thought through – but now, in the new politics, we won’t have to worry about non-existent climate change! Yay! problem solved! like ye old frogs sitting in gradually  boiling water. 

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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 even for a non-trade publication, and also would just avoid some of stupid pitfalls of designers having to pretend they have vision. The ‘vision” part is also probably the part the reviewer or non-professional is least  likely to ‘get.’  Additionally, good design, even  innovative design, does not necessarily require one to be annointed by god with light. It does require detail, however, and these reviewers just can’t be bothered doing something that should be fun for them- just tell us what you see! Ask the designer for concrete details, like where is it failing, or what is your watering schedule….

the brits are so much better at writing than we are. 

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