Top 10 Contemporary Landscape Architecture Projects in London

London is famous for its arts, literature, politics, and history, so it’s no surprise that the vibrant city is also home to some of the world’s finest landscape architecture projects. Although the classic English landscape gardens championed by leading figures such as William Kent and Capability Brown are still largely influential today, contemporary designs laced with ecological functions and urban elements are emerging throughout London. So what are the best contemporary landscape architecture and design projects in London? Read on! 10. Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park Image via LDA Design The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park was designed by LDA Design and Hargreaves Associates and built for the 2012 London Olympics. Originally called Olympic Park, the landscaped park was renamed to ...Read More

Experiencing the global collapse of bee populations.  If you’re like me, you’ll remember being out on a summers day, running around, finding the next adventure and catching bees in an old jar for a closer analysis. Then, making sure they were comfortable with a hand full of flowers, realizing that when these critters were released, they would transform into tiny kamikaze bombers. But growing up it became clear that these fat bottom flyers were becoming a distant visitor to my local park and garden. Through reading Rachael Carson’s timeless Silent Spring an unequivocal inside view developed.  It illustrated the damage pesticides, DDT in particular, caused the ecosystem. It conveyed the fragility of nature. Since the realization of mankind’s destruction, how far have we come? Wel...Read More

April is flying by and, believe it or not, we are already in our third week of National Landscape Architecture Month! Land8 returns with yet another recap of last week’s activities by landscape architects across the country. Keep reading to see the highlights! Although Ask A Landscape Architect Day isn’t until this Wednesday, April 16, we saw some professionals getting a head start with their public outreach efforts.  Texas ASLA set up a booth with lots of goodies for Earth Day Houston on Saturday. And some other great work as seen over on our Week 2 Storify recap:  States and cities across the US are also doing their part to promote National Landscape Architecture Month:  ASLA continues their daily #NLAM challenge and even launched a new Career Discovery Page! Check it out: as...Read More

Groundswell Design Group create a fully functional pop up beer garden. A vacant lot filled with garbage and unwanted materials are an eyesore. However, if that lot is beautifully landscaped with a pallet of up-cycled materials, then that lot can become a beautiful destination. As featured on our “Top 10 Examples of Rapid Landscape Architecture” article, the Pop Up Beer Garden project by Groundswell is a gleaming example of success and simplicity at its best. Just like in Philadelphia, where the beer garden annually pops up, many urban areas have unused and unloved spaces. This particular lot in PA was previously used for a trapeze art exhibition as well as a parking lot. However, in 2013, the lot fell into the hands of Groundswell design group where they decided to create a pocket park tha...Read More

Civil 3D is a design and documentation program that supports BIM workflows. Although it’s not a program specifically tailored for landscape architects, we can still benefit from its powerful and useful features for analysis as well as its tools for design automation and visualisation. Civil 3D also offers another big advantage for landscape architects requiring close collaboration with engineers. The drawing and information exchange as well as its interoperability with other engineering software makes it a flexible tool for both disciplines.  Surfaces: Civil 3D Building Blocks Before we go any further, the first and major thing you’ll need to understand about Civil 3D are its basic building blocks called Surfaces. According to the Autodesk explanation, a Surface is: “a three-di...Read More

The basic premise of permeable paving systems is simple: Let water drain through pavement instead of across it.  It is a boon for designers who advocate environmental responsibility by reducing or eliminating runoff and increasing water quality.  However, despite the concept’s seeming simplicity, careless design can create a number of issues that eventually lead to pavement failure. SmithGroupJJR’s design of the Loyola campus included a sweeping permeable paver walk.  As we, both as a society and a profession, look to “green” how we build, permeable paving has become a popular method of reducing stormwater runoff.  There is a challenge, however, in utilizing it properly.  Unlike permeable pavements, time-proven traditional engineering always tries to keep water out of the base.  Why?...Read More

RO&AD Architecten surprise the world with their Moses Bridge. Dutch design has always been great reference when it comes to creativity and innovation – in this case, it is no different. The Moses Bridge is a very unusual pedestrian bridge (already featured in our “Top 10 Pedestrian Bridges”, check it out!) built in a fort located near Halsteren, in the Netherlands. What makes it so unique? Well, it offers more than just access from one side to the other like an ordinary bridge – it takes you in a journey back in time… THE FORT DE ROOVERE Fort De Roovere is an entrenchment that was part of the West Brabant Water Line – a Dutch defence line consisting of a series of fortresses constructed between the cities of Bergen op Zoom and Grave in 1698. Over the...Read More

This week’s sketchy selection has been particularly inspiring, with all kinds of interesting works coming in. Our readers have been especially imaginative with these. This is why I’ll start this selection with a quote from one of this week’s entries by Emilie Marques Jordao: ‘You should give hand drawing a shot even if you have a non-artistic background. Find something that inspires you and your sketching abilities will flourish!’ No. 10 by Nancy Sarai Vazquez, Landscape Designer, USA ‘This sketch was drawn while on a study abroad trip to Italy. We were in Venice that day and the views of the harbor were just spectacular. Since that trip, I have traveled with my sketchbook, always stopping to draw only the things that grab my attention, be it people, places, or things. The materials used w...Read More

Welcome to the first installment in our three-part series on “How to Design a Landscape for Extreme Workouts.” As the title suggests, these articles are going to explore how extreme and challenging workouts that produce extreme results can be accommodated in a landscape design. We start off with the first training: calisthenics. We all know that daily exercise is a vital thing to keep our bodies strong and healthy and boost our moods. However, calisthenics is on a whole other level of exercise! So how exactly can we as landscape architects accommodate this type of user? You had better tie your Nikes and listen up, because this is going to be a tough ride! What is Calisthenics? Calisthenics is a Greek word meaning beauty and strength. The beauty of the workout routines for calisthenics is s...Read More

In the spirit of ASLA’s promotion of career discovery for National Landscape Architecture Month, I want to give some insight into an important segment of the profession that is not talked about very much: the campus landscape architect. Landscape architects have been working on college and university campuses as design consultants for over a century, but in this other role – working in-house for the schools themselves – they are increasingly making big differences in the long-term stewardship and transformation of these important places.  If you are interested in landscapes that are both historic and dynamic, and like the idea of making a significant impact on one special place, then I can’t recommend this career path highly enough. Before I was hired on as Duke University’s first ca...Read More

Over 300 landscape architecture students from all over the U.S. and Canada gathered two weeks ago at Madison, WI to attend LAbash, an annual student-run landscape architecture conference. Hosted this year by the students of University of Wisconsin-Madison, LAbash offers landscape architecture students an incredible opportunity to enhance their knowledge and expand their social and professional network. The three-day event features an array of workshops, speakers, charrettes, and social events all focused on celebrating the students’ shared passion for landscape architecture. Fifteen of my University of Maryland classmates and I enthusiastically attended LAbash this year, despite not knowing much about Wisconsin. We were pleasantly surprised with what we found. With a rich ecological and cu...Read More

Seventeen months after Superstorm Sandy left a trail of destruction through the U.S. eastern seaboard, Rebuild by Design competition’s ten design team finalists have unveiled their resilience-based solutions after eight months of intensive research and public outreach. The international competition was launched by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force last year in an effort to defend the mid-Atlantic region from increasingly temperamental weather events. Here at Land8, we take at look at some of the proposals by top landscape architecture firms.    Hurricane Sandy is estimated to have caused the United States $68 billion in damages, a cost only surpassed by Hurricane Katrina. Some communities have yet to fully recover from the ...Read More