How a Narrow Piece of Land Evolved Into a Luxurious Project

The Line Condominium Sales Gallery, by Shma Company Limited, by Bangkok, Thailand. The Line Condominium is a 42 storey high residential building. The Complex is situated in the Jatutak Area, in Bangkok. The uniqueness of the “condominium” is that the residential units are individually owned. The landscape of the project unfolds on a narrow piece of land between the pedestrian pathway and the Sales Gallery building façade. The landscape designer Shma, a Thailand based firm, has successfully enhanced that small lane with a variety of special qualities. The Line Condominium Sales Gallery The design concept has been inspired by the history of the State Railway of Thailand. The Line Condominium represents the idea of ‘travelling’ to different natural destinations, and this is easily observed in...Read More

Contemporary Italian Garden – Private Residence, by Giuseppe Lunardini Landscape Architecture, in Ortonovo (Liguria), Italy. For landscape architects, private residences can often be a chance to showcase their creativity and create spaces that truly reflect not only their clients’ personalities but also their own design aesthetics. For Giuseppe Lunardini, this contemporary Italian garden in the hills of Ortonovo, close to the Mediterranean coast, is an excellent example of how a project can do just that. The owner, a businessman working in the marble sector, wanted that the traditional design of residential gardens be re-thought for his new home, and Lunardini happily obliged. As a designer, who views his firm as a workshop, or laboratory, where experimentation is encouraged and desi...Read More

We look at some of the common misconceptions students tend to hold, which turn out to be complete rubbish. Student days, aren’t they the best time of our youth? Full of new emotions, new happenings, and new experiences aren’t those years exciting and full of expectations; wild but educative simultaneously? Although we usually don’t realize it at the time, the period of our studies is one of the most momentous stages of life within which our personality, character, and attitude take shape. That shape is far from simple and explicit when we graduate, but its base is already deeply engraved. If that basic shape is bad, it will be almost impossible to transform or delete it. If it’s good, on the other hand, it can be improved and cleared up with ease and willingness. However, the four or five ...Read More

LAN’s Brett Lezon and Win Phyo went to Expo Milano 2015 and compiled a list of 10 Highlights that stand out for Landscape Architects.  Dating back to 1851, in London, the Universal Exhibition has served as the stage for showcasing the world’s successes. From the phonograph (1878 Paris World Expo) to electricity (1904 St. Louis World’s Fair), endless inventions have made their first appearance at World Expos. Based in Milan, the economic and cultural capital of Italy, Expo Milano 2015 took place from May 1 to Oct. 31 and featured pavilions from 143 participating countries, representing 93 percent of the global population. Open and inclusive, beautiful and ambitious: Bringing the world to Milan for six months was certainly an impressive challenge, and the organizers succeeded — m...Read More

In a conversation with writer Nicholas Bueskingkeys, top plantsman, Roy Diblik explains the keys to successful low-maintenance planting. Over the past decade, Roy Diblik has become a prominent name in Midwestern perennials. He runs Northwind Perennial Farm in southern Wisconsin, which supplies some of the largest perennial wholesale companies in the area. He has never received formal education in horticulture. Nevertheless, today Chicago is sprinkled with prominent displays of his work: Lurie Garden, Shedd Aquarium, and the Gary Comer Youth Center, among others. He has become a leading advocate for a paradigm shift in the planting industry, alongside other notable plantsmen including Piet Oudolf and Adam Woodruff. Recently, I had the chance to have a conversation with Roy Diblik . As we ta...Read More

ASLA headquarters, by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. and Conservation Design Forum, in Washington, D.C. The ASLA (American Society of Landscape Architects) green roof project seeks to demonstrate the environmental benefits of green roofs, as well as to showcase what landscape architects contribute to this type of project. Located on the rooftop of the headquarters of the American Society of Landscape Architects in the heart of Washington D.C., the ASLA Green Roof project transformed an existing 3,000 square foot roof into an expressive display of green roof technology that supports an active social space. Some Benefits of Green Roofs Worth Mentioning Green roofs help to cool cities, clean the air, build habitat and manage storm water. The plants and their growing medium filter ra...Read More

One Island East, by Hargreaves Associates, in Taikoo Place, Hong Kong, China. According to the common business terminology, a corporate design or a corporate identity is the specific combination of designs, colors, and words that a firm uses to present a visual statement about itself and its business philosophy. The corporate identity is the integral image a company shows to investors, customers, and the public. It is very often vital for the future development of the business. Corporate landscape is another notion, referring to the use of landscape architecture as a creative tool to underline and maintain a certain corporate identity. How can a landscape project reflect and correspond to the design and corporate identity of a specific office campus located in Hong Kong? How has it managed...Read More

Fiona Stanley Hospital, by HASSELL, in Perth, Western Australia. Hospitals are places where people go to heal, so it comes as no surprise that when asked to design the landscape at Fiona Stanley Hospital, the landscape architects at HASSELL sought to create a naturally healing space. Working alongside the other members of the Fiona Stanley Hospital Design Collaboration — Hames Sharley and Silver Thomas Hanley — HASSELL was able to create an outdoor environment that blends with the indoor spaces of the hospital and allows patients to recover and exercise, both indoors and out. The concept behind these seamless transitions and other design initiatives is discussed in the following video. WATCH: Fiona Stanley Hospital Before design work even began, the collaboration called on an e...Read More

Mediterranean Terrace, by Studio S.O.A.P, in Alassio, Italy. “The traveler returning from Italy, with his eyes and imagination full of ineffable Italian garden-magic, knows vaguely that the enchantment exists.” – Edith Wharton Italian gardens, full of fantasy and sensory delight, have never failed to inspire artists and designers throughout the centuries. Travelers who have ever visited Italy share the feeling described by Edith Wharton, and upon viewing the Mediterranean Terrace by Simone Ottonello, we are transported back and forth between the 15th and 21st centuries, realizing that it is not just to foreign designers that Italian Renaissance gardens provide inspiration. Set in Northern Italy Set just a few miles from the French border in the town of Alassio, on the western coast of Ligu...Read More

A’beckett Urban Square, by Peter Elliott Pty Ltd Architecture + Urban Design and Taylor Cullity Lethlean Landscape Architecture, in RMIT at Melbourne, Victoria in Australia.  Conceived as a piece of urban theater carved out of the surrounding of the city, A’Beckett Urban Square is framed by new residential towers, multi-level car parks, and RMIT academic buildings. This urban landscaping pop-up has transformed a vacant site into a vibrant sports and recreational hub for RMIT. Transforming a vacant space into a useful one by using artwork, platforms for sports, and vegetation, and by creating space between spaces, the park adapts its surroundings into a collaboration of ideas, developing creative concepts. A’beckett Urban Square A’beckett urban square is a temporary zone which converges dif...Read More

X-TRACK MOTORSPORTS Tatuí, by Eduardo Terra, located near two highways– Castelo Branco (SP 280) and Raposo Tavares (SP-270) — Brazil. For the last four years, Eduardo Terra has been hard at work performing feasibility studies and sports market analysis in order to build a racetrack that will encompass more than 1-million-square-meters (1,000,000 m²) outside the city of São Paulo, Brazil, in the municipality of Tatuí. The project, both large in size and cost, also has a chance to have a large impact on the communities that surround it based on the number of businesses that it will include and the number of jobs it will provide. In addition to the racetrack, the X-TRACK MOTORSPORTS facility will also include condominiums, an exhibition center, a village mall, a hotel, a hospit...Read More