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LAM
56 PALETTE
12 INSIDE
The Right Fit
16 LAND MATTERS
BY KATARINA KATSMA, ASLA
Sandra Clinton, FASLA, works both science and aesthetics into her landscapes. 70 GOODS
18 LETTERS
FOREGROUND 24 NOW
Light the Way Path lights, spots, standards, and bollards for a variety of settings. BY KATARINA KATSMA, ASLA
A floating landscape for a hospital in Los Angeles; Tulane’s nitrogen reduction challenge; palm tree protests in Milan’s Duomo plaza; and more. EDITED BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER
44 MATERIALS
Color and Cushion Rubber surfacing gives a bounce to the playground at Chicago’s Mary Bartelme Park.
RAYLEN WORTHINGTON
BY JEFF LINK
6 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
SEEDS HOPPED A RIDE ON ANIMAL HIDES OR IN THEIR GUTS, GERMINATING IN THE SOIL BROKEN UP BY SHARP HOOVES. —P. 102
FEATURES 80 CONTROL OF THE CANOPY The office of Landscape Architects of Bangkok has made a tiny but rich forest in the sprawl of the Thai capital. BY JAMES TRULOVE
102 ALONG FOR THE RIDE Once a tangle, Tylee Farm is becoming a landscape of Texas transitions in the hands of Studio Outside. BY ANNE RAVER
122 SIDE POCKET This month Paley Park turns 50 years old. It wears its age well, mostly. BY FRED A. BERNSTEIN
THE BACK 132 HIGH FIDELITY Drone mapping is reorienting designers’ relationship to the aerial view. BY KARL KULLMANN
142 BOOKS
Urban Design and Utopian Belief A review of City of Refuge: Separatists and Utopian Town Planning by Michael J. Lewis. BY JANE GILLETTE
168 ADVERTISER INDEX 169 ADVERTISERS BY PRODUCT CATEGORY 180 BACKSTORY
Seismic Matters USGS earthquake forecast maps are shaking things up, especially in Oklahoma. BY MAGGIE ZACKOWITZ
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017 / 7
THE MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS
EDITOR Bradford McKee / bmckee@asla.org
A skywalk snakes through the canopy of Bangkok’s Metro-Forest by LAB, page 80.
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REPRESENTATIVE Monica Barkley / subscriptions@asla.org REPRINTS For custom reprints, please call Wright’s Media at 877-652-5295. BACK ISSUES 888-999-ASLA (2752) Landscape Architecture Magazine (ISSN 0023-8031) is published monthly by the American Society of Landscape Architects, 636 Eye Street NW, Washington, DC 200013736. Periodical postage paid at Washington, D.C., and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Landscape Architecture Magazine, 636 Eye Street NW, Washington, DC 20001-3736. Publications Mail Agreement No. 41024518. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to PO Box 503 RPO, West Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 4R6. Copyright 2017 ASLA. Subscriptions: $59/year; international: $99/year; students: $50/year; digital: $44.25/year; single copies: $7. Landscape Architecture Magazine seeks to support a healthy planet through environmentally conscious production and distribution of the magazine. This magazine is printed on FSC® certified paper using vegetable inks and is co-mailed using recyclable polywrap to protect the magazine during distribution, significantly reducing the number of copies printed each month. The magazine is also available in digital format through www.asla.org/ lam/zinio or by calling 1-888-999-ASLA.
ASLA BOARD OF TRUSTEES PRESIDENT Vaughn B. Rinner, FASLA PRESIDENT-ELECT Gregory A. Miller, FASLA IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT Chad D. Danos, FASLA VICE PRESIDENTS David M. Cutter, ASLA Robin L. Gyorgyfalvy, FASLA Wendy Miller, FASLA Thomas Mroz Jr., ASLA Michael S. Stanley, ASLA Vanessa Warren, ASLA EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT Nancy C. Somerville, Honorary ASLA SECRETARY Curtis A. Millay, ASLA TREASURER Michael D. O’Brien TRUSTEES Aaron A. Allan, ASLA Brian E. Bainnson, ASLA W. Phillips Barlow, ASLA Robert D. Berg, ASLA Shannon Blakeman, ASLA Gary A. Brown, FASLA Perry Cardoza, ASLA Matthew O. Carlile, ASLA David H. Contag, ASLA Scott V. Emmelkamp, ASLA William T. Eubanks III, FASLA Melissa M. Evans, ASLA David V. Ferris Jr., ASLA Robert E. Ford, ASLA David Gorden, ASLA David A. Harris, ASLA Lucy B. Joyce, ASLA Jennifer Judge, ASLA Ron M. Kagawa, ASLA Roger J. Kennedy, ASLA Mark M. Kimerer, ASLA Joel N. Kurokawa, ASLA Brian J. LaHaie, ASLA Lucille C. Lanier, FASLA Curtis LaPierre, ASLA Dalton M. LaVoie, ASLA Robert Loftis, ASLA Jeanne M. Lukenda, ASLA Timothy W. Maloney, ASLA Eugenia M. Martin, FASLA Timothy W. May, ASLA Bradley McCauley, ASLA Douglas C. McCord, ASLA Ann Milovsoroff, FASLA Jon M. Milstead, ASLA Cleve Larry Mizell, ASLA Dennis R. Nola, ASLA April Philips, FASLA Jeff Pugh, ASLA John D. Roters, ASLA John P. Royster, FASLA Stephen W. Schrader Jr., ASLA Adrian L. Smith, ASLA Susanne Smith Meyer, ASLA Ellen C. Stewart, ASLA Mark A. Steyaert Jr., ASLA Adam A. Supplee, ASLA John A. Swintosky, ASLA Nicholas Tufaro, ASLA LAF REPRESENTATIVES Barbara L. Deutsch, FASLA Kona A. Gray, ASLA NATIONAL ASSOCIATE REPRESENTATIVE Carlos Flores, Associate ASLA NATIONAL STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE Joni Emmons, Student ASLA PARLIAMENTARIAN Kay Williams, FASLA
8 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
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LAM
INSIDE
/
CONTRIBUTORS KATARINA KATSMA, ASLA, (“The Right Fit,” page 56) is the magazine’s writer/editor and writes the Goods and Palette columns for LAM. She has a BLA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MLA from Sheffield University in the UK. You can reach her on Instagram or Twitter @katkatsma.
“Sandy [Clinton] said that for her, a good landscape comes out of a good relationship. It’s been a common theme I’ve seen in all the designers I’ve interviewed for Palette.”
KARL KULLMANN (“High Fidelity,” page
132) is associate professor of landscape architecture and urban design at the University of California, Berkeley. You can reach him at karl.kullmann@berkeley.edu.
JAMES TRULOVE (“Control of the Canopy,” page 80) is a publisher and editor of books on architecture and landscape architecture, and a former editor of LAM.
“Wedged between a 14-million-strong metropolis and one of the world’s busiest airports, it is remarkable that this small oasis of sustainability exists at all!”
GOT A STORY? At LAM, we don’t know what we don’t know. If you have a story, project, obsession, or simply an area of interest you’d like to see covered, tell us! Send it to lam@asla.org. Visit LAM online at landscapearchitecturemagazine.org. Follow us on Twitter @landarchmag and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ landscapearchitecturemagazine. LAM is available in digital format through landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/ subscribe or by calling 1-888-999-ASLA.
12 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
MEGAN CISMESIA, TOP; ANNA KONDOLF, CENTER; JAMES TRULOVE, BOTTOM
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LAM
LAND MATTERS
/
DEREGULARITIES A
nybody who values holding a license as a landscape architect is not going to like what happens next. The current political environment and a general disdain for moderation are encouraging an assault against many forms of occupational licensing, including licensing for landscape architecture. So far this year, there have been many bills introduced to end landscape architecture licensing and revamp occupational licensing structures in the legislatures of Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Virginia, and Washington. There are no doubt more to come. These attempts take various forms. Some would outright deregulate landscape architecture by simply removing it from the group of professions that require licensing. Others are more insidious and would reform landscape architecture as well as most all other licensing systems in the guise of “right to earn a living” or “economic liberty” measures, the premise of which is that licensure poses an unnecessary barrier to entering the occupation of one’s choice. Some would allow citizens to challenge licensure requirements in court and would shift the burden to the state to prove that licensure is necessary over other, less restrictive, forms of regulation. Others would place licensure regulations at the discretion of a governor who may or may not hold the view that, as is now recognized, landscape architects are responsible for protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the public. Any of them spells a potential direct threat to the profession. Under the economic liberty argument, it would seem there is a brand of frustrated paraprofessional who would be considered professional if not for the heavy hand of the state—if you can’t meet the criteria, you take down the criteria. The real drivers, though, are antiregulation politicians, policy shops, and think tanks such as the Goldwater Institute or the Institute for Justice, who work full time to slash the scope of government for gain or for spite, and particularly resent the need of the government’s blessing to get any kind of job. They invoke, among other things, the need to protect consumers from cartels, colluders, and monopolies in the interest of free-market economics, an argument that plays well in an environment of sentimental populism.
16 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
The antilicensure movement well predates the Trump era, but the politics of the present are giving it a strong draft. In 2015, the Obama administration issued a set of “best practices” for state licensing officials of all types to consider. Much of it reads as good-sense advice to avoid discrimination or differences among states in licensing any profession. It clearly did not satisfy antiregulation interests. In March, the Federal Trade Commission unwrapped something called the Economic Liberty Task Force. It is billed as the “first major policy initiative” of FTC Acting Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen, a Republican who was designated to her post by President Trump in January after having been a commissioner of the agency since 2012. Ohlhausen’s task force sounds ready to help states undo as much licensing as possible. In a statement introducing it, Ohlhausen opened by asking: “Should the government spend its time protecting consumers from ugly throw pillows or droopy floral arrangements?” The answer, clearly, is no, but the question misrepresents the ambition of the economic liberty phalanx, which has been known to doubt the need to regulate the supervision of physician assistants. In recent years, advocates for landscape architecture licensure, including ASLA and the Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards (CLARB), have worked with their members to beat back regular attempts in various states to render landscape architects persona non grata as a profession. “This is different,” wrote Joel Albizo, Honorary ASLA, the CEO of CLARB, recently in an advisory to colleagues. “The volume, variation, and novelty of reform approaches…add complexity and tax the community’s ability to respond.” Not least among licensure advocates’ concerns is a chronic assumption by landscape architects themselves that their licenses are safe. This self-assurance has perhaps been supported by the achievement of licensure in all 50 states since 2010, a scenario that was years of hard work in the making. Any landscape architects who are not paying close attention and taking personal action now to make their case for distinction to their elected officials have a license that is theirs to lose.
BRADFORD MCKEE EDITOR
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LAM
LETTERS
/
WRITING ON THE WALL
W
hen I pay my dues each year, I do so to support our profession —landscape architecture—which I believe to be first and foremost about design—design, not political activism. In my opinion, it is inappropriate for LAM to openly take and promote biased political positions. If I want to hear how wrong Trump is, or how perfect a former president was, there are plenty of other places I can turn. Members should be able to participate in ASLA and LAM without ever having to come to grips with the staff’s personal political beliefs. Please. Be objective. Be professional. KEVIN VIA LAM ONLINE
Y
ou may note that this is an opinion piece in a magazine which is only one of the many benefits that your ASLA membership provides. More importantly, your membership provides you with numerous educational resources, invaluable networking opportunities, and the tireless advocacy of our profession and the environment—which includes the protection of your ever-threatened license (see iAdvocate: advocate.asla. org). In fact, this association was named one of nine organizations exhibiting the most comprehensive approaches to educating and engaging their members regarding climate change by the Kresge Foundation. It may be biased, but it is overwhelmingly biased toward the protection of the environment and facts. And again, it is an opinion piece signed by Brad McKee. If you don’t like it, flip the page to the rest of this awardwinning magazine. MAGGIE VIA LAM ONLINE
I
want to commend Brad McKee and many recent LAM contributors for having the courage to look at the politics of antienvironmentalism. Scott Peatross’s position (Letters, April) that climate change should be left to others is understandable—it’s a big scary issue that many of us (and I include myself) would give our left leg to be able to ignore. We’d like to, but we can’t. Elissa Rosenberg, in the same issue’s Books column, summarizes the reality of 21st-century landscape professionals when she writes that “the design of the city cannot be separated from the natural systems on which its stability and survival depend.” For half a century, thoughtful LAs have formally recognized that we cannot stick our heads in the sand of “apolitical” design. Leaving politics to others is to trivialize this profession, which is the last thing it needs. Brad’s December Land Matters (“Get Ready”) did perhaps border on overwrought, but faced with an administration that hates environmentalism with such a twisted passion, who among us hasn’t felt outrage? To characterize outrage as “handwringing,” as Peatross does, goes beyond legitimately being scared and into name-calling; it passively accepts the bought-and-paid-for alternative facts of the climate deniers. Keeping politics in a neat box to enable polite indifference is soooo 20th, maybe even 19th, century. Please keep up the good work, LAM.
KIM SORVIG UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO
18 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
I
could not disagree more with the opinion that it is inappropriate for LAM to openly take and promote political positions (I omitted the word “biased” for redundancy…any political position is inherently biased). I am relatively new to the discipline (less than 5 years’ experience, 31 years old), but I imagine the majority of my peers (in experience level, generation, etc.) would stand by my disagreement. I understand ASLA has had difficulties in attracting new members in the early stages of their careers. I guarantee that they will continue to have this struggle as long as ASLA doesn’t take and promote political positions as done here. Design doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it is influenced by policy, as is every other aspect of human life. Finally, this article shares a trait that’s common across so much good design: It’s bold and brings a unique component to the discussion (an ecological layer in addition to issues of xenophobia and racism that have been the predominant beats of both national media and progressives). GRAHAM GOLBUFF, ASSOCIATE ASLA VIA LAM ONLINE
I
agree that the border wall is a terrible idea, from both the ecological and the human perspectives. But this piece could have been improved with some actual science and maybe a little less inflammatory language. The Jim O’Donnell/Yale Environment 360 report is science-based; an embedded hot link for that would have been good. Let’s keep the conversation going, but let’s incorporate the specific effects on specific habitats and species. TOBY GRAY VIA LAM ONLINE
CORRECTION
In LAM’s April issue, image credits did not include the source of the graphics on pages 56 and 58. Those graphics are from the book PHYTO: Principles and Resources for Site Remediation and Landscape Design (Routledge) by Niall Kirkwood, FASLA, and Kate Kennen, ASLA.
SUBMIT LAM welcomes letters from readers. Letters may be edited and condensed. Please e-mail comments to LAMletters @asla.org or send via U.S. mail to: AMERICAN SOCIETY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS 636 EYE STREET NW WASHINGTON, DC 20001–3736
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FOREGROUND
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At Clinton & Associates, there’s a right design for the right place in PALETTE, page 56.
FOREGROUND
/
NOW
EDITED BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER
FOR THE RENOVATION OF A HOSPITAL TERRACE, AHBE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS DESIGNS A FLOATING LANDSCAPE. BY NATE BERG
W ABOVE
Orb-like water features enliven one of four new gardens at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
hen the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center opened in Los Angeles in 1976, its two main towers were surrounded by notoriously unattractive concrete terraces. “It was like a prison yard. Literally concrete and maybe a few trees in planters,” says Zeke Triana, the hospital’s director of facilities planning, design, and construction. “People didn’t really want to sit out there.”
AHBE Landscape Architects saw a chance to turn the concrete into what the firm’s president, Calvin Abe, FASLA, calls a “healing environment.” The terraces could be reconfigured to actually contribute to the hospital’s mission of improving people’s health.
But physically building such a space proved difficult at a working hospital. A previous attempt to redesign When recently invited to redesign the deck spaces had to be halted the terraces, the Los Angeles-based completely because vibrations from
24 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
construction were so disruptive to hospital staff and patients. To avoid further disturbances, structural changes to the concrete were forbidden. AHBE came up with the idea to turn the concrete spaces into lush gardens by floating them above the surface, literally placing a new landscape on top of the old. A green roof medium holds the plants while foam insulation and a steel framework provide undulating forms. Bathtub-like sealed
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FOREGROUND
/NOW
Self-contained planters sit on top of the existing structure. BELOW
Work was done off-site to limit disturbance.
planting structures direct all water flows to pre-existing drains. None of the water or soil ever touches the original concrete. Abe says this was the project’s biggest challenge.
To accommodate the varied sun exposure of each of the four long plazas that surround the towers, AHBE designed four separate gardens. The northernmost plaza is a largely shaded space, with tall Weaver’s bamboo, a mix of grasses and shrubs, and patio seating. Between the towers, one garden features a sculptural walking path and the other a blue-themed planting palette with rosemary, agave, and spruce nestled around small water features. The southernmost space catches full sun and is used to showcase plants that thrive in the region’s Mediterranean climate. Curved wooden benches designed by the firm meander through all four spaces. The prison yard has been replaced. Abe says the completed landscape, which is set to open this spring, is “a way of transforming not only the space but also the experience of the patients, the visitors, and the medical staff”—all with minimal disturbance.
26 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
AHBE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS, TOP; SIBYLLE ALLGAIER, HELIPHOTO, BOTTOM
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FOREGROUND
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LEFT
Competition finalists walk the test site in Tensas Parish in northern Louisiana.
T
ucked within the old bends and oxbows of the Mississippi River, the cornfields of Somerset Plantation in Tensas Parish, Louisiana, are the backdrop for a high-profile competition to solve one of the region’s most pressing environmental issues. Here, four hours north of New Orleans, five finalist teams are testing new methodologies and management systems as part of the $1 million Tulane University Nitrogen Reduction Grand Challenge. Although the solutions will be evaluated for their effect on crop yield, their main target is not the field itself but an environment hundreds of miles away: the Gulf of Mexico.
TULANE’S $1 MILLION NITROGEN REDUCTION CHALLENGE AIMS TO MITIGATE HYPOXIA IN THE GULF OF MEXICO. BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER
TEST FIELD PLOTS
LEGEND Treatment Plots
a. Cropsmith b. Adapt-N c. Stable’N d. AgDNA e. Pivot Bio
28 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
N
whether it’s in Louisiana or in Iowa or anywhere else around the world,” says Leah Berger Jensen, the director of the challenge.
Of the five finalists—selected from 31 teams representing 10 different countries—three are focusing on getting farmers better and more accurate data regarding the amount of nitrogen already in the soil, to minimize the application of nitrogen fertilizers in the first place. Pivot Bio, on the other hand, uses nitrogen-fixing microbes to “spoon feed” the nutrient to crops such as corn, and Stable’N uses electricity to zap nitrifying bacteria, extending the length of time that nitrogen The goal of the challenge, which was conceptu- remains usable in the soil. alized and funded by the New Orleans philanthropist Phyllis Taylor, is to reduce hypoxia, an This fall, each team’s method will be judged on ecosystem-wrecking scarcity of oxygen in a body cost, crop yield, and the amount of nitrogen in of water, usually caused by an excess of nutrients field runoff, and the winner will be announced. such as nitrogen. In the Gulf of Mexico, hypoxia For those competing, the value of the challenge has created a nearly 6,000-square-mile dead goes beyond the prize money. Paul Turner, the zone, disrupting the coastal environment and cofounder of AgDNA, one of the finalists, views it many industries that rely on it. as an opportunity to “bring together the ‘thinking’ of academia and the ‘doing’ of private industry.” According to the World Resources Institute, there Others acknowledge that the technologies being are more than 470 hypoxic dead zones around the tested are generally complementary and hope world, and challenge organizers hope the compe- to develop ways to combine them for further tition will spur the development of a cost-effective, reductions. market-based solution that can stem the flow of nitrogen into the world’s waterways. “We want TIMOTHY A. SCHULER, EDITOR OF NOW, CAN BE REACHED something that is going to be a real-world solution AT TIMOTHYASCHULER@GMAIL.COM AND ON TWITTER that farmers will actually utilize on their farms, @TIMOTHY_SCHULER.
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/NOW
S PAYING BY THE PARCEL DETROIT’S NEW STORMWATER FEE STRUCTURE COULD SPUR GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE ON LARGE SITES. BY JEFF LINK
ince at least 1975, property owners in Detroit have paid a drainage charge for stormwater transportation and treatment. Some paid on an outdated fixed-rate meter system, while others were charged based on impervious acreage. But in October 2016, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) began charging all property owners by the acre rather than by a meter. Customers pay $750 per impervious acre per month for each parcel they own.
industrial, commercial, tax exempt, residential, and faith-based parcels, to a single, impervious-based rate by January 2018.
ratepayers can gain credits toward volume reduction and peak flow reduction, eliminating up to 80 percent of the total charge.
Those who will feel the biggest impact are “new-to-world” customers who will see a bill for the first time. Using aerial photography, DWSD identified approximately 22,000 parcels, many of them surface parking lots, which had not previously been billed for drainage. “Say you’re a business on six parcels. Your building may have been paying for drainage, but the five parcels surrounding it weren’t,” Mobley says. “We want to make sure all the pieces of the pie are being counted and everyone pays their fair share.”
As of this spring, only one landowner had obtained the drainage charge credit: General Motors, for its 365-acre Detroit–Hamtramck assembly plant. In a 2014 pilot project, the company added a massive stormwater retention pond to two already on site, increasing the site’s retention capacity to 47 million gallons of water. The company’s investment led to a 72 percent savings on the plant’s monthly stormwater bill, from an average of about $193,000 per month to $46,000 per month, and a 1.5-year payback on its $3.1 million investment.
The drainage charge has two aims: to bill customers more equitably and manage the revenue requirements of combined sewer overflow facilities and wastewater treatment plants, says Palencia Mobley, the deputy director and chief engineer of DWSD. Customers will transi- Reactions to the change have been tion by class, beginning with city- mixed. Among those most conowned properties and followed by cerned are clergy, who contend the fee could force some churches to shut down, according to a report in the Detroit Free Press. To encourage investment in green infrastructure, DWSD is educating area businesses about its drainage charge credit program. By reducing the size of impervious surface and implementing practices such as bioretention, permeable pavement, and green roofs,
“WE WANT TO MAKE SURE ALL THE PIECES OF THE PIE ARE BEING COUNTED AND EVERYONE PAYS THEIR FAIR SHARE.”
—PALENCIA MOBLEY, DWSD
32 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
Given their size and resources, the city’s legacy manufacturers may be best positioned to capitalize on the drainage charge credits, says Joan Nassauer, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Michigan. Because of their size and “institutional memory,” corporations such as GM “really have an incentive to do it right,” she says. “A small business, privately held, or one with little land surface to operate, might have more of a challenge to come up with an adequate solution.”
FOREGROUND
/NOW PARKS GENERATOR WITH A TEMPORARY DEDICATED PLANNER, SAINT PAUL’S GREEN LINE IS A CATALYST FOR OPEN SPACE.
LEGEND Green Line Station Shared Blue Line / Green Line Station Green Line Blue Line Existing Park Privately-Owned Public Space (POPS) Planned Park Potential Future Park or POPS City Boundary
ABOVE
Along the Twin Cities’ Green Line light rail, existing park space (in green) is being supplemented by new public and privately owned open space (proposed, in orange).
hree years ago, Ellen Stewart, ASLA, a senior landscape architect with Saint Paul, Minnesota’s Department of Parks and Recreation, says she “felt like a broken record, being at these meetings, and always saying, ‘We need open space, we need open space, we need open space.’” The Green Line, a light rail line connecting the Twin Cities, had just opened, and on paper at least, the plan was to increase the amount of public open space—in the form of both parks and privately owned public spaces (POPS)—along the Central Corridor paralleling University Avenue north of I-94.
ing for a dedicated person whose job would be to focus on public spaces within the Central Corridor, an area of particularly high need in a city recognized for its public parks. (Minneapolis and Saint Paul were numbers one and two respectively in the Trust for Public Land’s 2016 ParkScore rankings.) In 2014, some of the neighborhoods along the Green Line had just four acres of open space per thousand residents, compared to the city average of 16.6 acres per thousand residents. Stewart also saw it as a once-in-a-generation chance to acquire land in areas that But in reality, it was tough to keep will likely be developed and densify parks near the top of the priority list, in coming years. “If you don’t get it Stewart says, and she began advocat- now, it’s gone,” she says.
34 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
In 2015, Stewart’s wish was granted by the Central Corridor Funders Collaborative, a consortium of local and national foundations, which provided $120,000 for a two-year, part-time “open space coordinator for transit-oriented development” to help identify opportunities for parks and POPS in the specified area and to provide design support to developers and community organizations. Stewart was surprised to be chosen for the role. “It’s something that I was pushing for, but it wasn’t for me,” she says now.
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/NOW
RIGHT
Ellen Stewart, ASLA. BELOW
Opened in 2016, Little Mekong Plaza is one of the first privately owned public spaces along the Green Line corridor.
Still, it made sense. Stewart has worked on the Central Corridor since she joined the parks and rec department in 2007, and in many ways, she was doing the job already. “It was like, oh, okay, they’re at least giving me this little tiara for now, and I have the right to [speak] and wave my wand,” she says, laughing. More important, the funded position helped elevate parks to the level of other developmental priorities. “Anytime somebody would say,
‘Ellen wants a park there,’ it’s like, nope, it’s not about me, and it’s not even about our department. The city wants a park there.” Jonathan Sage-Martinson, the director of the city’s Planning and Economic Development Department, says the position has been vital to the city’s progress. With the help of the Trust for Public Land, Saint Paul has completed eight parks or POPS projects totaling more than 11 acres
LEGEND Green Line Station Shared Blue Line / Green Line Station Green Line Blue Line Existing Park Privately-Owned Public Space (POPS) Planned Park Potential Future Park or POPS City Boundary
36 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
along the Green Line just in the past two years. “That’s a lot of progress,” Sage-Martinson says. “And we would have made some, but having Ellen there paying attention to it really made a difference.”
ELLEN STEWART, ASLA, TOP RIGHT; THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND, CENTER; BENJAMIN HARTBERG, BOTTOM LEFT
FOREGROUND
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/NOW
E FROND FAREWELL
IN MILAN, PALM TREES ARE A FOCUS OF ANTI-IMMIGRATION FERVOR. BY JULIE LASKY
ABOVE
Palm trees were planted at Piazza Duomo in February in a garden sponsored by Starbucks.
arly on February 20, 2017, vandals set fire to palm trees in the piazza of Milan’s famed 14th-century cathedral, the Duomo. The incident occurred hours after two right-wing Italian groups staged a protest in the square, declaring the 42 palm trees, which had been planted three days earlier, unwelcome foreign intruders. Members of the Northern League and CasaPound toted banners decrying the “Africanization” of the historic site and handed bananas to passersby in mockery of the expected addition of about 50 banana plants. That night, three of the trees were burned, one past recovery. A perpetrator was captured on video but has not been identified.
first appearance near the Duomo; at one point in the 19th century, palms surrounded the square’s equestrian statue of Victor Emmanuel II.
All of the vegetation is adapted to Milan’s climate, he added, echoing rebuttals he has made in the Italian press over several weeks to critics of his flamboyant choices. True, palms aren’t native to Italy, but they can be found in parks and courtyards throughout Milan. This isn’t even their
“Piazza Duomo is in the middle of town,” he said. “Any natural landscape is too far away to have a relationship with the piazza. In its place are the unique and huge cathedral and 19th- and 20th-century buildings typical of those periods. I imagined the garden out of time and space.”
Most of the detractors have described the garden as “kitsch” or offered unflattering comparisons to Miami Vice. But the anti-immigration groups have made it a flash point, both literally and rhetorically.
On February 15, Matteo Salvini, leader of the Northern League, tweeted, “Palm trees and banana trees in Piazza Duomo? Insanity. Missing are sand and camels, and then illegal immigrants will feel at home.” Conflating xenophobia and The garden was funded by Starbucks, which plans beanophobia, he added hashtags with the words to open a store next year in a former post office at “chainsaw” and “Starbucks go home.” Milan’s Piazza Cordusio—the first of 200 to 300 Starbucks in Italy. Located in three rectangular This isn’t the first time right-wing leaders have plots at the west end of Piazza Duomo, the garden used gardens as political battlegrounds. Elizabeth was designed by Marco Bay, a local landscape Meyer, FASLA, a professor of landscape architecarchitect who won a competition for the project. ture at the University of Virginia, noted that in It will remain in place for three years. 19th- and early-20th-century Germany, designers supported the ideas of an inborn Teutonic affinity “The concept was to use plants to create a sort of with natural landscapes and native plants. This green architecture,” Bay explained in an e-mail. nationalistic and racialist identification grew more The design incorporates two rows of Chinese potent with the rise of the Nazis and was still windmill palms (Trachycarpus fortunei), whose causing unease in the profession half a century verticality echoes the Duomo’s delicate spires later. “Ecology is not just equated with the good, and the portico columns surrounding the square. the beautiful, the true,” she said. “At times, it is Behind the trees are two rows of Abyssinian also ideological.” bananas (Ensete ventricosum) intermingled with Giant Miscanthus (Miscanthus x giganteus) and Bay declined to discuss politics, but said the conplants that will offer seasonal bursts of pink: Hi- troversy was bringing more people to the Duomo, biscus, Hydrangea paniculata ‘Vanilla Fraise,’ and where they were introduced to an international Bergenia. Bay said his ideas were limited only by botanical spectrum: “From China the palms, from the 20-inch soil depth. The beds are covered in France the Hydrangea, from the Pacific islands the black gravel and watered with an underground Miscanthus, from Central Asia the Bergenia, from irrigation system. North America the Hibiscus.
40 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
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/NOW
WITH A RESORT, RESTORATION GUIDED BY JENS JENSEN JR., A NEW WISCONSIN GOLF RESORT HONORS THE GAME’S WILDER ROOTS. BY JEFF LINK
With two golf courses and a 7,000acre natural area located on the site of a former glacial lake and pulp tree plantation, Sand Valley Golf Resort in Rome, Wisconsin, is a manifestation of Keiser’s philosophy. Until recently, Keiser says, the landscape was dominated by rows of agricultural red pines planted by timber companies. Those pines now have been cleared to open the canopy and encourage the reemergence of a robust native seed bank and remnant plant community that transitions
42 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
from sand barren to black oak and (Lupinus perennis) seed across five jack pine savanna. acres, it has helped expand the nectar area for the endangered Karner blue “From the standpoint of someone butterfly. who cares about land, I see so many opportunities for this type of restora- Jensen, the great-great-grandson of tion because golf takes up so much the pioneering Chicago landscape area within the landscape,” says Jens architect Jens Jensen, worked closely Jensen Jr., the founder of Jensen Ecol- with David Kidd (the Scottish son ogy, which guided the restoration. of a greenskeeper), who says the course he designed is the product of Since 2014, Jensen’s company has many hours spent walking the site. worked with Oliphant Golf Course Allowing the landscape to guide the crews to hand pull, mow, or spot design doesn’t mean leaving nature spray invasive species. It has inven- to its own devices, however. toried, photographed, and mapped native plants, overseen the manage- “We’ve done a lot of chunking where ment of intact remnant plant com- the golf courses are going to go,” munities, such as outcroppings of Jensen says. “Using everything from devil’s-tongue (Opuntia humifusa) front-end loaders and skid steers and woolly beachheather (Hudsonia down to hand trowels, we’ve taktomentosa), and reseeded roughly en out clumps of soil and organic 112 acres of the golf courses with a matter and moved these around to floral seed mix containing annual salvage species, create microtopogryegrass as a cover crop. And by hand raphies, and add texture and plant spreading inoculated sundial lupine diversity to the courses.”
ABOVE
Winged pigweed (Cycloloma atriplicifolium) colonizes disturbed ground at Sand Valley Golf Resort, representing the revival of a remnant seed bank.
JENSEN ECOLOGY
G
olf courses are often seen as resource-intensive and artificial landscapes, but Michael Keiser, a Chicago-born golf course developer, says it wasn’t always that way. Early courses were derived from the land, he says. “Instead of building a golf course, you find it. You find great land and plant some grass in the sand and maintain it. That’s the school of thought I come from.”
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FOREGROUND
/
MATERIALS COLOR AND CUSHION
NEW SURFACES FOR PLAY CAN CHANGE THE GAMES. BY JEFF LINK
ack in July 2016, when I took my two-year-old son to Mary Bartelme Park in Chicago’s West Loop for the first time, he, quite literally, jumped for joy. That reaction is unusual for my son, who tends to approach even the most whimsical neighborhood playgrounds with the practiced indifference of a data scientist.
ABOVE
The topographical playground features at Mary Bartelme Park include poured-in-place rubber surfacing, chosen for its play value and conformance with sloped surfaces.
But the rubber-surfaced topographical playground at Mary Bartelme Park, designed by Site Design Group and completed in the summer of 2010, is not like most other playgrounds. For starters, it has hills, angular slopes, and trenches that
44 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
create suspense in what they reveal and what they hide. Take a few steps and you’ll discover, as my son soon did, that the rubber surfacing itself is a medium for play. You can climb it. You can scramble down a slope. You can jump on it and feel a pleasant give underfoot. The project is part of a recent generation of playgrounds that, says Hana Ishikawa, a Site Design Group design principal, represent a dramatic change from an earlier era defined by “post-and-deck” style platform equipment: a dominant central climbing structure outfitted with slides, bridges, stairs, peekaboo windows, and the
like. Others have followed, such as Mt. Greenwood Park in Chicago by Hitchcock Design Group; LeBauer Park in Greensboro, North Carolina, by OJB Landscape Architecture; and Waterfront Park in San Diego by Schmidt Design Group. A big part of what has made that evolution possible, as Ishikawa pointed out when we sat down in the firm’s South Michigan Avenue studio, is pouredin-place (PIP) surfacing: a spongy course of shredded rubber granules held together by polyurethane glue that are mixed in a concrete hopper and then troweled onto concrete or aggregate.
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FOREGROUND
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PLAYGROUND PAVING ENLARGEMENT PLAN
Mary Bartelme Park was guided by the concept of founding principal Ernie Wong, FASLA, and made a reality through the work of Ishikawa and Brad McCauley, ASLA, a managing principal. Taking cues from the undulating design of Hargreaves Associates’ Louisville Waterfront Park and a handful of concrete topographical playgrounds that existed in New York in the early 2000s, as well as artistic inspiration from Zoe Ryan’s The Good Life: New Public Spaces for Recreation, it was one of the first topographical playgrounds in Chicago. The detailed sectional drawings defining its layers of rubber, cement, and fabric became a model for many Chicago park playgrounds that followed, Ishikawa says. ABOVE
Located on the former site of the University of Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary, the playground required extensive site remediation to contain hazardous materials.
“Most playgrounds at the time were flat, with raised playground equipment in the center. But the big driver behind that, as we found out, was that playground equipment requires an open fall zone—in Chicago it’s six feet,” Ishikawa says. “Poured-inplace rubber surfacing, which serves
46 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
as a fall zone, doesn’t have to be playground equipment can be denselaid flat, so you can incorporate play- ly integrated. Armando Chacon, the ground equipment along slopes.” president of the Mary Bartelme Park Advisory Council, who lives in view Integrated across the playground of the park, says its spatial efficiency at various heights, for instance, is one of its major achievements. are tactile moving pieces, such as a hammock swing and a rocking horse “What Ernie Wong and the designer saddle, whose responsiveness echoes did a really good job of is making the that of the surfacing. The design’s playground feel bigger than it actuarchitectural standout—a climbing ally is. With all the angles and berms, piece of horseshoe-shaped recycled you can really get lost. And if you conveyor belts made by Berliner don’t have eyes on your kid, you’re Seilfabrik—although large in scale, going to have to spend some time is not the hydra-headed jungle gym looking for your kid,” Chacon says. of earlier-generation playgrounds. Rather, it is one feature of an epi- Today, PIP rubber-surfaced playsodic design that uses the gradient grounds are found throughout the of the landforms, often in dialogue country. Uses of the surfacing vary. with the equipment, to challenge and It is used for visual storytelling, entertain kids. for creating slopes to help stormwater drain, and for constructing “I really like the input–output you get physically challenging topographifrom all the equipment. Everything cal landforms, says Nathan Elliott, is bouncy. The surfacing affects the ASLA, a principal at OJB Landscape ropes and vice versa,” Ishikawa says. Architecture. Competition among And because fall zones may overlap distributors over the past 15 years, on rubber surfacing (imagine the in- Elliott says, has driven the rapid tersecting circles of a Venn diagram), maturation of a market that now
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FOREGROUND
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POURED IN PLACE RUBBER SURFACING SECTIONS
RIGHT
Crews pour impact attenuation layer of styrene-butadiene rubber granules. BOTTOM
Berms are constructed of layers of portland cement as well as CA-6 and CA-7 compacted aggregate.
BOTTOM OF BERM
At the time, Gent says, CPD was looking to purchase underused land to develop park sites in residential areas with high population growth. A flat city block at the intersection of South Sangamon Street and West Adams Street, high on the priority list, was home to the former site of the University of Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary. When the infirmary closed, the state assumed ownership of the historically significant terra-cotta building. Initially, McCauley says, some community members believed a park was not the best use of the site, and suggested such alternatives as a go-cart track or fishing pond; the Illinois En-
48 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
In a series of meetings beginning that fall, Site Design Group unveiled three concepts to a committee of West Loop Community Organization members, residents, and aldermen: the first, a circular park with curving promenades; the second, in a Beaux-Arts style with formal rectangular rooms; and the third, in an angular, off-center style with walkways extending diagonally to street intersections. The community chose number three. For CPD, a key selling point, Gent says, was Site Design Group’s use of rubber surfacing as part of a site remediation strategy that included a
SITE DESIGN GROUP
TOP OF BERM
offers a high degree of technological sophistication: cushioned subsurfacing, antimicrobial backings for dog areas, UV-resistant coatings, and a range of colors that includes robin’s egg blue and teal. vironmental Protection Agency was concerned it presented contamination But in 2003, when the idea for Mary risks. But in fall 2006, after receivBartelme Park emerged as an ini- ing a grant from the Illinois Departtiative of the Chicago Park District ment of Natural Resources to rede(CPD), topographical playgrounds velop the site, CPD put out a request were fairly new. Chris Gent, ASLA, a for proposals to a prequalified list of former deputy director of planning landscape architects, and Site Design and development for the CPD, says: Group came back with the winning “We wanted to figure out how to bid: three park concepts that included make play more interesting, not your a sunken dog park, a fountain plaza, standard poured-in-place rubber sur- native planting beds defined by Corface and prefab equipment. And Site Ten steel walls, an open lawn, and the Design was good at responding.” children’s play area.
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/MATERIALS
ABOVE
Applied at a 1:20 grade, the berms serve as accessible paths that don’t require handrails. BELOW
A wear course of EPDM rubber is troweled in place. Blue denotes water; green denotes land.
drawings for the playgrounds’ slopes, developed after a series of conversations with the installer, Total Surface (which is no longer in business), show a surface wear layer of EPDM (ethylene propylene diene monomer) virgin rubber at a minimum 3/8” and an impact attenuation layer of SBR (styrenebutadiene rubber) recycled from tires. The rubber surfacing is molded to fit the form of the deeper containment layers—in this case, portland cement, CA-6 and CA-7 compacted aggregate, and geotextile fabric.
permeable paving system for stormwater infiltration, soil reuse, and containment of hazardous materials beneath layers of concrete aggregate. CPD, like many municipal park departments, requires a minimum barrier of three feet between the ground level and the soil of a site deemed to be an environmental risk. Much of the playground, Ishikawa says, sits below grade, a choice born “The idea of capping a site was of environmental necessity: An unsomething that the city was strug- derground storage tank had to be gling with, as was the retention of removed to complete the project. on-site water. This project helped in- PIP surfacing, which, unlike engiform the development of other parks neered wood fiber, can be contoured as we moved along,” Gent says. to a slope, made the furrowed design achievable. Wheelchair-accessible And this is where Site Design Group’s pathways were also made possible use of PIP rubber for its malleability because of the pliability of the mateand capacity to be troweled in place rial. Ishikawa says that the surfacing gets fairly sophisticated. Sectional could be applied at a 1:20 grade—a
pitch just slight enough to constitute a walkway, not a ramp, and thereby eliminate the requirement for accessibility handrails. McCauley acknowledges that PIP rubber surfacing has its challenges. Because the binding agent weakens over time, and rubber granules can eventually tear and flake, especially in areas of heavy wear, it needs to be replaced. Site Design Group’s Coliseum Park in Near South Chicago, which opened in 2000, was resurfaced in 2013, and a 10- to 15-year replacement schedule is typical. PIP rubber surfacing is also expensive —about $22 to $27 per square foot, compared to $25 to $35 for rubber tile, $20 to $22 for artificial turf, $7 to $10 for rubber mulch, and $5 for engineered wood fiber, McCauley says. Ensuring adequate seam closure at the bottoms of hills where the rubber course transitions from flat to sloping sections (and in spots where a crew clocks out for the day after troweling the surface) requires the expertise of a good contractor and installer, he noted. At Mary Bartelme Park, rubber tiles by sofTile installed at the bases of slides and around spinners provide extra wear protection. And though not focused on PIP rubber, there has been some concern about the chemical safety of shredded rubber infill at playgrounds and sports fields. An NBC News story from October 8, 2014, included the claim that 38 soccer players, particularly goalkeepers, from all over the country have developed cancers after playing on artificial turf.
50 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
SITE DESIGN GROUP
FOREGROUND
/MATERIALS
ABOVE
Much of the design sits below grade. An underground storage tank was removed to complete the project. INSET
The nonlinear layout is designed to integrate play among children ages 2 to 12.
Much of the concern stems from the crumbs of rubber infill in artificial turf, which are often made from recycled tires. As reported in an April 2015 article in Science News, “Those tiny crumbs are known to harbor an array of dangerous chemicals, such as toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and metals, such as lead.” However, the author of the article cautioned against overplaying the significance of the reports, noting that “no scientific study has found an association between exposure to artificial turf and cancer.” McCauley notes that the top course of the playground at Mary Bartelme Park is finished in EPDM virgin rubber, not the recycled rubber that poses concerns, and that the material is fixed into place with an aliphatic binder, and thus not loose and capable of sinking into the skin. What is really important about PIP surfacing, McCauley adds, is its capacity to shape angular landforms, create visually interesting thematic
52 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
patterns, and make children’s play reused on site, not shipped to a landmore accessible and exciting. fill, which, Ishikawa says, kept the project within budget while limiting And these design considerations, its environmental impact. Ishikawa says, have helped forge a path for ambitious Chicago projects “It’s hard to say if we’re doing anysuch as Michael Van Valkenburgh thing different or more interesting Associates’ Maggie Daley Park and than others,” Ishikawa says. “Chalemboldened Site Design Group to lenging playgrounds and sustainpursue at least a dozen other topo- able parks are really prevalent in our graphical playgrounds, including profession right now and sparked an taller and more elaborate designs, interest to work with this material. such as Park 574 in Chicago’s Near The idea is not original. The way we West Side. Opened in 2014, the fit- do it is original.” ness playground occupies the site of a former housing complex and JEFF LINK IS A GRADUATE OF THE IOWA WRITfeatures adult fitness stations, a spin- ERS’ WORKSHOP. HIS WORK HAS APPEARED ning net, pommel horses, rings, and IN PUBLICATIONS SUCH AS FAST CO.EXIST AND REDSHIFT. even a zip line. All existing soil was
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FOREGROUND
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PALETTE
THE RIGHT FIT
SANDRA CLINTON’S LANDSCAPES DON’T STAND OUT. THEY BELONG. BY KATARINA KATSMA, ASLA
’m a plant scientist first,” says Sandra Clinton, FASLA. She is quick to clarify it’s not the only thing that defines her work. “I’m an aesthetic designer. I design for what I think works together and what I think will survive.”
ABOVE
The entrance view at Longview in Bethesda, Maryland.
with the next-door neighbor for best landscape. While her mother focused on plants, her neighbor—who was an engineer—favored structures and pavement, and by the time Clinton reached the age of seven he would let her help with construction. “To me, you have to have the structure work and you have to have the plants work. My job is to make them work in proportion and combination and in concert with each other.”
It’s the literal combination of landscape and architecture that Clinton, the president of Clinton & Associates in Hyattsville, Maryland, says defined her interests early on. “My entire childhood was spent watching my mother garden this incredibly intense Clinton notes that there are hints of garden.” Her mother, she says, was inspiration from previous mentors in an unspoken annual competition throughout her work; people in the
56 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
past have mentioned seeing echoes of Roberto Burle Marx in some designs. Her plant sciences degree at the University of Delaware led her to the educator and landscape architect Conrad Hamerman, from whom she learned about the profession. It was on a trip he led to Brazil that she got to study firsthand some of Burle Marx’s work. Clinton earned her master’s in landscape architecture at the University of Virginia and eventually went on to work at Oehme, van Sweden (OvS). She was there until 1998, when she left to start Clinton & Associates. “A
HUGUETTE ROW
“I
FOREGROUND
/PALETTE
RIGHT
The roof garden at Underwood is planted with an array of vegetables and herbs. BELOW
lot of the things that I learned in OvS are things that I’ve taken with me. But I believe that I have manipulated my understanding of plants and plant life very differently from what I was doing when I was in OvS.” Everything was big and grand, she says, referring to the large, distinctive planting masses done by the firm. At Clinton & Associates, she tends to blend plants within masses to give a meadowlike appearance at maturity.
everything she does. “I am a texture queen. That is one of my things. Texture in materials, texture in plants,” she admits. “I’m always looking at big coarse things next to really fine things so they show each other off.” It’s the details, and the firm’s responsiveness to them, that Clinton says are key. “We pay attention to how [designs] are going to get used, and how these plants work with how people use the space,” she says. Embracing those details—plants, materials, location, atmosphere, setting—allows her to create designs that look like they belong to, rather than stand out from, the surroundings. And a part of achieving that is planting expertise, an attribute Clinton says she looks for in the people she hires.
A Clinton & Associates design starts belowground, ensuring there are good bones to allow a landscape to thrive. Each design is “highly engineered so that they actually work,” she says. “But then they kind of get turned on their heads with the overlay of this exquisite palette “I’m not a huge manipulator,” Clinof plant materials.” She loves con- ton says. “I pick what I believe will trast, and it is apparent in almost work in a space.” Her understanding
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of the plant sciences gave her the tools necessary to know what plant can go where and how to plant in communities—though sometimes with an older garden, things can disappear or be overcrowded by enthusiastic competition. “You have to be assertive if you really care about a place,” she says. “It’s my job to tell [the client] what needs an overhaul.” It’s a skill that she learned from observing Burle Marx designs when she was in Brazil—having a “level of ownership of the work that you do if you want it to stay in a particular state”—strong maintenance so that lines don’t blur or weeds completely take over. But she acknowledges and even embraces the idea that some things are just out of her hands. “There’s just so many things in nature that you cannot have control over, which I think is one of the things that I absolutely love about working in this profession. You simply cannot control everything.”
© MICHAEL MORAN/OTTO, TOP; BOB DEVLIN, BOTTOM
Sandra Clinton, FASLA.
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FOREGROUND
/PALETTE
UNDERWOOD, CHEV Y CHASE, MARYLAND
Underwood
illed as Clinton’s “one and only modern garden,” this residence near northwest Washington, D.C., is the home of an architect couple who run their own firm. The design is “very outward looking, which you won’t see in very many of my gardens, mostly because people want to be more inward,” she says. The desire to open themselves up toward the street is a reflection of the friendly neighborhood and the clients’ character. “They make pizza on the front garden,” she says. “[The clients] really have transformed the way they live because of how the garden was built around them.”
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The house was built to be as selfsustaining as possible, and the landscape reflects as much. There is a
CLINTON & ASSOCIATES
B
PLANT LIST TREES
PERENNIALS, GROUND COVERS, FERNS, AND BULBS
Betula nigra ‘Cully’ HERITAGE (Heritage river birch) Cornus florida ‘Cherokee Princess’ (Cherokee Princess flowering dogwood) Cryptomeria japonica ‘Yoshino’ (Yoshino Japanese cedar) Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Arnold Promise’ (Arnold Promise witch hazel) Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Diane’ (Diane witch hazel) Styrax japonicus ‘Emerald Pagoda’ (Emerald Pagoda Japanese snowbell) Thuja standishii x plicata ‘Green Giant’ (Green Giant arborvitae)
Agastache ‘Blue Fortune’ (Blue Fortune giant hyssop) Ajuga reptans (Common bugle) Aruncus dioicus (Bride’s feathers) Astilbe ‘Deutschland’ (Deutschland astilbe) Athyrium niponicum var. pictum (Japanese painted fern) Ceratostigma plumbaginoides (Blue leadwood) Epimedium x versicolor ‘Sulphureum’ (Barrenwort) Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae (Wood spurge) Helleborus niger (Black hellebore) Hypericum calycinum (Aaron’s beard) Iberis sempervirens ‘Alexander’s White’ (Alexander’s White candytu ) Iris pseudacorus (Pale yellow iris) Iris versicolor (Harlequin blueflag) Leucanthemum x superbum ‘Snowcap’ (Snowcap shasta daisy) Ligularia dentata ‘Desdemona’ (Leopard plant) Liriope muscari ‘Big Blue’ (Big Blue lilyturf) Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’ (Golden creeping jenny) Mazus miquelii (Miquel’s mazus) Packera aurea (Golden ragwort) Persicaria polymorpha (Giant fleece flower) Polygonatum odoratum var. pluriflorum ‘Variegatum’ (Variegated Solomon’s seal) Polystichum tsus-simense (Korean rockfern) Rudbeckia fulgida var. fulgida (Orange coneflower) Thymus pulegioides (Lemon thyme) Thymus x citriodorus (Lemon thyme) Trachystemon orientalis (Early-flowering borage) Veronica spicata ‘Royal Candles’ (Royal Candles speedwell)
VINES
Actinidia ‘Anna’ (Anna hardy kiwi) Clematis x jackmanii (Leather flower) Parthenocissus tricuspidata (Boston ivy) Polygonum aubertii ‘Silver Fleece’ (Silver Fleece vine) SHRUBS
Fothergilla gardenii (Dwarf witchalder) Hibiscus ‘Kopper King’ (Kopper King rose mallow) Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Nikko Blue’ (Nikko Blue hydrangea) Hydrangea quercifolia ‘Snow Queen’ (Snow Queen oakleaf hydrangea) Mahonia bealei (Beale’s barberry) Nandina domestica (Sacred bamboo) Sarcococca hookeriana var. humilis (Sweetbox) ORNAMENTAL GRASSES AND BAMBOO
ABOVE
Chasmanthium latifolium (Indian woodoats) Fargesia nitida (Fountain bamboo) Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’ (Golden variegated Hakone grass) Miscanthus sinensis var. zebrinus (Chinese silvergrass) Molinia caerulea ssp. arundinacea ‘Windspiel’ (Windspiel purple moorgrass) Pennisetum alopecuroides (Chinese fountain grass)
Golden creeping jenny spills out from a textural blanket under a mature Japanese maple. LEFT
The Yoshino Japanese cedar creates a striking contrast to the Heritage river birch in front.
CLINTON & ASSOCIATES
OPPOSITE
Silva Cell under the front lawn, installed to deal with the harsh runoff from the street, and a 1,000-gallon cistern in the main courtyard, which the house wraps around. Whatever makes it to the cistern (that is, not absorbed by the multiple green roof terraces crowning the house) is used for irrigating the rest of the site. The planting is also designed to handle water on site, with a graceful row of multistem Heritage river birches
in front of a forest of plants with striking textures, such as irises and Indian woodoats, at the rear of the property. “They wanted to have as low of an impact on the land as possible,” Clinton says, which led to a design that emphasizes simple lines and a minimal use of materials. The only place on site with solid pavement is the pad where their electric car
recharges. There is a vegetable garden on the roof where it can get the most sun, and a small herb garden off the planted patio in the front where the pizza oven sits. “The first year we had these little kales in here and they seeded themselves,” Clinton says, pointing to the patio. “We just let them go because we love the texture of it and the color just brings everything together in that palette. So why fight it?”
The front of the house is more open and inviting than the back, standing in direct contrast to a more traditional residential design.
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017 / 61
FOREGROUND
/PALETTE 1
A FEW FAVORITES
2
“I
have a philosophy about plants,” Clinton says while on site at Underwood, a residence she designed outside Washington, D.C. “They have to give you at least three things of interest in order to make my list.” If they have three favorable attributes, then they most likely will also have three-season impact. Every now and then Clinton will have employees come to her asking why they don’t use a certain plant, she says. “And I’ll say it’s because it’s a flash in the pan. It’s there for 10 minutes and then it’s gone and just taking up room and not adding anything to the garden.” 4
CRYPTOMERIA JAPONICA ‘YOSHINO’ (YOSHINO JAPANESE CEDAR)
A favorite of the native rain garden, the butterfly milkweed adds a bright orange pop at two and a half feet. Its autumn foliage burns in intensity and it “shows beautifully in the fading garden as a bright spot,” Clinton says.
This evergreen tree is a favorite of Clinton’s, as it “grows quickly and forms a beautiful screen when used in masses.” The blue-green foliage persists until winter, when it gains a bronze cast. It is fast growing, up to 40 feet at maturity.
CALAMAGROSTIS STRICTA (SLIMSTEM REEDGRASS)
Native to North America, this Calamagrostis species is found in mostly wetland environments. “It creates a scrim effect between different ‘rooms’ of the garden, or between plant masses. It’s a great backdrop for other plantings,” Clinton says. 3 CALLICARPA AMERICANA (AMERICAN BEAUTYBERRY)
Noted for its peculiar, yet brilliant display of purple berries throughout the year, this shrub is native to the southeastern part of the United States and can grow up to six feet in height and width. It is hardy to zones 6 through 10 and prefers full sun to part shade.
HAKONECHLOA MACRA ‘AUREOLA’ (GOLDEN VARIEGATED HAKONE GRASS)
This variegated grass brings a brightness to the shade garden, Clinton says, adding a bit of visual appeal that combines with the soft texture of the leaves. It grows to about 18 inches in height and width, and is described as deer resistant. 1 HAMAMELIS X INTERMEDIA ‘ARNOLD PROMISE’ (ARNOLD PROMISE WITCH HAZEL)
A popular cultivar of a North American native, Arnold Promise (cultivated at the Arnold Arboretum in the early 20th century) gives a burst of early color to the spring landscape. The thick, channeled leaves turn a CERCIDIPHYLLUM JAPONICUM brilliant orange and red in autumn. (KATSURA TREE) “Every Clinton & Associates design The katsura tree can reach up to 60 has a witch hazel…to me it announcfeet in height at maturity and is most es spring,” Clinton says. notable for its heart-shaped leaves and striking fall color. The fallen leaves in autumn have a caramel aroma, giving it the nickname the “caramel tree.”
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3
POLYGONATUM ODORATUM VAR. PLURIFLORUM ‘VARIEGATUM’ (VARIEGATED SOLOMON’S SEAL)
This popular variety can grow in heavy shade and is drought tolerant. In spring, stems of white, bell-shaped flowers appear against the delicate white variegation lining each leaf. It grows in zones 3 through 8 and can reach up to three feet in height. STYRAX JAPONICUS (JAPANESE SNOWBELL)
“This is one of my all-time favorites, especially as it ages and creates a beautiful sculptural form in the garden,” Clinton says. The fragrant white flowers appear in spring and stand in contrast to the dark green foliage that turns red or yellow in autumn. TRICYRTIS HIRTA (TOADLILY)
This showstopper is topped in early autumn by large purple orchidlike flowers. It can grow in full shade and prefers moist, well-drained soil. Clinton likes this, saying it “sends foliage up early, but doesn’t bloom until late summer to fall, extending the interest of this plant for several months’ time.”
HONEY DUST
Clinton says she favors this material, a lightly colored, finely textured limestone gravel for walkways, as it can compact like concrete without giving the look or feel of a hard surface. Its loose nature makes it ideal for water percolation. 4 BELGIUM BLOCK USED GRANITE COBBLES
Clinton says she finds used granite cobbles (such as those pulled from old street paving projects) ideal as a hardscape material. She has used them in everything from edging to paving to textured “rugs” for garden rooms. 4 PENNSYLVANIA BLUESTONE STEPPING-STONES
This material makes its way into many of Clinton’s designs, as she says she likes local stone she can grow plants around to soften the edges. “It’s a great balance between hard- and softscape, which we are fond of,” she says.
CLINTON & ASSOCIATES, 1 & 4; © 2014 DEREK RAMSEY RAM MAN GFDL 1.2 , VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, 2; BY ERIC HUNT CC BY SA 3.0 , VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, 3
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FOREGROUND
/PALETTE PIKE & ROSE, ROCK VILLE, MARYLAND
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RIGHT
The enclosing nature of the plantings along the busy Old Georgetown Road creates a sense of security. INSET
Clinton & Associates took on more and more aspects of the design, including seasonal container rotations.
W
hen Clinton & Associates joined the design team for the mixed-use development of Pike & Rose, the concept was to create a campus-like mood that had a visual unity. “The irony of the direction that we were given was that none of this really looks like a campus. None of the buildings have any form of unity, so it’s actually the landscape that has to pull it together,” Clinton says. The developers also wanted it to look like a botanic garden at all times of the year, she says. “Now, that’s really hard to do when you have nothing but paving, so every place where we could open up the ground for planting, we did.”
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Construction has already begun on phase two of the three-phase development, and despite the rumbling jackhammers and piercing beeps of trucks reversing, what has already been built seems as if it’s been there for years. Almost any spot they could fill with flora, they have. What doesn’t get filled with plantings is designed for gatherings or repose, with various kinds of seating and even a children’s fountain. The site has more than 500 container plantings with seasonal rotations done by Clinton & Associates, and vines climbing up walls of what look like converted warehouses, but
are in fact newly completed buildings. In spring, thousands of giant allium spring up from the in-ground planters—purple down one lane and white down another, to give a sense of wayfinding. “We did everything because nobody stopped us from doing anything on this project,” Clinton says. It has an atmosphere rich in textures, sights,
DAVID BURROUGHS, LEFT AND BOTTOM; CLINTON & ASSOCIATES, TOP
Pike & Rose
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CLINTON & ASSOCIATES, TOP, CENTER LEFT, AND BOTTOM; DAVID BURROUGHS, CENTER RIGHT
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and experiences, drawing to mind a mature Manhattan neighborhood rather than a newly built development on the outskirts of a dense city. “It’s amazing what we get to do here. Before this property was here, nobody ever walked on this stretch of road. The sidewalk was right at the curb, and you didn’t feel safe. Now at lunchtime it’s teeming with people.”
The children’s fountain was a collaboration piece with Foreseer; the existing buildings were temporarily redesigned to fit in with the new buildings; a main road is lined by white giant allium in springtime.
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017 / 65
FOREGROUND
/PALETTE
CLINTON & ASSOCIATES
LONGVIEW, BETHESDA, MARYLAND
N
Longview
“T ABOVE
Multileader trees loosen the plan around the house.
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his is the one place that hired the landscape architect before the architects,” Clinton says of this sprawling eight-acre estate. Clinton explained that the current owners had seen the property and sent a letter to the then owner, asking if she would sell. It took a while, but they were able to buy the property, which had large, mature trees that had the air of a botanic garden. The first thing Clinton & Associates did was tag every tree in a survey; the surviving specimens still bear this mark nearly two decades after work began.
Woven throughout the site are sculptures with literary allusions—the husband is in journalism—such as a large open book visible intermittently along the winding drive up to the house. The trees on either side of this drive once stood in a straight shot up the property to the residence, but were moved to accommodate the new entry sequence that created groves rather than lines, Clinton says. The clients tore down the old house and built the new one in the same location. The landscape design wraps
LEFT
CLINTON & ASSOCIATES
Open and inviting up front, the entrance is all but hidden by plantings.
around it to give it partial cover from the highly trafficked main road. “[The owner] wanted a French provincial house that had roses growing up all of it so you didn’t even see the house,” Clinton says, pointing to the trellised roses on the side next to the garage. The French themes are apparent throughout, as formal planting urns flank the entryway to the house,
paired with the soft, light coloring of materials throughout the property. “This is probably one of the most formal gardens I’ve ever designed, and part of it is because of the for-
mality of the house,” Clinton says. An oval lawn in line with the pool and the center of the house acts as an anchoring element to the design and borders a series of garden rooms that wrap around the side and back of the main building. Each garden room has a “rug” of stone, subtly dividing one space from the next. In the back, tucked away from the lawn, is what feels like a private courtyard flanked by the house and a line of Heritage river birches. Though the courtyard is openly connected to the rest of the landscape, its green-toned low-growing plantings of Himalayan sweetbox, creeping mazus, Japanese pieris, and coralbells create a sense of intimacy and enclosure.
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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017 / 67
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FOREGROUND
/
GOODS
LIGHT THE WAY SMALL OR LARGE, THESE ELEMENTS GIVE LIGHT WHERE YOU NEED IT. BY KATARINA KATSMA, ASLA
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70 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
COURTESY AURORALIGHT, LEFT; COURTESY SLV LIGHTING NORTH AMERICA, RIGHT
HPL HYBRID SERIES
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PAMELA
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EUGENI AGUILÓ, TOP LEFT; COURTESY TECHNILUM, TOP RIGHT; © ERCO GMBH, WWW.ERCO.COM, BOTTOM
KONA XS
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AIGUILLE
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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017 / 71
FOREGROUND
/GOODS
CHRYSLER
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FOREGROUND
/GOODS
BOLLARD
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FEATURES
METRO-FOREST
A canopy for Thai urbanites, page 80.
CONTROL
DUSK AT METRO-FOREST
The tower serves to mark the location of the Metro-Forest much as does the control tower in the distance for Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport.
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OF THE CANOPY
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS OF BANGKOK HAS REFORESTED A SPECK OF THE THAI CAPITAL. THE COBRAS SEEM TO APPROVE. BY JAMES TRULOVE / PHOTOGRAPHY BY RUNGKIT CHAROENWAT
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017 / 81
LEFT AND OPPOSITE TOP
BELOW AND BOTTOM LEFT
The exhibition center as seen from the skywalk; Metro-Forest’s modest entrance.
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t would not be a stretch to think of this reforestation project as a “vest-pocket” park, much in the tradition of the work of the noted landscape architect Robert Zion in New York City. After all, the name of the project, “Metro-Forest,” might suggest as much. Though it is not bounded on all sides by encroaching office towers, this five-acre landscape rests squarely in the midst of equally inhospitable and unchecked suburban sprawl dotted by illegal dump sites (of which this was once one), a tangle of expressways and surface roads, and the din of more than 800 planes landing and departing nearby every day at Suvarnabhumi Airport, which serves Bangkok. Certainly many of the design elements of a vest-pocket park are present: a water feature to mask the clamor of planes and cars,
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GOOGLE EARTH, TOP
Aerial views show the site wedged between Bangkok and the airport in dense suburban sprawl.
GOOGLE EARTH, TOP
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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017 / 83
RIGHT
The height of the tower was restricted owing to its proximity to the airport. BELOW
A meandering stream helped to mold the landscape.
native plants that recall a bygone era, seating to contemplate the surrounding nature, hardscape to create boundaries, and a carefully designed network of berms that increase the overall planting area of this small space while blocking views of the surroundings. The project, which won a 2016 ASLA Professional Honor Award for General Design, is an oasis, but also much more. It has also become an important laboratory for exploring ways to create a diverse forest ecology. It employs planting techniques developed by the noted Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki and implemented here by the designers at Landscape Architects of Bangkok (LAB) under the direction of one of Miyawaki’s students, Sirin Kaewlaierd. The socalled Miyawaki method is a proven, straightforward approach to reforestation: Seedlings native to the area are densely planted on a site. As the seedlings compete for nutrients and water, the
84 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
RIGHT AND BELOW
Aerial views during early work and completion of the earthwork. BOTTOM
Tawatchai Kobkaikit, ASLA (pointing), the managing director of LAB, tours the site with PTT Chairman of the Board Piyasvasti Amranand and the architect Kanika R’kul of Spacetime Architects.
COURTESY PTT REFORESTATION INSTITUTE, TOP, CENTER, AND BOTTOM; LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS OF BANGKOK LTD., OPPOSITE LEFT
strongest survive and flourish, and within three years the forest is on its way to maturity. The project brief describes the MetroForest as “an ecological regeneration project” on an abandoned landfill site. It is conceived as an exhibition space to educate people about the ecology of the local forest, which consists of tropical lowland. The plantings, both native and introduced, aim to “reverse the trends of suburban sprawl,” particularly heat-island effects and flood proneness. Saplings of many of the trees planted here were prominent around Bangkok during the mid-19th century. Many districts in the area are named after them. Finding this forest in the thicket of suburban Bangkok sprawl is not easy. No signs mark its existence until you arrive on the site. I arrived in a passenger van that came upon an overpass it was too tall to clear. The van backed up and followed a more circuitous route along surface roads. When we finally arrived at the Metro-Forest, we were greeted at the entrance gate by a crowing rooster, guarding his turf, as it were. Several chickens roam the site, placed there by the client, PTT Public Company Limited, the state-owned oil and gas company of Thailand, perhaps to create a more agrarian atmosphere. (The site is managed by PTT’s Reforestation Institute, which works on sustainable conservation of natural resources throughout Thailand.) ↘
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GRADING PLAN
BELOW
The exhibition center’s rammed earth walls take shape.
A handheld compactor was used to create the rammed earth walls of the exhibition center.
→ Besides the rooster, there is a small guard sta-
tion at the entrance. When the Metro-Forest first opened, visitors were required to have made reservations in advance, though, owing to its popularity, that requirement has been dropped. It was expected that 100 visitors a day at most would tour the site, but as word has spread, weekends have brought as many as 1,500 people. Tawatchai Kobkaikit, ASLA, a lead designer on the project as managing director of LAB, says that neighbors from surrounding housing stop by to enjoy the sunset from the skywalk that encircles the forest at considerable heights. At the entrance to the site, a broad fire lane leads past an inadequate parking lot that can hold only 12 cars and continues around the perimeter of the forest. The parking lot is now a storage site for exhibition materials, so all visitors have to park along the public access road.
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COURTESY LA TERRE CO., LTD., LEFT AND INSET; LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS OF BANGKOK LTD., OPPOSITE
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LEFT
An early view of the stream that meanders through the forest. BELOW
The stream has become fully sustainable, replenished by groundwater and rain.
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS OF BANGKOK LTD., TOP LEFT
The formal entrance to the forest is along a rustcolored concrete walkway that leads to an exhibition center. The center is carefully tucked into the site, disguised by a green roof and massive rustcolored walls of rammed earth. Kobkaikit notes that the building, by Spacetime Architects, a Thai firm, is among the first projects in Thailand to use rammed earth, and it has inspired other Thai architects to experiment with the technique. To reach the exhibit halls, you enter a narrow corridor created by two curving, parallel rammed-earth walls that are 20 feet high and open to the sky. Walking down this corridor, I was quickly reminded of the work of the sculptor Richard Serra and his sitespecific rust-colored steel walls that embrace and dwarf you as you move into them. You could say that this experience of compression prepares visitors for the drama of the forest they are about to
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RIGHT
A view of the rear of the exhibition center from the ground-level entrance to the skywalk. BELOW
The stream visually connects the forest to the exhibition center.
experience. The rammed earth, trucked up from the southern Rayong Province, was chosen as the building medium as a way of emphasizing the importance of soil for this project. Placed along this corridor, as part of Metro-Forest’s educational program, are kiosks that contain samples of some of the seeds used to plant the forest. The PTT Public Company wanted LAB to create a self-contained environment that would allow people to become immersed in the landscape. To this end, a series of large earthen berms was created, some as high as 13 feet, both to shield views ↘
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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS OF BANGKOK LTD.
SUCCESSIONAL GROWTH OF THE LOWLAND DIPTEROCARP FOREST OVER TIME
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PLANTING PLAN SHRUBS
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DETAIL TREES
AREA SHOWN IN PLAN ABOVE
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS OF BANGKOK LTD.
AREA SHOWN IN PLAN ABOVE
DETAIL SHRUBS
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LEFT
The constructed waterfall animates the space while helping to mask the sound of nearby cars and airplanes.
→ of the surrounding suburban chaos and to provide
a carefully engineered soil mixture that would facilitate the growth of the 60,000 trees (mostly seedlings), representing more than 279 species. During a tour of the forest, Kobkaikit repeatedly emphasized the importance of the soil used to create the berms, as prescribed by Miyawaki, to create an optimal planting environment. When the project began in 2013, 48,000 cubic yards of earthwork was brought to the site and mixed with an additional 7,800 cubic yards of planting medium to create the berms. The resulting berms also led “to the creation of diverse microecologies” throughout the forest, Kobkaikit says. Given that the project is essentially constructed in a swamp filled with brackish water, plants were selected that thrive in this water and planted along the embankment created by the berms. Similarly, a diverse mix of deciduous forest plants and lowland dipterocarp cover the area along the riparian edge, atop the berms. The exhibition center is divided into two halls, the first with displays focused on the value of ecology. The second is a theater that was screening a short film designed to appeal to young students on the value of planting trees. After the film ends, the large screen, divided into vertical panels, pivots open, dramatically revealing the forest and the skywalk. A quick jog across the lawn leads to the beginning of the skywalk that quickly ascends above the tree canopy and follows a zigzag path around the perimeter and then into the core of the forest. The 600-foot-long skywalk was mandated by the client but initially opposed by the landscape architects, and yet it has turned out to be a very important design element on two fronts. First, because of the rapid and spectacular growth of the forest, visitors ascending the skywalk find themselves moving
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through and above the tree canopy while leaving undisturbed the undergrowth of the forest. A second, more practical consideration has emerged supporting the need for the skywalk: cobras. The district in which the forest is located is known in Thai as Nong Ngu Hao, which translates as “cobra swamp.” Needless to say, a walk along the ground floor of the forest could become an Indiana Joneslike adventure. And then there are the occasional monitor lizards to further balance what is becoming a sustainable landscape. As you ascend higher on the skywalk and ultimately above the tree canopy, the illusion of being lost in a forest is quickly dashed. In the immediate foreground just beyond the forest’s boundaries, the illegal dumping site that was once the Metro-Forest has simply moved on to adjacent plots of abandoned land. And in the distance to the east, silhouetted in a haze of smog, are the office and residential towers of Bangkok. Some four miles to the west is the control tower of Suvarnabhumi Airport, seemingly animated by the heat waves in the scorchingly hot and humid Thai climate.
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ABOVE
The green roof of the exhibition center. LEFT
The reception area within the exhibition center.
RIGHT
Visitors begin the climb up the skywalk. BELOW
Curving rammed earth walls lead visitors to the exhibition center. INSET
COURTESY PTT REFORESTATION INSTITUTE, INSET
Along these curving walls are kiosks educating visitors as to the many plant species of the Metro-Forest.
Not to be outdone, the Metro-Forest has its own tower (also mandated by the client) that is accessible from the skywalk. Here the energetic can climb an additional 65 feet or so to fully appreciate the uniqueness of the Metro-Forest within the context of its surroundings. According to Kobkaikit, a height restriction was placed on the tower owing to its proximity to the airport. From here, the notion that you are indeed immersed in a laboratory becomes dramatically apparent. Looking down on the forest, the design of the MetroForest microcosmos fully asserts itself. The closed circulation, the designed waterfall and stream that meanders through the forest, has literally taken on a life of its own and requires no liner to sustain the water levels. It is replenished by groundwater and rainwater. Sounds from the robust waterfall reassure you that nature is not far away. From the tower, the skywalk dips down to the forest floor and a small footbridge crosses the stream, and a path leads you back to the exhibition center. Given the concerns regarding the cobras, an elevated walkway in this area is under consideration. As you leave the forest, the rooster is still at his post. For now. Â JAMES TRULOVE IS A PUBLISHER AND EDITOR OF BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE.
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COURTESY SPACETIME ARCHITECTS CO., LTD.
SKYWALK DETAILS
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SKYWALK LAYOUT PLAN
COURTESY SPACETIME ARCHITECTS CO., LTD.
SKYWALK DETAILS
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HYDROLOGICAL MANAGEMENT
Planting Soil Mix BackямБll Clay Soil Existing Subgrade
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS OF BANGKOK LTD.
SECTIONS
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ABOVE
A view of the skywalk as seen from the top of the tower. BELOW
The terminus of the skywalk. Project Credits CLIENT PTT PUBLIC COMPANY LIMITED, MANAGED BY PTT REFORESTATION INSTITUTE, BANGKOK. LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS OF BANGKOK LTD. ARCHITECT AND INTERIOR DESIGN SPACETIME ARCHITECTS CO., LTD. MINI-THEATER INTERIOR DESIGN DESIGNLAB NLSS CO., LTD. ECOLOGICAL FOREST CONSULTANT SIRIN KAEWLAIERD. LANDSCAPE DESIGN CONSULTANT ANGSANA BOONYOBHAS. ENERGY AND GREEN BUILDING CONSULTANT ARCHITECTS 49 LIMITED. QUANTITY SURVEYOR LANGDON & SEAH (THAILAND). CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT EDA CONSULTANT CO., LTD. COMMISSIONING AUTHORITY SCG GREEN BUILDING DEPARTMENT. EXHIBITION DESIGN PICO (THAILAND) PUBLIC COMPANY LIMITED. LIGHTING CONSULTANT 49 LIGHTING DESIGN CONSULTANTS LIMITED. STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING H ENGINEER CO., LTD. MEP ENGINEERING MITR TECHNICAL CONSULTANT CO., LTD. MAIN CONTRACTOR RITTA CO., LTD. SOFTSCAPE CONTRACTOR CORDIA COMPANY LIMITED. WATERFALL CONTRACTOR TROPICAL GARDEN LTD., PART. RAMMED EARTH SUBCONTRACTOR LA TERRE CO., LTD. EARTHWORK CONTRACTOR PSATANACHOD KANYOTHA CO., LTD. [NOTE: ALL ARE LOCATED IN OR AROUND BANGKOK.]
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GWENDOLYN MCGINN, ASSOCIATE ASLA
ALONG FOR THE RIDE 102 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
PRESCRIBED BURN
The ямБrst controlled burn, in January 2016, helped control invasive woody plant species and stimulated dormant seeds and the growth of warm-season grasses.
STUDIO OUTSIDE COAXES MANY LANDSCAPES FROM ONE NEGLECTED RANCH. BY ANNE RAVER
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RAYLEN WORTHINGTON
T
HERE’S A JOURNEY LIKE FEELING TO THIS LANDSCAPE, BOTH IN SPACE AND TIME, AS THE PATH CURVES THROUGH DENSE STANDS OF RED CEDAR AND YAUPON HOLLY, THEN OUT TO OPEN SAVANNA, DOTTED WITH LIVE OAKS AND GROVES OF POST OAKS.
“You can’t really understand these landscapes and the plants on the surface until you understand the underlying soil types and drainage patterns,” said Tary Arterburn, FASLA, a founding principal of Studio Outside, one sunny cool morning in early November.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT
Amy Bartell and Tary Arterburn, FASLA, of Studio Outside monitor the restoration of the prairie; the Salvia close to the house; the emergence of American beautyberry and other natives in an edited woodland.
“It’s sand, sand, and sand,” said Amy Bartell, a project manager at Studio Outside, who has spent countless hours on site here. She knows where the fine clayey sands of the Southern Blackland Prairie to the west finger into the coarser sands of the Northern Humid Gulf Coastal Prairie to the east. The Dallas-based firm first walked the 132-acre property in 2015 to assess the site and create a master plan for clients with seemingly opposing interests: The nature-loving wife wanted to increase plant diversity and habitat for birds and other wildlife; the husband wanted a polo field and barn for his seven horses and those of visiting equestrians.
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RAYLEN WORTHINGTON
RIGHT
Native post oaks, like this one by the lily pond, ourish on the open savanna.
How to buffer birds from thundering horses (plus horse trailers and vehicles and the madding crowd) is as much of a challenge as bringing back little bluestem to the forgotten prairie. Tylee Farm, about 75 miles west of Houston, is a remnant of the Southern Post Oak Savanna. Tucked into a narrow ecoregion called the East Central Texas Plains, it is a land of transitions, with the diversity that comes with many edges. Bison once grazed here, always on the move, so deep-rooted grasses quickly grew back. Seeds hopped a ride on animal hides or in their guts, germinating in the soil broken up by sharp hooves. Natural fires, or those set by Native Americans to attract game to the fresh shoots that sprouted in the ash, kept the grasslands open and diverse. But by 2005, when the current owners saw the For Sale sign and climbed over the fence to explore, the long-abandoned ranch had been overgrazed for centuries.
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SOUTHEAST TEXAS ECOREGIONS
There were a few cattle, to keep up an agricultural easement, but eastern red cedars, water oaks, and a tangle of vines and yaupon holly had grown up in the old fields. The rolling savanna landscape appealed to them. It wasn’t too far from their home in Houston, and their three young sons would have a place to roam. The land was a remnant of the 4,600-acre land grant from the Stephen F. Austin Colony to James Tylee in 1834. Born and raised a New Yorker, Tylee had left the city with his young wife, Matilda, to homestead. But Matilda left him soon after setting foot on the prairie. And Tylee died at the Alamo in 1836.
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“My husband is from New York, so that was one connection,” says the owner, who also felt a pang for a man deserted by one love, and then killed before he could enjoy the other. They bought the first 82 acres in 2007, and named it Tylee Farm. A few years later, they bought 50 more acres from a neighbor who owned a rustic camp house perched on a slight rise to the southeast, adding not only higher ground but two more ponds, an intermittent creek and seep, and hardwood forest to the property. They had hired a caretaker, cleared underbrush and cedars, and built a house by Dillon Kyle Architects, with gardens and a main drive designed by the landscape architect Sarah Lake. They were about to put the horse barn next to the caretaker’s house when it occurred to them they needed a master plan.
ABOVE
Tylee Farm, a remnant of a 4,600-acre land grant, is a diverse area of transitions where many ecosystems converge.
STUDIO OUTSIDE
“There was a little grove of post oaks, and a higher pasture with oaks, and we found the little duck pond, but the interior of the property was so brushy it was mostly impassible,” recalls the client, who did not want her name to be used.
BRAZOS COLORADO HYDROLOGY
LEGEND BRAZOS COLORADO COASTAL BASIN RIVER BASIN BOUNDARIES RIVERS CREEKS AND STREAMS FLOODPLAINS AND LOW TERRACES CITY BOUNDARIES
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ABOVE
STUDIO OUTSIDE
As prairie grasses are restored, their deep roots help soil hold and filter water before it flows down the San Bernard River to the Gulf of Mexico.
“We were clumping everything on one side of the property, without thinking of the overall scheme,” the owner says. A path their young boys had unthinkingly made through the lawn and up through the meadow was not only unsightly, but causing erosion. The gardens around the house were languishing in too much shade from fast-growing sycamores. The additional land had opened up new possibilities, not only for a barn site, but more vistas and nature rambles. They could picture eventually adding home sites for future generations.
He could visualize the viewsheds from the front and back of the main house, as trees were selectively cleared. He recognized the potential of the half-mile drive, which curves through dense woods and open grassland. By taking out unwanted species and adding intense plantings of hollies, wax myrtles, and other natives, or a few oaks in the right place, by varying mowing patterns to emphasize the drive’s curves, or a particularly beautiful tree or vista, a simple ride becomes a journey.
So the Texas architect Ted Flato suggested they call Arterburn, who has a feel for natural landscapes. The team from Studio Outside—Arterburn, Bartell, and Gwendolyn McGinn, Associate ASLA— walked the farm with the clients in early 2015. Arterburn recalls the interplay of open meadows and woodlands, especially “the savanna landscape over by the pond, where trees floated out over the field.”
“I like to devise ways for people to move through nature, to make it as experiential as possible,” he says. Bartell, who has a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture and a deep knowledge of plants, was amazed by the feeling of expanse on a relatively small farm. “It has so much diversity on it, even
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HYDROLOGY | ELEVATION
LEGEND ELEVATION GREATER THAN 400’ ELEVATION BETWEEN 400’ AND 350’ ELEVATION BELOW 350’ TYLEE FARM TYLEE HOLDING UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD RIVER BASIN BOUNDARIES DIRECTION OF FLOW
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100 YEAR FLOODPLAIN
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ABOVE
A mere 75-foot difference in elevation marks the high and low points of Tylee Farm, but its vistas defy the reality.
STUDIO OUTSIDE
though there are only a few high and low spots,” the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the she says. “But the way the viewsheds are set up, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. you feel like you’re walking in the state of Texas.” McGinn marched along, her GPS receiver held aloft on a stick, like some modern-day Joan of After hours of discussions with the owners, the Arc, mapping the existing roads and pathways, team pulled together data from a wealth of sourc- noting washouts and key trees, wood duck and es: topographic maps from the U.S. Geological bluebird boxes. As the rain came down, only a Survey, hydrology maps from the USDA Natural few weeks after an 18-inch deluge had flooded Resources Conservation Service, ecological sys- Houston, they saw what the lines on the maps tems and vegetation classification maps from really meant. the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and images from Google Earth. “We had a sense of “You can make assumptions based on topograhow the site was laid out, we saw the ridgelines, phy,” McGinn says, “but the site was saturated, and started to understand how the water flows,” so all the hydrology was extremely evident. Where says McGinn, who has a graphic arts degree there were low points and intermittent streams, from the Rhode Island School of Design and has all that started to come together.” since left Studio Outside to work with Spackman Mossop and Michaels. By mid-June of 2016, in a Bartell mucked about with the hydrologist and steady rain, they assembled on site with a team soil scientist, learning that the three ponds were of experts from the Ecosystem Design Group of sized correctly for the watershed, where boggy
VEGETATION CLASSIFICATIONS SAVANNA GRASSLAND
CONTIGUOUS TO TYLEE FARM NONCONTIGUOUS TO TYLEE FARM
POST OAK MOTTE AND WOODLAND
conditions ruled out roadways and pathways or ABOVE buildings, and just where water drained off the A natural grove of live oaks by the lily pond, slopes and into the seep. perfect as is.
CONTIGUOUS TO TYLEE FARM NONCONTIGUOUS TO TYLEE FARM
STUDIO OUTSIDE, LEFT; RAYLEN WORTHINGTON, RIGHT
POST OAK | YAUPON MOTTE AND WOODLAND
CONTIGUOUS TO TYLEE FARM NONCONTIGUOUS TO TYLEE FARM
Arterburn and the client glued themselves to botanists and ecologists from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, recording plant species and getting a sense of which areas could be restored by prescribed burns. McGinn found the ridgeline that had shown up on the USDA topography map, running on a north–south diagonal through the center of Tylee Farm. The relatively wide, flat ridge, hidden in the woods, suggested itself as the best place for the five-acre polo field, with adequate runoff. And little soil would have to be moved to create it. McGinn also came upon a lovely opening in the dense red cedars, cleared years before by the owners, where beautyberry carpeted the forest floor.
LEFT
Subtle yet distinct differences in vegetation here create a diversity of experience and place: Tylee Farm feels much larger than it is.
“Amy and Tary were working more slowly and scientifically in many ways, looking at plant species, whereas my mission was to cover as much of the site as possible,” McGinn says. “So I had a walking experience of the site, more of a knowledge of what it felt like.”
↘
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MASTER PLAN
THE LONG WALK PICNIC MEADOW NORTH POND
BRIDGE
EQUESTRIAN LOOP
EXISTING CONDITIONS
LEGEND VEHICULAR PROPERTY LINE PATH CREEK
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STUDIO OUTSIDE
POND
LEGEND VEHICULAR PROPERTY LINE PATH CREEK POND
MAIN WALKING LOOP
THE SEEP
LINEAR BOARDWALK
BARN CAMP HOUSE
SECONDARY PATHS
UTILITIES
PASTURE
UTILITY LINE ALONG EQUESTRIAN ROAD
FIELD
CHECK DAMS
LILY POND
PRAIRIES & MEADOWS
DUCK POND CIRCULAR BOARDWALK
THE LONG MEADOW
PASTURE & PADDOCK
MIDDLE WOODLAND
MAIN ROAD
MAIN HOUSE
PRIVACY EDGE
DEEP FOREST
EQUESTRIAN MANAGEMENT
MAIN ENTRY
FARM MANAGEMENT
WESTERN LOOP
OAK ROAD
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themselves into old fields, gradually turning them ABOVE Attentive management, into forests like the one covering the ridgeline. including controlled
→
The barn, large enough to accommodate 16 horses, could then be sited at the top of the polo field, where a north–south breeze would cool the horses. That epic day in the rain began a conversation across disciplines and laid the foundation for the master plan. As McGinn later wrote, “priorities were developed for habitat restoration, increasing the diversity of plant species and the curation of aesthetic experiences.” The ridge, with a dense cedar forest to the west, also suggested a natural dividing line between sporting equestrians and quiet birding and walking. Winding trails to the southwest led through the much more open post oak savanna, around the ponds, and into the shady seep where birds and many other animals come for water, food, and shelter. Arterburn had been a bit confused by the water oaks proliferating in the woods. But he was reminded by ecologists that these, along with red cedars, are the pioneer species that seed
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In its analysis, the Ecosystem Design Group noted, “Historically, in the presence of natural wildfire cycles, the ecological climax community for these soil types would be a savanna system with a composition of 75 percent grasses, 20 percent woody plants, and 5 percent forbs.” And as Arterburn says, “once you understand the climax community, then you know what to shoot for.” The team set out to develop a timeline
burns, mowing, clearing, pruning, and weed control are essential to curating nature at Tylee Farm. LEFT
Gwendolyn McGinn, Associate ASLA, is fascinated by the relationship of plant species to soil and water. She received a 2015 ASLA Student Honor Award for her project, Grounding Root System Architecture. STUDIO OUTSIDE, TOP; RAYLEN WORTHINGTON, BOTTOM AND OPPOSITE
“It had been agricultural at one point, so it had the least desirable trees,” Arterburn says. “Which meant we wouldn’t be losing any long-lived trees, like oaks, to build the polo field.” The meticulously groomed field, planted with Bermuda grass, would be a dramatic contrast to the surrounding horse pastures and paddocks, planted in native grasses. “They are much more nutritious than coastal Bermuda,” Bartell says.
ABOVE
Early morning light on native sedges and grasses; the meadow was cleared of many red cedars.
for managing three different canopy types— grassland, savanna, and woodland—with a goal of restoring 50 percent of the farm to prairie– savanna. They worked with the Cat Spring Wildlife Management Association to prepare the site and carry out the first prescribed burn in January 2016 on two meadows on the front and back side of the house.
up from the owners sitting by the pool. “Because you could not put them back, or replant them.”
Bartell had orchestrated the selective clearing of the overgrown meadow beyond the pool the previous fall. “I had tagged some of the trees, mostly cedars and a few water oaks, and we cleared one at a time,” she says. Then she would run back toward the pool to check on the view, and to get a thumb’s
And by saving a few oaks and venerable red cedars, they created an artful viewshed. “We didn’t want a bare meadow going up that slope; it’s the composition of the remaining trees that gives it a bit of character,” Bartell says. Their intense work together that day had created a kind of epiphany. “When people
It was the husband, she recalls, not the natureoriented wife who encouraged them to keep going as two live oaks were revealed, and the forest on either side of the meadow became more transparent. “He said, ‘That’s what I’m looking for,’” Bartell says. “He could see the tall tree trunks and “We had a very wet year the year before, so there a high canopy. Those cedars can block your view was a very small window when they thought it completely, so you can’t see through the woods. was dry enough to burn,” Bartell says. “And some But now we were looking at the trunks of water areas were too wet to burn.” oaks and live oaks.”
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SOILS
LEGEND SANDY DEEP SAND
N
SANDY LOAM
“I’m experimenting with the species that like wet feet,” she said. And instead of sowing seed, she is using one-gallon pots. In other areas, coastal Bermuda grass, long used as forage in Texas pastures, continues to outcompete young native grasses, sprouting after the burn. So some areas have been spot-treated with herbicide. But watching these prairie grasses take hold is part of the experience of the place. Much of what Studio Outside is doing here is standing back, and doing less. At the duck pond, fed by a seep that drains down
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BELOW
One of 20 bluebird nest boxes monitored throughout the season as part of a conservation easement.
STUDIO OUTSIDE, TOP; RAYLEN WORTHINGTON, BOTTOM
have that moment, they know it,” Bartell says. “You the eastern slope, the owner planted native irises have to wait for it to appear. It appeared, and we all in the shallow mud. But the edges are no longer got on the same page immediately.” mowed. Invasive species will be removed, but as Bartell says, the natives will come if you give them By November, when we walked the farm one half a chance. “In this part of the world, things morning, little bluestem and bushy bluestem make themselves at home all the time. You don’t were flourishing in the upper reaches of the have to force it. They’re there. It’s just a matter of burned meadow. And the path that used to cut straight up the slope has been moved, to curve in and out of the eastern woodland. But Bartell shook her head over the wet patches that had refused to burn at the bottom of the slope, where the team envisioned a tall wildflower meadow.
VEGETATION CLASSIFICATION | VERIFIED SITE CONDITIONS
LEGEND GRASSLAND OAK SAVANNA POST OAK AND WATER OAK WOODLAND RED CEDAR WOODLAND DENSE RED CEDAR WOODLAND
N
CENTRAL TEXAS RIPARIAN HARDWOOD FOREST + WETLANDS
PROPOSED ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITIES
LEGEND GRASSLAND OAK SAVANNA
STUDIO OUTSIDE
POST OAK AND WATER OAK WOODLAND RED CEDAR WOODLAND DENSE RED CEDAR WOODLAND
N
CENTRAL TEXAS RIPARIAN HARDWOOD FOREST + WETLANDS
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PLANT LIST Existing nonnative and nonnative invasive species identified on the property in June 2015 are shown in red. GRASSES
Andropogon gerardii (Big bluestem) Andropogon glomeratus (Bushy bluestem) Bouteloua dactyloides (Buffalo grass) * Bouteloua gracilis (Blue grama) * Cynodon dactylon (Bermuda grass) Eriochloa sericea (Texas cupgrass) Hilaria belangeri (Curly-mesquite) * Panicum virgatum (Switchgrass) Paspalum dilatatum (Dallisgrass) Paspalum notatum (Bahiagrass) Paspalum urvillei (Vasey’s grass) Schizachyrium scoparium (Little bluestem) Sorghastrum nutans (Indiangrass) Tripsacum dactyloides (Eastern gamagrass) WILDFLOWERS
Asclepias spp. (Milkweed) Chamaecrista fasciculata (Partridge pea) Gaillardia pulchella (Indian blanket) Helianthus angustifolius (Swamp sunflower) Helianthus maximiliani (Maximilian sunflower) Ipomopsis rubra (Standing-cypress) Liatris acidota (Sharp blazing star) Liatris aspera (Tall blazing star) Liatris elegans (Pinkscale blazing star) Monarda citriodora (Lemon beebalm) Phlox drummondii (Annual phlox) Rudbeckia hirta (Black-eyed Susan) Solidago canadensis (Canada goldenrod) Vernonia texana (Texas ironweed) SHRUBS
Callicarpa americana (American beautyberry) Cephalanthus occidentalis (Common buttonbush) Crataegus spp. (Hawthorn) Erythrina herbacea (Redcardinal) Ilex vomitoria (Yaupon) Indigofera suffruticosa (Anil de pasto) Lonicera japonica (Japanese honeysuckle) Morella cerifera (Wax myrtle) Sambucus nigra ssp. canadensis (American black elderberry) TREES
Carya illinoinensis (Pecan) ‡ Carya texana (Black hickory) † Diospyros texana (Texas persimmon) ‡ Diospyros virginiana (Common persimmon) ‡ Melia azedarach (Chinaberry tree) Quercus macrocarpa (Bur oak) † Quercus marilandica (Blackjack oak) † Quercus stellata (Post oak) † Quercus virginiana (Live oak) † Sassafras albidum (Sassafras) ‡ Triadica sebifera (Chinese tallow) Ulmus alata (Winged elm) ‡ Vaccinium arboreum (Farkleberry) ‡ Vernicia fordii (Tungoil tree) * Grasses that combine to form Habiturf, a native lawn. † Trees that represent the target canopy. ‡ Species that have been identified on site in addition to species that might start to grow with the changes in management, or that might be introduced to the property to diversify its woodlands and provide diversity in food sources and habitat.
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ABOVE
Little bluestem, croton, and wildflowers flourish among native post oaks and water oak seedlings.
STUDIO OUTSIDE, THIS PAGE; RAYLEN WORTHINGTON, OPPOSITE
MANAGEMENT SCHEDULE YEARLY
making sure the yaupon doesn’t shade everything mate life in the pond, to the wide expanse of the out.” McGinn suggested putting in a boardwalk, savanna, as one turns to continue up the path, is around part of the perimeter of the pond, and another one of those moments.) going partway into the water. We strolled along the wide mown path, through “Right now, we can’t see the critters on the edge, open grasslands punctuated by post oaks, and but you could go over and see everyone who lives occasional live oaks, to another pond, which in down there, by looking into the water,” McGinn summer is covered by white water lilies. Three said. It’s one of those “curated moments” that live oaks stand together at the far end of the pond, Arterburn is after, to intensify one’s experience their low branches forming a perfect shelter— in nature. (And lifting one’s head from the inti- once for cows, now for humans. ↘
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MANAGEMENT PLAN EDGES
CLEARED EDGE
PRIVACY EDGE
HABITAT EDGE
LEGEND CLEARED EDGE PRIVACY EDGE
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MANAGEMENT PLAN GRASSLAND
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MANAGEMENT PLAN WOODLAND
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WILD WOODLAND
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MANAGEMENT PLAN SAVANNA
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PASTURE SAVANNA
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GRASS DOMINATED SAVANNA
S4 THICKER CANOPY GRASS DOMINATED SAVANNA
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LEFT
Restoration of the post oak savanna helps wildlife and expands the view. OPPOSITE
A planting of annual oats as a cover crop.
“I think they’re so perfect the way they are, I wouldn’t dare try to improve on that area at all,” Bartell says. The team will remove any water oaks or yaupons growing into the dams of these ponds—“we won’t pull them off, we’ll just cut them off,” Bartell says, to keep the dams intact. “We’ll do less mowing around that pond, to let the natural species re-emerge.” One of the client’s favorite spots is the seep that runs down this slope, between the lily pond and the meadow that leads toward the old camp house. The land forms a natural crease, where water runs or trickles, depending on the weather, and yaupon holly, wild grape, Chinese tallow trees, and water oaks have made a dense thicket for birds and other wildlife.
specific needs,” says the owner, who has started collecting books and expert advice on the subject. As McGinn says, the project isn’t so much about “selecting plants and defining a set spatial plan” as it is “about creating relationships and responding to the site.” She adds, “It’s strangely exciting to design something that will never be any one specific thing, but something that grows and changes.” One reason for burning the meadows near the house was not just aesthetic. Its progress can be noted daily by the owners. The bird lover has started to record what birds she sees, what flowers are blooming throughout the seasons.
She watched the bluestem sprouting in the spring, after the first burn. “I’d only seen it beThe team wants to put a series of weirs along the fore as a tall grass,” she says. “But after a burn, seep, to slow down the flow of water and create these little mounds of green start to shoot up. It’s the kind of puddles and trickling water that attract a completely different look.” many birds and other animals. A small boardwalk would allow the client and others to quietly ob- And in the evenings, she hears the barred owl call serve life up close. near her house. And she answers back. McGinn has been fascinated by the different plants that spring up, as soil and conditions change, even in the slightest. “This area has distinctly different habitats, so where there is a wetland, we’re trying to find a way to cultivate it more, create more intense diversity.” They will take out the Chinese tallow and other exotic species, and cut back the leggy yaupon, to encourage the hollies to fruit closer to the ground. “And we’ll add various things for the birds, which have very
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ANNE RAVER GARDENS IN WARREN, RHODE ISLAND, AND WRITES ABOUT NATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT.
Project Credits LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT STUDIO OUTSIDE, DALLAS. ECOSYSTEM CONSULTANT LADY BIRD JOHNSON WILDFLOWER CENTER, AUSTIN, TEXAS. BURN TEAM AND SEEDING WILDLIFE HABITAT FEDERATION, CAT SPRING, TEXAS. LAND MANAGEMENT NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICE, BELLVILLE, TEXAS. LANDSCAPE INSTALLATION JMA LIVING LANDSCAPES, BELLVILLE, TEXAS.
WILLIAM T. ARTERBURN, FASLA; RAYLEN WORTHINGTON, OPPOSITE
→
SIDE POCKET BY FRED A. BERNSTEIN
NEW YORK’S PALEY PARK, WHICH TURNS 50 THIS MONTH, IS A MASTERPIECE PROOF THAT EVEN A TINY PUBLIC SPACE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN A CROWDED CITY.
But during a recent visit, the park looked less than stellar. The concession stand, tucked into a tiny pavilion in the southeast corner of the park, had sprouted unattractive signage (perhaps to compete with the café next door). Signs on the windows of the building directly behind the park drew the eye away from Zion
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BY OINONIO CC BY SA 2.0 VIA FLICKR
Designed by Zion and Breen Associates at the behest of the broadcasting mogul William Paley to honor his father, Samuel, an immigrant from Ukraine (and officially called Samuel Paley Plaza), it opened on May 23, 1967, and has attracted accolades and honors ever since.
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BY JUSTIN HEIDEMAN CC BY NC 2.0 VIA FLICKR, LEFT; BY JASON REIBOLD CC BY NC ND 2.0 VIA FLICKR, RIGHT
not a large woman.” At a Long Island nursery, Miller picked out trees that most resembled the ones selected by Robert Zion and Harold Breen 32 years earlier. “Amanda Burden gave me old black-and-white photos,” she says, referring to the city planner who was William Paley’s stepdaughter. Using the photos as reference, “I looked at the trees and said, ‘I’ll take The trees there now aren’t original to the this one. I’ll take that one.’ It was a lot of fun.” park; they were planted under the supervision of the public garden designer Lynden But now the trees, which once formed a lush Miller during a 1999 renovation planned by canopy, rise high above the back and side the architects Beyer Blinder Belle. Miller’s walls of the park. “Paley Park is a beautiful job, she says, was to replace the park’s origi- set piece,” says Michael Van Valkenburgh, nal honey locusts, which weren’t doing well. FASLA. “It’s not a forgiving landscape. And the scale of those trees is incredibly impor“Back then,” she says, “when they power tant to how well it works.” washed the park they used those horrible chemicals, and the chemicals got into the Van Valkenburgh says the honey locusts roots. When we pulled up the trees, the roots might need to be replaced. “They can do weren’t much longer than my arm, and I’m two things: They can replant every 10 or and Breen’s famous waterfall—breaking the spell it was designed to cast. And, most troubling, the honey locust trees that dot the 4,200-square-foot park have gotten so tall that, rather than helping to define the space by acting as a kind of canopy, they simply peter out.
NEW YORK POST ARCHIVES / CONTRIBUTOR / GETTY IMAGES
OPENING DAY, MAY 23, 1967
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OPENING DAY, MAY 23, 1967
Miller, however, thinks the current trees are fine. Their purpose wasn’t to form a canopy, she says. The key, she says, was at ground level, where visitors saw the dark trunks of the trees against the aerated water (1,800 gallons a minute) streaming down the back wall of the park—a stirring black-on-white effect. Besides, given the number of buildings that have gone up around Paley Park
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in recent decades, the trees receive far less direct sunlight than 50 years ago. “Keep in mind that it’s deep shade now. So there’s no reason why they would be very rich in foliage,” Miller says. “The trees are looking for the light,” says Donald Richardson, FASLA. “Trying to reach for the sun, they get leggy, straggly.” Hired by Zion and Breen in 1962, right out of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Richardson worked on the design of Paley Park. Now 80, he continues to run the successor firm, Zion Breen Richardson Associates, out of an office in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. He adds: “We knew it was
NEW YORK POST ARCHIVES / CONTRIBUTOR / GETTY IMAGES
15 years—honestly that’s not the end of the world. The other thing is to have a really artful pruner keep them from getting too tall, like bonsai. Maybe they can do that with the new trees. I think it’s too late to bonsai the ones that are there.”
MARIO BURGER
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going to be challenging for the trees, and they have to be switched out periodically.”
BY OINONIO CC BY SA 2.0 VIA FLICKR
Besides replacing the trees, the 1999 renovation included cleaning the masonry walls, replacing the fountain waterproofing, and improving the lighting, says Tom Lindberg, the project architect for Beyer Blinder Belle. “No real design changes were made,” he says. And no real design changes are needed now. But what will happen to the trees? No one is saying. The park is controlled by the William S. Paley Foundation (with tens of millions of dollars in assets); its executive director is Patrick S. Gallagher, a former financial secretary to Paley. Reached by phone, Gallagher declined to answer questions about plans for the park. He said: “Paley Park is adverse to publicity, or anything written about it. We are unreceptive to stories, frankly, or to publicity, or to attention. We take a very simple view: The park was built by Mr. Paley in memory of his dad, for the enjoyment of the public, and the park speaks for itself.” FRED A. BERNSTEIN WRITES ABOUT LAW AND ARCHITECTURE. HE LIVES IN NEW YORK.
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THE BACK
MOVEMENT AND MEANING: THE LANDSCAPES OF HOERR SCHAUDT
Written with Douglas Brenner; New York: The Monacelli Press, 2017; 256 pages, $50.
SCOTT SHIGLEY
The architect Laurence Booth’s foreword to this book puts forth a question posed in the early days of the partnership of Douglas Hoerr, FASLA, and the late Peter Schaudt: “How, observers wondered, could these two extraordinary, and very different, designers—Doug’s craft honed by hands-on expertise, Peter’s burnished by academia—merge and work together?” The answer, of course, was, “Beautifully.” This compilation celebrates that answer with photographs and details of dozens of Hoerr Schaudt’s public and private landscapes (including the Prairie style stairways swathed in redbud at the lakefront Bissell residence, left).
HIGH FIDELITY DRONE MAPPING FILLS A MISSING LINK IN SITE REPRESENTATION.
BY KARL KULLMANN
I
N MANY WAYS, the satellite has been often camouflaged from 450 miles above Earth
instrumental for landscape architecture. As the apex of two centuries of progressively higher aerial reconnaissance, the satellite’s view reveals landscape associations and patterns that remain concealed at lower altitudes. Through these revelations, satellite imagery played a key role in the reinterpretation of cities as complex ecological systems instead of mere assemblages of buildings. Ultimately, online satellite mapping applications confirmed that the entire planet is composed of landscape. Through the convenience of GPS-equipped mobile devices, we now seamlessly integrate the satellite’s landscape into our everyday lives. A world tuned in to the synthesizing role of landscape is undoubtedly empowering for landscape architecture. But as enlightening and convenient as the satellite’s all-encompassing gaze may be, the tyranny of distance coupled with a downward viewing angle also undermines its potency. As landscape architects are abundantly aware, the nuances and details that enrich the landscape are
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within shadowed, interstitial, and underneath spaces. Even with familiarization and steadily improving image resolutions, abstract planimetric forms routinely fail to resonate with an individual’s perception of his or her place in the world. The recurring popularity of more immersive angles such as the archaic bird’s-eye view is probably a reaction to this lingering apprehension. These shortcomings are revealed at the site scale, at which a significant portion of landscape practice occurs. At this scale, the substitution of feature surveys or commissioned aerial imaging with freely available satellite-derived GIS data often lowers the quality of spatial information. GIS mapping data interpolated from much larger data sets trades site specificity for expansive coverage, and its accuracy typically has not been verified on the ground. Given that landscape architecture relies on maps in one form or another to interpret, abstract, conceptualize, and ultimately reconfigure the ground, this demotion of ground proofing is highly significant to the discipline.
Š 2015 LANDSAT 8, USGS/ESA
Enter the drone. Initially introduced to the public as enigmatic appliances of remote warfare, drones rapidly became synonymous with the multirotor camera-equipped consumer devices that increasingly permeate the sky. Despite unresolved privacy concerns, civilian drones now fulfill everyday roles ranging from flyovers of photogenic landmarks to promotional real estate bird’s-eye views. Likewise, many landscape architects routinely deploy drones for site overviews, design visualization, and completed project documentation. And, as previously reported in LAM, drones are also being fitted with experimental payloads that include seed dispersal and fire ignition for forest fuel load management. Whereas this first generation of civilian drones required active piloting, the next generation of the technology incorporates automated navigation. By integrating GPS with onboard avionic sensors, automated navigation enables predefinition of virtual flight paths and autonomously tracks the ground-dwelling operator from the sky. Automated navigation also streamlines and
systematizes the process of landscape imaging. Georeferenced drone imagery is digitally composited into extremely high-resolution orthomosaics, and converted through a sophisticated form of photogrammetry into three-dimensional topographic models. From these models, detailed contour elevation maps are generated. Based on current battery technology, areas of up to 100 acres can be captured in optical, nearinfrared, or thermal formats. Flying at practical altitudes of 200 feet with high-definition cam- ABOVE eras results in image pixel resolutions of less The satellite’s view: than one inch. To place this in context, imagery San Francisco Bay. at this resolution is more than 600 times sharper than typical online urban satellite imagery, and where available, about 15 times sharper than aerial imagery captured and hosted by aircraftbased imaging vendors. Compared to the fidelity of Google Earth and GIS maps, the results are astounding. For the first time in cartographic history, topographic features are mapped down to a level of clarity comparable to the world that we perceive from on the ground.
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How might this technology affect landscape architecture? First off, the usability of automated drone navigation is primed to increase the prevalence of the bird’s-eye view in landscape design visualization. Once prominent in landscape architecture before falling out of favor in the latter part of the 20th century, this oblique angle is already enjoying a digitally propelled resurgence through applications such as Google Earth (with terrain and
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3-D buildings activated), Google Maps 45°, and Bing Bird’s Eye. Combining a structural overview with close range immersion in the landscape, the cyclical allure of the bird’s eye is a product of its capacity to communicate design visions to a general audience. Insofar as we imagine the future to arrive from over the horizon, there is something inherently aspirational about looking at, over, and through the landscape. In addition to reviving the bird’s-eye view, the drone heightens the landscape architect’s interaction with the site. Current regulations and technologies require drone operators to escort their equipment to (or nearby) the mapping target. The act of launching the drone upward from the ground reverses the downward zoom of satellite imagery, and places the landscape architect on the site and in the frame of the map. Granted, future developments in long-range drone dispatching may well dilute the practice of the operator’s having feet physically planted on the site. But for the time being, a sweet spot exists between the technique and the technology. Landscape architecture
ABOVE
The bird’s-eye view: contemporary landscape architectural visualization of the Salton Sea. OPPOSITE
The drone’s-eye view: orthomosaic of the Albany Bulb landfill in comparison with satellite and aerial imagery. (Drone image captured with 3D Robotics Solo drone equipped with Sony UMC-R10C camera flown at 200 feet.)
RICHARD CROCKETT
In practice, the various features of next-generation drones are intended for different user groups, with topographic mapping principally calibrated for commercial use, and self-tracking primarily directed at the consumer market. But befitting of its diverse identity, landscape architecture straddles both of these professional and consumer domains. The applied aspects of drone mapping are most directly relevant to landscape architecture’s ongoing search for new methods with which to represent the complexities of landscape. And as a social art, landscape architecture also has a vested interest in the cultural implications of the more consumeroriented drone features.
KARL KULLMANN
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OPPOSITE
Drone mapping: Contour map of the Albany Bulb landfill in comparison with GIS and LiDAR contour data. (Drone map captured with 3D Robotics Solo drone equipped with Sony UMC-R10C camera flown at 200 feet.)
is likely to be enriched by this return to the field the site scale that mirrors the critiques leveled from which it became progressively insulated in at Ian McHarg’s regional mapping method of the digital age. the 1960s. Although the new wave of GIS-based creative mapping sought to reconcile this “analyEven in the advent of remote drone dispatch- sis paralysis” of too much data with the “fantasy ing (or the assimilation of drone imagery into fatigue” of whimsical design, an inflection point Google Earth), the drone’s close relationship with remains between the gathering of information the ground reintroduces a form of fieldwork to and projecting of ideas. At this decisive moment, the site mapping process. From a near-ground landscape architects may become transfixed by aerial perspective, this thickened fieldwork fulfills site-mapping fidelity that surpasses the fidelity the original terms of site surveying, whereby an at which they are able to conceptualize form. overview of a landscape is established by working Mesmerized by ephemeral and variable landscape from the inside out (as opposed to from the top phenomena that are freeze-framed in high definidown). In rediscovering the role of surveyor—as tion, a designer may be tempted to trivialize this opposed to mapper—the landscape architect is information into mere pattern making. embedded into the whole process of site delineation. Whereas designers engaged in mapping These consequences remain possible, though my typically mine satellite, aerial, and spatial data initial observations from coordinating a graduate provided by agencies and corporations, drones design studio project over several iterations sugfacilitate unfiltered on-site engagement in the gest more constructive outcomes. This design creation of content. studio challenge involves transitioning an overgrown dump site situated on the eastern shore of That said, the optical basis of drone mapping is San Francisco Bay into a public park. Named the no substitute for the precision of the surveyor’s Albany Bulb, the site comprises a highly complex theodolite. But although inappropriate for design topography of concrete and rebar outcroppings documentation and construction, drone map- interspersed with self-seeded thickets. Over the ping is relevant to many of the other roles in bulb’s short history, these features supported which landscape architects are routinely invested. clandestine off-grid encampments and inspired For preliminary design, community advocacy, or creative activities. speculative work, the technology provides an accessible window into spatiality and materiality at In earlier iterations of the studio, the students’ the scale of the landscape site. aspirations to engage these physical and cultural characteristics sensitively through design were Can this newfound fidelity actually be harnessed curtailed by the coarse fidelity of available site in the design process, or does it lead to a form data. With off-the-shelf satellite imagery, GIS of design determinism? It is possible that drone data, and feature surveys all failing to systemmapping delivers an information overload at atically capture the topographic “texture” of the
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KARL KULLMANN
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BELOW
Drone modeling as fieldwork: 3-D mesh of rough terrain and vegetation at the Albany Bulb landfill. (Captured using 3D Robotics Solo drone equipped with GoPro HERO4 camera.) OPPOSITE
Site-specific design at the Albany Bulb landfill that used high-fidelity drone mapping.
site, students tended toward overscaled and overbearing design interventions. With this site texture now represented in high fidelity, the design proposals are noticeably more specific in their engagement with the complex qualities of the site. Moreover, much as landscape architects have always done, intermittently placing the detailed mapping aside and simplifying the site into key features and tectonics avoids any risk of data overload.
But this is not to suggest that a renewed focus on site specificity will or should displace the past two fruitful decades of emphasis on large-scale associations, systems, and infrastructures. Rather, the drone and the satellite are most productive coexisting as overlapping scales of engagement with landscape. This is particularly relevant to addressing the persistent division within the discipline between site design and regional planning, cities and regions, and between gardens and landscape. Moreover, the drone’s eye is potentially instrumental in grounding the satellite approach to urbanism that has prevailed over the past 15 years and that arguably overlooks the placemaking aspects of dwelling.
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KARL KULLMANN
The capacity to spatialize nuanced landscape characteristics evidently affects the designer’s ability to engage these qualities through design. If we extrapolate this and assume widespread participation in drone-based fieldwork, an increase in landscape design strategies that focus on retaining and incorporating the preexisting qualities of a given site is a likely consequence. This is particularly relevant to the integration of culturally appropriated urban wasteland sites (such as the Albany Bulb) into the public realm.
YIPING LU
Hypothetically, aerial access to the scale at which humans interact with the public realm also creates a platform for other innovations within landscape architecture. The reinvigoration of the human behavioral side of landscape architecture is one such possible by-product. When coupled with recent advances in mobile technology and the social sciences, it is conceivable that behaviorally based design might undergo a similar digitally propelled renaissance, as occurred with ecologically based design a decade and a half ago. Intentionally capturing the natural and cultural landscape in high fidelity is only one half of the drone story for landscape architecture. The other aspect is the wider cultural assimilation of the drone’s near-ground perspective. Clearly, our distaste at being visibly surveilled remains fervent. But in the same manner that individuals turned the cameras in smartphones back onto institutions of power and eventually back onto themselves, the use of drones as appliances of personal vanity is likely to outstrip the use of drones as deliberate instruments of surveillance and cartography. Whether we agree with it or not, drones are destined to become personal mirrors in the sky, enabling operators to witness (and
share) themselves in the third person, positioned within the surrounding landscape. But there is potentially a silver lining to this looming aerial narcissism. Once the drone operator’s personal vanity is satisfied, attention invariably turns to the surrounding landscape that fills out the majority of the scene. Landscape architecture has a vested interest in how this circumstantially imaged landscape is used and interpreted. It is unlikely to remain inert, since by its very nature the drone’s-eye view implies a certain degree of envisioning of alternative futures. It also provides a degree of instrumentality for enacting those visions. Given that imagining and actuating landscapes is traditionally the task of landscape architects, everyday participation in drone mapping injects core landscape ethics into the existing culture of image sharing. With their horizons extended to include the near landscape, creators and consumers of drone imagery and mapping inadvertently advocate for landscape architecture. KARL KULLMANN IS AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.
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THE BACK
/
BOOKS URBAN DESIGN AND UTOPIAN BELIEF BY MICHAEL J. LEWIS; PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2016; 256 PAGES, $45. REVIEWED BY JANE GILLETTE
O
n one level, City of Refuge by Michael J. Lewis, the FaisonPierson-Stoddard Professor of Art History at Williams College, is just what it purports to be: a scholarly study of how utopian values influenced the built environment, producing towns organized around a square grid in which property was collectively owned and living spaces shared. As such, it is a praiseworthy accomplishment. On another level, the way Lewis shapes his narrative, crafts his prose, and reveals his sources (some previously unpublished) makes this book a compelling read for a community stretching far beyond scholars of architectural history and city planning.
RIGHT
Albrecht Dürer’s ideal city unites the geometric shape with a precise locating of 47 trades and businesses among 1,073 buildings.
Lewis clearly states the goal of his book: to serve as a corrective to the Marxist viewpoint that “obscures the fundamental relationship between these two utopian currents” of religious and secular reform. True, some of the settlements he explores were sanctuaries from religious persecution, like those established by the German Moravians and Rappites, the French Huguenots, and the American Shakers, while others were sanctuaries from the effects of the Industrial Revolution, like the New Harmony, Indiana, of Robert Dale Owen. Yet both types sought
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“to create an ideal social order and express it in an ideal physical plan,” and the physical plans for both types of settlement were based on the same principle, the square. How the square became a principle constitutes much of Lewis’s text. “Almost every society has an image of a perfect world,” Lewis explains as he introduces the basic texts and images that establish the religious importance of the square. He then follows the manifestations of this ever-morphing metaphor into the built environments of the Separatists via what amounts to a close reading of specific architectural manifestations, especially in a few of the best-known American examples including George Rapp’s New Harmony, Indiana, and Economy, Pennsylvania. In effect, Lewis constructs a metaphorical wall around his readers who cease to speculate about the underlying cause for this hypersymbolization and happily read along, utterly convinced of the virtues of the square and the right angle, “the most divine of all geometric forms.” Like the citizens of the refuge city, we feel we are protected by a transcending pattern. To some degree, Lewis’s clear exposition is a narrative trick of true brilliance because, having
ALBRECHT DÜRER, ETLICHE UNDERRICHT ZU BEFESTIGUNG DER STETT SCHLOSS UND FLECKEN NUREMBERG, 1527 , CHAPIN LIBRARY, WILLIAMS COLLEGE, WILLIAMSTOWN, MA
CITY OF REFUGE: SEPARATISTS AND UTOPIAN TOWN PLANNING
/BOOKS
established the origin and specificities of the Separatist urban plan, Lewis closes with the history of the communities established by Rapp, Owen, and James Silk Buckingham, communities that failed and ultimately disappeared because a great urban plan, even one based on the square and the right angle, won’t save us. We readers awaken, at the end of the book, to the ultimate inadequacies of town planning and architecture when they are left on their own, an intense emotional experience for believers in the power of design.
ABOVE LEFT
Today, Freudenstadt’s orderly geometry dissolves at the periphery, evidence of the ideal city’s inability to cope with growth. RIGHT
Heinrich Schickhardt’s 1599 plan of Freudenstadt reveals the ultimate foursquare sanctuary for refugees displaced by the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Lewis brings off this emotional tour de force by establishing the holiness of the square. He begins with the four separate occasions on which the Bible describes a square-based city or settlement. First comes the text of Numbers 35:9–15, which records God’s instructions to Moses and Aaron for the arrangement of the tents of the 12 tribes during the Exodus. This arrangement is repeated in the 48 Levitical settlements (also recorded in Numbers), which include six “cities of refuge,” where someone who has committed manslaughter can escape the vengeance of the victim’s family to be more rationally judged on a later occasion. Third is the prophet Ezekiel’s “extravagantly detailed” account of the New Jerusalem, and, fourth, the description in the book of Revelation of a much larger vision of the New Jerusalem. Lewis also cites such relevant biblical texts as St. John’s “Make straight the way of the Lord,” (which refers to the Second Coming thought to be imminent by many Separatist groups) and points to the English use of the same word to mean “justice” and “the opposite of left”—as is also true in German (recht),
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French (droit), and Spanish (derecho). He evokes wider cultural contexts by quoting the architectural historian Joseph Rykwert on the sacred meaning of the grid: “When the Roman surveyor inscribed his cardo, he was drawing the axis on which the earth turns, and when he crossed it with the decumanus, drawn right to left, he was tracing the course of the sun.” Lewis next proceeds to the evidence of the power of the square in more modern texts, first, in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), a vision distilled from Plato, the Bible, and the accounts of travelers from the New World and source of a radical idea: “In order to make an ideal city one must also make an ideal society.” Lewis also points to the importance of Johann Valentin Andreae’s Reipublicae Christianopolitanae descriptio (1619), Utopia rewritten from a reformed Protestant standpoint that celebrates experimental science and intellectual debate. Andreae was heavily influenced by Civitas Solis (The City of the Sun), written by Tommaso Campanella, a jailed Dominican friar, and finally published in 1623. The plans elaborated by More and Andreae run counter to the ideal of Renaissance humanists, who believed ideal cities should be circular, as did Campanella, who was nevertheless more radical in his program, eliminating the family unit as well as private property.
PHOTOGRAPH BY LOTHAR SCHWARK, FREUDENSTADT, LEFT; HAUPTSTAATSARCHIV STUTTGART, N 220 B 14, 1 BL, RIGHT
THE BACK
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RIGHT
New Haven, Connecticut, with its grid of nine squares, was among the first religious sanctuaries in America to express its social order through ideal geometry. BELOW
Christian Gottlieb Reuter based his plan of New Haven on a close, unembellished reading of the Old Testament description of the cities of Canaan.
As he establishes this textual background, Lewis begins to explore the desire to turn words into physical form, for example Rabbi Jacob Judah Leon’s 1646 attempt to create a scale model of the tabernacle and the camps of the 12 tribes. Most important is the ideal city detailed by Albrecht Dürer in 1527, Etliche Underricht zu Befestigung der Stett Schloss und Flecken (Comprehensive treatise on the fortification of cities, castles, and towns), which reflects the “Renaissance conviction that any object could be made beautiful and useful—a building, a painting, an instrument of war— by means of disegno, formal design based on the order of geometry.” Lewis also cites an intriguing and perhaps influential 1524 map of the square-centered Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, published in Nuremberg by an associate of Dürer’s. As he explains these visual explorations Lewis segues convincingly to a reality heavily influenced by Protestantism: Heinrich Schickhardt’s plans for Freudenstadt, a city established in 1598 as a safe haven for religious refugees from the CounterReformation and the town plans of the military engineer Johann Melchior von Schwalbach (1581–1635). We are also reminded of the early history of Philadelphia, the influence of Savannah, Georgia, and, most enjoyably, the founding of New Haven, Connecticut, the first city of refuge in the New World with a physical basis in the square. We also learn about Herrnhaag, “the Lord’s Grove,” a refugee settlement in Saxony founded in 1738 and the prototype for almost every city of refuge that would follow, thanks to the worldwide peregrinations of the Moravian Church, which made the design of their villages
146 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
“a formal instrument of theology.” Throughout these forays into reality Lewis gives convincing historical explanations for the creation of the towns, for example, the desire to retain in Germany the hard-working Protestant laborers uprooted by the endless wars of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation or, conversely, to protect their lives and beliefs by creating an escape destination. Throughout these chapters Lewis takes great pains to investigate the buildings and plans with a specificity that rewards the reader, an approach culminating in his analysis of the early 19thcentury ventures of George Rapp; his adopted son, the architect Frederick Rapp; and the Harmonists, Rapp’s German followers who renounced “private property, personal ambition, and even sexual relations”: Harmony (1804), Economy (1824), and especially the intervening New Harmony (1814), which Rapp sold in 1824 to Owen, who turned it into a center of nonreligious socialism. Lewis closely investigates Rapp’s “ever more imaginative use of architecture as an instrument of religious expression and of social cohesion.” For example, traditional buildings were included to serve as “objects of cultural reassurance,” and—of particular interest to landscape architects—a botanical garden and a labyrinth added their symbolic weight to the religious argument, the labyrinth expressing “the difficulty of arriving at Harmony.” The story grows even more interesting when Rapp moved the Harmonists to the new village of Economy, Pennsylvania, which included a museum devoted to natural science and art (among the first of a new building type) and a new iteration of an old form, a formally landscaped garden that, for all its resemblance to Versailles, was an allegorical statement of Harmonist belief. It too featured a labyrinth with a grotto that looked like a heap of boulders on the outside, yet concealed an elegant interior—a symbol of the rewards of self-denial.
HISTORIC URBAN PLANS, TOP; C. G. REUTER, “A CITY LIKE THE LEVITE CITIES IN CANAAN,” NOTIZBUCH 1761 , UNITÄTS ARCHIV HERRNHUT, TS BD. 13, P. 8, BOTTOM
THE BACK
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RIGHT, TOP
George Rapp’s second city of refuge, New Harmony, Indiana, quickly grew from village to town but at its core retained the threeby-three block plus central square plan. RIGHT, BOTTOM
Rapp’s Economy, Pennsylvania, held onto its plan, although by 1858 (date of drawing) the Harmony Society was in decline.
ABOVE
Rapp’s baffling labyrinth represented the difficulty of arriving at Harmony.
The second owner of New Harmony, Robert Dale Owen, saw the problems of morality in terms of early environmental influence, a relatively scientific, nonreligious idea that demanded an orderly and rational urbanscape where children could be removed from their parents, as in the visionary town he called the Village of Unity and Mutual Cooperation. Owen established his actual community in New Harmony, to which he also famously brought, in 1825, the “Boatload of Knowledge,” a selection of forward-looking scientists, artists, and educators. Lewis beautifully tells the story of the end of both communities. The Harmonists declined after 1832, with the final “ignominious fulfillment of Rapp’s millennial vision” occurring in 1903, when the last member conducted Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries in front of pasteboard scenery— ignominious perhaps, but an end to what was, after all, a lengthy survival. By contrast Owen’s New Harmony “sputtered to a halt” within a decade, a sudden death for a nonreligious, scientific New Jerusalem. Owen, who was called “the prince of parallelograms,” had, according to Lewis, “learned everything about the working of the Harmonist communities—their agriculture, their industry, their architecture —except the religious sense of mission that held them together.” Planning could not save a community when it devolved to pure utilitarianism, the square and the right angle “leached of all theological significance” and now “a mere system of crowd control.” Lewis closes with a discussion of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880) in which Frederick Engels dismisses the theology of three Utopians—Owen, Henri de Saint-Simon, and Charles Fourier—while failing to consider whether “communal ownership of property was even viable without some sort of millennial belief system.” I end on a personal note. I was taken with the moral beauty of the square and, even though Lewis warned me from the beginning that a good urban plan doesn’t create the good society, I was moved when he described the end of the utopian village. I remembered my childhood visits to the remains of
New Harmony and particularly the existence of one enticing artifact, unmentioned by Lewis but evidence for his explanation of decay: a limestone slab with two footprints pressed into its surface. It was, in reality, an aboriginal petroglyph from the St. Louis area, purchased by Frederick Rapp in 1819, but it was described to us children as the place where the Angel Gabriel, or perhaps even Jesus himself, touched down on earth and left holy footprints in the weak terrestrial soil. Last summer, sneaking around several fences, I paid the footprints a visit. There the slab lay, abandoned, crumbling, left outside to be destroyed by the elements, an artifact with an outdated mythological backstory that no longer convinced or amused. JANE GILLETTE IS THE FORMER EDITOR OF SPACEMAKER PRESS AND LAND FORUM MAGAZINE.
MANUSCRIPT GROUP 185, PENNSYLVANIA HISTORICAL AND MUSEUM COMMISSION: OLD ECONOMY VILLAGE ARCHIVES, 06.72.17.51, LEFT; MANUSCRIPT GROUP 185, PENNSYLVANIA HISTORICAL AND MUSEUM COMMISSION: OLD ECONOMY VILLAGE ARCHIVES, 06.72.17.84, RIGHT TOP; OE80.2.62. COLLECTIONS OF OLD ECONOMY VILLAGE, PENNSYLVANIA HISTORICAL AND MUSEUM COMMISSION, RIGHT BOTTOM
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BOOKS OF INTEREST BIOPHILIA IS A NOTION EMBRACED BY THINKERS INCLUDING ERICH FROMM, E. O. WILSON, AND BJÖRK.
CONSERVING THE DUST BOWL: THE NEW DEAL’S PRAIRIE STATES FORESTRY PROJECT
CHANDIGARH REVEALED: LE CORBUSIER’S CITY TODAY BY SHAUN FYNN; NEW YORK: PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS, 2017; 240 PAGES, $60.
BY SARAH THOMAS KARLE AND DAVID KARLE; BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA: LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2017; 183 PAGES, $35.
This book shines light on a nearly forgotten aspect of Franklin Roosevelt’s infrastructure interventions: the shelterbelt, a tree-planting project meant to stabilize soils and protect farms from the Great Plains winds. Beginning in 1935, the Prairie States Forestry Project planted some 220 million elms, cottonwoods, locusts, conifers, and other trees in a swath from North Dakota’s northern border down deep into Texas. In 1939, in Nebraska alone, records show installation of 10,327,523 trees. The program lasted only seven years; World War II hastened its demise. Though many of the trees haven’t survived, remnants of the shelterbelt still remain across America.
150 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
HANDBOOK OF BIOPHILIC CITY PLANNING & DESIGN BY TIMOTHY BEATLEY; WASHINGTON, D.C.: ISLAND PRESS, 2016; 312 PAGES, $40.
Biophilia—a love for the living world— is a term embraced by thinkers including Erich Fromm, E. O. Wilson, and Björk. Now, in this comprehensive book, Timothy Beatley—chair of the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning and Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of Virginia—takes on the concept of the biophilic city. Beatley covers topics such as urban forests and trails, edible landscapes, wildlife support, and more. Particularly good is Beatley’s concept of the urban nature diet, a “food pyramid” format illustrating how best to integrate nature into city dwellers’ lives.
“Chandigarh tells a story in which the architectural visions of a great master meet the political visions of a postcolonial society,” writes Shaun Fynn in the introduction to his book on the Indian city designed by Le Corbusier. How have those visions worked out, more than six decades on? It really takes photographs—with which the book is amply illustrated—to say. Le Corbusier’s raw concrete surfaces have retained their brutal beauty, but some of the city’s parks, notes Fynn, have suffered: “Today Chandigarh is a city proud to display its private wealth through property and automobile assets, while the upkeep and preservation of the civic space remains an ongoing issue.”
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800-258-2353 888-535-5005 800-548-3227 763-972-5237 877-278-9111 202-216-2369 202-216-2331 215-541-4627 877-305-6638 513-241-4010 973-423-2303 928-775-3307 800-547-1940 240-813-1117 305-857-0466 800-233-3907 800-598-4018 866-252-8210 716-689-8548 800-363-9264 800-873-3321 877-877-5012 770-840-7060 800-451-0410 512-392-1155 909-989-9977 617-774-0772 251-471-5238 888-315-9037 310-331-1665 800-450-3494 914-428-1316 866-733-8225 800-426-4242 503-224-8700 760-304-7216 510-536-4886 631-698-0975 714-572-4050 800-233-1510 206-276-0925 760-776-5077 715-687-2423 800-659-9000 703-361-7000 877-252-6323 202-898-2444 202-331-7070 269-337-1222 800-328-0035 800-931-1462 954-349-2525 800-448-7931 201-933-6461 813-282-3828 866-438-6677 800-552-6331 240-743-4672 202-208-3818 303-539-5439 800-334-4647 888-823-8883 800-387-6318 800-247-2326 660-409-7971 800-356-9660 800-832-7383 336-721-7500 760-707-5400 718-963-0564 951-256-3245 877-794-1802 323-846-6700 845-834-1438 718-729-4900 402-421-9464 519-882-8799 760-966-6090 702-822-8365 800-875-5788 800-633-8859 310-483-6979 847-588-3400 505-982-7988 800-268-7809 877-489-8064 800-787-3562 202-483-0553 800-828-8424 651-289-8399 800-448-7931 503-625-1747 800-542-2282 888-285-4624 301-365-2100 301-855-8300 818-503-1950 514-694-3868 800-343-6948 512-392-1155 800-388-8728 407-433-4300 800-832-2052 604-626-0476
PAGE #
30, 174 27 145, 172 177 57 178 167 177 78, 170 140 41, 172 155 151, 174 47 156 171 39, 171 176 173 22, 171 176 2-3, 176 170 9, 170 177 11 4, 173 10, 176 175 154 19, 172 158 63, 175 159 157 54 154 170 164 14, 174 69, 170 141, 170 49, 174 76, 173 31 29, 171 166 153 C2-1, 15, 17, 43, 171 25, 164 175 35 51 130 158 163 164 21 179 53 162 147 73 176 C4 20, 173 165 143, 174 157 159 13 37 171 155 59 172 38 164 68 163 45 156 149, 173 161 160 177 165 152 163 173 172 174 33, 175 163 176 172, C3 162 5 161 177 75, 175 55 175 77
THE BACK
/ADVERTISERS BY PRODUCT CATEGORY
ASSOCIATION/FOUNDATION
Gensun Casual Living
909-989-9977
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ASLA Heritage Circle
202-216-2369
178
Kingsley Bate, Ltd.
703-361-7000
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ASLA Professional and Student Awards
202-216-2331
167
Museum & Library Furniture LLC
240-743-4672
21
LA CES
202-898-2444
166
Paloform
888-823-8883
147
Landscape Architecture Foundation
202-331-7070
153
Westminster Teak
407-433-4300
55
National Park Service - HALS Challenge
202-208-3818
179
The Cultural Landscape Foundation
202-483-0553
152
PARKS AND RECREATION Goric Marketing Group Inc.
BUSINESS SERVICES Nichols Venture Group
303-539-5439
53
DRAINAGE AND EROSION
Vitamin Institute
818-503-1950
162
STREET FURNISHINGS AND SITE AMENITIES ANOVA
888-535-5005
27
Canaan Site Furnishings
877-305-6638
78, 170
Canterbury International/The Verdin
513-241-4010
140
Company 617-774-0772
4, 173
Columbia Cascade Company
800-547-1940 151, 174
DeepStream Designs
305-857-0466
156
Doty & Sons Concrete Products
800-233-3907
171
GreenďŹ elds Outdoor Fitness
888-315-9037
175
Landscape Structures, Inc.
800-328-0035
25, 164
Livin the Dog Life
800-931-1462
175
DuMor, Inc.
800-598-4018
39, 171
Themed Concepts
651-289-8399
173
Equiparc
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22, 171
Forms+Surfaces
800-451-0410
9, 170
Huntco Supply, LLC
503-224-8700
157
IAP
510-536-4886
154
Iron Age Designs
206-276-0925
69, 170
Ironsmith, Inc.
760-776-5077 141, 170
PAVING/SURFACING/MASONRY STONE/METALS
The Marathon Companies
800-828-8424
Acker-Stone Industries Inc.
800-258-2353
Eurocobble
877-877-5012 2-3, 176
Infrared Dynamics
714-572-4050
164
Kornegay Design
877-252-6323
29, 171
Landscape Forms
269-337-1222 C2-1, 15,
Madrax
800-448-7931
51
163
FENCES/GATES/WALLS
30, 174
Hanover Architectural Products, Inc.
800-426-4242
159
Evergreen Walls US
770-840-7060
170
Invisible Structures, Inc.
800-233-1510
14, 174
Illusions Vinyl Fence
631-698-0975
170
Kafka Granite
715-687-2423
49, 174
Marmiro Stones
201-933-6461
130
Pavestone Company
660-409-7971
C4
Paris Equipment Manufacturing Ltd.
800-387-6318
73
Pine Hall Brick Co., Inc.
336-721-7500 143, 174
Petersen Concrete Leisure Products
800-832-7383
165
SofSURFACES, Inc.
519-882-8799
38
QCP
951-256-3245
13
Soil Retention Products
760-966-6090
164
Salsbury Industries
323-846-6700
171
Spectraturf
800-875-5788
163
Sitecra
718-729-4900
59
Stepstone, Inc.
310-483-6979
156
Sitescapes, Inc.
402-421-9464
172
Thomas Steele
800-448-7931
172
Victor Stanley, Inc.
301-855-8300
172, C3
Wishbone Site Furnishings Ltd.
604-626-0476
77
155
GREEN ROOFS/LIVING WALLS greenscreen
800-450-3494
19, 172
McNichols Company
813-282-3828
158
IRRIGATION Hunter Industries Incorporated
760-304-7216
54
LIGHTING
Tri-State Stone Co. for Carderock
301-365-2100
176
Wausau Tile
800-388-8728
75, 175
Williams Stone Company, Inc.
800-832-2052
175
ANP Lighting
800-548-3227 145, 172
Artemide N.A.
877-278-9111
57
Cast Lighting LLC
973-423-2303
41, 172
PLANTERS/SCULPTURES/GARDEN ACCESSORIES
Kichler Landscape Lighting
800-659-9000
76, 173
Campania International, Inc.
215-541-4627
Louis Poulsen
954-349-2525
35
Greenform LLC
Selux Corporation
845-834-1438
155
HADDONSTONE
Sternberg Lighting
847-588-3400 149, 173
Planters Unlimited by Hooks & Lattice
760-707-5400
StressCrete Group / King Luminaire, The
800-268-7809
Planterworx
718-963-0564
Stone Forest
505-982-7988
161
Tournesol Siteworks/Planter Technology
800-542-2282
33, 175
160
LUMBER/DECKING/EDGING
Classic Recreation Systems, Inc.
928-775-3307
310-331-1665
154
Easi-Set Buildings
866-252-8210
176
866-733-8225
63, 175
Gothic Arch Greenhouses
251-471-5238
10, 176
157
Structureworks Fabrication
877-489-8064
177
159
Trellis Structures
888-285-4624
163
Walpole Outdoors LLC
800-343-6948
161
WATER MANAGEMENT AND AMENITIES
716-689-8548
173
Oly-Ola Edgings, Inc.
800-334-4647
162
Permaloc Aluminum Edging
800-356-9660
20, 173
Ernst Conservation Seeds
800-873-3321
Sure-Loc Aluminum Edging
800-787-3562
165
Growth Products, Ltd.
914-428-1316
Tiger Deck
503-625-1747
174
Moss Acres Partac Peat Corporation Spring Meadow Nursery Inc.
Country Casual
240-813-1117
47
STRUCTURES 177
Envirospec, Inc.
OUTDOOR FURNITURE
17, 43, 171
PLANTS/SOILS/PLANTING MATERIALS
(Proven Winners)
Aquatix by Landscape Structures
763-972-5237
177
176
Fountain People, Inc.
512-392-1155
177
158
Most Dependable Fountains
800-552-6331
164
866-438-6677
163
Roman Fountains
877-794-1802
37
800-247-2326
176
Southern Nevada Water Authority
702-822-8365
68
800-633-8859
45
Vortex Aquatics Structures International
514-694-3868
5
Water Odyssey
512-392-1155
177
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017 / 169
BUYER’S GUIDE
TRANSFORM YOUR ENVIRONMENT
Leadership by design
WITH PLANTABLE CONCRETE RETAINING WALLS
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BUYER’S GUIDE
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BUYER’S GUIDE
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176 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
CREATE FUN WAYS TO SPRAY & PLAY! Formerly Aquatic Recreation Company
We’ve got new designs on water
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The Field is a place to exchange information on issues and challenges faced in recent work and to share thoughts and reactions to current events and research. All contributions are by ASLA members, for ASLA members.
thefield.asla.org
952.445.5135 • 877.632.0503 aquatix.playlsi.com
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one resource
512.392.1155 | waterodyssey.com
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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017 / 177
BUYER’S GUIDE
CONTRIBUTE TO THE FIELD
Plant the Seeds for a Green and Sustainable Future Join the ASLA Heritage Circle
Central Park in autumn
Your participation in the Heritage Circle will provide ASLA with the resources it needs to promote the profession’s values in the face of today’s challenges and those yet to come. To join, simply include the ASLA Fund in your estate plan the next time you see your attorney or financial planner and then notify ASLA that you have done so. When we receive your notification, ASLA will add your name to the list of members of the ASLA Heritage Circle on ASLA’s website and in ASLA publications. For language you can share with your attorney or financial planner, please visit www.asla.org/heritagecircle For more information on the ASLA Fund, please visit www.asla.org/aslafund
If you have questions, please contact Ron Sears, Director, Stakeholder Relations and Resource Development at (202) 216-2369 or rsears@asla.org
2017 HALS CHALLENGE DOCUMENTING CITY OR TOWN PARK(S)
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, HALS CO-1-19
JULY 31, 2017 AWARDS PRESENTED: OCTOBER 20-23, 2017 SUBMISSION DEADLINE:
ASLA Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, CA The mission of the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) is to document the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s historic landscapes. For the 2017 HALS Challenge, we invite you to document a historic city or town park. How to prepare a HALS short format history: NPS.GOV/HDP/COMPETITIONS/HALS_CHALLENGE.HTML To learn more about HALS visit: ASL A.ORG/HALS
THE BACK
/
BACKSTORY
SEISMIC MATTERS MAPPING HUMAN-INDUCED EARTHQUAKES. BY MAGGIE ZACKOWITZ
T
his may be a shaky year for parts of Oklahoma.
Before 2016, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) maps had predicted only naturally occurring earthquakes. Forecasting over a 50year outlook, the maps had primarily been for use in writing building and other safety codes. Human-caused earthquakes (such as those from mine blasts) were so sporadic that the USGS omitted them from its data. “Then,” says Mark Petersen, the chief of the USGS National Seismic Hazard Mapping Project, “we noticed in about 2008 this increase in the number of earthquakes. In 2011 we had the Prague [Oklahoma] earthquake. It was a magnitude 5.7 and caused damage. And during that same time period we saw some other earthquakes that were occurring in southern Colorado. And so we became concerned that our maps were taking out these man-made earthquakes that could potentially be hazardous.”
180 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2017
has slowed some production. Yet bigger, more damaging quakes appear to be on the rise. This past year Oklahoma had 21 earthquakes with a magniAccording to the USGS, the tude greater than 4.0—and induced quakes are largely three of these were greater caused by the injection of oil and than magnitude 5.0. “That’s gas industry wastewater deep into more than we’ve ever had before. wells near susceptible faults. “Most in- And we had the largest earthquake jections in these wells don’t stimulate in Oklahoma that we’ve ever experiearthquake activity,” Petersen says. enced,” Petersen says. “But in some places like Oklahoma, they seem to stimulate a great deal.” Only two years into its annual release And a great deal more often: Between of induced seismicity forecasts—the 1980 and 2000, Oklahoma saw an 2017 map was released in March— average of two magnitude 2.7 and the National Seismic Hazard Map larger earthquakes per year. By 2014 Project is seeing results. “We have that number had risen to some 2,500; emergency response people putting in 2015 it was about 4,000. Petersen [maps] in flyers; we have geological says that the forecast for induced and surveys that are bringing awareness natural earthquakes in 2017 is hun- about the hazards associated with dreds of times higher than it was be- these induced earthquakes. Regulafore 2008, when the rate of induced tors are looking at these trying to earthquakes took off. understand what kind of actions they should take,” Petersen says. AnyThe number of minor induced earth- one, he says, “can come to our webquakes (magnitude 3.0 and below, site (earthquake.usgs.gov/hazards/ which cause little damage) is pre- induced) and access any of these dicted to drop in 2017. One reason maps, all the data: the catalog that may be that regulations have reduced goes behind these things, bases of wastewater pumping near areas of these maps, the models, the hazard previous seismic activity. Petersen curves. There are lots of products notes that another factor is the plum- that people can use to make better meting price of oil and gas, which informed decisions.”
USGS NATIONAL SEISMIC HAZARD MAPPING PROJECT
USGS FORECAST FOR GROUND SHAKING INTENSITY FROM NATURAL AND INDUCED EARTHQUAKES IN 2017
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