Landscape Architecture Magazine LAM-2018-108

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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE

FIRST STEPS A plan to make slavery visible at Brazil’s Valongo Wharf

THE EDGES OF PARIS Three new parks pull the city outward

MOSCOW IN THE OPEN The novel idea of public space

STEEP SLOPE PLANTING Details for big trees on sharp inclines

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60 MATERIALS

14 INSIDE

Slope Style

20 LAND MATTERS

BY ANNETTE WILKUS, FASLA

Pointers and pitfalls for planting trees on steep grades.

68 GARDENS

FOREGROUND 24 NOW Signs of recovery in Puerto Rico’s storm-ravaged rain forest; the military adapts to oyster reefs; therapeutic gardens for those in crisis; and more.

EDITED BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

48 OFFICE

Maintenance Matters

Royal Treatment The art of bonsai is easier to see in Rhodeside & Harwell’s new pavilion at the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum.

BY JANE BERGER

80 GOODS

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“ALL OF THIS WAS AGRICULTURAL. I CAME HERE HUNTING RABBITS.” —DIEGO GONZALEZ, P. 106

FEATURES 90 ETHIC AND AESTHETIC

THE BACK 160 SOFT POWER IN MOSCOW

The acequia—a centuries-old irrigation technology—is ideal for stormwater management at a New Mexico house.

Public spaces devoid of politics are a new idea in Moscow. You could even call them revolutionary.

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

BY STEPHEN ZACKS

106 SCALE FACTOR SWA combines beauty and security at Mexico’s University of Monterrey.

BY JONATHAN LERNER

174 BOOKS

Big Sur’s Big Compromises A review of Big Sur: The Making of a Prized California Landscape, by Shelley Alden Brooks.

BY JANE GILLETTE

120 PARISIAN ACCENTS 200 ADVERTISER INDEX Three new parks anchor regeneration projects near the city’s periphery.

BY DANIEL ELSEA

201 ADVERTISERS BY PRODUCT CATEGORY

138 OUT OF TIME 212 BACKSTORY The past and the present merge in a new language for commemorating slavery at Valongo Wharf, the largest slave port in the Americas.

BY JENNIFER REUT

Refill as Needed Park Rx America wants doctors to prescribe their patients a healthy dose of the outdoors.

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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE THE MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS EDITOR Bradford McKee / bmckee@asla.org

PUBLISHER Michael D. O’Brien, Honorary ASLA / mobrien@asla.org ADVERTISING SALES

202-216-2335 SENIOR SALES MANAGER Daryl Brach / dbrach@asla.org SALES MANAGER Gregg Boersma / gboersma@asla.org SALES MANAGER Kathleen Thomas / kthomas@asla.org

ASLA BOARD OF TRUSTEES PRESIDENT Gregory A. Miller, FASLA PRESIDENT-ELECT Shawn T. Kelly, FASLA IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT Vaughn B. Rinner, FASLA VICE PRESIDENTS Haley Blakeman, ASLA Lake Douglas, FASLA Eugenia M. Martin, FASLA Wendy Miller, FASLA Tom Mroz, ASLA Vanessa Warren, ASLA EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT Nancy C. Somerville, Honorary ASLA

PRODUCTION

MANAGING EDITOR Maggie Zackowitz / mzackowitz@asla.org

PRODUCTION MANAGER Sarah Strelzik / sstrelzik@asla.org

ART DIRECTOR Christopher McGee / cmcgee@asla.org

MARKETING

SENIOR EDITOR Jennifer Reut / jreut@asla.org ON THE COVER

Sara Zewde’s spatial analysis of Valongo Wharf in Rio de Janeiro, page 138.

COPY CHIEF Lisa Schultz / lschultz@asla.org WRITER/EDITOR Katarina Katsma, ASLA / kkatsma@asla.org CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Adam Regn Arvidson, FASLA; Brian Barth; Jessica Bridger; Sahar Coston-Hardy; Jonathan Lerner; Jane Margolies; Zach Mortice; Anne Raver; Timothy A. Schuler; Alex Ulam; James R. Urban, FASLA; Lisa Owens Viani EDITORIAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE Falon Mihalic, ASLA / Chair Haley Blakeman, ASLA / Vice President, Communications Magdalena Aravena, Associate ASLA Kofi Boone, ASLA Conner Bruns, Student ASLA Kassandra D. Bryant, Student ASLA Ujijji Davis, ASLA Diana Fernandez, ASLA William Green, ASLA Deb Guenther, FASLA Richard S. Hawks, FASLA Joan Honeyman, ASLA Tobie E. Merrill, ASLA Cleve Larry Mizell, ASLA Erin Monk-Tharp, ASLA Forster O. Ndubisi, FASLA Abigail M. Reimel, Student ASLA Fern Lan Siew, Associate ASLA EDITORIAL Tel: 202-216-2366 / Fax: 202-898-0062

MARKETING MANAGER Lauren Martella / lmartella@asla.org SUBSCRIPTIONS

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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 oices. 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 2018 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.

SECRETARY Curtis A. Millay, ASLA TREASURER Michael D. O’Brien, Honorary ASLA TRUSTEES Aaron A. Allan, ASLA W. Phillips Barlow, ASLA Robert D. Berg, ASLA Shannon Blakeman, ASLA Gary A. Brown, FASLA Kevin W. Burke, ASLA David H. Contag, ASLA Patrick F. Dunn, ASLA Scott V. Emmelkamp, ASLA William T. Eubanks III, FASLA Melissa M. Evans, ASLA David V. Ferris Jr., ASLA Robert E. Ford, ASLA Nick Gilliland, ASLA David Gorden, ASLA David A. Harris, ASLA Jonathan Henney, ASLA James A. Jackson, ASLA Lucy B. Joyce, ASLA Jennifer Judge, ASLA Ron M. Kagawa, ASLA Roger J. Kennedy, ASLA Mark M. Kimerer, ASLA Marieke Lacasse, ASLA Lucille C. Lanier, FASLA Dalton M. LaVoie, ASLA Robert Loftis, ASLA Jeanne M. Lukenda, ASLA Timothy W. May, ASLA Bradley McCauley, ASLA Douglas C. McCord, ASLA Baxter Miller, ASLA Ann Milovsoroff, FASLA Cleve Larry Mizell, ASLA Jennifer Nitzky, ASLA Dennis R. Nola, ASLA April Philips, FASLA Jeff Pugh, ASLA John D. Roters, ASLA John P. Royster, FASLA Stephen W. Schrader Jr., ASLA Jean Senechal Biggs, ASLA Susanne Smith Meyer, ASLA Brian H. Starkey, ASLA Mark A. Steyaert Jr., ASLA Judith Stilgenbauer, ASLA Adam A. Supplee, ASLA Nicholas Tufaro, ASLA Thomas J. Whitlock, ASLA LAF REPRESENTATIVES Barbara L. Deutsch, FASLA Jennifer Guthrie, FASLA

NATIONAL STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE Abigail M. Reimel, Student ASLA PARLIAMENTARIAN Kay Williams, FASLA

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INSIDE

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CONTRIBUTORS ANNETTE WILKUS, FASLA, (“Slope

Style,” page 60) is the founding partner of SiteWorks LLC in New York City. She can be reached at awilkus@siteworkscm.com.

“Soils are such an important aspect to topography and plants, it would have been beneficial to be able to expand on the relationship of soils, slopes, and plant establishment.”

STEPHEN ZACKS (“So Power in Moscow,” page 160) is an architecture critic, urbanist, and curator based in New York City. He previously served as an editor at Metropolis and has been published in the New York Times, Art in America, The Architect’s Newspaper, Curbed, Print, and Architectural Record, among others. You can find him on Twitter @herocharlatans.

“It benefits the American public to have a deeper cultural understanding of Russia beyond its political leadership, because surely we like to imagine we are better than our own.”

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.

14 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

JOY YAGID PHOTOGRAPHY, TOP; STEPHEN ZACKS, BOTTOM

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LAND MATTERS

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THE DISABILITY RIGHTS ROLLBACK W

hen Congress passed and President George H. W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the landmark legislation had survived broad, hostile opposition from business lobbyists who claimed its cost and liability would run companies into the ground. But with monumental efort and few exceptions, the law has succeeded in opening a once-closed world of transportation, employment, government, communications, and public accommodations to people with disabilities—and everyone else lived. Nearly all commercial businesses that serve the public have had to create full access and remove obstacles to their establishments. Design professionals, not least landscape architects, have been active at the core of this revolution, turning the law’s many dimensional requirements into reality as ramps, doors, railings, driveways, slopes, stairs, and all the rest. For most people, the law is a fact of life, and a welcome one.

“It is a civil rights issue, not a code compliance issue,” said Peg Staeheli, FASLA, a principal of MIG | SvR in Seattle. “Today we ind most clients ahead in thinking about inclusive design.”

There are some retrograde types, though, who haven’t learned to live with the ADA. In February, the House of Representatives approved a bill that would signiicantly weaken the ADA’s public accommodations provisions. The bill, H.R. 620, the ADA Education and Reform Act, passed by a vote of 225 to 192 and was sent to the Senate, which has not originated its own companion version. If passed into law, the bill would defang the ADA by taking away a person’s right to sue an establishment for discrimination if they encounter barriers in a public place. Instead, it would send the aggrieved person into a rigmarole of correspondence to notify the property owner of the problem and wait 60 days to hear back about what the corrective measures will be. If no ix is made, it sends the case into arbitration. The message to businesses would no longer be to make sure they are free of barriers, period. Rather, they could discriminate irst and see what the consequences are later.

The bill has the support of the National Restaurant Association, the International Council of Shopping Centers, the American Hotel and Lodging Association, and other business groups.

They claim their members are the victims of opportunistic

20 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

“drive-by” lawsuits or extortion attempts drummed up by attorneys who work in cahoots with sham plaintifs in search of attorney’s fees (otherwise, the ADA does not ofer money damages to plaintifs, only removal of barriers).

Disability rights groups don’t buy that complaint. “At the core of this is that these businesses do not want to be accessible,” Dara Baldwin, a senior public policy analyst with the National Disability Rights Network, wrote to me. Though H.R. 620’s passage by the House surprised many people, disability rights advocates were not among them—they have been tracking similar measures, called “notiication” bills, for nearly 20 years, Baldwin said, and now see a chance to pass one into law given party unity between Congress and the White House. They argue that the only purpose of these measures is to disarm the ADA’s key civil rights protections in public places. As for the brief opening section of the bill that calls for a “program to educate” property owners of their obligations, it is unnecessary. In 28 years, mountains of information have accrued to help people igure out how to comply with the ADA. It seems the restaurant and shopping center associations may be hearing, if anything, an unmet need among their members to have this free information repackaged and sold to them for guidance, so they can comply without embarrassing themselves, like everyone else has learned to do over nearly three decades.

“There’s no excuse for anything new not to have the right parking, pathway, and access from the sidewalk and the roadway,” says Emily Meeker O’Mahoney, FASLA, who has consulted frequently on ADA designs at her irm, Gentile Glas Holloway O’Mahoney & Associates, in Jupiter, Florida. There are, of course, rare variances granted for historic properties, but oicials in Florida, she noted, are very on top of the law’s requirements by now. “No one gets away with anything,” she said. “This is the way we do it. It’s just the way it is.” It’s the way it should be kept.

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FOREGROUND

THE MOON WINDOW

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by Rhodeside & Harwell at the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum, in GARDENS, page 68.

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018 / 23

FOREGROUND

/

NOW EDITED BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

BATTERED, BUT NOT BROKEN AMID A TROUBLED RECOVERY, SIGNS OF LIFE IN PUERTO RICO’S EL YUNQUE NATIONAL FOREST.

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

J Puerto Rico’s La Coca Falls in 2016; in October 2017, immediately following Hurricane Maria; and in January 2018, showing substantial regrowth.

It had been almost four months since Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico, devastating the island’s infrastructure and leaving millions without food, water, or shelter. The storm also wreaked havoc in El Yunque National Forest, a 28,000-acre tropical forest preserve located on the east end of the island, where Maria made landfall. Much of the forest was leveled, trees uprooted or snapped in half. What survived was almost completely defoliated, leaving a brown and barren landscape that looked as if it would never recover.

24 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

But just days after the storm, the trees in El Yunque began to leaf out, Gonzalez told me when we inally reconnected. “We continue to see the vegetation recovering, particularly at the lower elevations and closer to urban areas,” she said. The IITF anticipates a mortality rate of up to 20 percent—based on observations following Hurricane Hugo

JERRY BAUER

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE

ust seconds after Grizelle Gonzalez picked up the phone, the line went fuzzy and then silent. Gonzalez already had e-mailed that day, asking me to call her cell rather than her ofice phone because the International Institute of Tropical Forestry (IITF), where Gonzalez works as a research ecologist and project leader, needed to conserve power from its diesel generator and would be shutting of the electricity early. I waited, unsure if Gonzalez would be able to call me back.

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/NOW

ABOVE

Lower-elevation rain forest has been quicker to recover than older, higher-elevation dwarf forest.

BELOW

El Yunque and eastern Puerto Rico tend to bear the brunt of most tropical storms.

PUERTO RICO

many of which had been blocked by landslides. (Almost 20 percent of Puerto Rico’s water comes from El Yunque.) Several months in, however, research has become the priority.

Scientists are tracking plant mortality, water quality, species diversity, and other environmental conditions to try to understand the ways a forest like El Yunque responds to such a Right now, Gonzalez and her colleagues are work- traumatic event. ing nonstop to document the recovery. In the days immediately following the Category 4 storm, One observation Gonzalez made the most important task was to clear the intakes early on: The resilience of the rain that divert water to Puerto Rican communities, forest gave the people of Puerto Rico hope. The island undoubtedly faces serious challenges; some half a million people as of early 2018 still don’t have power, and Puerto Rico’s already troubled economy will take years to recover. But when the forest began to green just days after the storm, “it was amazing to see people make the connection,” Gonzalez said. “That we are resilient. We can recover. We can adapt.” in 1989—but also expects to see higher rates of productivity as vegetation strives to gain a foothold. (Part of this growth burst, scientists think, is because the ground becomes littered with green, nutrient-rich leaves, which temporarily boost the health of the soil.) Over the long term, however, it is possible that the forest will see a reshuling of its dominant species, especially if hurricanes continue to grow stronger and more frequent.

LEGEND

El Yunque National Forest Municipalities of El Yunque Municipalities

26 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

N

TIMOTHY A. SCHULER, EDITOR OF NOW, CAN BE REACHED AT TIMOTHYASCHULER@GMAIL. COM AND ON TWITTER @TIMOTHY_SCHULER.

GRIZELLE GONZALEZ, TOP; U.S. FOREST SERVICE, INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TROPICAL FORESTRY, BOTTOM

FOREGROUND

/NOW

E

OYSTER PLATOONS

FACING RISING SEA LEVELS, THE U.S. MILITARY INVESTS IN LIVING BREAKWATERS.

ABOVE

Navy personnel help install oyster castles (center) in New Jersey’s Raritan Bay to help protect coastal infrastructure.

ight years after Kate Orf, ASLA, thrust the term “oyster-tecture” into the design lexicon, the idea of using constructed oyster reefs to enhance water quality and coastal resilience continues to gain mainstream support. Among the entities championing the practice: the U.S. armed forces.

Counter to the rhetoric of the Trump White House, the Pentagon has acknowledged climate change as a threat to the national security of the United States, speciically noting that a three-foot rise in sea levels would threaten operations of at least 128 military installations.

In response, the military has begun partnering with various environmental organizations to explore how living shorelines and other nature-based solutions can protect its coastal facilities. At the Naval Weapons Station Earle, which operates a threemile-long, three-pronged pier of the New Jersey coast, the navy is working with NY/NJ Baykeeper, an environmental organization, to build a large “living breakwater” that will be about an acre in size.

Nearly 300 linear feet of oyster castles (pyramidal structures made out of turreted concrete blocks) have been placed in Raritan Bay, a home for the oysters and a “speed bump” for storm surge.

Baykeeper to remove oyster habitat it had constructed in the New York Harbor, on the basis of the water’s being too contaminated. Any illegal oyster poaching that occurred could endanger public health. So Baykeeper approached the navy.

Building a reef adjacent to the Naval Weapons Station Earle would eliminate the risk of illicit ishing, they reasoned, and in 2011, Baykeeper was given permission to resume its work on navy property.

A year later, the weapons facility sufered $50 million worth of damage during Hurricane Sandy. It was the navy’s turn to ask for something. Dennis Blazak, the station’s community plans and liaison oicer, asked Baykeeper if it was possible to build an oyster reef specially designed to reduce wave action onshore. A baseline study was conducted in 2015, and construction began a year later. (The navy also worked with local townships to remove Phragmites and help restore the salt marsh along the shoreline.)

The navy is not alone. Last year, on the Gulf Coast of northwest Florida, the Choctawhatchee Basin Alliance partnered with Eglin Air Force Base to construct a 1,700-foot oyster reef on air force property in the Alaqua Bayou. It’s an encouraging development for proponents of living shorelines, an approach that is gaining national attention this year with the introduction of the Living Shorelines Act. If passed, the legislation would provide federal funding for nature-based coastal resilience projects. (The American Society of Landscape Architects has issued a statement in support of the bill.)

The military seems to be embracing “oyster-tecture” in a signiicant way. Both living shorelines and living breakwaters (constructed oyster or coral reefs) are listed as viable options for climate adaptation in the Naval Facilities Engineering Command’s Climate Change Planning Handbook, which was released in January 2017. And Meredith Comi, Baykeeper’s restoration program director, says she has been surprised by the enthusiasm The restoration project wasn’t initially about and environmental literacy of the navy personnel, many of whom coastal resilience. In 2010, the New Jersey De- have helped with installation. Seven years in, she says, Baykeeper partment of Environmental Protection forced is lucky to have this “amazing but bizarre partnership.”

28 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

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FOREGROUND

/NOW

LEFT

The park’s silos were salvaged from a roadway project and moved to the park site.

BOTTOM

PASTORAL PLAYGROUND IN FORT COLLINS, A FARM-TURNEDPARK DRAWS ON THE SITE’S AGRICULTURAL PAST.

BY BRIAN FRYER

T

here are the requisite baseball and soccer ields, a one-acre dog park, and even a BMX racetrack at the new Twin Silo Park in suburban Fort Collins, Colorado. But it is around the two namesake silos where landscape architects and planners responded to community requests to keep some of the site’s “wildness” and connect to the area’s agricultural history. “We couldn’t and didn’t want to re-create a farm, but we thought there was value in creating farm-like experiences in a park,” says Craig Kisling, ASLA, a landscape architecture apprentice for the city’s Park Planning and Development Department.

plan. The 54-acre brownield site (once a sheep farm but more recently vacant) is bisected by a creek and bordered by roads on the south, east, and west, and by a school property on the north. City planners, working with the Denver-based landscape architecture and urban planning irm Civitas, identiied six experiences they wanted to create in the park: driving down a long driveway, growing a garden, picking fruit in an orchard, playing in a barn, sitting on a porch, and playing in a creek.

The two 50-foot-high, 18.5-footdiameter silos were moved to the park from the site of a road-widening project elsewhere in the city. DeCompleted in the fall of 2017, Twin signers at Cre8play of Minneapolis Silo Park is the seventh of nine com- packed them with custom climbmunity parks in the city’s master ing play elements, some reaching

32 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

CRE8PLAY. TOP; CITY OF FORT COLLINS, BOTTOM

Custom climbing features fill the inside of the 50-foot silos.

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/NOW

ABOVE

Eroded creek banks were regraded and replanted.

BELOW

Playing in a creek was one of six experiences designers wanted to create in the new park.

as high as 33 feet, and connected the silos with a slide. “We did some pretty precise measurements and 3-D modeling of the silos,” says Todd Lehman, Cre8play’s lead designer and owner. “There is a tremendous amount of active play in the silos, but you don’t realize it’s there until

you step inside. We wanted elements that draw your eye up so you can see just how high these things are.”

The team fabricated a twisting, double-helix climber with an adjacent cargo net as well as a spiral staircase. “That twisting gives it motion,” Lehman says. “We also wanted this to be intergenerational and available to diferent ability levels. You can have a kid climbing the net or helix, and the parents or grandparents can be on the stairs.

There are diferent routes that push the limits and allow kids to be challenged in diferent ways.”

Cre8play also designed climbing, sliding, and interactive play features in the “play barn” near the silos.

Outside the barn, large pipelike sections disguise more interactive features. “It was purposely built to look like a deconstructed farm implement,” Lehman says. “We wanted something that looked like it might have been a big piece of old farm machinery in the yard.”

34 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

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FOREGROUND

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FOREGROUND

/NOW

NORTH GARDEN SOUTH GARDEN

STAFF GARDEN

IN PORTLAND, OREGON, QUATREFOIL DESIGNS A HEALING GARDEN FOR PATIENTS IN CRISIS.

BY KYNA RUBIN

ABOVE

The plan by Brian Bainnson, ASLA, for the therapy garden at Unity Center for Behavioral Health in Portland, Oregon.

o large trees—they can be climbed on to exit the premises. No exposed rock—small round ones can be eaten, sharp angular ones used for cutting. No shrubs large enough to hide behind. No shaded seating outside staf–patient sight lines. No mobile furniture. No visible irrigation system—PVC pipes can be ripped out of the ground by idgety hands. No structures that might anchor a rope for hanging. No water features.

These are some of the challenges that Brian Bainnson, ASLA, faced in the design of a 20,000-square-foot therapeutic garden for the Unity Center for Behavioral Health in Portland, Oregon. Located in Northeast Portland, the new hospital, which serves patients in mental health crisis, is a partnership among four health systems. One of them, Legacy Health, is a national leader in integrating therapy gardens into patient

38 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

care and healing. The new garden, which is scheduled to begin construction this month, is Legacy’s 12th, according to its therapeutic garden program coordinator, Teresia Hazen.

Having to think through every potential danger for patients and staf makes the Unity job diferent from many of his other projects, Bainnson says. Safety is a concern in any project, “but this is at a much bigger level,” says the principal of Quatrefoil, a Portland-based landscape architecture irm. Bainnson by now knows some of what to expect: This is his ninth garden for Legacy Health, and he previously has designed gardens for dementia and burn patients.

Still, this garden is two and a half times the size of the other behavioral health garden he designed for Legacy. The new project has two spaces that reflect diferent activity levels. One garden will have a

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FOREGROUND

/NOW

PATIENTS WILL WALK, OBSERVE THE TREES, LISTEN TO BIRDS, AND LEARN TO IDENTIFY PLANTS.

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE

Previous Bainnsondesigned therapy gardens: the Oregon Burn Center at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland; the Terrace Garden at the same hospital; the Healing Garden at Legacy Mount Hood Medical Center in Gresham, east of Portland.

basketball court and stationary exercise equipment; the other will be quieter and more contemplative.

Both will be used to help patients focus attention, follow directions, and cope with stress, Hazen says.

Oregon law states that people receiving mental health services have a number of rights, including “daily access to fresh air and the outdoors.” Melissa Bierman, Unity’s supervisor of counseling and therapy, says that hospitals without access to

40 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

For the conceptual design of the Unity garden, Bainnson met with a 15-member team of clinicians, therapists, and facilities and fund-raising representatives over a series of meetings—a process that Legacy follows in all its garden planning.

A lot of work then goes on between meetings, Bainnson says, which results in a master plan that, if not perfect, “has been pretty well vetted through the facility.” By the time he starts on design development and construction drawings, he says, “you have a pretty good handle on what needs to be done.”

LEGACY HEALTH

garden space can “pass” by providing access to a window. This garden, and its integration into treatment plans, well exceeds that minimum.

Horticultural therapists like Bierman will use the garden “to integrate all the senses into the patient’s daily life,” she says. Patients will walk, observe the trees, listen to birds, learn to identify plants, and help staf with plantings. An art therapist will have patients draw in the garden, and a movement therapist may have them dance.

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FOREGROUND

/NOW

LEFT

HOW RICH IS LIFE?

In rural New York, rigorous studies of amphibian habitat and migration patterns drove a change in the layout of a residential community.

SCIENCE IS SHOWING THAT SPECIES VARIETY IS NOT THE SAME THING AS BIODIVERSITY.

N

ince at least 1992, when hundreds of world leaders formally pledged to help protect biological diversity at a United Nations summit in Rio de Janeiro, the loss of biodiversity has been acknowledged as an environmental crisis, with ramiications for all species, including humans. In response, many landscape architects have made enhanced biodiversity an explicit aim of their work and a metric with which to measure success.

ABOVE

Marc Cadotte’s green roof modules, featuring low, medium, and high phylogenetic diversity.

However, biodiversity, like sustainability, becomes problematic if not well-defined.

Often, members of the design and planning professions, as well as some scientists, use biodiversity simply to mean species richness, or the number of diferent species within a certain area. But this is just one way to measure diversity, says Marc Cadotte, a professor of urban forest conservation and biology at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

There also is functional diversity (i.e., ensuring that species within an ecosystem play a variety of roles) and phylogenetic diversity, which is similar but looks at the genetic relationships between species.

42 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

Both these measures, Cadotte says, are better predictors of ecosystem health than the number of species present. In one recent study, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, Cadotte and his colleagues examined how phylogenetic diversity could be used to produce higherperforming green roofs. For each potential plant species, the researchers used gene sequencing to map its relationship to the others, then created a series of green roof modules that exhibited low, medium, and high phylogenetic diversity. After two years, the soil in the more diverse modules retained more water and exhibited cooler temperatures than those with less diversity.

Designers don’t have to moonlight as geneticists to apply this sort of thinking to their work, Cadotte says.

New online tools and resources have made genetic information readily available. GenBank, for instance, which is maintained by the National Institutes of Health, contains the sequences of almost any plant species a landscape architect might consider, he says. Another surprisingly useful source is Wikipedia, he says, which provides links to the taxonomy of many plant species. “Pretty quickly,

you can get a graphical representation of how all these groups are related to one another,” he says.

Greater scientiic rigor is something many landscape architects have called for in recent decades. Alex Felson, a landscape architect and ecologist who directs Yale’s Urban Ecology and Design Laboratory, is one of them.

He says applying broad biodiversity concepts to highly fragmented urban environments may help raise awareness about species loss, but that “we don’t have a very clear grasp of the implications of all those influences on the biological communities from a functional perspective.”

Felson’s “designed experiments,” which weave scientiic hypotheses and testing into constructed landscapes, are a way to increase that knowledge, and he sees an increasing number of irms using ecology to guide their approach. At the same time, he says, the landscape architect must be free to design. “It’s a really important stage where designers try new things,” he says. The question becomes, “Is the intention to actually construct functional ecosystems, or create ecology-like conditions that serve as a backdrop for people?”

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OFFICE

MAINTENANCE MATTERS ENSURING PROJECT INTEGRITY OVER THE LONG TERM TAKES TACT AND TENACITY.

BY WENDY GILMARTIN

Kurt Carlson, ASLA, at work in the KTUA oice in San Diego.

fter months and possibly years of design development, on-site meetings, contractor discussions, submittal reviews, and long days drafting construction documents, the project is inally unveiled, the ribbon is cut, and handover completes the timeline. Or not? The time after a turnover can become its own stand-alone phase after all else is completed. How do irms ensure plants will be cared for, gutters cleaned, controls checked at the appropriate times, and that there are enough (or any) return visits accounted for in the fee? Three irms in diferent regions explain their approaches to maintenance and client relationships. Interviews have been edited and condensed.

SAN DIEGO KURT CARLSON, ASLA, SENIOR PRINCIPAL BROOKE WHALEN, ASLA, SENIOR ASSOCIATE STEPHEN NUNEZ, ASSOCIATE ASLA, SENIOR DESIGNER AND PLANNER

[Hideo] Sasaki’s method, where he uses research as a continuing part of the design process. We’re interested in getting feedback so that we expand our expertise as designers and so we can make better design decisions in the future. We were looking at not only the physical performance of the site and the plants, but also if the decisions we’ve made are supporting the durability of the site—like whether people are shortcutting through our planters. As users are afecting the site, they’re changing and adjusting the way the furniture is laid out and the way that paths are laid out, and things of that nature.

Does KTUA have a postoccupancy procedure once a project is built?

STEPHEN NUNEZ: One of the other designers in the oice and I have been interested in postoccupancy, because it gives the designer feedback and it’s kind of in the vein of

Are you providing questionnaires for the end users, or do you survey the project? How is that data assembled and analyzed?

NUNEZ: We identiied four components to focus on; the irst and most obvious is the physical performance

KTUA

ABOVE

A

48 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

of the site, the materials, and the plants. Then there’s behavior mapping, which is more of how users use the site. Interviewing staff is another aspect, interviewing some of the maintenance staf, too, inding out what the problems have been, what they’ve had to replace. And then, lastly, talking to our client and just seeing how pleased they are or whether they’ve found certain portions of the products that have been really successful or whether there are some things they feel could have been done better. So, we want to connect on all levels, not just what we can see.

KURT CARLSON: This doesn’t sound like that big of a deal now because most irms do their own irrigation anyway, but irrigation used to be farmed out in the 1970s. In our irm, we always had somebody who oversaw all of our irrigation, and that is really helpful in terms of the

JOSEF GUTIERREZ, ASLA

FOREGROUND

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FOREGROUND

/OFFICE

“WE’VE HAD A PREFERRED LANDSCAPE CONTRACTORS LIST AND WE’VE HAD A NOT PREFERRED CONTRACTORS LIST.” —KURT CARLSON, ASLA, KTUA

BROOKE WHALEN: I would add that often, at least in Southern California, we’re inding that the landscape contractor negotiates and becomes the maintenance personnel. It’s to their beneit to make sure the plans were followed and everything got installed properly in order to reduce their maintenance eforts in the long run.

TOP

Keith Murphy and Erin Webb collaborating at 3North in Richmond, Virginia.

Let’s talk about the team and relationship with the contractor and certain vendors. It seems like that’s really key—to be able to work with those you trust.

CARLSON: Well, for years we’ve had a preferred landscape contractors list, and then we’ve had a not preferred landscape contractors list. And we have done everything possible to get the contractor that we want. Now, on the private side, that’s a little bit easi-

50 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

er to do. On the public side, it’s a lowbid contractor and so, right away, it’s very important to have those preconstruction meetings with contractors, making sure that they understand what our expectations are in terms of submittals, checkpoints, project starts, where you want to see the review periods, checking the pressure on the irrigation mainline, and inished grade around the project itself. At the end of the project, we’re telling them, “Okay, we’re going to have a prewalk and then we’re going to have the inal walk, and then the walk after the inal, a postmaintenance walk.”

WHALEN: We do have a lot of good relationships with a lot of diferent contractors, and that allows for flexibility when an issue comes up in the ield and perhaps a little more collaborative approach. The contractors that we prefer, they’re focused not only on making money, but are the ones who are really passionate about the project and in making sure that it gets installed properly.

3NORTH RICHMOND, VIRGINIA ANDREA ALMOND, ASLA, SENIOR PROJECT MANAGER JAY HUGO, ASLA, MANAGING PRINCIPAL

How has the conversation with clients changed over time in regard to maintenance?

JAY HUGO: Figuring out ways to either conserve budget for maintenance or to expand budget to address maintenance is a somewhat new territory for a lot of our clients. I think many project budgets are so constrained, you kind of igure out how to get across the inish line, and to then start talking to your clients about signiicant maintenance reserves or even maintenance endowments in some cases can be a challenge. But at the same time, I think we’re inding people are more and more receptive to it.

We have a number of clients who are working their way toward conservancy models where there are in fact maintenance endowments, but in some cases, we’re having clients

3NORTH

maintenance, bidding the project, the things that are really important for the project to succeed, which are usually the things you don’t see.

Those are things like irrigation, the soil mechanics, soil amendments— the areas that a lot of contractors, in order to try to get the job, cut back on. Our specs have to be really exact in terms of spelling out what needs to be met in order to meet the anticipated quality of the project.

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FOREGROUND

/OFFICE

LEFT

3North’s work space in the Manchester neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia.

52 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

project could not have proceeded without a maintenance partner at that level—somebody who’s got the resources and also is entirely vested in the outcome because it’s in the middle of their campus.

ALMOND: We have found that when we’re trying to do green streets and sustainable stormwater infrastructure, the utilities department and the public works department’s biggest disconnect is understanding how to maintain those projects. There are lots of groups that want to partner and help fund and build these streetscapes, but then the city has to maintain them, and yet the projects are specialized pieces of infrastructure, and that’s when things kind of fall apart.

I think they’ve acknowledged that, and I think that’s part of why they’re embracing this idea of diferent types of partnerships moving forward.

That’s interesting. Have you ever participated in education sessions or done outreach to partner groups?

ALMOND: I personally have not, but there are local nonproits that are working on projects like that with the city, and when we’ve been working on green streets, they have done training sessions and then ofered up educational sessions to city staf.

It doesn’t seem to be super successful, as far as making a shift in how things are working. I think it just would take a bigger commitment of training from the city for that type of thing to work. But we’ve seen lots of instances of attempts being made.

3NORTH

but private sector donors in particular want to know that their investment is protected, and I think they are willing to invest. Particularly if they are investing funds that are for public spaces, they’re reassured that maybe some of these private sector nonproits are engaged and they’re taking care of things. We deinitely ind it in Richmond, that this private sector funding of maintenance has really been bridging a gap. We were inding that design was getting constrained because of the municipal staf’s inability to take care of public spaces. We’re already struggling at the most minimal level of mainteset aside as much as 15 or 20 percent nance, so how can we take it beyond in their project budgets just as an that? Really, the only way to take it allocation for maintenance reserves. beyond was to introduce another type of funding.

ANDREA ALMOND: Particularly on public projects with limited budgets Was there a speciic project or inwith the city, the number one com- stance when your approach was adplaint that they’re getting from citi- justed or a lesson learned that’s now zens is about lack of maintenance on integrated into your approach? public projects, parks, streetscapes, HUGO: One would be a substantial and trails. Now, the city has to pro- public park project that we’re workvide a maintenance plan that’s re- ing on together in Richmond called viewed as part of the design review Monroe Park, which was signifiprocess, and it helps everyone under- cantly constrained by public fundstand that, through partnerships or ing. What evolved was a three-way contracts or internal staing, they’re partnership between the City of committed to actually maintaining Richmond, Virginia Commonwealth these new pieces of infrastructure University (VCU), and the Monroe that everyone is so excited about, Park Conservancy. In this case, VCU because there’s been a lot of disap- has stepped up to be the maintepointment in the past. nance partner of the project. The city will put in all of its municipal HUGO: It can be a challenging con- infrastructure and the conservancy versation, especially if the baseline will put all the amenities on top, and project budget is already a challenge, then VCU will take care of it. That

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FOREGROUND

/OFFICE

“MAINTENANCE IS USUALLY ONE OF THOSE THINGS TO GO WHEN YOU ONLY HAVE X AMOUNT OF DOLLARS.” —BRAD MCCAULEY, ASLA, SITE DESIGN GROUP LTD.

What about developer-driven projects? When there’s potentially a lot of value engineering, how does that affect the contract?

BRAD MCCAULEY: Fortunately, being around for a few years, you generally only have to go through an arguABOVE ment once. You make a good case for The team at work in the it—for instance, what’s better, a tray studio at Site Design system versus the built-in-place sysGroup Ltd. in Chicago. tem for a green roof? Just putting toBELOW gether the pros and cons of long-term Jenna Jones, ASLA, maintenance: Here’s the estimated director of marketing survival rate of this, here’s how much and communications for Site Design Group Ltd., you’re going to spend in ive years by maintaining this. It’s generally been in the firm’s library. at least enough to get some type of irrigation system on a roof. It’s about arming our team with the arrows in the quiver to attack these questions when they come up in a meeting.

HANA ISHIKAWA: I think we’ve also been pretty lucky in that often the developers we work with notice and understand the value of the landscape around them. They understand that the landscape component is a big marketing piece for them. They

54 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

scape, because we know that’s what’s required for the planting to get fully established.

MCCAULEY: We’ve actually created a document that we use on all our nature play spaces or playground spaces that talks about the wood elements and the expected longevity of materials and the annual maintenance, and what clients can expect to spend as far as percentages of total cost and all those good things. I guess one interesting thing that makes it a little bit tough, if you look at project budgets— and maintenance is usually one of those things to go when you only have X amount of dollars— compared to places like New York and San Francisco, Chicago is deinitely on the low end in terms of what clients are typically going to spend on a nice, open civic space or even a private, open-space amenity.

So we really focus our eforts where we think we’re going to get the most beneit for the client and for the user.

How does maintaining project integrity start to drive design?

ISHIKAWA: It’s almost become second nature to understand what organizations or what people are able to maintain, and in the private sector as well, of course. In the public sector [you have to ask] whether there’s irrigation, whether they’re going to have monthly maintenance, is there going to be someone always around to help out? Is it a residential landscape where there are going to be more eyes on it and perhaps someone maintaining all the time? These are questions ingrained in how we design our landscapes all the time.

We’re always trying to enhance our planting plans to make sure we use what’s tried and tested, what works well in growing this palette of plants, and what can work under any main- ISHIKAWA: I personally enjoy working with these constraints, because it’s tenance situation. a bigger design challenge for us.

We also recommend letting them know how much maintenance will WENDY GILMARTIN IS A WRITER AND ARCHIneed to happen on a certain type of TECT IN LOS ANGELES. THE FOUNDING PRINCIlandscape. We’ll recommend three PAL OF WENDY GILMARTIN ARCHITECTURE, SHE TEACHES IN THE COLLEGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL years of maintenance for prairie, na- DESIGN AT CALIFORNIA POLYTECHNIC STATE tive prairie, or meadow types of land- UNIVERSITY, POMONA.

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look to us for what they can maintain, what we can do within their budget, and they’re pretty understanding of what’s possible. It’s about giving them those options and helping them determine what they can maintain and what they really can’t.

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FOREGROUND

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MATERIALS TYPICAL GRADING

SLOPE STYLE

CONFORMING GRADING PLANS TO ROOT BALLS

LARGE TREES AND STEEP SLOPES CAN WORK TOGETHER— BUT IT TAKES THOUGHT.

BY ANNETTE WILKUS, FASLA

ABOVE

A typical grading plan is on the let. The one on the right conforms to the root ball size to avoid its exposure on the downhill side.

t’s interesting to watch the evolution of planting design alongside our profession’s afection for steep slopes. Using steep landforms allows us, as designers, to create dramatic rooms in small places. In any urban environment, the use of landform has become increasingly important to expanding our environment without increasing the square footage of its footprint. Slopes greater than 3:1 have become the sweetheart of the landscape architecture world—and the steeper the better.

requesting larger plants that provide an instant landscape. The bigger the tree or shrub, the better. So we see a lot of enormous plants placed into sharp slopes as a standard practice.

In our practice, we’ve seen steep landforms become a challenge for contractors when installing large root balls, trying to establish the plants, and maintaining them during the warranty period. We’ve also seen misunderstandings among designers over the relationship between the steep slope and the As space becomes smaller and land- root ball size associated with a large forms become steeper, clients are tree’s caliper. This challenge afects

60 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

the success of the project and longterm maintenance.

The American Standard for Nursery Stock, ANSI Z60.1, is clear about the appropriate size of a root ball as it relates to the species and size of a tree. For example, the minimum root ball size for a multistem tree of 10 feet is 32 inches to 44 inches in diameter, depending on the habit of the species (Table 7 of ANSI Z60.1); the minimum root ball for a shade tree with a caliper of four inches is 42 inches in diameter and 25 inches deep (Tables 3, 4, and 5 of ANSI Z60.1).

SITEWORKS

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/MATERIALS

ABOVE

The relationship of root ball size and slope is shown on a number of standard slopes.

BOTTOM

Slopes are oten manipulated to accept large root balls.

Arborists recommend planting a tree with the root flare in its original growing relationship to the soil—this is of course with the understanding that the root flare is exposed in the nursery. If the tree doesn’t have its root flare exposed, the nursery must be instructed to expose the root flare prior to digging. Making sure that the root flare is exposed prior to digging ensures the root ball is dug at the appropriate depth and with an appropriate amount of root mass. To better explain this concept, the graphic above depicts speciied root balls in 2:1, 3:1, and 4:1 slopes. Clearly, the root ball extends past the slope’s plane and exposes from just a bit more than one-third to more than two-thirds of the root mass.

As a profession, we need to reevaluate our propensity for

62 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

large plants on steep slopes. It is sim- root ball and the grading plan is ply not sustainable. completely missed by the designer.

We’ve seen several problems repeatedly where landform dominates the design and plantings are not sized properly for the slope. Most notable is the extent to which the landform is contorted to accept the root ball, both uphill and downhill. We consistently see grading plans with a smooth slope, and it’s clear the relationship between the size of the

Should your client insist, even after you’ve explained the problems of installation, establishment, and maintenance, on planting large plants on steep slopes, you can still attempt to minimize the risks.

But it requires diferent thinking.

From our ield experience, we’re seeing several developed details with a “terrace” in the landform to accept the root ball on the uphill side and mound around the root ball on the downhill side. Other options are using small, bare-root plants, bare rooting larger plants during planting, or using the Missouri Gravel Bed method, developed by Chris Starbuck at the University of Missouri, as a way to enhance the flexibility of the root mass.

SITEWORKS, TOP; ANNETTE WILKUS, FASLA, BOTTOM

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The method we are most familiar with is terracing the slope to accept the root ball (see graphic above). The detail calls for a flat area created within the landform and the root TOP RIGHT ball placed on it. Once the root ball A planting detail addressing root is placed, the grading on the uphill ball exposure with side is adjusted to avoid covering mounding. Coordination the root flare, and on the downhill between the grading side, mounding is performed to proplan and this detail tect the face of the root ball. This is needed. method works for the initial instalABOVE lation, but we’re seeing short- and A large root ball being long-term consequences of this applanted on a steep proach. There is diiculty in planting slope. Note extension and establishment, and the need for of the root ball beyond maintenance techniques to serve the the slope line. distorted grading over time.

First, the planting aspect. To simply provide the depth and width of the root ball, the contractor has to stabilize the surrounding soil while digging the hole—many times the contractor

64 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

is in a hole three feet deep and four to ive feet wide. We’ve seen geoibers blended into the soil and jute mesh placed after planting in eforts to stabilize the soil. Both of these methods accommodate planting, but over time they create their own maintenance requirements, which may include replacing jute mesh or chasing geoiber “dust bunnies” for several years after installation.

Landscape architects consistently overlook the diiculty of establishing plantings on steep slopes, where welldraining soils prevent plants on the top of the slope from getting enough water to establish themselves. We’ve had to manually operate a sophisticated irrigation system with a complex sequence of timing several times a day to ensure that the trees and plants at the top of the slope receive the requisite moisture and yet make sure that the plants at the toe of the slope aren’t overwatered. To accomplish this dual

scenario, we’ve had to run the zone on the top of the slope for 10 minutes, turn it of for 10 minutes, and repeat several times a day during the acclimation period. Because the water is traveling downslope, we minimized any watering midslope and at the toe of the slope.

The third overlooked consequence of steep slopes is long-term maintenance. There is yearly cleanup.

There is mulching. There is the special equipment the maintenance staf may need to reach all areas of the slope. These requirements all add to the cost of maintaining your design over time.

Using bare-root plants is not a new idea. The beneit of using bare-root plants over standard container or balled-and-burlapped plants is that when the trees arrive on site, the root system will be pliable and able to be adjusted to the designed slope. Many

URBAN TREE FOUNDATION, TOP; ANNETTE WILKUS, FASLA, BOTTOM

FOREGROUND

FOREGROUND

/MATERIALS

TOP

RIGHT

Evidence of root growth in Missouri Gravel ater three months.

projects are enhanced by bare-root plants as long as the construction schedule accommodates smaller trees as well as early spring delivery and planting.

If those conditions are not a luxury, there are some exciting recent methods to accommodate large root balls and steep slopes. One of these methods is using an air spade to expose the roots of an existing tree either on site or near your site (see graphic above). The proximity of the tree’s inal planted location is important for several reasons. One is the logistics of transporting it. Depending on the size of the tree, large construction equipment may be needed, and permitting may be necessary. Second is the time

66 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

it takes to transport from excavation to installation. The bare roots will need to be kept moist and protected until they are in their new location, so traveling on a major highway may not be a practical option. One major beneit is that the root system will be able to be manipulated to respond to the steep slope while minimizing the need for contorted grading.

It is necessary to prepare early when bare rooting a plant by root pruning within the predetermined transplant root zone. Once the roots are exposed and excavated to a depth acceptable for lifting the tree, care must be taken while securing the larger roots with root ties to the trunk of the tree.

Another option for bare rooting a plant in anticipation of planting is the Missouri Gravel Bed method, which calls for bare rooting the tree and growing it in a matrix of pea gravel and sand while using drip irrigation.

The beneit of this method is being able to plant trees throughout spring, summer, and fall—even in full leaf— with little shock, owing to the massive ine root systems developed (see “The Bare-Root Cause,” LAM, June 2011).

The practice of using bare-root plants is proving to accelerate acclimation, growth, and establishment. It argues toward an industry of bare-root stock as a norm. Landforms are important to design. They create space where none was before—providing multiple programming opportunities—and are made all the better, of course, with trees. The way to make it work is to realistically understand and embrace the relationship of the slope to the size of the root ball, and to think hard about establishment periods and all the maintenance that follows.

ANNETTE WILKUS, FASLA, IS THE FOUNDING PARTNER OF SITEWORKS LLC BASED IN NEW YORK CITY.

STEPHEN STIMSON ASSOCIATES IN COLLABORATION WITH BARTLETT TREE RESEARCH LABORATORIES, TOP; RAYMOND JUNGLES, INC., BOTTOM

Procedures for air spading and transplanting a large tree.

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FOREGROUND

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GARDENS

ROYAL TREATMENT A REVERED NATIONAL BONSAI COLLECTION HAS A NEW HOME.

B

ABOVE

The 1795 Japanese red pine in the pavilion’s informal so section was a git from Emperor Hirohito.

onsai is a centuries-old art form in Asia, but it was little known in the United States until after 1945, when American servicemen encountered it during the military occupation of Japan. Many returning soldiers joined bonsai clubs that had sprung up in some parts of the United States, notably in New York, California, Washington, D.C., and Hawaii. Around the same time, the horticulturist John Creech visited bonsai nurseries and became acquainted with several bonsai masters while on plant-hunting expeditions in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s. On a 1974 visit to China, Creech met practitioners of penjing, an older form of miniature, living

68 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

trees and shrubs that he described as “strong and severe in character as opposed to the more graceful and reflective style of the Japanese.”

Creech became the director of the U.S. National Arboretum in 1973, and arranged for a gift of bonsai from the Japanese people in honor of the U.S. bicentennial. He proposed the establishment of a bonsai museum on the arboretum’s grounds. Masao Kinoshita of Sasaki Associates in Watertown, Massachusetts—an expert in Japanese design—was hired for the project, which is now the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum at the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C.

The museum is said to have been the irst in the world dedicated to the display of bonsai when it opened in 1976 with a gift of 53 bonsai from the Nippon Bonsai Association.

The collection included a number of priceless plants: the Yamaki Pine, a Japanese white pine (Pinus parvilora ‘Miyajima’) dating to 1625, which survived the atomic blast at Hiroshima; a Japanese red pine (Pinus densilora) in training since 1795 that was a gift from Emperor Hirohito; an 1895 trident maple (Acer buergerianum) that was a gift from Prince Takamatsu, the emperor’s brother; and a 1926 Japanese hemlock (Tsuga diversifolia) from Princess Chichibu, the emperor’s

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FOREGROUND

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sister-in-law. The gifts from the Imperial Household marked the irst time that any bonsai from its collection had left the country. In later years, additional prized specimens were added to the collection, which now numbers 63 plants. In 1982, the National Bonsai Foundation (NBF) was established to promote the museum’s collections and raise of Japanese woodland plants. There funds for its expansion. was a large, open, sloping courtyard paved with gravel, and a Japanese The original museum complex stroll garden with a winding path included an entrance garden through that led to a walled Japanese pavilion a forest of Japanese cedars (Crypto- with an open roof. The pavilion was meria japonica) with underplantings constructed of cinder block walls covered by stucco, with wood rafters above, gravel underfoot, and long wooden tables where the bonsai were displayed.

Faye Harwell, FASLA, a principal of Rhodeside & Harwell, says, “The idea was that the detailing would be Asian in inspiration but not tied to any one speciic Asian culture…you had that feeling of Asian design, but it didn’t say ‘this is Chinese,’ or ‘this is Korean,’ or ‘this is Japanese.’ And then when you enter the pavilions, they are much more speciically of their cultural origin.”

After several years, the sloping courtyard became a huge problem: Every time it rained, the curator’s oice flooded. The arboretum and the NBF brought in Rhodeside & Harwell of Alexandria, Virginia, to ix the problem and redesign the main entry garden, the courtyard, and the Japanese stroll garden to comply with the Americans for Disabilities Act (ADA). New walls, a gate, and bluestone paving were added to the original entrance garden.

As the Japanese pavilion approached its 40th anniversary, the foundation saw the open-air building needed an update. The walls were cracking, and the wooden display benches and overhead rafters were deteriorating.

The arboretum and the foundation again hired Rhodeside & Harwell for the project. Felix Laughlin, the foundation’s president, wanted “a worldclass display” to present bonsai as an art form and show it was “not just a horticultural pursuit.”

TOP

Bonsai are displayed on natural stone plinths in the foreground and semiformal stones to the rear.

RIGHT

Eye-level bonsai specimens rest on engineered wood platforms atop natural stones.

70 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

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FOREGROUND

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ABOVE

The installation crew lits large stone display plinths into place.

Kurisu decided that the bonsai collection should be displayed on stone plinths in accordance with a Japanese classiication of formality in

72 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

art—the shin, or formal; the gyo, or semiformal; and the so, or informal.

“If we display the bonsai accordingly,” he said, “people will understand the art of bonsai itself.” The pavilion was divided into three sections that correspond to this transitional idea.

Kurisu explained that the scheme is akin to the practice of bonsai, when collectors range high into the mountains to search for diminutive, weathered, aging specimens that are brought home, coddled, shaped, and pruned to express the beauty of na-

ture. “Bonsai is wonderful therapy,” he says, “in a busy and uncertain world,” where their timeless qualities release emotions that connect the visitor “to the essence of nature, even in Washington, D.C.” The collection itself drove much of the design. Bonsai require painstaking care. They need daily watering and temperatures that are not too hot, and sun or shade depending on the species. Richard Olsen, the director of the arboretum, says arboretum staf

RHODESIDE & HARWELL

Laughlin brought in the renowned Japanese garden designer Hoichi Kurisu, Ailiate ASLA, to work on the renovation. “I knew that Hoichi had the right sensibility,” Laughlin says.

“He always talked about how Japanese gardens had therapeutic value and power, and that it really was a way to raise one’s consciousness.”

PLAN 1 BONSAI DISPLAY (SHIN) 2 BONSAI DISPLAY (GYO)

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3 BONSAI DISPLAY (SO) 4 IWASAKI PINE (GYO)

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The bonsai display elevation shows the transitional elements between the semiformal gyo and natural so areas.

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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018 / 73

TOP LEFT

The winding path in the Japanese stroll garden leads to the Japanese pavilion.

TOP RIGHT

The Yamaki Pine, dating to 1625, survived the blast at Hiroshima and is the oldest bonsai in the collection.

/GARDENS

members were “constantly scrutinizing” details as plans were developed.

They explained to the design team that a 250-pound bonsai needed a movable railing so it could be relocated to other quarters in winter, and that easy access to planting beds was required for bonsai maintenance.

Scott Aker, the arboretum’s director of horticulture and education, says bonsai placement was also a major consideration, because there’s an “optimal height at which each piece should be displayed from the ground.” to the plants as needed. The plain So the stone display pedestals carved stucco and bamboo walls were esby Kurisu had to be of diferent sizes. sential for the overall display, Laughlin says. “If the background is not The landscape architects worked just a simple wall, you can’t see the with the architecture firm Beyer bonsai.”

Blinder Belle on parts of the new structure. The architects handled Kurt Parker, ASLA, a principal landdesign of the walls and overhead scape architect at Rhodeside & Harstructure, while Rhodeside & Har- well, traveled with Kurisu to North well replaced some of the stucco Carolina to select stones for the gyo walls with bamboo and installed and so sections of the project. “Most wall openings, including a moon of the stones we selected were natuwindow, to promote air circulation. ral, weathered pieces with lichen and Overhead, retractable fabric shade moss,” he says. Kurisu carved the screens provide more or less sun gneiss stones to make the bonsai

74 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

pedestals, exposing natural marbling on some that “became part of the interpretation.” The square stones in the formal, or shin, part of the garden are made from a saltand-pepper granite that came from China. Harwell says the progression in stones from formal to semiformal to natural represents “three levels of unraveling, or revealing of nature… as you walk through the garden… you can see that the initial stones are very formal—they’ve been cut and inished—and the trace of human hands starts to disappear the more you get into the depth of the

ALLEN RUSS PHOTOGRAPHER

FOREGROUND

FOREGROUND

/GARDENS

“THE TRACE OF HUMAN HANDS STARTS TO DISAPPEAR THE MORE YOU GET INTO THE DEPTH OF THE GARDEN.” FAYE HARWELL, FASLA

The overhead superstructure designed by the architect included stainless steel flitches—metal plates that connect and strengthen pieces of wood—so Parker designed flitches for the ground-level cedar fencing to echo the details above. Bluestone paving was installed to meet ADA requirements and to make the space accessible for arboretum events.

garden. So you can see that transition from the very formal worked pieces of stone to the ones that are partly worked and partly natural and then the ones that are natural.”

ABOVE

The moon window promotes air circulation and is installed between the formal and semiformal sections of the pavilion.

A major concern about the stone plinths, however, was the heat they might collect during the day and radiate back up onto the bonsai. Harwell and arboretum staf visited a bon-

76 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

sai collector in Pennsylvania whose specimens were on wood tables, and they soon decided to do the same thing. The designers hired a wood consultant to determine how to engineer platforms to go on top of the display stones. Using an African mahogany called sapele, the wood was cut into planks to prevent warping, laminated together, and coated to keep the moisture content inside.

Olsen told me the ground cover plants in the Japanese pavilion were selected with much care because “the plants we use in our landscapes are basically our collections…. We always let our designers know that we have a pretty strict living collections policy that stresses enhancing the collection as much as possible with high provenance material,” he says.

JANE BERGER IS A JOURNALIST AND LANDSCAPE DESIGNER BASED IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

ALLEN RUSS PHOTOGRAPHER

To mitigate Washington’s summertime heat and to make the pavilion more “gardenesque,” Aker suggested planting ground covers under the bonsai, along with an irrigation system to cool the entire area. He also believes that mist from the system will promote the spontaneous appearance of moss and lichen.

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FOREGROUND

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FOREGROUND

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FEATURES

KATE RUSSELL

SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO

At Woven Plains, a gravel-bottomed acequia gives stormwater a place to run, page 90.

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018 / 89

90 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

ETHIC AND AESTHETIC IN SANTA FE, AN OLD FORM OF IRRIGATION INSPIRES A NEW APPROACH TO STORMWATER REUSE.

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER / PHOTOGRAPHY BY KATE RUSSELL

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018 / 91

I

N 2005, Kenneth Francis, ASLA, received a grant from the Penny White Project Fund to travel to northern New Mexico and study its historic acequias. An acequia is a network of gravity-fed irrigation canals, irst dug more than 400 years ago by the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest and expanded by the Spanish. Francis, then a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, was interested in the acequias as a part of the cultural landscape, but also in how they might be adapted to a more urban condition. “It’s like 400-year-old green infrastructure,” he says.

A few months later, Francis moved to New Mexico. He joined the Santa Fe oice of Design Workshop, then in 2008 started Surroundings, a multidisciplinary design studio ofering landscape architecture, architecture, and planning, with two other former Design Workshop principals, Faith Okuma, ASLA, and Sandra Donner, ASLA. The studio has made its mark on Santa Fe. In particular, it has worked to reine the notion of a “stormwater acequia,” a system of unobtrusive channels that could better manage runof.

92 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

Among the earliest prototypes is a system of rocklined, open-air canals that Surroundings designed for a two-mile stretch of downtown Santa Fe’s El Parque del Rio, a linear park along the Santa Fe River. The system intercepts runof—previously diverted into pipes and dumped straight into the stream—and reroutes it to the river’s native cottonwoods and other orchard trees, reducing erosion and pollutant loads. “It was the irst time we had ever termed that idea as a strategy for taking urban runof and putting it back into a parkway that was being starved of its natural watershed,” Francis says.

Since then, acequias of various scales have found their way into a good portion of Surroundings’s work, including its residential projects. This past October, Francis took me to see a house that, he says, put Surroundings on the map.

The residence is known as Woven Plains. It’s 15 minutes outside Santa Fe, on a 2.5-acre lot that used to be just high desert scrub, dotted by the occasional juniper and piñon pine. The roads to the

ABOVE

A nod to New Mexico’s native grasslands, Nassella tenuissima flanks the entrance to Woven Plains.

PLAN 1 YUCCA FIELD 2 WILDFLOWER MEADOW 3 NATIVE GRASS BERM 3

4 BLUE GARDEN

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6 5 REVEILLE LAWN 6 OASIS GARDEN

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7 ENTERTAINMENT TERRACE

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house are lined with yellow-feathered chamisa, and in the distance, gold-leafed aspens glitter against the velvety blue of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Though neighbors aren’t plentiful, they are visible—each house a large, boxy intrusion on the otherwise fluid and unbroken landscape.

The architecture at Woven Plains is largely unremarkable, featuring a typical adobe structure with charred wood beams. The clients (a husband and wife who asked that their name not be used) had bought the property in 2008 as a getaway from their lives in Midland, Texas. When they sold their house in Midland, downsizing to an apartment, and began to spend more time in Santa Fe, they found the landscape lacking. It was, in the wife’s words, “awful.”

The Surroundings team was asked to enliven the landscape, as well as to enhance privacy: The house, modest in size, was exposed to traic on the nearby road. Lights and noise both made their way into the clients’ bedroom. The clients also requested a vegetable garden and a larger outdoor area for entertaining.

The most exigent request, however, was for an aspen grove. Aspens here, down near the city—which is high in terms of elevation (7,200 feet) but low in terms of the trees’ preferred range—are somewhat ill-advised, Francis tells me. Santa Fe receives an average of just 11 to 14 inches of rainfall each year, often in short, intense bursts. In that kind of environment, aspens can be inicky, he says. They can die of thirst or any

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2013

2015

number of diseases. For the trees to thrive, the conditions have to be just right.

The design team began with two key analyses: stormwater runof and the house’s main viewsheds. For the latter, the designers identiied both places where the house’s privacy was compromised and objects that the owners would rather avoid seeing. Rather than fence the entire property and lose the expansive views, the landscape architects proposed a series of berms, freestanding metal screens, and trees. To attenuate traic noise, a large landform was added at the northwest corner of the house and then sliced vertically with a Cor-Ten steel retaining wall to create a small side yard, the landscape’s only bit of lawn.

Wherever possible, the designers worked to give the landscape a sort of logic, extending the program of a particular interior space into the adjacent outdoor area. The vegetable garden is just outside and visible from the kitchen window.

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The lounge (designed for stargazing or smoking cigars, depending on whom you ask) is directly of the back portal, the local term for a covered porch. And outside the master bedroom, next to the side yard, is a grove of quaking aspens, their leaves dappling a shaggy, swirling carpet of sheep fescue.

The Surroundings team knew that the trees, if they were to survive, needed a lot of water. Unfortunately, the stormwater analysis had revealed that nearly half of all the available water was being channeled to the opposite end of the house, running onto the roof of the garage and cascading to the ground via a series of canales, a type of wide

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT

A constructed berm helps screen the house from the nearby road while also giving the landscape definition.

ABOVE

A rock-lined acequia carries water to the aspen grove and also serves as a threshold.

metal scupper common to Santa Fe architecture. that’s sitting there for the aspens to continually It was a decent amount of stormwater—10,850 feed of of,” Francis says. Each wick is made up of gallons a year—but it was just in the wrong place. individual scoria rocks ranging from one to three inches in size, and though they function mostly So the designers did what New Mexico’s early underground, the wicks also are expressed on the farmers did. They created several points of di- surface, a visual reminder of how water moves version and channeled the water to where they across the site. needed it. In a traditional acequia, a presa, or check dam, diverts water from a natural source, such Given Santa Fe’s arid climate, Surroundings as a river, into the acequia madre, which carries worked to squeeze every drop of water out of the it to agricultural ields via smaller canals called site that it could, regrading the driveway (which sangrias. Any excess water is returned to the river. flooded anyway) so that it too would drain to At Woven Plains, roof runof is directed to an the acequia. Unlike the acequia designed for El aboveground cistern just south of the vegetable Parque del Rio, the channel at Woven Plains is garden and to an 80-foot-long, rock-lined acequia, lined with a heavy pond liner to ensure that the which cuts diagonally from the corner of the main water makes it to the aspen grove. “It’s a carrier, house to the edge of the aspen grove. rather than an iniltrator,” Francis says.

From the acequia, the water flows into two scoria wicks, bands of porous volcanic rock that serve as passive irrigation systems. Like pumice, scoria is full of tiny holes. “Water molecules just kind of bind and grab onto it, and it holds water for a longer period of time. So there’s a water source

The acequia also became a threshold between the more formal landscape near the house and the looser, more natural landscape beyond. Lined with lavender, the waterway can be crossed only in two places: at the north end, via a brick-paved bridge that links the portal to the outdoor lounge, and at

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RIGHT

The design considered views both to and from the house.

the south, via a weathered steel stair that leads to a small guest casita. The stair, in fact, was existing. With the addition of the acequia, however, the stair’s sculptural qualities are emphasized by the void beneath it, its ribbonlike handrail curling out over the water.

IEWS

SUNRIS

E VIEW ET V S SUNS One of Francis’s favorite details is actually a pair of existing trees, a juniper and a piñon, which are so intertwined that they appear to be a single tree.

The species, he explained, are symbiotic. “They do this really cool thing where, in drought times, piñons will sufer much more readily, whereas junipers thrive in drought; they know how to harness water in the soils to keep going. necessary. “We’re always trying to be conscious So the piñons that do really well are the ones that about every move we make,” he says. That ethic are closer to these junipers.” drove the planting design. Santa Fe lies within northern New Mexico’s semiarid grasslands, and Like many irms in arid climates, Surroundings the landscape architects developed a plant paladheres to what Francis calls a “water ethic,” a ette inspired by a native meadow, with a colorcommitment to using only that water which is ful array of grasses and wildflowers, including

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SURROUNDINGS, BOTTOM

Farther from the house, the landscape dissolves into a more naturalistic native meadow.

SANGRE DE CRISTO MOUNTAIN VIEWS

ABOVE

JEMEZ MOUNTAIN VIEWS

VIEWSHED ANALYSIS

STORMWATER PLAN STORMWATER ACEQUIA Driveway runoff directed to stormwater acequia

ROOF WATER CISTERN Vegetable garden watered with 650-gallon cistern

PERMEABLE BRICK

PERMEABLE BRICK Subsurface stormwater diverted to oasis garden

OASIS GARDEN Stormwater piped to scoria wicks around aspen trees

PIÑON GROVE Acequia overflow and lawn runoff benefit an existing piñon grove

SCORIA WICK

STORMWATER ANALYSIS purple-blooming Allium, which dissolve into the existing scrub as you move from the house out toward the edges of the property. In front of the house, which is screened with burgundy-leafed crabapples, a propane tank is covered by a low, wildflower-strewn hillock. What little turfgrass exists is Reveille, an engineered sod designed to use 40 percent less water than typical bluegrass.

LEGEND 1 2 3 4

10,850 gallons/year 9,150 gallons/year 6,700 gallons/year 3,300 gallons/year Existing roof canale

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The project necessitated a number of custom details, which in the hands of the Surroundings team are highly reined and expertly crafted. Beneath the two canales that jut of the back portal are two nearly invisible drains that whisk the runof to one of the two scoria wicks. Where the drains are located, the bricks sit on a perforated metal screen and are gapped a fraction of an inch with polymeric sand so that the water can drain quickly. The change in spacing is so subtle that I wouldn’t have noticed had it not been pointed out. Francis credits the landscape contractor, Charles Doerwald of El Toro Landscape, who oversaw all the stone and brickwork, including the desire lines expressed in darker-colored ↘

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LEFT

Plantings are highly varied in color and texture.

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SURROUNDINGS

PLANTING PLAN

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IRRIGATION PLAN

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A custom-designed steel trough channels water from the roof into a corrugatedmetal cistern.

BELOW

SURROUNDINGS

Recaptured runof is used to water the vegetable planters, another custom detail.

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STORMWATER ACEQUIA

ACEQUIA FOOTBRIDGE

COBBLE SWALE

COBBLE SWALE WITH PUMICE WICK

LEFT

The house’s stormwater acequia has a pond liner topped with black beach pebbles.

SURROUNDINGS

PARKING AREA FOOTBRIDGE

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SECTION AT CISTERN

VEGETABLE GARDEN FENCE

VEGETABLE GARDEN GATE

CISTERN DETAIL

LEFT

The vegetable garden lies just outside the kitchen, giving the owners a visual connection from indoors to outdoors.

KENNETH FRANCIS, ASLA, PHOTO; SURROUNDINGS, DETAILS

VEGETABLE GARDEN PLANTER

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RIGHT

Silky thread grass is regionally appropriate and less harsh than some desert xeriscape species.

LEFT

Desire lines are expressed in the house’s hardscape.

BELOW

The pathways feature bricks several shades darker than those around them and oriented longitudinally.

Some custom details fell short of their intent, of the house and intersect in the ground plane, such as the steel fence that secures the vegetable requiring tiny brick wedges cut to exacting garden. The pickets are spaced too far apart to speciications. prevent rabbits’ slipping through. Other details were serendipitous, like the side yard, where Although a vast majority of Surroundings’s work the angled retaining wall echoes the shape of is landscape architecture, two of the irm’s three the Jemez Mountains in the distance. Francis principals—Francis and Donner—also have de- hadn’t noticed the relationship until a friend grees in architecture, and their understanding of complimented him on it. “Yeah, yeah, we did building materials and structure informed several that,” Francis says wryly. design decisions, including the choice to make the Y-shaped steel trough, which directs water Francis said he doubts he would have thought from the garage roof’s canales to the cistern, to add an acequia to the landscape had he not freestanding. To attach it to the house would have needed to ind a way to water the aspens, which risked damage to either or both structures when today are huge, 30 feet high, and shimmering. the water froze in the winter.

Several volunteer trees have even joined the grove.

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NARRATIVE MEDIA, TOP

→ brick that extend from both the front and back

“It wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t necessary to our tation. Santa Fe residents connect with the idea approach,” he said of the acequia. “It’s sort of of an acequia “because it has a story,” he says. “I symbiotic, like the junipers and piñons.” don’t want to put Portland green infrastructure into Santa Fe.” Four years in, the landscape at Woven Plains is mature, spellbinding in its mélange of color TIMOTHY A. SCHULER WRITES ABOUT LANDSCAPE ARCHITECand texture. It is high performance and low TURE, ECOLOGY, AND URBAN DESIGN. HE LIVES IN HONOLULU. maintenance. It mimics the northern New Mexican landscape even as it delivers contemporary Project Credits comforts. Most important, for Francis, it is one LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT SURROUNDINGS, SANTA FE, NEW MEXmore example of the wisdom contained within ICO (KENNETH FRANCIS, ASLA, PARTNER IN CHARGE; CHRISSY SCARPITTI, PROJECT MANAGER; SANDRA DONNER, ASLA; WILL vernacular forms of water management, and how IADEVAIA, ASLA). LANDSCAPE CONTRACTOR EL TORO LANDlandscape architects can embrace them. Geologi- SCAPE, SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO. STEEL FABRICATOR METAL cally speaking, New Mexico hasn’t changed all MOGUL, SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO. BRICK MASONRY RIGHT THE that much in the past 400 years, which means FIRST TIME CONSTRUCTION, SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO. STAIR HANDRAIL SCULPTOR JODY NORSKOG, SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO. that this ancient infrastructure is ripe for adap-

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SWA GROUP/JONNU SINGLETON

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SCALE FACTOR HUMANIZING A UNIVERSITY CAMPUS IN SPRAWLING MONTERREY.

BY JONATHAN LERNER

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SWA’s first phase has sotened the campus and made it kinder to pedestrians.

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UDEM demarks San Pedro’s narrow western border, at a point where lateral ridges of the soaring Sierra Madre mountains pinch close to the Santa Catarina River. West of the campus, where the valley opens out a bit, a new suburb is being developed; land prices there have quadrupled in the past decade. When the university campus was irst established in 1981, “it was in the country,” noted Gonzalez’s passenger, René Bihan, FASLA. “Now they are landlocked. They have no choice but to be smart about how they inill.” One of UDEM’s smart choices was to hire the irm of which San Francisco-based Bihan is a principal, SWA, to create a landscape master plan for the campus. Gonzalez, whose Monterrey irm is Prohabitat, is his local collaborator.

The campus’s problems reiterate Monterrey’s sprawling urban form and reliance on cars. Nearly half of its 94 acres is surface parking. That consumes centrally located potential building sites and logical axes of circulation. SWA’s landscape plan elaborates upon an earlier master plan by the architecture and engineering irm Page (formerly Page Southerland Page). Most of the parking will be relocated to the perimeter; much of it will go underground. That will free up space for inill construction and connective landscape intervention. SWA’s goal, Bihan said, is placemaking that establishes “scale and engagement” and uses “regional expression.” Those qualities should well distinguish the experience of UDEM from that of the rest of the city.

SWA GROUP/JONNU SINGLETON, TOP AND OPPOSITE BOTTOM

D

IEGO GONZALEZ was driving through San Pedro Garza García, the poshest municipality in metropolitan Monterrey, one of the richest cities in Mexico.

“When I was a kid, in the 1970s,” he said, gesturing broadly through the windshield, “all of this was agricultural. I came here hunting rabbits.”

San Pedro is built out now. Its dominant typology is the single-family house, and its circulation patterns exist to serve cars, so it’s not unlike any late 20th-century North American suburb, except that it has an orthogonal grid instead of a dendritic street plan. Also, almost every property is enclosed within a high security wall.

Gonzalez’s destination was the campus of the University of Monterrey (UDEM).

DOWNTOWN MONTERREY

LEGEND Master plan scope Gate of Creation project site SPORTS COMPLEX HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT HOUSING

FUTURE STUDENT CENTER

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In this aerial view from the west, the area surrounding the Centro Roberto Garza Sada is in red.

LEFT

SWA GROUP, TOP

Native grasses and informal groves of trees are a central motif of the planting approach.

The plan will rely on native species, in relaxed sweeps of grasses and groves of trees, for example, to replace what’s there—“lawns, and gardening with little shrubs and flowers,” as Gonzalez characterized it. (Bihan said drily, “It’s interesting, for a city like this, that they identify

tom; no matter where you stand, there’s a view. Just a mile and a half to the south, the escarpment of the Sierra Madre shoots up 1,000 meters over the bottom of the valley. Two and a half miles north, across the river, rises the even higher wall of the Cerro de las Mitras. Formed by tectonic uplift, not volcanism, these vertiginously steep exposed limestone with the ‘Home Depot landscape,’ ins have an almost kinetic quality, which is kind of this curator of the as if they are just breaking through British landscape across the entire the earth’s crust right now. globe—boxwood, roses, privet.”) And the SWA plan will acknowledge the The first expression of the SWA magniicent setting. The valley floor plan has been put in place. It’s the is canted. The campus slopes an av- landscape surrounding the Cenerage of 10 percent from top to bot- tro Roberto Garza Sada (CRGS),

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Tucked between walls, this staircase alongside the Centro Roberto Garza Sada ofers intimacy amid the dramatic topography.

OPPOSITE

The valley is framed by soaring, finlike ridges.

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projects and sculptures. The arch frames dramatic vistas, but it also delimits them. It shades you from Monterrey’s intense sunlight. And the softness and seeming randomness of the planting, a foretaste of what is envisioned as a predominant treatment for the campus, is a humanizing response to both the building and the surrounding topography, which together verge on the overwhelming.

The next efort toward implementing the campus landscape master plan is immediately adjacent: a plaza between the CRGS and a new student center currently under construction. This project embodies many of the complexities inherent in transforming the UDEM cam-

pus. Located where a boulevard forms the campus boundary, it incorporates a drop-of zone and the principal pedestrian entry. (The student center is being built over a parking deck sunk into the slope; vehicles will enter it on the other, downhill side.) At the plaza level,

SWA GROUP/JONNU SINGLETON, LEFT AND OPPOSITE

ABOVE

a monumental 2013 building designed by Tadao Ando that houses the university’s design faculties. The building is a long concrete slab, slit with narrow ribbon windows and cut out underneath to form a low arch whose undersides are tightly pleated and oppositionally angled.

It has a massive, sharp-edged quality similar to that of the mountains.

(The CRGS is also called the “Gate of Creation,” which sounds grandiose, but once you observe the studios upstairs where young people are busy learning things like graphic, interior, textile, and industrial design, it seems less so.) Surrounding the building and flowing beneath the arch are soft swaths of vegetation and a rather intimate plaza where students display their architecture

the new building—actually, a cluster of pavilions looking more like a bit of a village than a single building— will include retail spaces such as restaurants, a bookstore, and a barber shop. These will be accessible to both the general public and the university community. And that’s

a challenge, because access to the campus, as to many places in Monterrey, is controlled. (Security is an issue in the region because of drug traicking but also, and especially in this aluent part of the city, because of opportunistic kidnappings for the purpose of extorting ransom.)

“The tricky thing is where you draw the security line,” Bihan said. Plus, of course, the aesthetics of that barrier.

SWA came up with a visually porous fence design, the elements of which actually but subtly form the letters of the acronym UDEM. Finished in a shiny goldenrod hue, it’s distinctive,

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CIRCULATION DIAGRAM

MASTER PLAN SKETCH

LEGEND Security checkpoint Vehicular access Primary pedestrian Drop-off zone VIP routing N

ABOVE

Early concept drawings of circulation (let) and the campus master plan (right).

and has the virtue of not pretending it isn’t there. “In the United States when you design something like that, specialty construction, a contractor does shop drawings, you review those drawings, there are several levels of reinement. Here they just build it.

The irst version of that fencing was a disaster, too heavy, and not sized properly for the gates,” he said. But on this site visit, he noted with satisfaction that a version had been recently

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installed at one of the existing campus entries. “It looks like they haven’t given up.”

The sloping terrain is another challenge for the plaza, as for the entire campus. In this spot, “the topography is moving in two directions.”

The plaza’s signal gesture is an oval berm, 84 by 57 meters in plan, rising to six meters at its peak. “The idea is

you’re mitigating the topography,” Bihan explained. “It’s also to give a big landscape presence.”

It’s complemented by a fountain 18 meters in diameter, flush with the ground plane, with a thin water skin. The plaza “is bookended by two beautiful buildings, and then there’s this landscape move that works as an amphitheater if they want to stage the plaza, with the mountains as a backdrop.” Depending on an event’s

SWA GROUP

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LEGEND MASTER PLAN SCOPE GATE OF CREATION PROJECT SITE

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PLAN 1 CENTRO ROBERTO GARZA SADA PROJECT AREA 2 ENTRY PLAZA 3 INTEGRATION ZONE 7

4 FUTURE EVENT LAWN

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ENTRY PLAZA CIRCULATION

LEGEND Vehicular circulation Public circulation Secure circulation Secure perimeter Pedestrian entry Vehicular entry

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THE PLAZA’S SIGNATURE GESTURE IS AN OVAL BERM, TO MITIGATE THE COMPLEX TOPOGRAPHY AND “GIVE A BIG LANDSCAPE PRESENCE.” PLAZA EVENT STUDY: CONCERT

PLAZA EVENT STUDY: GRADUATION

Maximum Event Occupancy: 5,000 People

Maximum Event Occupancy: 3,500 People

LEGEND

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SWA GROUP

Event Space 1 m2/Person 2 m2/Person 5 m2/Person 15 m2/Person

ENTRY PLAZA RENDERING

SWA GROUP

configuration, with the fountain drained, the plaza could accommodate 5,000. “And it also works on a more garden scale, as it faces into the university.” With fence, gates, fountain, planted plots, and the cluster of pavilions, “it’s composed,” he said.

“But it’s very large-scaled.”

UDEM is a private institution that receives major support from several prominent Monterrey families, whose members occupy powerful roles on university boards. In its current efort to re-create the campus, the university is leaning toward showcase buildings by famous architects. This creates another particular set of conditions. Tadao Ando, the architect of the CRGS, had designed the home of one such donor. Tatiana

Bilbao, the architect of the new student center, had done the home of another. “That creates a personal bond, over the years,” Bihan said.

“The donor picks the architect. And sometimes the architects rule.”

Bilbao’s design replaced an earlier concept. “The old plan was more conventional, a building on top of a podium. Tatiana’s improvement was wrapping its edge” with the more dispersed ensemble of the pavilions.

“What it does is much better,” Bihan said. But SWA had designed the plaza earlier, concurrently with the Ando building’s planning; construction documents were complete. Modiications to long-term projects must be taken in stride, of course. And Bilbao’s concern—or, perhaps, sensibility—

was not primarily focused on the landscape architecture. “She’s a good architect. There’s a storyline there. But it doesn’t translate into public space,” Bihan said. Bilbao’s design didn’t address the grading issues. At one point, she proposed a recessed exit corridor from the underground garage, open to the sky, slicing in several directions through the oval berm—treating the berm as a simple landform more than a functional element with programmatic purposes.

This reliance on deep-pocket donors funding high-visibility buildings has another, surely unintended, consequence: Other elements of the plan can become deprioritized.

For example, at the southern, uphill point of the campus is UDEM’s

ABOVE

The plaza “is bookended by two beautiful buildings,” the student center’s cluster of pavilions, let, and the “Gate of Creation.”

OPPOSITE

The plaza can accommodate up to 5,000 people for special events.

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SWA’s goals are “scale and engagement,” “regional expression,” and pedestrian culture.

OPPOSITE

The architectural monumentality of the CRGS is balanced by the naturalism of its plantings.

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The tunnel was completed in 2008.

The landscape plan was completed in 2011. But the integration zone, though identiied as part of the plan’s irst phase, remains a blank. Implementation there is to be directed by Gonzalez. “They asked me a while ago, can’t you put a little something there?” he mentioned to Bihan, “so I said, uh, what about following the master plan?” Bihan replied, “I thought this would be the irst project to go because when we started, they were building the tunnel, sinking the road. But then for whatever reason they never completed this part. I think it probably has to do with funding. If there’s not a building to amortize the cost of the site work, it’s very hard to fund-raise for a landscape.”

“In Mexico, people are not interested in investing in landscape. They just build a building and don’t have landscape around it,” Gonzalez said.

Only one university in the country ofers a landscape architecture degree, “so you don’t have landscape architects being trained.” In that con-

SWA GROUP/JONNU SINGLETON, TOP AND OPPOSITE

ABOVE

preparatory high school. It used to be separated from the rest of the campus by a road. The Page plan proposed depressing the roadway and creating a broad land bridge on top. SWA’s concept for this “integration zone” is a walkway on an axis from the high school’s main entrance, down the slope, right under the arch of the CRGS and into the entry plaza. Another walkway will lead down from the high school into the campus’s center on a line to the atrium of the Rectoría, UDEM’s prominent administration building. In the integration zone, a sequence of smaller paths will zigzag between these two axes, addressing the grade change to provide universal access and creating a chain of graduated triangular lawns.

PLANT LIST Cordia boissieri (Anacahuita) Pennisetum alopecuroides (Chinese fountain grass) Prosopis velutina (Velvet mesquite) Quercus polymorpha (Netleaf white oak) Ruellia (Wild petunia) Salvia leucantha (Mexican bush sage)

text, UDEM’s engagement with landscape architecture in its long-range planning may be not only laudable but exemplary.

the new plaza’s programming and design elements will introduce the animation and sense of place that is currently lacking, and perhaps it will spur the overall project onThe ambitious reconfiguring of ward. Given the terrain, though, an entire campus can’t be accom- delay implies a particular risk. “The plished in a single stroke. It is hoped planting makes it humane, but the

grading makes it functional, and it’s also very expensive and diicult to do here. When they’re doing it piecemeal, it’s not like doing an entire district,” Bihan said. “The thing I’m concerned most about is that they’re going to give up on the grading plan.” He added, “If they don’t

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Native species such as velvet mesquite reunify the campus with its setting.

OPPOSITE

Intimate spaces balance the terrain’s magnitude.

get this right, then the master plan where walking is discouraged by urwill never work. You’d always have ban form, perhaps by culture—and these jarring interruptions.” by danger. People in Monterrey say that the security situation is less dire Even if the plan is fully and perfectly than it was a few years ago, though realized, there will be the irony of it must mean something that U.S. it having created a pedestrianized, government personnel are still rehuman-scale island in a metropolis quired to stay within the upscale

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and safer enclaves of San Pedro and the new suburb west of UDEM between 1:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. That suburb is being developed relatively densely with town houses, apartment complexes, and mixed-use nodes, though its neighborhoods are mostly gated. “The city is ex-

SWA GROUP/JONNU SINGLETON, TOP AND OPPOSITE

ABOVE

nent of the city. You need some kind of physical interface, which should not be just a fence. Probably the fact of having certain urban context all around will facilitate the reduction of security measures.”

tending toward this direction, growing very fast,” says the UDEM architecture professor Roberto Pasini. He brings the master plan and campus design issues into his studio curricula so that students can “envision its projection toward the outside, that it becomes a relevant compo-

At the least, that’s a reasonable pedagogical challenge, and students’ imaginations should be encouraged.

What would it look like to open up the campus, even incrementally? “When we were irst doing the master plan it was, ‘It has to be bombproof.’ If someone can drive a car through it, that’s not good enough,” Bihan said.

“It also shows why master plans need to be flexible—and it’s a barometer of improved conditions, the fact that we’re even talking about it.”

JONATHAN LERNER IS THE AUTHOR OF THE 1960S MEMOIR SWORDS IN THE HANDS OF CHILDREN: REFLECTIONS OF AN AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY.

Project Credits LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT SWA, SAN FRANCISCO (RENÉ BIHAN, FASLA, PRINCIPAL IN CHARGE; JUSTIN WINTERS, ASLA; YE LUO; SEHGYUNG KANG; DANIEL CUNNINGHAM; MARIANA RICKER, ASSOCIATE ASLA). ARCHITECT TADAO ANDO, KITA-KU, OSAKA, JAPAN; TATIANA BILBAO, MEXICO CITY. CIVIL + HORTICULTURE PROHABITAT, SAN PEDRO GARZA GARCÍA, MEXICO (DIEGO GONZALEZ).

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PARISIAN ACCENTS IN THE RAPIDLY CHANGING FRENCH CAPITAL, THREE BIG NEW PARKS ARE EXPANDING THE EDGES.

BY DANIEL ELSEA

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ATELIER JACQUELINE OSTY & ASSOCIÉS

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ARIS “IS STILL A CRUCIBLE, STILL A FOCAL POINT.” These are words written by Henri Lefebvre, the philosopher and sociologist best known for his insights regarding urban development, power, and the organization of space in cities. He wrote these words in his seminal work The Production of Space as the dust was still settling from the trauma of the 1968 revolts that rocked the city. His words previewed a French modern tradition meant to inject gusto in the city—the grand projet. In the 1970s and 1980s came a string of grands projets: from great new cultural institutions with muscular buildings to match (Centre Pompidou, Musée d’Orsay) to a corporatist paradise for French multinationals (the La Défense business district). The inauguration of grands projets continued apace through the 1990s with loud echoes of France’s global reach (Jean Nouvel’s Institut du Monde Arabe and Musée du Quai Branly) and a rather large park by Bernard Tschumi (Parc de la Villette). With their strong design pedigree and a dose of radicalism, these seductive projects are a bursting of the French id, and they’ve been good to French designers.

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A park named in honor of the American civil rights hero caters to an increasingly diverse Paris.

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Three Parisian parks: Parc Martin Luther King lies within the city’s boundaries; Parc de Billancourt and Grand Parc de Saint-Ouen are located in inner-ring suburbs, now part of the larger Paris Métropole— an oicial designation for a Greater Paris city region.

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Crucially, grands projets involve heavy public sector backing. It is in this tradition that Paris has embarked on major regeneration projects around the Périphérique, the ring road around the edge of Paris proper. Three signiicant new neighborhoods are being built at the moment, and each of them features a large public park at its heart, the Grand Parc de Saint-Ouen, the Parc Martin Luther King, and Parc de Billancourt, designed by either Agence Ter or Atelier Jacqueline Osty, Parisian landscape architects known for their large-scale civic projects with a growing international proile. Ter recently won the competition to overhaul Ricardo Legorreta’s Pershing Square in Los Angeles.

The parks anchor massive regeneration projects delivered via public–private partnerships, or P3s, in which private developers collaborate with the state to deliver whole new neighborhoods and a signiicant expansion to Greater Paris’s housing supply. But these are not the P3s you might know. The public sector retains a majority share of ownership in the delivery vehicles set up for each. In France, one P is more important than the other two.

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HE MAYOR AND THE CITY [have] the power to do what they want to do,” says Olivier Philippe, a partner at Ter. Philippe and his team are responsible for two of these parks, the latest of which won the 2017 Landezine International Landscape Award (LILA) in the Project category— the Grand Parc de Saint-Ouen, the heart of the ongoing 100-hectare ZAC des Docks regeneration project to the northwest of Paris. Saint-Ouen is one of the poorest suburbs of Paris, a very mixed area with people from approximately 140 countries who call it home. It is part of a northern belt of suburbs that in the mid-20th

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century were largely industrial. By the 1980s, their industrial base had collapsed, and many of these northern suburbs were rocked by social unrest, most recently in 2017. In response, a P3, Séquano, was set up with the Seine-Saint-Denis local government as the majority shareholder (the département, or administrative region, bordering northern Paris proper and within the Grand Paris region). Séquano took over the Docks site and embarked on a major development project that is delivering more than 5,000 new housing units and 400,000 square meters of new oice, public, and educational buildings along the northern bend of the Seine River.

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The public belvedere along the northwestern edge of Grand Parc de Saint-Ouen.

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Generously planted floodplains within the park will help to mitigate major inundation events.

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The park is designed as a series of ribbons, each diferent in character.

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Playscapes animate the park, which sits within one of the most multicultural communities in Paris.

Ter’s plan for the park is delightfully simple. It embraces the riverine location and is composed of diferent “stripes” parallel to the river. Each stripe has a diferent texture, which changes in character as you move from the river toward the city. A flood basin melds into a great lawn, which meets a civic pedestrian boulevard that divides it from a prairie, more naturalistic in character than the lawn, which then ambles upon a thick layer of agricultural land, which you can meander through quite easily before reaching a smaller linear lawn and a transition hardscape into the neighborhood. Alongside the park’s eastern edge is an update of the classical French garden that radiates from the small Château de Saint-Ouen, which is tucked into the park’s northeast corner.

It provides a lookout point onto the unfolding bands of landscape. Despite the grand name, the château is more petite sideshow than grand palais.

It is the ribbon of scraggly agriculture running down the middle of the park, east to west, which is the star attraction.

Friendly, casual, and unassuming, this patchwork of allotments sets the tone for a landscape that is informal and approachable even as it is civic. Picnic tables, designed by Ter, sit amid brushy lawns that punctuate small outdoor rooms for farming right in the middle of the city. A large, industrial-

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One-meter-square agricultural allotments have proven to be very popular.

scale pavilion, competently designed by Ter’s inhouse architects, sits adjacent to the allotments.

Fitted out with a generous kitchen—the kind you see in cooking shows—it is home to a cooking school and has an ongoing program to promote healthy eating and a relationship with the land.

A motley collection of furnishings, seemingly strewn across the park as if lawn chairs in a suburban backyard, its nicely with the casual tone set by the allotments, all creating a bit of unorganized design. There’s a waiting list for the farming plots, which measure a square meter each. They’re remarkably popular, Philippe notes, sounding pleasantly surprised. “Very few of the vegetables are stolen,” he assures.

“The gardening that is going on here is not only about gardening. It’s about meeting people, learning cooking, sharing experiences with people from other countries, and learning to live together. We need to emphasize the idea of living together especially in a city like this, like in many places in France,” Philippe says. In many French urban neighborhoods, some in the indigenous French population have grown uneasy with large numbers of newcomers, so spaces like these that enable discovery and sharing are increasingly useful.

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The park is the anchor in Clichy-Batignolles, a major mixed-use redevelopment site with housing for thousands.

SHORT MÉTRO RIDE from ZAC des Docks is further evidence of this cosmopolitanism in the Parc Martin Luther King. The name, of course, instantly resonates to the American ear. Bertrand Delanoë, the Socialist mayor of Paris from 2001 to 2014, selected the name (the full name is Parc Clichy-BatignollesMartin Luther King) in 2008 to mark the 40th anniversary of King’s assassination. Paris’s Seventeenth Arrondissement may seem a far cry from Memphis, the site of King’s murder, but this is a city used to naming big places after great progressive Americans—one of its busiest Métro stations, a great boulevard, and a roundabout are all named after Franklin D. Roosevelt, after all.

MLK park’s principal landscape architect is Jacqueline Osty, who has led her own studio since 1985 and has taken on a number of large ur-

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ban commissions. In 2003, Osty was one of 14 landscape architects, architects, and urban planners invited to develop a master plan for ClichyBatignolles, a major redevelopment project in northwest Paris, also developed by a P3. As Paris was preparing its bid for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, this site of back-of-house rail yards was selected as the Olympic Village. London ended up winning those games and transformed its own industrial backwater into the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

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The park is conceived as a series of smaller outdoor rooms; here, one seen in summer and autumn.

Rather than give up on the ambition, Paris decided to carry on. The plans for the 50-plus-hectare site were redone to create a permanent piece of the city rather than an Olympic Village. It would become a neighborhood of 3,400 homes, many of them subsidized, as well as the location of a new theater complex and Paris’s new courthouse, a large, 160-meter-high complex designed by

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Renzo Piano Building Workshop that opens this month. The master plan is rather classical, or, shall we say, Haussmanian. The rectilinear park is at the middle. Blocks of housing, all midrange in height, politely line its western and eastern edges; the theaters and park line its shorter northern edge, and the existing Batignolles neighborhood lies to its south. As massing, the housing blocks are relatively uniform—a 21st-century take on the Haussman block—but their envelopes are decidedly eclectic, with a lot of expression at the hands of many architecture irms—Odile Decq, Aires Mateus, and Baumschlager Eberle, to name a few. Opening in three phases, the irst in 2007 (4 hectares), the second in 2013 (2 hectares), and the third in 2020 (4 hectares), it represents 17 years of work for Osty.

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A number of important European architects have designed new buildings lining the park.

“The park came irst. It’s been very interesting, because it has shaped the architecture that grew up around it, literally,” says Osty, who notes that Renzo Piano’s oice oriented its monumental courthouse to face the park.

Despite the grand gestures and civic plan, the park feels intimate. The existing urban structure of the surrounding street grid is superimposed onto the

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park to create a series of small outdoor rooms, which break it up into pieces of smaller parks, as if several variants of the Place des Vosges were transubstantiated into a modern-day Tuileries.

“What we tried to do was to retain the spirit of the little square. We were very interested in creating little parks in Batignolles,” Osty told me, rather than one big park. “You can ind interest in different ways, and diferent people will ind their own place.”

The internal paths that continue the street pattern make the park easy to cross. There are some higher belvederes, contrasting with sunken lawns, a hard-edged skatepark, ponds, and soft rectangles of planting. For those seeking the idyllic, there is a ield of Japanese cherry trees—Osty’s favorite part of the whole tapestry.

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Routes across the park follow the existing street patterns of the surrounding neighborhoods.

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SIMILAR APPROACH is taken at Parc de Billancourt, where rows of apartment buildings overlook a vast park in an urban assemblage that would also make Haussman proud. Here, set in the southwestern suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, the site of an old Renault factory has been transformed into a major new community, also backed by a brawny P3. Called Ile Seguin Rives de Seine, it is bringing the creation of a whole new neighborhood (well on its way to completion) on the banks of the River Seine and a major cultural campus on a nearby island. Still

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a bit of a construction site, it features the large, bulbous Cité Musicale building by Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines, which would not look out of place as an opera house for a third-tier Chinese city.

It’s a disappointing low point to what is otherwise an impressive architectural ensemble. It includes a sublime assortment of silver towers by Dominique Perrault and adventurous blocks by Foster + Partners and some of France’s best emerging architects.

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“It’s quite a classical master plan, a very Parisian layout,” Phillippe says. “It’s chic and soft.”

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Parc de Billancourt anchors a major new development reimagining old industrial land as a neighborhood for families needing proximity to central Paris.

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The park sits within a wider landscape and water filtration system for the whole neighborhood.

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The park itself is a sunken plane, one that, if needed, could absorb 20,000 cubic meters of water in the event of a major flood. It is divided into three diferent “islands,” each with a slightly diferent character to break up the rigidity expected at such a scale. Its northern edge, closer to the magnetism of the Perrault towers, has fewer trees; the southern riverside edge, which includes the retained Renault factory relic, has more trees. The efect is the creation of two microclimates, which further accentuates the park’s intimacy. There is no artiicial lighting in the parkland itself, which has helped to attract AQUIFER INFILTRATION a remarkable amount of biodiversity with ducks, herons, and hedgehogs returning and making their habitat. And like Osty’s MLK park, it has cherry trees.

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ARISIAN PARKS are traditionally along the Seine,” says Henri Bava, Philippe’s partner at Ter, who had just flown back from Los Angeles when I interviewed him. “As the city has created new districts—Bercy, La Villette, Saint-Ouen—it puts parks along the river, and around them blocks with new housing.”

This French urban system has proved a remarkably efective model, expanding the city’s housing supply and gently expanding one’s understanding of what Paris is. With these developments, the Périphérique, the long-standing edge of the city of Paris’s limits, is no longer a barrier in the minds of people. With the creation of a Grand Paris regional Métropole, which incorporates neighboring suburbs such as Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris’s very boundaries may one day be expanded—and these parks are an important salvo in this expansion.

These parks anchor new pieces of a modern France, multihued, a bit more multi-culti. More Turenscape than gentle European pocket park, this is the landscape architecture of big government. With the Olympics now just around the corner—the city inally won them for 2024— perhaps it’s time to remember that we’ll always have Paris.

DANIEL ELSEA, A DIRECTOR AT ALLIES AND MORRISON IN LONDON, WRITES ON ARCHITECTURE, LANDSCAPE, AND CONTEMPORARY ART.

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The park is part of a major 74-hectare development that will deliver housing for 12,000 people when complete.

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GRAPPLING WITH HOW TO COMMEMORATE PEOPLE ENSLAVED AT BRAZIL’S VALONGO WHARF, SARA ZEWDE DESIGNS A WAY FORWARD FOR MEMORIALS EVERYWHERE.

BY JENNIFER REUT/IMAGES BY SARA ZEWDE

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PRAÇA DE IEMANJÁ

A proposal for a plaza marks where the sea once met Valongo Wharf.

The plaza would reactivate the space for Afro-Brazilian traditions associated with the sea.

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Sara Zewde talks with a Brazilian tourist at the Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site in Rio. The original wharf paving was laid directly on the beach and included a ramp and steps down to the sea.

In July 2017, the Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site in Rio de Janeiro became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Zewde helped write the nomination, and her ideas are threaded through the descriptions. Recognized for “Outstanding Universal Value,” for its material, spiritual, and cultural signiicance, the wharf was and is the central element in a landscape that profoundly The diagram comes from one of the spatial analy- shaped the history of the Western Hemisphere: the built enses that Zewde did on samba, the distinctly Bra- vironment of slavery. zilian musical form with African roots that lives in the city’s streets and squares. It depicts the Cais do Valongo, as it is known in Brazil, was a slave port of roda de samba, an informal dance circle of musi- unimaginable scale. According to UNESCO, “Almost a quarter cians and spectators who become musicians. The of all the Africans enslaved in the Americas arrived at Rio de character of samba is both sad and happy, a shout Janeiro, so the city can be considered the entry point of the of joy and a lamentation. greatest number of enslaved Africans and the biggest slave port

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AP PHOTO/SILVIA IZQUIERDO

here are a number of arresting images in Sara Zewde’s proposal for a memorial at Valongo Wharf in Rio de Janeiro, but my favorite is the one with the water. In it, ghostly igures in white are faded back over a scrim of water overlaid on the sea.

Above their heads is a diagram of points and lines that ricochet out from a dense cluster triangulating across the sky. The palette is one of muted blues and grays. It feels both transcendent and somber.

in history.” The port was active from 1811 until the trade was outlawed in Brazil in 1831 (though not the practice of slavery, which continued until 1888). Historians estimate that some four million enslaved Africans came through Valongo. The descendant community, Afro-Brazilians and those who identiied as black or mixed race, are, for the irst time, the majority of Brazil’s population. This historic shift in demographics means that Brazil’s slave port has direct and tangible connections to some 97 million people.

The archaeological remains are signiicant in their number and richness. Unearthed in 2011 during infrastructure upgrades for the Rio Olympics, the original stones from the 1811 wharf as well as the paving placed over them in 1843

were remarkably intact. In addition, there were the personal items—artifacts such as beads and small tools—that would eventually number in the thousands that were excavated from the site.

Zewde saw them for the irst time in 2011, the year they were discovered. She was in Rio when the wharf was uncovered, having inished her master’s degree in city planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the year before. She’d come to Brazil as a transportation fellow for the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, working on sustainable transportation projects around the redeveloping Porto Maravilha, or port zone.

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The city has made it possible to view both the rougher 1811 wharf stones and the more refined 1843 paving, but there is little in the way of interpretation other than signage.

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Dozens of parcels were slated for redevelopment on both sides of the historic coastline owing to pressure from the 2016 Olympics and the 2014 World Cup.

ÀOO KLVWRULF WHUUD ÀUPD existing open plaza parcels slated for redevelopment under Port Zone/Olympics redevelopment plan new Light Rail Line currently under construction historic Valongo Wharf complex contemporary street network

It was not Zewde’s irst trip to Rio—she’d come in 2007 through an international honors program.

“It really stayed with me,” says Zewde, who is from New Orleans. “Rio de Janeiro reminded me of New Orleans a lot in that it was very African influenced.”

In both places, she recognized an intense “negotiation between urban space and cultural practices.”

At MIT, she had studied with Anne Whiston Spirn, FASLA, working toward a thesis on New Orleans’s Claiborne Avenue. Zewde credits Spirn with helping to put together her interest in planning with design and culture. Zewde soon realized that she didn’t want to just plan, she wanted to design.

While in Rio, she tried to get her colleagues interested in the Valongo story, but there wasn’t a transportation angle. By the end of her fellowship, she had been accepted into the MLA program at Harvard and returned to the United States. Still, she was haunted by what she’d seen and what she’d heard from the construction workers and people she’d met around the site.

former primary slave port until end of 19th century

Despite the modern development that illed in, covered over, and expanded the port, the area around the historic wharf had long been known for its associations with the slave trade. Zewde says that people knew the wharf was there, somewhere, but its presence was more evident in the way they behaved. “I really did get a sense of how people were ritualizing and memorializing it in everyday ways.

Even before the excavation and the discovery, it was a hot spot.” Earlier sites in the wharf area had been documented, including cemeteries, warehouses,

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samba at salt rock

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one of many points of sale in the area for the purchase and sale of Africans

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designed by André Rebouças, an Afro-Brazilian designer, in 1871

and areas like the Deposit, used for processing Africans for enslavement. But the discovery of the intact wharf was a breakthrough moment. It revealed the physical place of disembarkation, a threshold that brought all of these individual sites into what is arguably the largest and most important cultural landscape of slavery outside of Africa.

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A 19th-century view of the port in Rio from the Saúde neighborhood illustrates the density of commerce at the port.

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Zewde’s axonometric reconstructed plan of the time when Valongo was an active slave port shows the extent of Rio’s industrial landscape of slavery.

Recognition was rapid. In just six years, Valongo Wharf had entered the canon—the UNESCO World Heritage list—primarily ushered by the Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (IPHAN), working with the city of Rio. Adopting the recommendations of IPHAN, the World Heritage listing acknowledged the cultural signiicance of Valongo Wharf and its status as a “site of conscience.” Calling it “the most powerful memorial of the African diaspora outside Africa,” the report left open the question of how to interpret that memorial, though it singled out the importance of intangible heritage.

In the meantime, the archaeological site remained open for viewing, allowing locals and tourists to peer into the pit where the wharf stones had been revealed and left in open air. The exposed wharf became a center of intense spiritual activity for Brazilians, who had begun their own interpretations of the site, performing rituals such as the Washing of the Wharf.

Plans and debates over the site attracted the attention of local activists and community members, who began to advocate for some form of commemoration to address the site. The city was talking about a memorial. But it wasn’t clear what the right thing would be.

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Africans transfer to small skiffs upon approach to Valongo Wharf

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ships enter through the mouth of the Guanabara Bay, following 3 to 4 months at sea

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Africans held for 2-4 weeks for fattening and taming process

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the buildings lining the circuit largely housed Africans and associated supplies

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open burial ground for Africans dead on arrival or who died during the taming period

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treating Africans who had fallen ill before their purchase

slavery supply stores retail shops selling slavery management supplies lined the deposit area

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the point of landfall for millions of Africans

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THE HISTORIC VALONGO WHARF SLAVERY COMPLEX

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SCENES FROM THE CIRCUIT OF AFRICAN HERITAGE

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Members of the Centro Cultural Pequena África (Little Africa) meet near Largo de São Francisco da Prainha, an unmarked plaza that was once an auction and whipping block.

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A street near the Quilombo Pedra do Sal, or salt rock.

At Harvard, Zewde had written a proposal to do a site analysis and interview people. By the winter of her irst year, she’d landed a grant to return to Rio and begin interviewing activists and locals.

She had six weeks. She had gotten the contact of Washington Fajardo, an architect who was then the Secretary of Cultural Preservation for the city, and started to develop ideas about the cultural practices around the site.

ful moment.” The conversations were a turning point. “I was coming at it from a research perspective, but when they were speaking so strongly about next steps, and they’re like, ‘We really need you to be involved,’ that was really the irst time it crossed my mind that I could have a role in this beyond just writing a report or making a drawing.”

Zewde describes her ongoing engagement with the activist community in Brazil in vivid if considered terms. “These are sensitive conversations to have in your own country, in your own language,” she says, having taught herself Portuguese in a few months to pass the language exams required by her transportation fellowship. “So you can imagine I tried to be as careful as possible in these conversations, but listened more than anything.”

According to Harvey, Zewde’s identity as an outsider was not an issue for the local community connected to the site. “Zewde’s nationality did not represent, for the activists of the Brazilian black movement, a challenge that had to be overcome,” wrote Harvey through a translator. “The main obstacle was, from my perspective, the recognition of her professional abilities (as an architect and/or urban planner) by the white people who were in charge of the government agencies and technical institutions overseeing the process.” He says that Valongo Wharf’s human relevance was global, not just Brazilian. “The fact that Sara Zewde was a ‘diaspora’ citizen was, and continues to be, perceived as a positive trait, and not a negative one.”

A mix of academics, religious and spiritual leaders, professionals, and others with direct connections to what she says roughly translates as the “black movement” in Brazil, the activists took up Valongo as an important cause. She began to meet and talk with people, including Giovanni Harvey, a long-time local activist for racial justice in Brazil, with a deep investment not just in Valongo but in the national ight for racial justice.

“We had a meeting, and they were just very passionate and articulate about what they thought this place could be, should be, in Brazilian history.

And I mean, it was a really powerful, really power-

The architectural language for memorials to trauma, loss, and grief have traditionally come out of Western architectural traditions—they distill the collective experiences into individual representations (equestrian statues, bronze reliefs) or derive from funerary traditions that are rooted in Judeo-Christian expressions (obelisks, swaths of granite with names inscribed).

They mark time in a particular way that ixes the event hard in the past. The push for a memorial caused some frustration from the local community around what they perceived to be an unresolved gap between architecture and the expression of African and Afro-Brazilian culture. Zewde told them, “I know what that’s like. I can relate to that. I see that in architecture.

It is real—what you’re describing is real.” ↘

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CLOCKWISE, FROM ABOVE

The Docas Dom Pedro is a large brick dock warehouse designed by André Rebouças, a black Brazilian, in 1871; preserved fragments from the 1843 wharf that was repaved to present a more appealing face to a newly arrived Bourbon princess; the vacant shell of the Afoxé Filhos de Gandhy, once a samba school.

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SOILS, PLANTS, AND CULTURE

trans-Atlantic slave routes

Umbanda

warm ocean currents

CandomblĂŠ

cooler ocean currents

Maria Lionza

water bodies traveled by slave traders selling Africans to Rio de Janeiro

Hoodoo

latosolic tropical red soils

Other

the Valongo Wharf site, over 300 million years

Ficus leprieurii

Ipomoea pres capre

Terminalia cattapa

Figueira triangular

Beach Morning Glory

ColĂ´nia

ABOVE

Research into the migration of soils and plants from the period during which the African and South American continents were joined informed the material palette for the proposal.

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300 million years ago

150 million years ago

“IF YOU’RE GOING TO DESIGN A SPACE ABOUT MEMORY OR A MEMORIAL, THEN YOU HAVE TO HAVE A STANCE ON TIME.” —SARA ZEWDE

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Samba de Roda

→ The day before she returned to the States, the

ABOVE AND OPPOSITE

Spatial diagrams of cultural practices that blend sound, movement, and cosmology informed Zewde’s design proposal.

meeting with Fajardo inally came through. It was another pivotal moment, Zewde says, that conirmed what she’d been thinking and hearing.

Traditional Western architectural paradigms for memorials would not work in this context. It was the wrong language, the wrong expression, for sites like Valongo Wharf.

She returned to Harvard and worked on her MLA thesis with Anita Berrizbeitia, ASLA, while simultaneously pursuing funding to work on the Valongo site, an experience she describes as “very intense.”

Zewde credits Berrizbeitia with pushing her to expand the proposal beyond the limits of the site from a single public space to the city scale. “Slavery was this industry that provoked, prompted, and required the construction of the city to support it because it was about housing, shipping, and storing millions of people until you need a city to do that,” she says.

Berrizbeitia, who is the chair of landscape architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, says that Zewde had very speciic ideas about what she wanted to include and what she wanted to leave out. The move from a proposal for a single object to one that was “distributed, didactic, and would have

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Cosmolog y

a dimension of memory and social space” was a very challenging one. “She did not want to do a monument that only talked about the horrors of slavery. She wanted to include that, and at the same time speak about moving forward,” Berrizbeitia says. Finding the language, inding the right expression, was a diicult journey.

“When she found the parallel in samba, this duality of high energy and happiness and, at the same time, a sense of longing, a sense of sadness, it was very productive for her.”

Zewde continued to look for funding to return to Rio and work on a design proposal. It did not happen quickly. “Most of the story is unanswered e-mails,” she says. Discouraged, she nearly gave up, but then, inally, in 2014, an Olmsted Scholar fellowship from the Landscape Architecture Foundation came through. She was back in the summer, working on a design proposal. It had taken two years.

The city had already begun to plan for the Circuit of African Heritage after the Valongo Wharf was uncovered. A project of Rio’s municipal government and the Instituto Rio Patrimônio da Humanidade (IRPH), proposals for the circuit were developed in collaboration with a working group made up of activists, spiritual leaders, and other community members, and eventually, Zewde.

During that summer, Zewde worked at a desk in the city government oices in conjunction with Fajardo and Aline Xavier, an architect with the agency implementing the project, and met with the working group on a proposal for the circuit.

Roda de Samba

The Circuit of African Heritage links 20 sites around the port zone. Some of the sites predate the port renovation and the discovery of the wharf ruins, such as the Instituto dos Pretos Novos—a house converted to a museum after renovations revealed an open burial ground beneath it that held the remains of enslaved Africans. Others, such as Laboratório Aberto de Arqueologia Urbana, an open laboratory for urban archaeology that allows the public to view the artifacts and ongoing archaeological research at Valongo, were developed in response to archaeological discoveries made during the port redevelopment. Still others on the circuit were sites of everyday use by descendants—the Central do Brasil transit hub, and the Morro da Providência, the oldest favela in Rio. They were linked by their connection to the enslaved and descendant community.

“They were already working with this idea of a Circuit of African Heritage when I came along,” Zewde says. “What they thought was that there would be a memorial in the circuit.”

Instead, Zewde’s contribution was to reframe the idea behind the circuit entirely, evolving it from a sequence of disparate sites connected through the African experience in Brazil to an idea of a living cultural landscape punctuated by what she calls a “constellation of sites.” It was a reversal of the igure– ground relationship, but at the scale of the human network.

“The circuit is the memorial as opposed to a memorial in the circuit,” she says.

Capoeira

Zewde’s design concept linked western Africa and Brazil through an expanded ield of movement, time, and materials. She researched and identiied soils and plants of Africa that had once been native to Brazil when the two continents had been connected, 300 million years ago, some of which would have been recognized by Africans who landed at Valongo. These shared soils, seeds, and plants became the material palette of the design.

Spatial analyses of cultural practices such as the roda de samba, but also of dance, spiritual, and social practices that Zewde observed happening around the port area, shaped the formal architecture of movement around the circuit and became a way of understanding how the past and present are simultaneously occurring. “People perceive time diferently, and if you’re going to design a space about memory or a memorial, then you have to have a stance on time,” Zewde says.

At seven points along the circuit, Zewde proposed design interventions that incorporated cultural practices, plants, and forms that would be recognized by both the enslaved and their descendants, illuminating and dissolving the boundaries between the past and present. At

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CONSTELLATION OF SITES

Praça da Harmonia

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Afoxé Filhos de Gandhy

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Escararia do Quilombo da Pedra do Sal

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Laboratório Aberto de Arqueologia Urbana

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Rua Sacadura Cabral

Teleférico Station

Observatório do Valongo

Morro da Providência Jardim Suspenso do Valongo

Afoxé Filhos

Teleférico Station

Largo do Depósito

Teleférico and ‘Central do Brasil’ Regional Train Station

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de Gandhy

Rua Sacadura Cabral

A Praça de Iemanjá

OPPOSITE

Zewde’s proposal for the Circuit of African Heritage includes designs for seven of the 20 sites.

Museu de Arte do Rio Praça Mauá Rua Sacadura Cabral Largo de São Francisco da Prainha

À Q D WR

Morro da Conceição

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Quilombo Pedra do Sal

Igreja de Santa Rita

each intervention, the design logic is clear and the connections are legible to descendants who live in, above, and around these sites. Though there are places for interpretation and narrative signage, the design concept is not built around the need to tell the story to outsiders. It provokes questions; it does not promise answers. “I got challenged for sure, especially the irst couple of presentations,” Zewde recalls. “People were like, ‘So, where’s the memorial?’”

One of the things that makes Zewde’s approach at Valongo instructive is that its visual, physical, and auditory vocabulary comes from the perspective of the enslaved. It is relatively agnostic as to the concerns of the white society that fed of this economy and its human capital. They simply aren’t addressed. Although the logic of this elision might seem evident, there are very few such monuments to the enslaved or commemorations of the achievements or sacriices of enslaved people in the United States—Louisiana’s Whitney Plantation Museum is one exception. Instead, we have a commemorative landscape of slaveholding. Up until now, there has been a general unwillingness to tell the story of the African Americans as distinct from their relationships to white people.

de Cássia To some extent, that blindness was partly because we hadn’t done the work. Archaeology, bolstered by many new technologies, has expanded in both scope and commitment to nonwhite historical actors. At places such as Thomas Jeferson’s Monticello, historians equipped with new tools have begun to interpret the lives of enslaved people who

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CONCEPT FOR VALONGO WHARF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE

At the Valongo site, Zewde proposed relocating a building to expand access and public space and connect it to the Providência favela. The curved wrapping platform takes its form from the AfroBrazilian practice of wrapping a white cloth around the base of a Ficus tree to mark where the ancestors gather.

Circular plazas encourage capoeira and other cultural expressions.

lived and worked on Mulberry Row. Plantations and gentlemen’s farms are now the places where the interpretation of slave landscapes has the most depth and breadth, but they are still framed in relation to the white families who lived there.

Underground Railroad stations, slave cemeteries, and historic slave market sites are preserved in some places, but often as single notes—markers rather than narratives—to describe discreet moments in which lives were saved or destroyed.

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Zewde’s proposal for Rio has both conceptual and practical analogues for slave memorials in the United States, where slavery has largely been erased from the built environment, and particularly for memorials that are deeply connected to place.

One such place is Shockoe Bottom in Richmond, Virginia. The site of what was once the largest slave market in the United States outside New Orleans, Shockoe Bottom is under intense development pressure as its waterfront becomes more desirable real estate. Currently, the city has ofered to preserve and

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interpret the Lumpkin’s Jail site— named after the white property owner rather than the Devil’s Half Acre, as it was and is known to local African Americans—while community members and activists have pushed for a multisite, nine-acre Shockoe Bottom memorial park.

Rob Nieweg, a senior ield director and attorney for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, saw Zewde present her project in Charlottesville in March 2017, just a few months before a white nationalist protest over the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee ended in fatal violence. Nieweg says there are some direct parallels between Valongo Wharf and sites like Shockoe in the United States, “in terms of buried history, diicult history, that’s on the one hand been forgotten and on the other hand is essential to the full understanding of the place and culture.” Though most of the Shockoe site is under a parking lot, “Archaeologists were able to ind really extraordinary resources that make us think that if there ever were more investigation and more excavation, there’d be an even deeper and richer story told there.”

Nieweg says that in Richmond, part of what the community is asking for is an interpretation that goes beyond the archaeology and integrates current issues and cultural practices. The park might, for example, incorporate some of the rituals to honor ancestors that are spontaneously occurring on the current Richmond Slave Trail. Nieweg says the responsibility of white people and their instruments of land use is to cede the space, not to shape interpretation of these places. “If historic preservation does something right, then it’s preserving, conserving, and retaining the authentic place. And then, over time, there’s space, there’s room for interpretation to shift,” Nieweg says.

TOP

The Ficus tree represents a threshold between the past and the present.

ABOVE

The wrapping form shapes the base of a bench and planter for the Praça da Harmonia.

LEFT

A plaster model of the wrapping form that appears in many of Zewde’s interventions.

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In 2015, Zewde went back to Rio to present the project during Brazil’s National Day of Black Consciousness. That same year she took a job at GGN in Seattle, where she works on public space projects. Her commitment to the intangible over the formal in her proposal ensures there will be continuing dialogues as she helps to move the project forward with governments, nonproits, activists, and locals. In 2016, Fajardo, who has moved on from his position with the city and is now a consultant, was the curator of the Brazilian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and included Zewde’s proposal.

Recently, the city planted Adansonia digitata (baobab) trees near the Valongo Wharf site, despite the fact that they’re nonnative species and ordinarily not permitted. According to Zewde, in AfroBrazilian culture, the baobab is a tree whose roots are said to spread underneath the ocean, and whose trunk contained the ages. Zewde says the city made an exception in recognition of the tree’s historical and cultural signiicance, which is documented in the mapping and other arguments in her proposal.

The appointment of Valongo Wharf to the World Heritage list means the site will have some tourist traic as well as some protections from the area’s voracious development.

The notion that lived experience might ofer an interpretive model, that the past and present can be simultaneously integrated in design, or that cultural practices can be seen as the center of the

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LEFT

A design for marking the Rua Sacadura Cabral, the historic coastline, would remove traic to the north side of the street and create more space for pedestrians; graphics, trees, and paving represent the continents separating and joining together.

OPPOSITE

A detail of the site model with the coastline intervention visible.

design process is a provocative one, but it’s not one that’s easily written into design regulations or requests for proposals. The kind of investment that Zewde has made in Valongo doesn’t it common development models, either, and the time and commitment necessary to develop a project as nuanced and responsive as the one for Valongo Wharf requires something beyond tenacity, venturing into passion.

Through some eight trips (and counting), Zewde has spent considerable time over the years thinking about the nature of memorials, the commemoration of sufering, and the problems of centering “the trauma of enslavement as the dominant theme in black memory” over other modes and narratives of black life. In the memorial landscapes of the United States, as Berrizbeitia points out, the question in Rio is the same as the question in the United States in places like Shockoe Bottom. “Who gets to decide? Who gets to speak? Whose voice is the one that’s going to be heard?”

When I asked her recently about where the project is now, Zewde outlined the complex nature of Brazilian politics and the shifting agendas and alliances that are always threatening to scuttle the proposal. But she seems undaunted, and is ready with ideas big and small for pushing it forward even if the current environment isn’t supportive. “This project will always be about the long view.”

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TOMASHI JACKSON, INTERSTATE LOVE SONG DETAIL , MIXED MEDIA, 2018, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND THE TILTON GALLERY, NEW YORK. IMAGE COURTESY THE ZUCKERMAN MUSEUM OF ART.

THE BACK

INTERSTATE LOVE SONG

At the Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Georgia, through May 6, 2018 Cobb County, Georgia, has a white majority population. Adjacent Atlanta’s is black.The impact of exclusionary racial politics on public transportation planning between these two areas is a focus of the artist Tomashi Jackson’s multimedia exhibition now at the Zuckerman Museum of Art. Mounted high on a wall, Interstate Love Song features images of protesters both for and against construction of a Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) station, printed in red onto waving strips of clear acetate. With it, Jackson imposes light and clarity on a dark time. More information is available at zuckerman.kennesaw.edu/exhibitions/ upcoming.php.

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RIGHT

A

T ZARYADYE PARK in central Moscow, a procession of Eurasian birch trees, grasses, and shrubs winds downhill from a glass-encrusted outdoor amphitheater that tops the new Philharmonic Hall, framing photogenic views of the candy-colored cupolas of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. The park’s verdant terrain folds onto the rooftops of ive scalloped pavilions that shelter a botanical display, an educational center, a food court, and a screening room that plays an immersive 3-D ilm on Russian history. The park, which covers 32 acres, stretches to the edge of Red Square, and even adds 11 square feet to the square that was uncovered during excavation. The pavilions, with their vegetated roofs, and most of the park’s terrain sit atop a 430-car underground parking garage. To keep the whole landscape in place, a geocell soil-stabilization

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system rests on top, anchoring granite pavers on pedestrian pathways that stretch onto an arching, boomerang-shaped overlook that cantilevers and hovers over the Moskva River.

Here visitors of all ages and groups compulsively photograph themselves against the backdrop of the Kremlin and the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building, one of the Stalinist high-rises that deine Moscow’s skyline.

Zaryadye Park is an entertaining landscape intended as a spectacular place, a special attraction, and a free public space—a term that Russian architects agree had almost no precedent in the language before a series of convergences brought the park into being. Anna Kamyshan, a Ukrainian architect at the oice of Project Meganom, told me: “It’s not really [a] simple thing to do in post-Soviet country because [before this park, public

IWAN BAAN, COURTESY DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO

Birch trees planted at the foot of the Kremlin and Saint Basil’s Cathedral in 32-acre Zaryadye Park.

SOFT POWER IN MOSCOW AN EXPANSIVE PARK AT THE FOOT OF THE KREMLIN HELPED DRIVE A SERIES OF REVOLUTIONARY IMPROVEMENTS TO THE RUSSIAN CAPITAL.

BY STEPHEN ZACKS

space was] not even [a] word.” Meganom won the competition for Moscow’s waterfront master plan. “Like there are two diferent options to call public space: One is really similar to English: publichniya, which is ‘public,’ or obshchestina, more having this context of ‘social.’ So what is public space as a concept is not really developed and also not really thought in the theory ield.

The other thing that is existing in Russian is blagoustroystva, which you would call in English ‘improvement.’ It’s mostly about pavement and greenery, and adding some areas like playgrounds and so on. But [this word is] not about strategy, and it’s not about people at all: It’s about the material thing.”

Designed by the American team of Diller Scoidio + Renfro with Hargreaves Associates and the Moscow-based urban design consultancy Citymakers, Zaryadye Park caps a monumental nine-year project to transform the landscape of Moscow, deploying a new set of urban design methodologies and

technical expertise to defuse the politics of creating a free and open public space in the city. Adopting a pragmatic, researchintensive, and willfully technocratic approach to working with the government, landscape architects, architects, and urbanists iniltrated the city government, producing sweeping improvements in streetscapes, parks, and plazas, and intervening within a political system generally regarded in the West as a dictatorship.

“There’s something about the fact that it’s public realm,” said Mary Margaret Jones, FASLA, the president and a senior principal of Hargreaves. “People tried to ask us about the politics of it.

There really weren’t any politics of it. It really was about making public realm. There’s something in all of us as human beings that unites us, that we want nature and to have nature in the city and a public realm that’s free and open—something everyone loves. When you’re there, all you feel is a sense of joyousness.”

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LEFT

Zaryadye’s overlook cantilevers 230 feet over the Moskva River, gesturing toward the Stalinist Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building.

OPPOSITE

A site plan of Zaryadye Park shows the progression of regional landscapes folding at intervals over scalloped pavilions.

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in 2012, as if just hatching the brilliant idea live in front of the TV cameras, Putin made an announcement: “Why not turn the Rossiya’s ruins into a park?”

Simple, right? A harrowing, sometimes heroic process followed: An ideas competition in early 2012 led by the Union of Russian Architects ended inconclusively; a second design competition the next year run by Strelka KB, the for-hire arm of the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture, and Design, awarded the winning design to Diller Scoidio + Renfro, Hargreaves, and Citymakers. The collapse of the ruble after the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine put the park on hold; then, when construction began a year later, its $190 million cost had inflated by at least a quarter, even with a redesign and mostly Russian procurement. In the meantime, however, something fairly magical happened. The concept of public space that was the project’s core value brought about a paradigm shift that delivered far more than a park.

IWAN BAAN, COURTESY DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO

Of course, the project is far from apolitical. From the moment of its oicial announcement, then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin presented the idea for the park as their personal brainchild. On January 20, 2012, they appeared in front of TV cameras, strolling along the troubled site by the Moskva River. The 3,000-room Khrushschev-era Rossiya Hotel, which had hosted bureaucrats visiting the Kremlin since 1967, had been demolished in 2006, leaving behind only a pile of rubble. A predecessor of Sobyanin’s as mayor, Yury Luzhkov, had leased the land to a development company that had close ties to his wife, which had commissioned Norman Foster to design an $800 million, 2,000-room hotel and entertainment complex there, in the going spirit of oligarchical post-Soviet capitalist expansion. But with that lease agreement ending up annulled in court, the project never got past the demolition stage. Then in 2011, then-President Dmitry Medvedev floated the idea of moving the Russian Parliament to the location. That plan never got of the ground either. Finally,

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Y MOST ACCOUNTS, the prehistory of Zaryadye Park dates back to 2009, when two oligarchs, Alexander Mamut and Sergey Adonyev, decided to found an education and entertainment platform to create a place for interdisciplinary discussions on urbanism that were not emerging from traditional educational and governmental institutions. The founding CEO, Varvara Melnikova, had hosted Rem Koolhaas for lectures at the Center for Contemporary Architecture— supported by the Ford Foundation—and approached him to help deine the mission of what became the Strelka Institute.

By 2010, under Koolhaas’s guidance, they settled on public space and historic preservation as the main research areas for the venture, which declaimed no less an ambition than to transform the physical and psychological landscape of Russian cities. “Public space as a term basically didn’t really exist in the Russian language before we actually started to do this research with him,” Melnikova said. “This is a huge contribution by the institute to open up this subject for a broader audience to

discuss.” The Strelka Institute hired the Russian architecture irm Wowhaus to design a center on Bolotny Island in the repurposed garages of the Red October chocolate factory, with an outdoor amphitheater for public discussions and Strelka Bar as a place for instructors, students, and guests to socialize. That October, Medvedev’s chief of staf, Sergey Sobyanin, replaced Luzhkov as mayor.

5 MEADOW/ SLEDDING HILL 6 AMPHITHEATER 7 GLASS CANOPY 8 PLAZA 9 FLYOVER BRIDGE

The center of Moscow is overwhelmed by an extensive governing complex that occupies hundreds of buildings outside the walled fortiication of the Kremlin. The Moscow Architecture School, known as MARCH, founded ive years ago to introduce a studio-based model influenced by the Architectural Association in London to Russia’s technical education system, conducted a building-by-building study of the central city and found that 80 percent of doors at the street level were closed to the public. In 2011, during his time as president, Medvedev floated the idea of moving the federal government to a

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As part of a consulting practice that later established itself as Strelka KB (consulting bureau), the Strelka Institute had already begun informally advising Sergei Kapkov, who was appointed director in 2011 of Gorky Park, Moscow’s Stalin-era central park along the Moskva River, to devise a strategy for its revival. For more than a decade after the end of the Soviet Union, oicials had neglected Gorky Park. During a period of fast commercialization, shopping malls were considered the most important public spaces, and residents considered Gorky Park unsafe, its rusting amusement rides and old-style cafés no longer capturing public interest. Consultants from Strelka pushed for quick wins such as eliminating entrance fees, removing the rides, allowing seating on the grass, and introducing a new food program to bring life back to the promenades. The upgrades were hugely successful and launched what became known as the Kapkov Revolution; Kapkov was appointed Moscow’s Minister of Culture and undertook the renovation of 13 other parks and a far-reaching redevelopment of the city’s transportation infra-

IWAN BAAN, COURTESY DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO

purpose-built complex within the annexed municipal boundaries of New Moscow, which doubled the size of the city in 2012, with master planning led by the Paris-based team of Antoine Grumbach and Wilmotte & Associates. Petr Kudryavtsev, a journalist, publisher, and editor in chief of Building ARX magazine and a founding partner of Citymakers, undertook a study of Kitay-gorod, the core central area of Moscow occupied by government buildings and the headquarters of the Russian secret police. “Our idea was to make a pedestrian city center there, like every historic European city, with very active street life, with cafés, galleries, museums, sculptures,” he said. “Our idea was that here we could have a park that would be adjacent to this territory that people who were going to live here were going to use.” After announcement of the park by Putin and Sobyanin, Citymakers founded Friends of Zaryadye Park, modeled after Friends of the High Line, and organized a project about it for the 2012 Moscow Biennial of Architecture.

ABOVE

The Media Center in Zaryadye Park features an immersive 3-D film of the history of Moscow.

RIGHT

An aerial view shows the extensive public space that flows toward the river from Red Square.

OPPOSITE

The 1,600-seat outdoor amphitheater is topped by a climate-engineered glass dome to moderate temperatures in every season.

IWAN BAAN, COURTESY DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO

structure. “One of the irst problems which were raised by the institute but which Strelka KB started researching the solutions to was public spaces,” said Strelka KB cofounder Denis Leontiev.

“When the cities started asking, ‘OK, so you talk about that; you have experts about this who understand the problem. Can you give us the solutions?’ And the success of Gorky Park was so big in the public, they invited us to think about Zaryadye.”

was then 35 years old, as the new chief architect for the city of Moscow. A partner in the irm SPEECH with Sergei Tchoban, Kuznetsov was already well-respected for pavilions in several Venice Biennales and at Expo Milan, and for big development projects throughout Russia. Kuznetsov asked Strelka to research potential uses of Zaryadye Park, write a detailed design brief, and run a new competition. “I came up with this new idea that we should do something absolutely diferent with a Only 10 days after the press event for Zaryadye Park, the very complicated, strong program, with high-level experts, jury Union of Architects announced an open ideas competition. members, architects, an absolutely diferent thing than was From hundreds of responses, 116 were short-listed and voted done before,” Kuznetsov said. on by the public that spring. They included oversized Easter eggs, a park devoted to the Glory of Russia, construction of the The research process and international expertise that went into unbuilt 1919 Tatlin’s Tower, a massive geodesic dome, and a its design brief made all the diference. Leontiev and a project sprawling formalistic concert hall. The results were ridiculed, team of 21 urban designers and other experts used digital and variously described as “garbage,” “horrible,” “rubbish,” a “dead physical anthropological methods to investigate the site and end,” and “not constructive.” The competition was abandoned. design the program, and even managed to ind someone still Soon after, Mayor Sobyanin appointed Sergey Kuznetsov, who living to interview who had once inhabited the old Zaryadye

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RIGHT

Much of the park sits atop a 430-car garage.

OPPOSITE

The park’s glass outdoor pavilion and one of Moscow’s seven Stalin-era skyscrapers lie beyond the steppe landscape zone.

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broadly positive response. Meanwhile, the competition itself had generated a huge amount of discussion about what constitutes a high-quality public space. The process became its own reward.

One success led to another. Strelka KB began consulting for the city on a wide range of streetscapes, plazas, parks, and competitions, resulting in implementation of designs by European landscape architecture irms such as West 8, OKRA, Gillespies, Snøhetta, and Djao-Rakitine and generating public commissions for young innovative Moscow oices such as Wowhaus, Meganom, and Buromoscow. Four years later, on September 9, 2017, President Putin declared Zaryadye Park a gift to the city and credited the mayor and chief architect for their work at the opening ceremony. By that time, a breathtaking transformation had taken shape. “The central part of Moscow has been transformed in the time that we’ve been going there,” said Charles Renfro.

“In terms of its streets, almost every sidewalk has been repaved, and every street has been narrowed. They put all of the roads on

IWAN BAAN, COURTESY DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO

neighborhood in the 1940s. They fought for the park to be a noncommercial space, arguing that investment in the public realm would boost commercial development in the surrounding area. They suggested its name reference the old Zaryadye neighborhood rather than the Rossiya Hotel, making it belong to residents more than to the Kremlin. They brought in Ed Uhlir from Millennium Park Chicago and Doug Blonsky, ASLA, from the Central Park Conservancy to advise on the program.

They also invited a dream team of specialists to sit on the jury, including Martha Schwartz, FASLA; Peter Walker, FASLA; and Ken Smith, FASLA; the sociologist Saskia Sassen; and Martha Thorne, the executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, together with government oicials and then-Strelka educational director Yuri Grigoryan of Project Meganom. By September 2013, Strelka formalized its consultancy practice, founding Strelka KB as a public-beneit corporation to advise the city on its parks and streetscape. In November, the announcement of the winning design by the Diller Scoidio + Renfro team received a

IWAN BAAN, COURTESY DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO

diets. There’s more shared space than there was before, so it’s not roaring traic zooming by. They’ve made the city much more habitable, peaceful, and generous.”

Since 2014, the city has spread more than 250,000 shrubs, 12,000 trees, 7,000 pedestrian street lamps, and ive million square feet of granite sidewalks throughout the center of Moscow, and redesigned dozens of plazas with Piet Oudolfstyle tall grasses and other plantings. Strelka KB, a two-person outit in 2013, wrote streetscape guidelines and ran international competitions that had shaped reconstruction of four square miles of Moscow through its My Street program. It took cues from the Bloomberg administration’s New York City streetscape manual and from a study commissioned by the New York City-based Gehl Institute. Strelka KB now employs a staf of 250 urban designers, anthropologists, researchers, and other specialists who run competitions and advise public-space initiatives in more than 300 other cities.

“What speaks a lot about Moscow the city and Russia itself is that whatever we do, it’s super ambitious,” Melnikova said. “When you haven’t done anything for your cities for 30 years, when you haven’t invested attention and resources into public space and decide to do this so ambitiously and in a very short time…this is part of Russian DNA. As soon as you have an aim, you can mobilize yourselves and the community and take huge steps. Nobody [has] done such an ambitious and very speedy thing with this amount of attention to details, and with such generosity to the people.”

“G

REEN HAS RETURNED in some degree to the streets because we really emphasized in the guidelines that you have to use these natural facilities like penetration to soil of rainwater and green surfaces, and you need to have trees in streets because of climate comfort,” said Yekaterina Maleeva, who led the My Street program for Strelka KB. “Then you have better temperatures in summer, and you have this precipitation not going into the sewage system. What has happened in Tverskaya

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018 / 167

RIGHT

West 8 designed the streetscape improvements on Tverskaya Street, including planters, pavement, and seating.

BOTTOM RIGHT

Traic clogs Tverskaya Street prior to West 8’s redesign.

BELOW

Street—and they are planting Sadovoye [the Garden Ring] right swing sets in front of the Metro station, built glass pavilions for now—is really incredible. This is really a revolution.” fast-casual burger stands and retail vendors, and surrounded the towering Vladimir Mayakovsky statue with planters illed The diference is most evident in the places that resisted with tall grasses, shrubs, and trees. To connect two sections change, especially the area around Lubyanka Square, sur- of the pedestrianized Boulevard Ring around central Moscow rounded by various agencies of the secret police and still at Khokhlovskaya Square, Djao-Rakitine, based in London, overwhelmed by countless lanes of fast-moving traic with no unearthed an ancient wall around the old city and built an street-level pedestrian crossings. It culminates in a blank empty amphitheater around it. Along the Moskva River’s Krymskaya square dominated by the Lubyanka Building, the former KGB Embankment, Wowhaus designed flowing blond wood benchheadquarters, an old Soviet hammer-and-sickle still prominent es, planters illed with trees, shrubs, and tall grasses, angular on the pediment. Snøhetta completely redesigned the square, café kiosks, blue-lit jet fountains, and syncopated brick and but the agencies rejected most of the improvements. In most granite-tile pavement. Along the stately shopping boulevard other parts of central Moscow, architects and planners suc- of Tverskaya Street, West 8 built a system of embedded plantceeded in widening sidewalks, implementing street-level ers with irrigation for tall trees, concrete and wooden plinth crossings, planting trees, removing parking from sidewalks, benches, trash receptacles, and new granite pavers. installing modern benches, and designing curves in roads to slow traic. At Triumfalnaya Square—a frequent place of As impressive as the realization of these streetscapes, plazas, protest and crackdowns—Buromoscow created actively used and a new 35-acre landscape at the foot of the Kremlin may

168 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

VOSTOK PHOTOGRAPHY/COURTESY WEST 8, TOP; COURTESY STRELKA KB, BOTTOM LEFT; COURTESY WEST 8, BOTTOM RIGHT

Djao-Rakitine’s amphitheater at Khokhlovskaya Square faces an old, below-grade Moscow city wall.

LEFT

Along the Moskva River embankment, West 8 redesigned the streetscape for pedestrian walkways alongside the Kremlin.

ABOVE

COURTESY WEST 8, TOP; VOSTOK PHOTOGRAPHY/COURTESY WEST 8, BOTTOM

Pedestrian lamps supplement streetlights, trees, and grass to allow for greater comfort on the human scale.

be, the most enthralling aspect of the entire body of work is the intersection of social science research, detailed technical site analysis, and political pragmatism that delivered massive improvements to public space. For Americans hoping to better understand Russian culture and politics, Zaryadye Park and the My Street program reveal a more nuanced view of the workings of Russian government at the level of the municipal bureaucracy.

Nine years after the founding of the Strelka Institute, by treating public space as a technical, depoliticized, objective question involving practical improvements such as standardizing the width of traic lanes to expand sidewalks and create room for tree plantings, architects and urban researchers efectively neutralized political questions to produce a new lexicon of public space. They uncovered a potential for freedom of action that is already vastly improving the experience of Moscow residents.

Now their goal is to extend those beneits to the outlying areas of Moscow and to other cities through streetscape programs and reconstruction of the 1960s Khrushchev-era prefab housing.

“I think now we have [a] really revolutionary efect with these public spaces,” said Kuznetsov, the chief architect. “We have diferent statistics and igures about presence of people on the streets, on the squares, in the parks. This is of course extremely interesting, because if we take into account the situation 10 years ago, it was only horrible traic in Moscow, cars everywhere, no pedestrian sidewalks, [nothing] comfortable for normal life in the city besides subway, oice, apartment, and your car. The comfortable zone was extremely tight, little, and [there were] really very few places where you [could] go to spend some time and rub shoulders with other people.”

Criticism of Zaryadye Park has focused on details, whether the program serves Moscow residents or one-time visitors and tourists, and on its costs, which anonymous estimates put at more than twice the oicial igure of $190 million, not including the Philharmonic Hall. Architects, among them Eugene Asse, the founder of MARCH, question whether Zaryadye

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018 / 169

ABOVE

The City of Moscow incorporated West 8’s work into a unifying design along the river.

LEFT

Plantings along the Boulevard Ring Road around central Moscow allow for continuous vegetation and wider walkways.

OPPOSITE

could have been restored as an integral part of the city, referencing its historical context, without being turned into a massive commercial development. Others criticize the extent to which the Kremlin has used the park to its political advantage.

But nobody questions the scale of accomplishment the park represents. As for the idea of American landscape architects and designers collaborating on the biggest new public-space project in Moscow in a century during a period of heightening tensions, most see that as only positive. “You know, it was, in [the] case of Zaryadye Park, like a sensation because in the time of [the] Eastern Ukraine crisis and something serious like Cold War issures in the world, this type of collaboration between American and Russian architects here in front of the Kremlin was a great example of a possible way to collaborate and to have a dialogue,” Kuznetsov said. “I’m proud of this. I think [it] is the biggest thing we did, [an] example of how we can collaborate and interact with each other and do something very positive for both of us.”

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An open question is whether improving living conditions and beautifying public squares in Moscow will neutralize the opposition or prove the potency of civic action through direct engagement and cooperation with the government. Russian architects tend to deflect political questions, taking a pragmatic approach to accomplishing what they can within the existing system: Do what you will, but stay out of politics. The most telling response to questions about the ethics of working with the Putin regime was that the government could be much worse.

In March, Putin was expected to be elected to his fourth term as president with little to no opposition. Meanwhile, in the United States, the Trump-Russia probe continues to unwind interference in the 2016 presidential election. Russia continues to occupy parts of Georgia and Ukraine and jail opposition leaders, and covert Russian propaganda has extended a broad, right-wing authoritarian influence in the Soviet Union’s former satellite republics. “Unfortunately, it’s

COURTESY WEST 8, TOP; COURTESY STRELKA KB, BOTTOM

A major component of Moscow’s My Street program involved expanding sidewalks and putting gardens along 7.5 miles of the Garden Ring Road.

COURTESY STRELKA KB

kind of boring in a way,” Renfro said of the politics of working in Russia. “Maybe that in itself is interesting, that within the tumult of what’s going on at the national or international level [in] geopolitics, a project like this could fly under the radar. It’s a testament to how much the world is still working normally, and cooperatively and experimentally together.”

In the United States and Western Europe, with the failure of efective policy making and the collapse of political consensus building, there’s a growing sense that public space is one of the last refuges in which shared public interests can be collectively expressed. All else is absorbed in relentless proit-driven calculations of private capital and the polarizing algorithms of social media and cable news. Yet in reality, there’s reason to fear that public space is only a supericial palliative that avoids deeper problems. Cleaned-up parks and redesigned streetscapes will not stimulate more equitable distribution of wealth—by almost every measure, the United States is much more unequal than

Russia—or rescue the new cosmopolitan city from exploitation by real estate developers. Only expanded rent regulation is likely to do that. As with the High Line, public space also turns out to be a useful instrument for accelerating the inflation of real estate values. That also became part of Zaryadye Park’s rationale. Will public space fulill its promise to strengthen Russia’s democratic public sphere or merely serve as a politically neutralized relief valve for a kind of dictatorship of the oligarchy that masquerades as magnanimous leadership? In giving the gift of Zaryadye Park to Moscow, Putin fully expects its citizens’ cooperation in return.

They should show up to vote and not complain too much, even if no other real candidate is on the ballot. But even if it accomplishes nothing else, Moscow’s new parks and streetscapes will certainly have improved the quality of everyday life in Moscow, following a process that itself ofers a potent model for change.

STEPHEN ZACKS IS AN ARCHITECTURE CRITIC, URBANIST, AND CURATOR BASED IN NEW YORK CITY.

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018 / 171

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BOOKS BIG SUR’S BIG COMPROMISES BIG SUR: THE MAKING OF A PRIZED CALIFORNIA LANDSCAPE

BY SHELLEY ALDEN BROOKS; OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 2017; 279 PAGES, $29.95.

REVIEWED BY JANE GILLETTE

B

ig Sur: The Making of a Prized California Landscape explores the ins and outs of “making” the 75-mile-long stretch of California’s central coast where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise 5,000 feet just three miles from the Paciic coast. Mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, deer, and numerous other animals flourish there—as do a relatively small number of human beings.

Our questions begin with the title: Is the landscape of Big Sur “prized” because it is a beautiful example of nature? Or because it is representative of California culture? And how does anyone “make” such a landscape? Author Shelley Alden Brooks tackles these issues early on. She explains the equal value of nature and culture in Big Sur, and we learn that what “made” this speciic landscape possible was political action of a sort that carries a critical message for the times we live in: compromise. Here’s the basic fact: “Beginning with the creation of the Coast Master Plan in 1962…Big Sur shrewdly adopted contemporary tools, including a property owners’ association, a land trust, and the government’s resources and environmental guidelines to retain a rural, seemingly traditional landscape…. In so doing, locals created something that was actually quite modern—a hybrid space that encompassed American ideals of settlement and the wild.” The citizens of Big Sur were able to do this with intergov-

174 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

ernmental and private collaboration—“by respecting the role of each, as well as the role of private citizens.” And they managed to do this even though all the involved groups were afraid. Each one had something to gain—and lose. We may ind this sort of thing hard to understand these days. But it is particularly pleasurable when we do. Brooks issues a warning early on: “There never has been, and it is unlikely there ever will be, consensus on what constitutes ideal land management.” Nor is it likely that an ideal compromise will ever emerge. The book is, therefore, a diicult read for a good reason. Brooks does not just convey the facts of a complicated historical narrative. She succeeds in capturing the dark side of the compromise that made Big Sur what it is, compromise that inevitably includes paradox, irony, uncertainty, tension, and, despite all that respecting of roles, the inclusion of things each side hates.

The diligent text is repetitious by necessity. From the beginning, Brooks repeatedly emphasizes that the beauty of Big Sur owes to both nature and culture. It has always been a wild but inhabited land. Verbal descriptions convince us of its natural beauty, as do the black-and-white photographs, the only criticism of which is that we long for many more. As for culture, Brooks stresses that Big Sur is a symbol “of California and

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/BOOKS

solidiied their relationship in such institutions as the Big Sur Grange), the 1962 Esalen Institute (with visiting celebrities ranging from Bob Dylan to Timothy Leary), and, over the years, an increasing number of wealthy residents attracted by various aspects of the natural and cultural landscape.

RIGHT

In 1962 Big Sur’s Esalen Institute began exploring the outer boundaries of human potential.

BOTTOM

The Big Sur Grange Hall, built in 1950, hosts community gatherings.

the West, a place rife with meaning in contemporary society,” and by including a historical range of artistic references she demonstrates that cultural meanings change over time. The poet Robinson Jefers, who settled nearby in 1914, used Big Sur as a backdrop for his works, “many of which challenged the dominant American attitude regarding progress, material gain, and the seemingly indiscriminate transformation and destruction of the natural world.” In the mid-1940s, the novelist Lillian Bos Ross celebrated homesteading families (The Big Sur Trilogy), while Henry Miller, the author of Tropic of Cancer and, more relevantly, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957), echoed much of Jefers’s criticism.

The photographer Ansel Adams played a critical role in the planning eforts of the 1960s, putting his faith in the federal government as the only entity powerful enough to succeed, while in 1962 Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur described the landscape and the shenanigans of visiting humans with a totally diferent, apolitical vibe. In addition to artists, Big Sur was home to a signiicant community of descendants of homesteading families (who

176 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Big Sur landscape took on even more importance. Most of America was growing more urban while the automobile provided the freedom to encounter the “once-wild.” Increasingly, nature became a consumer good valued for its aesthetic and symbolic qualities.

The number of tourists attracted to Big Sur proved to be both a inancial boon and a potentially destructive force. And yet, for a while at least, “Americans’ love for nature and technology merged to make many believe that they could simultaneously protect and enjoy the nation’s most beautiful landscapes.” One of the irst serious threats to preservation was the building of Highway 1, construction of which began in 1921 and ended in 1937. While some (like Jefers) immediately feared the highway, farmers and business owners saw the inancial advantages of connections to the outside world, and tax-hungry state legislators wanted the highway “in order to showcase the region’s stunning beauty to a public eager to consume it.”

SHELLEY ALDEN BROOKS

THE BACK

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/BOOKS

IN ADDITION TO ARTISTS, BIG SUR WAS HOME TO A SIGNIFICANT COMMUNITY OF DESCENDANTS OF HOMESTEADING FAMILIES.

A redwood grove and creek in Big Sur.

178 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

bellwether forecasting nationwide trends.” The trends—even those protecting nature—are perhaps not exactly what we’d prefer. “Paradoxically, while a slow-growth measure like the Coast Master Plan ran counter to California’s dominant landuse patterns, the county plan portended many soon-to-develop California trends: coastal conservation, promotion of property rights and minimum-lot-size protection, soaring real-estate prices, and the impact of wealth on the land and its human communities.” Of course we have to remember that the protection also provided lots of visual pleasure and emotional sustenance to millions of tourists, aluent or not.

As a side note, landscape architects (and second-home residents of the entire California coast) might enjoy learning about the plan’s possible influence on Halprin’s Sea Ranch.

And—a warning note—if readers are confused by all the acronyms with Cs in them, they must remember there’s a list of abbreviations at the back of the book.

Planning professionals will take pleasure in Brooks’s detailed account of the various schemes, for example the work of the Big Sur Multi-Agency Advisory Council (BSMAAC), which preserved both the existing natural beauty and a version of “the wild,” a feat that seems almost impossible. Created in the late 1980s, the BSMAAC made local preservation possible because it “managed to bring together the many agencies that held land-management authority in Big Sur—from Los Padres National Forest to the Big Sur Land Trust to the

SHELLEY ALDEN BROOKS

RIGHT

Brooks discusses in detail how nature was preserved over the years, even while tourism flourished. In particular she concentrates on the 1960s coastal master plan of Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM), a county-led, slow-growth plan that was in large part the work of Nathaniel Owings. (Owings reserved for himself the tip of Grimes Point, where he built an A-frame getaway house 640 feet above the crashing waves.)

The primary objective of the SOM plan was “to preserve the scenic beauty of Big Sur through securing open space and to do so ‘without imposing unjustiiable restrictions on present or future property owners,’” a plan apparently “based on the idea that Big Sur’s best hope for remaining undeveloped was to entrust it to those who could afford the privilege of residing along this coast.” Here is the paradoxical heart of the matter, which Brooks explores in all its complexity. Various disagreements erupted around the plan, most of them centered on the tension between property rights and preservation schemes, but also between people who put their trust in the federal government as the only efective agency, those who only trusted local control, and some who saw all varieties of governmental power as a danger to property rights. Add to this California’s 1970s measures against taxation, particularly the 1978 Proposition 13—and the subsequent need for nonlocal money—and we begin to wonder why Big Sur is still standing. What cheers us up is that the majority of citizens, no matter their speciic agendas, saw that a plan was needed and thereby proved “a

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/BOOKS

A PLACE WITH THE APPEARANCE OF A DEMOCRATIC LANDSCAPE IS INCREASINGLY “EXCLUSIVE.”

RIGHT

The Bixby Bridge, completed in 1932, is a stunning part of scenic Highway 1.

Monterey County Regional Parks District—and to secure their compliance with the goals laid out in the LCP [Local Coastal Program].” The LCP itself minimized development “to protect the coast as a ‘scenic rural area where residents’ individual lifestyles can flourish, traditional ranching uses can continue, and the public can come to enjoy nature and ind refuge from the pace of urban life.’” Still, tourist amenities were kept to a minimum. For example, the plan emphasized visual access by building more scenic turnouts on the highway rather than more hiking trails, campgrounds, and lodging facilities. It also regulated against such recreation facilities as golf courses, tennis courts, cinemas, and boating facilities. In the LCP “two powerful strains of the time—environmental protection and private-property rights—combined to create a hybrid space… that reflected…[the] belief that the land could be inhabited while still evoking popular ideas of the wild.” The residents’ worst fears never came to pass: no federal landlords, no landscape deterioration. Although change did take place. Landscape historians will enjoy the LCP decision that “the presence of livestock enhances the rural western feeling of Big Sur and adds to [the] visitor’s enjoyment of the area.” Flocks of 18th-century English sheep come to mind.

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After reading Brooks, I was inspired to make a visit to Big Sur, which proved unfeasible. So, I purchased a copy of Kerouac’s Big Sur and fell into bed to read the account of his 1960 stay in Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Bixby Canyon cabin, where he sufered a nervous breakdown. Kerouac’s descriptions of nature are beautiful but frightening because that’s how he saw the landscape: “When later I heard people say ‘Oh Big Sur must be beautiful!’

I gulp to wonder why it has the reputation of being beautiful above and beyond its fearfulness, its Blakean groaning roughrock Creation throes, those vistas when you drive the coast highway on a sunny day opening up the eye for miles of horrible washing sawing.” After his most horrible night of madness, morning arrives with “all the green nature of the canyon now waving in the morning sun looking like a cruel idiot convocation.” And yet the sun shines, the birds sing: “Simple golden eternity blessing all…. Something good will come out of all things yet—And it will be golden and eternal just like that—There’s no need to say another word.” The nature of Big Sur moved me, and then I had to admit that I wasn’t really responding to nature. It was the writing about nature that I found so beautiful. Not the landscape itself, only the cultural product.

JANE GILLETTE IS A FORMER FEATURES EDITOR AT LAM. HER BOOK, THE TRAIL OF THE DEMON AND OTHER STORIES, IS AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.

SHELLEY ALDEN BROOKS

Brooks’s conclusions seem optimistic, and yet she makes it clear that paradox, irony, uncertainty, and tension are inevitable aspects of successful compromise. One of the more diicult for many of us is that Big Sur is in large part the home of the rich. A place with the appearance of a democratic landscape is increasingly “exclusive,” a place of wealth disparity increased by the service economy. Brooks makes this point at the end of her book with a hilarious anecdote about an episode of Mad Men, which I will not spoil by relating.

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BOOKS OF INTEREST

EVEN THE CONCEPT OF LANDSCAPE IN THE MIDDLE EAST IS FAIRLY RECENT.

CONSTRUCTED WETLANDS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

DESERT GARDENS OF STEVE MARTINO

BY GARY AUSTIN AND KONGJIAN YU; LONDON AND NEW YORK: ROUTLEDGE, 2016; 302 PAGES, $75.

BY CAREN YGLESIAS; NEW YORK: THE MONACELLI PRESS, 2018; 240 PAGES, $50.

What do you need to know about constructed wetlands? It’s probably here. The authors cover beneits, design, plantings, ecology, and more.

With a target audience of upper-level students and practitioners, this extensively illustrated book does have a tendency to get into the weeds of the topic (Sample sentence: “Swans, geese, many species of ducks, and king rail eat the plant’s seeds and tubers, while muskrat, beaver, and porcupine eat the tubers.”). But they’re wetland-friendly weeds.

The desert has its own schedule.

And while the photos in this book capture a collection of desert gardens

by Steve Martino, FASLA, at their brief, peak bloom, his work surprises at any time of year. Water features, gnarled trees, sculptural cacti, and imaginative use of rebar meant to mimic stalks of native ocotillo add year-round interest. His gardens even improve over time, notes the book’s preface: “The steel plates rust, bright colors have made their peace with the sun, minerals in the water deposit traces on stucco walls, plants slowly grow.”

182 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

CONTEMPORARY URBAN LANDSCAPES OF THE MIDDLE EAST EDITED BY MOHAMMAD GHARIPOUR; LONDON AND NEW YORK: ROUTLEDGE, 2016; 315 PAGES, $49.95.

This collection of a dozen essays covers a variety of subjects (Cairo parks, Tehran parks, xeriscapes, and stonework among them). An interesting notion appears in chapter 2, in which James Wescoat Jr., ASLA, makes the case that even the concept of “landscape” in the Middle East is fairly recent. It refers to neither just gardens nor geography there, he says, but a combination of both.

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INFORMATION AND DEADLINES Awards presented at the ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO in Philadelphia, October 19-22, 2018.

Entry registrations and payments are due by May 7, 2018; submission deadline is May 21.

CATEGORIES General Design Residential Design Analysis & Planning Communications Student Collaboration Student Community Service Research

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WHAT’S YOUR INTEREST? ASLA offers 20 Professional Practice Networks (PPNs) – national platforms for networking and exchanging information on specific topics. Find your interest area and join for free.

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196 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

ASLA Online Learning

Student & Emerging Professional

SPOTLIGHT mini-series

Call for Proposals Deadline: May 25, 2018

he ASLA 2018 Online Learning Student & Emerging Professional SPOTLIGHT mini-series call for proposals is now open! his initiative gives YOU the opportunity to work with a Professional Practice Network (PPN) mentor in creating a presentation for ASLA’s Online Learning series. Do you have eye-opening research to share with the profession, or an inclination to do a little design exploration over the summer? Here’s your chance!

ASLA members with the following membership types may apply: Student Member Student Ailiate Member Associate Member Full Member – Emerging Professional he call for proposals is now open and will close on Friday, May 25, 2018.

TO SUBMIT AN ONLINE PROPOSAL: 1. Visit www.surveymonkey.com/r/spotlight2018 2. Provide a presentation description – including title, short description (150 words), outline, and three learning objectives for the presentation.

3. Submit a portfolio giving ASLA and PPN mentors the opportunity to get to know you and your work (maximum five sheets at 8.5”x11”).

Selected participants will be notified in June. At this time, you will be introduced to your PPN mentor and the collaboration begins! Presentations will take place in August.

Questions? Please email us at propractice@asla.org.

For additional information on ASLA’s Online Learning opportunities and to view past SPOTLIGHT mini-series, visit:

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THE BACK

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200 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

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PAGE #

85, 205 4 186 208 45, 202 41 183 185 197 175 47 181, 207 53 208 188 C2-1, 208 37 61 39, 202 67 195 190 203 75, 202 191 205 78, 203 207 9, 203 13, 203 86 88 36, 204 8, 208 5 49, 205 190, 206 22, 204 44, 207 193 33 77 189 204 56, 205 16, 202 173, 202 194 63, 206 11 177 C4 59 186 30 29 21, 55 25, 206 209 206 19 203 204 195 211 195 58 69 207 31, 204 196 18, 206 194 187 188 192 15 202 187 35 189 79 203 83 51 87, 204 195 191 192 57, 205 194 71 208 2-3 10 17, 206 184 27, 207 207 43 210 205, C3 158 193 179 172 65

THE BACK

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207

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800-343-6948

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800-441-3573

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800-873-3321

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763-972-5237

41 195

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800-247-2326

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800-552-6331

Plantation Products

508-285-5800

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323-936-7111

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Columbia Cascade Company

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May 6 – 7, 2018 TRADE SHOW & CONFERENCE

May 8 – 10, 2018

LIGHTFAIR.COM

PHOTO CREDITS © SCOTT FRANCES/OTTO & COURTESY BARNEYS NEW YORK

2018 HALS CHALLENGE MEMORIALIZATION, COMMEMORATING THE GREAT WAR

JULY 31, 2018 AWARDS PRESENTED: OCTOBER 19-22, 2018

SUBMISSION DEADLINE:

DURING THE ASLA ANNUAL MEETING AND EXPO IN PHILADELPHIA District of Columbia War Memorial, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, HABS DC-857-5

The mission of the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) is to document the country’s historic landscapes. For the ninth annual HALS Challenge, we invite you to document a World War I memorial site or landscape to honor the centennial of the end of World War I, the war to end all wars.

For information on how to prepare a HALS short format history visit NPS.GOV/HDP/COMPETITIONS/HALS_CHALLENGE.HTML To learn more about HALS visit ASLA.ORG/HALS

THE BACK

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BACKSTORY

REFILL AS NEEDED

LEFT

Robert Zarr, the founder of Park Rx America, walks in Meridian Hill Park in Washington, D.C., with María RuedaGonzález, a colleague at Unity Health Care.

TO HELP AILING PATIENTS, PARK RX AMERICA PRESCRIBES A DOSE OF NATURE.

BY JANE MARGOLIES

magine you go to the doctor with an ailment, a local efort called DC Park Rx. The initiative has and you’re given a prescription—but not for now expanded and has been renamed, reflecting medicine. Instead, the doctor instructs you to the goal of one day operating coast to coast. spend 30 minutes a day in a nearby park.

Zarr knows that his colleagues will be more likely Sound far-fetched? If Park Rx America and other to prescribe nature if it’s easy to do so, so Park Rx like-minded groups are successful, such “park America has been building a database of vetted prescriptions” will be increasingly common. Their parks and linking it to the electronic medical movement is based on the growing ield health records systems that hospitals, health clinof ecotherapy, which says that exposure to ics, and doctors’ oices use. That way, a pedianature can have healing efects for those trician who is treating a child with ADHD, for sufering from depression, attention deicit example, can, with a couple of clicks, ind a park hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and chronic near the patient’s home and prescribe visits to that conditions such as diabetes and high blood park in the same window on the computer screen pressure. Exercise isn’t the main point, that he or she uses to prescribe Ritalin. though vigorous walks or shooting some hoops can certainly help those who are inac- Landscape architects, of course, design the parks tive or overweight. Studies show that sim- that doctors may be sending patients to. Certain ply being in a natural setting—sitting on a landscape features such as trees and running bench, inhaling fresh air, and hearing the water are believed to have the greatest healing chirping of birds—can have beneits like low- efect, according to John Henderson, the execuering levels of the stress hormone cortisol. tive director of Park Rx America. Incorporating these and other calming elements into designs for Landscape architects may not know much parks and public spaces “will maximize therapeuabout cortisol levels, but doctors do, and tic beneits,” he says—not only for patients with Park Rx America is directed at them— park prescriptions, but all of us. encouraging them to prescribe a dose of nature just as they prescribe a dose of pills. The group, in fact, JANE MARGOLIES IS A NEW YORK-BASED JOURNALIST was started by a physician, Robert Zarr, a Wash- AND FREQUENT CONTRIBUTOR TO THE NEW YORK TIMES. ington, D.C., pediatrician, who in 2010 launched

212 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE APR 2018

KATE PATTERSON

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