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Snøhetta’s landscape accelerator
SYLVATICA STUDIO Treading lightly in an Atlanta forest
A PAINTER’S TABLEAU Nelson Byrd Woltz at historic Olana
STONE STANDARDS New criteria for knowing your supply
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LAM 12 INSIDE 14 LAND MATTERS
FOREGROUND 18 NOW Louisville’s culture-spanning, pop-up soccer pitch; honoring ancient Arctic burial practices in a modern Baffin Island cemetery; a cult juniper on the rise; peace park dreams for the U.S.–Mexican border; and more. EDITED BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER
36 GARDENS
42 DETAILS
Woven in Place At Kopupaka Reserve, New Zealand’s Isthmus Group is weaving Maori culture into stormwater infrastructure. BY GWENETH LEIGH, ASLA
52 MATERIALS
Solid as a Rock It’s natural and durable, but is stone always a sustainable building material? It depends. BY MEG CALKINS, FASLA
62 GOODS
Beyond Borders Panels, fences, walls, and enclosures that surround just about anything. BY KATARINA KATSMA, ASLA
Secrets to Share Sadafumi Uchiyama, ASLA, can teach you how to make a Japanese garden in Portland, Oregon. But you’ll have to move your own big rocks.
TIMOTHY HURSLEY
BY KYNA RUBIN
6 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
“ WE WANT PEOPLE TO FEEL SLIGHTLY NOT AFRAID BUT THRILLED.” —SUSAN STAINBACK, ASLA, P. 70
FEATURES 70 A FOREST IN THE CITY IN THE FOREST Sylvatica Studio’s landscape design at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History immerses visitors in Atlanta’s old-growth Piedmont forest. BY JONATHAN LERNER
88 RIPPLE EFFECT A topographically exuberant research campus by Snøhetta embraces the MAX IV synchrotron particle accelerator. BY JESSICA BRIDGER
108 A VIEW OF THE WORLD Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects has restored what might have been Frederic Church’s greatest work: the landscape of Olana, his upstate New York home. BY MAC GRISWOLD
THE BACK 128 GARDEN INDUSTRY LAND Collective’s David Rubin, ASLA, has the right horticultural tool for the job. BY BRADFORD MCKEE
138 BOOKS
Make Yourself Comfortable A review of Be Seated, by Laurie Olin. BY JANE GILLETTE
158 ADVERTISER INDEX 159 ADVERTISERS BY PRODUCT CATEGORY 168 BACKSTORY
Open Book The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion stockpiles weapons for inclusive design. BY JENNIFER REUT
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018 / 7
THE MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS
EDITOR Bradford McKee / bmckee@asla.org
The pattern of mounds in Snøhetta’s landscape for the MAX IV synchrotron particle accelerator in Lund, Sweden, page 88.
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REPRESENTATIVE Monica Barkley / subscriptions@asla.org REPRINTS For custom reprints, please call Wright’s Media at 877-652-5295. BACK ISSUES 888-999-ASLA (2752) Landscape Architecture Magazine (ISSN 0023-8031) is published monthly by the American Society of Landscape Architects, 636 Eye Street NW, Washington, DC 200013736. Periodical postage paid at Washington, D.C., and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Landscape Architecture Magazine, 636 Eye Street NW, Washington, DC 20001-3736. Publications Mail Agreement No. 41024518. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to PO Box 503 RPO, West Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 4R6. Copyright 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.
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 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 ASSOCIATE REPRESENTATIVE Magdalena Aravena, Associate ASLA NATIONAL STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE Abigail M. Reimel, Student ASLA PARLIAMENTARIAN Kay Williams, FASLA
8 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
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INSIDE
/
CONTRIBUTORS MAC GRISWOLD (“A View of the World,”
page 108) is finalizing a biography of the renowned gardener, style icon, and art collector Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon for publication in the spring of 2019. Griswold is the author of four previous works of garden and cultural landscape history, including The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island (2013). She can be reached at mac@macgriswold.com. “A deeper look into the science that underlies Olana’s Strategic Landscape Design Plan, a greater understanding of how incredibly collaborative the process was, more interviews with the wide net of practitioners in many fields—those are the things I wish I could have included in my story.” KYNA RUBIN (“Secrets to Share,” page 36) is a naturalist and freelance writer in Portland, Oregon.
“I wish I could have included the evocative images that the Japanese garden cra smen used to explain concepts—for instance, that the proper distance between steppingstones on a water basin path adheres to the six-inch gait of an elderly woman in a kimono.”
CLARIFICATION
Our December story on a new documentary about Piet Oudolf misidentified one of the gardens that appeared in the film. It is Hauser & Wirth Somerset, not the Serpentine Garden in London. In addition, screenings in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles will not be part of the Architecture & Design Film Festival. Please see pietoudolfmovie.com for screening updates. We regret the errors.
At LAM, we don’t know what we don’t know. If you have a story, project, obsession, or simply an area of interest you’d like to see covered, tell us! Send it to lam@asla.org. Visit LAM online at landscapearchitecturemagazine.org. Follow us on Twitter @landarchmag and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ landscapearchitecturemagazine. LAM is available in digital format through landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/ subscribe or by calling 1-888-999-ASLA.
12 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
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n November, Moody’s Investors Service, the bond rating agency, released a cautionary report on climate change. Looking ahead, the report said, the effects of what it describes as climate trends and climate shocks are sure to become a “growing negative credit factor” for states, localities, or utilities that don’t appear to be responding to potential climate change effects through mitigation or adaptation. Cities and others issue bonds to borrow money for building things such as infrastructure or schools. They need investors to know they’re a good risk. Moody’s came out to say that it has begun deciding, based on climate resilience among a matrix of other factors, whether a given risk is good or bad. “If you’re exposed,” one Moody’s analyst told Bloomberg, “we know that.” The other of the two biggest rating agencies, Standard & Poor’s, is also keenly onto climate (it and Moody’s together run 80 percent of the bond rating business). It released a report in October to explain how municipal bond issuers will be affected by climate impacts. Like Moody’s, S&P specified two theaters of risk: the sudden extreme event, such as a hurricane, and “more gradual changes to the environment affecting land use, employment, and economic activity that support credit quality.” This may all seem very back-office in the design world, and for now it is. It is also, critically, moving to the fore as the federal stance on climate change and its many hazards is not only in retreat but in vicious denial. Trump administration appointees, who are like drones for industry, are ordering the removal of references to climate change in agency communications. The administration is also purging our government of good-faith, intelligent scientists who recognize the stakes for the country in confronting carbon emissions and defending against a rapidly changing physical environment. In August, the administration undid an Obama-era requirement that federal infrastructure projects to build roads and bridges account for future climate change effects in their designs, which is sheer idiocy.
14 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
Insurers of cities and of individuals have been signaling for years that their tolerance for climate-related losses is finite. The losses come from floods, fires, heat deaths, crop losses, depopulation in the case of New Orleans, and a huge surprise bill, as Moody’s report notes, for the Oroville Dam in California ($275 million). And then there is Puerto Rico’s wrecked power grid. Along with insurers, bond rating agencies can be seen as a deep state (forgive the term) in reality-based programming for the era of climate change. Is this a new brake on climate heedlessness? The rating agencies would have you think it’s not so new. Michael Wertz, a Moody’s vice president and senior analyst who led the climate report, told me the agency has been observing climate risks for some time. But the Moody’s report struck Cooper Martin, the program director of the Sustainable Cities Institute at the National League of Cities, as a “complete reversal.” Moody’s had earlier stated its interest in the ways cities are confronting climate, “but they weren’t going to proactively or preemptively make changes based on climate,” Martin said. “They would look at the ability to pay, rebuild, and recover, and factor that in, but until late November or early December, they weren’t proactively factoring climate change. This is a big reversal in that sense.” Either way, it’s a significant set of moves. One thing Martin said he does not welcome is the laying of all responsibility for climate action at the feet of cities. But what these ratings considerations give to landscape architects is an irresistible point of persuasion around climate preparedness when their clients are local officials and taxpayers hoping to attract investment. The alternative for them will be to do nothing and watch those bond ratings fall to junk status, and nobody wants that.
BRADFORD MCKEE EDITOR
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FOREGROUND
DAVID ST. GEORGE
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND
A basket-weave wall echoes traditional Maori craft at Kopupaka Reserve, in DETAILS, page 42.
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018 / 17
FOREGROUND
/
NOW
EDITED BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER
LOUISVILLE’S LIBERTY FIELD IS AN URBAN DESTINATION FOR EVERYONE— ESPECIALLY REFUGEES. BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER
L
ouisville, Kentucky, has long been linked with sports. Some know it as the home of the Kentucky Derby, others as the birthplace of the Louisville Slugger. But in recent years it’s become a city of soccer. In part, Louisville’s embrace of soccer follows national trends—soccer’s popularity has grown steadily since the 1990s—but it is also the result of decades of refugee resettlement. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2016, Kentucky had twice as many refugees (individuals who have experienced or have reason to fear persecution based on their race, religion, or nationality) resettled per capita as the national average.
18 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
This demographic shift inspired the creation of Liberty Field, a pop-up soccer pitch converted from an unused parking lot in the city’s Phoenix Hill neighborhood. The project, led by City Collaborative, a nonprofit urban research and design laboratory, is an attempt to better serve a population that is often overlooked. Patrick Piuma, a cofounder of City Collaborative, says he’s been troubled by the xenophobia that has become increasingly visible in many American communities. “The fastestgrowing segment of our population is refugees and immigrants,” he says. “How do we humanize each other? Soccer seemed like the kind of thing that would attract people from all over.”
ABOVE
Located in Louisville’s Phoenix Hill neighborhood, this smaller-than-average soccer pitch is designed for a popular style of pickup. BELOW
The field was built on top of a parking lot for just $30,000.
BRIAN PIERCE, TOP; PATRICK PIUMA, BOTTOM
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FOREGROUND
/NOW
POVERTY AND SOCCER FIELDS Louisville, Kentucky PERCENT OF FAMILIES BELOW POVERTY
American Community Survey 2011–2015 5-Year Estimates
SOCCER FIELDS
Liberty Field League Club
N
Indeed, in cities across the United States, soccer has emerged as a way to engage immigrant and refugee populations. Clarkston, Georgia, has a boys’ soccer program called the Fugees. San Diego has a club called YALLA (Arabic for “Let’s go”). Baltimore and Boston have Soccer Without Borders. In Louisville, Liberty Field is designed specifically for what’s known as “five-aside,” a style of soccer that is popular in Europe and South America. The pitch measures 90 feet by 60 feet, with a synthetic turf field and shipping containers sliced open to form goals. The project, completed in 2016 and expanded in 2017, is part of an effort called ReSurfaced, which temporarily transforms surface parking lots—which account for 25 percent of land use in downtown Louisville—into urban destinations. Liberty Field is the most ambitious undertaking yet. But though the field was used almost immediately, it took time for the rest of the space to fully come together. Among the challenges was the size of the lot. “Three-quarters of an acre is pretty big,” Piuma says. “You could go to a bar down the street, and if there were 50 people there, it felt like it was going on, but if there were 50 people here, it felt like it was dead.”
20 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
To help the space feel more welcoming, Piuma enlisted Patrick Henry, ASLA, and Louis Johnson, ASLA, two local landscape architects, who recommended tearing out more asphalt and adding additional trees and furniture. Custom bar tops encircle new lindens and Ulmus americana and double as supports. (Early on, a storm flattened the new trees, necessitating better support structures.) By summer 2017, the space included new artwork, an expanded beer BOTTOM garden, and a bourbon bar, sponsored by Adjacent to Liberty Brown-Forman, a local liquor company. Field are gathering Liberty Field seems to have given Louisville’s various populations more reasons to interact. In an article he cowrote for Medium, Piuma quoted a lifelong Kentuckian who regularly uses the field: “You’re definitely not going to get a game like this anywhere else in Louisville,” he said. “You’ve got people from all over, people from Kentucky playing against people from Somalia or Southeast Asia.” A player from Kenya put it more succinctly: “This is the only space in Louisville, in this whole city right now, that gives everybody a chance [to] play.” TIMOTHY A. SCHULER, EDITOR OF NOW, CAN BE REACHED AT TIMOTHYASCHULER@GMAIL. COM AND ON TWITTER @TIMOTHY_SCHULER.
spaces, such as a bourbon bar. INSET
Patrick Piuma (right) and Louie Adamson at one of the customdesigned bar tops, which support the young trees.
PAT SMITH/CITY COLLABORATIVE, TOP LEFT; LOUIS JOHNSON, ASLA, BOTTOM; PATRICK HENRY, ASLA, INSET
0 – 7 percent 8 – 15 percent 16 – 27 percent 28 – 45 percent 46 – 88 percent
FOREGROUND
/NOW BURIAL AT 64° NORTH
BY KATHARINE LOGAN
ABOVE
A view from the entrance to the whalebone arch at the cemetery’s edge and out to the arctic landscape beyond.
22 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
F
or thousands of years, the people of the Canadian Arctic lived lightly on a landscape of ice and tundra, moving with the animals and the seasons. Neither their dwellings nor their graves broke the surface of the land. In the latter half of the 20th century, however, cities sprouted in the north. Iqaluit, on Baffin Island’s Frobisher Bay, is one of these: latitude 64° north, population 7,700 and growing. For decades Iqaluit’s funerary infrastructure consisted of a municipal cemetery that was little more than functional, and then it was full. A new municipal cemetery, winner of a 2017 Canadian Society of Landscape Architects National Award of Excellence, now offers the community a
sacred place that “expresses spirituality, the passage of time, the circle of life,” the awards jury said. “Austere and perfect, this is a place with soul.” Located on a peninsula outside Iqaluit, the 8.4acre cemetery uses local materials and forms to honor indigenous traditions. “We tried to let the land speak for itself,” says Erik Lees, ASLA, the Vancouver-based principal of LEES+Associates, landscape architects for the project. Local boulders delineate paths even under snow. Weathering steel gates and memorial walls harmonize with the colors of arctic willow and the northern lights. Motifs in the gates refer to the amauti (the parka in which a woman carries her child) and the runners of the qamutiik (the Inuit sled). At a central ceremonial gathering place, a monumental arch frames a view toward the sea, symbolizing a connection to the afterlife. Composed of bowhead whale jawbones from a hunt that fed hundreds of people—the community’s first in
LEES+ASSOCIATES | TSC PHOTOGRAPHY
ON BAFFIN ISLAND, AN ARCTIC CEMETERY HONORS INDIGENOUS TRADITIONS.
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FOREGROUND
/NOW
RIGHT
The cemetery’s elemental materials harmonize with the landscape. BELOW
MEMORIAL WALLS ENTRY GATE
more than 75 years—the arch and municipal council balked at the up-front cost. its framed view honor the traditional Without the boxes, however, the complex and dynamic ground conditions make operations and Inuit way of life. maintenance intensive and expensive. “We’re tryTo preserve the fragile tundra ing to maintain the aesthetic qualities of the site,” during the cemetery’s con- says Cameron DeLong, a landscape architect who struction, turfs were carefully serves as manager of public works for the city of salvaged and later placed over Iqaluit. “In such a cold climate, a lot of the time CENTRAL CEREMONIAL disturbed areas. In late sum- we just have to say, it is what it is.” AREA mer, blooming tundra grasses WHALEBONE are evidence of the success of In important aspects, though, the cemetery surARCH the strategy. Taking conservation passes what it is. Beyond its formal use as a place into account in the cemetery’s op- of passage and remembrance, it serves more erations, active burial areas will be widely as a place of contemplation, a destination phased to ensure the tundra ecosys- for a Sunday outing, or a photo opportunity for visitors, transforming residents’ perception of tem will be sustained over time. what a cemetery can and should be, Lees says. A N The design originally called for pre- public open space that celebrates the community placed concrete boxes to facilitate and its arctic landscape has proven welcome in winter burials and to mitigate sub- this small city. “Thank you,” said Iqaluit Mayor sidence and muck from the thaw- Mary Wilman at the opening, “for creating this ing of excavated permafrost, but the cemetery that is so respectful of this place.”
24 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
LEES+ASSOCIATES | TSC PHOTOGRAPHY, TOP; LEES+ASSOCIATES, BOTTOM
All paths lead to the ceremonial area at the water’s edge.
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FOREGROUND
/NOW
LEFT
Two Woodward junipers grow at Laramie County Community College outside Cheyenne, Wyoming.
GETTING TO THE ROOTS PLUCKED FROM AN ABANDONED RESEARCH STATION, THE WOODWARD JUNIPER IS ON THE RISE IN THE ROCKIES.
Y
ou’ll be forgiven if you haven’t heard of the Woodward juniper (Juniperus scopulorum ‘Woodward’). The tree is an uncommonly slender columnar evergreen native to the Rocky Mountain region and the western plains, and hardly a celebrity in the landscape world. That is, unless we’re talking about Colorado. In recent years, this relatively obscure, highly sought-after tree—long an enigma to horticulturists—has wooed both designers and growers alike on the Front Range. More xeric than the Italian cypress and more compact than the Skyrocket juniper, Woodward is, in the words of Genevieve Villamizar, “matchless.” Villamizar is a landscape designer based in Carbondale, Colorado. She often works on highend residential projects in the Roaring Fork Valley and uses columnar
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Despite her admiration for the tree, Villamizar has yet to be able to use the Woodward juniper in a design. “It was never available!” she says. Indeed, Fort Collins Wholesale Nursery has reliably sold out of the juniper almost every single year since the late 1990s, says Scott Skogerboe, the nursery’s chief propagator. “We’d sell out before winter even hit,” he says. The reason the tree was in short supply was that it was nearly impossible to propagate. Initially a genetic accident, what became known as the Woodward juniper was initially “discovered” in a windbreak outside McPherson, Kansas, in the 1930s. Horticulturists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture took cuttings from the tree and planted them at the USDA’s Horticultural Field Station in Woodward, Oklahoma. They also shipped cuttings to a sister station in Cheyenne, Wyoming. For decades, the Cheyenne station, which encompassed 2,200 acres in the high desert, was a hub for horticultural experimentation. But in 1974, its mandate changed
to focus on grasslands research, and much of the horticultural facility was abandoned. It was within that remnant landscape that Skogerboe first discovered the Woodward. That some of the trees had survived without any additional water or care “really told us something,” Skogerboe says. And yet propagation proved difficult. In early trials, only five out of 100 cuttings would root. But in 2012, Skogerboe’s colleague, Kirk Fieseler, stumbled onto the key. He used a growing medium of one third sand, one third peat, and one third Perlite; added indolebutyric acid at 5,000 parts per million; and placed the cuttings two to two and a half inches deep, far deeper than Skogerboe typically did. Almost every cutting rooted. Now, the Woodward may finally be more available. In 2015, Plant Select, a partnership between the Denver Botanic Gardens and Colorado State University that helps promote drought-tolerant plants well suited to the Colorado climate, gave the Woodward its stamp of approval, and several large West Coast wholesale nurseries, including Bron & Sons in British Columbia and Van Essen in Oregon, began to propagate the tree. Although scarcity can create its own appeal, Villamizar expects that increased availability will only make the Woodward more popular. Maybe soon she’ll even get her hands on one.
ROSS SHRIGLEY
evergreens to accentuate the rolling landscape. The Woodward, she says, is perfect. “Unlike the Skyrocket [juniper], it has really short, tight branches that can shed snow. You don’t get these three- to four-foot gangly branches flopping out. Even the spires throughout wine country landscapes get those embarrassing arms, like the drunk person who can’t keep their shit together.”
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NOT A WALL, BUT A BRIDGE THE UNDYING DREAM OF AN INTERNATIONAL PARK THAT SPANS THE U.S.–MEXICO BORDER. BY RACHEL DOVEY
ABOVE
Albert Dorgan’s 1934 map showing a proposed national park district in the Big Bend area of Texas.
I
n 1988, Rick Lobello crossed the Rio Grande from Texas’s Big Bend National Park to the Mexican state of Coahuila and hiked deep into the Sierra del Carmen mountain range. Big Bend and the Maderas del Carmen—the area in which the mountains lie—are essentially one continuous ecosystem characterized by sunset-colored rock formations; white, cloud-like yucca blooms; and, in the higher-elevation mountains on the Mexican side, cooler forests of Douglas fir and ponderosa pine. As Lobello navigated those coniferous forests and surveyed the unbroken landscape on either side of the river below, he had an epiphany that would drive him for the next 30 years. Big Bend, he realized, shouldn’t be a national park. It should be one half of an international park, stretching from Texas to Mexico. Twenty years later, the looming shadow of a border wall threatens that vision—which, Lobello later learned, didn’t start with him, but had been floated since at least the 1930s. President Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” would rip apart the parks’ shared ecosystem thread by delicate thread, from the plant life clinging to the Rio Grande to the
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large mammals, like the Mexican black bear, that migrate between the two countries to breed. In 2018, the dream of a unified preserve appears more relevant—and less likely—than ever before. Lobello, however, who began advocating for an international park soon after he came down from the mountain in 1988, is not dissuaded. To him, the parks’ separation has never made sense. “If you stood at the border without a good compass, it would be hard to tell whether you were in Mexico or the United States,” says Lobello, who in the early 1990s quit his job as a park ranger for Big Bend, believing he would be able to become more politically involved with the creation of an international park if he wasn’t an employee of the National Park Service. He reached out to organizations like the Sierra Club and people like Bruce Babbitt, Honorary ASLA, who was Secretary of the Interior from 1993 to 2001, and watched as the idea gained momentum. In 2011, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Honorary ASLA, and Mexican Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada announced a “Binational Cooperative Conservation Action Plan” for the area.
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RIGHT
Big Bend as it exists today, part of an ecosystem that spans the U.S.–Mexico border. BELOW
The plan had deep roots in both Texas and Mexican history. Well before Congress passed the legislation that created Big Bend in 1935, Texans began pushing for an international park. In fact, one of the first to do so was a landscape architect named Albert W. Dorgan, who lived in Castolon, Texas, which is now a ghost town within the park’s borders.
Of course, by the time of Lobello’s 1988 epiphany, an international park still had not been built. Historians cite cultural differences, private land interests, and even the Mexican oil expropriation of 1938 as possible reasons it never materialized. Now, history appears to be repeating itself. Despite the “Binational Cooperative Conservation Action Plan,” voters elected Trump in 2016 on a platform that threw any kind of binational cooperation into question. Salazar left office with the rest of the Obama administration.
In 1934, Dorgan wrote a letter to then-Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes proposing an “International Peace Park” that would cross the Rio Grande. Dorgan owned land that could potentially become quite valuable within the park he outlined, so his motives may not have been pristine, but the vision he articulated fit nicely with President Roosevelt’s newly established Good Neighbor policy, which encouraged trade and condemned military intervention between the United States and Central and South America. In 1944, Roosevelt himself wrote to then-Mexican President Manuel Ávila Camacho: “I do not believe that this undertaking in the Big Bend will be complete until the entire park area in this region on both sides of the Rio Grande forms one great international park.”
Lobello has switched tactics. He’s currently working with the staff at Big Bend on an effort to create a “Transboundary Biosphere Reserve.” Administered by UNESCO, the designation would allow greater economic and ecological cooperation between the two sides without any sort of congressional engagement. UNESCO oversees similar parks spanning the borders of Romania and Ukraine, and Ecuador and Peru, among others. It’s unclear whether or not the designation would be an obstacle to other border structures. Regardless of who occupies the presidency, Lobello says he plans to keep pushing for a unified ecosystem. “When you love something enough, and believe in it,” he says, “you’ll fight for it.”
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LEGEND Core zones – 28,343 acres Managed use area – 756,553 acres Partnership and cooperation areas – 2,490,625 protected acres, 329 miles of river Partnership and cooperation areas 2,964,901 private acres
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NPS
A coalition is working to establish a “transboundary biosphere reserve” to be administered by UNESCO.
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FOREGROUND
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IN REAL LIFE ART, ECOLOGY, AND TECHNOLOGY MEET IN TWO HARVARD UNIVERSITY LANDSCAPES. BY MADELINE BODIN
from a hemlock, now the main tree species in the grove, toward a black birch. Across the trail, a giant data stick made from hemlock wood is a comment on the loss of the climate data that is encoded in each hemlock’s growth rings.
RIGHT
Fast Forward Future, a sculpture in the Hemlock Hospice installation at Harvard Forest.
t the edge of a hemlock grove in Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts, 18 artworks dot a forest trail. The installation, which opened in October, is designed to bring attention to the impact of an aphid-like invasive insect, the hemlock woolly adelgid, which has already killed hemlocks in Harvard Forest.
Other Order, which is available as a free download but is GPS activated, combines sounds and information about the history, ecology, and contemporary uses of the meadow. It was created by Del Tredici and Teri Rueb, an artist who combines mobile media art and landscape studies, and who has a PhD from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Except for existing trails, both Hemlock Hospice and Other Order are the only designed elements at their respective sites.
Hemlock Hospice (which is on view through November 18, 2018) is both a sculpture installation and an art–science communication project primarily created by David Buckley Borden, an artist with a master’s degree in landscape architecture, and Aaron Ellison, a senior ecologist at the Harvard Forest. At one point along the trail, five entangled triangles point the way to the forest’s future. Black birches are expected to grow in place of the hemlocks that are being killed by the invasive insect, and the triangles seem to topple
Participants describe these projects as genuine collaborations between artist and scientist, building on the strengths of each partner, that could serve as models for commercial client interactions. Rueb says sculpture, signage, recordings, and sounds all allow people to interact with landscapes in new ways, creating another layer of meaning. Rueb, originally a sculptor, was drawn to working with sound by a quality also found in landscapes: change. Buildings are relatively static, she says, but both sound and landscapes are ephemeral. “It forces you to think temporally,” she says. “It’s part of what you embrace as a designer.”
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DAVID BUCKLEY BORDEN
It isn’t the first time that Harvard has used one of its outdoor properties to host a project that blends ecology, education, and art. Other Order, an artwork of GPS-triggered sounds, debuted three years ago in the Bussey Brook Meadow at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum in Boston. In addition to ambient sounds like the rushing of the sewer that runs beneath the meadow, the piece includes the voice of Peter Del Tredici, who recently retired as a senior research scientist at the arboretum, explaining the urban ecology of the site.
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FOREGROUND
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GARDENS SECRETS TO SHARE
DECODING JAPANESE GARDEN DESIGN ONE STONE AT A TIME. BY KYNA RUBIN
ABOVE
Students in a new program at the Portland Japanese Garden laying stone. RIGHT
Sadafumi Uchiyama, ASLA, left, leads a seminar on Japanese garden design. Participant Alan Johnson and instructor Tomohiko Muto look on.
quat and move it counterclockwise, clockwise, repeat, and repeat again,” Tomohiko Muto says as he motions to the American landscape professionals gamely trying to move a chunk of Columbia River Gorge basalt. The centerpiece rock they’ve selected for their project forms a natural water basin, the result of a depression created at the break point of columnar basalt. The stone’s heft eventually requires a dolly. Under the guidance of Muto and other instructors from Japan, the students are engaging in tactile learning at a new program developed, in the main, by Sadafumi Uchiyama, ASLA, the curator at the Portland Japanese Garden (PJG) in Portland, Oregon.
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Like many of his predecessors in Japan, Uchiyama hews to tradition in the Japanese gardens he creates. But his latest endeavor reveals an iconoclastic bent. Through an unusual seminar first offered this past summer as part of the PJG’s new International Japanese Garden Training Center, he hopes to debunk the long-held myth that “90 percent of
Japanese gardening is secret, unteachable,” he says. “I dispute that.” Uchiyama is a third-generation gardener. He studied with his grandfather, father, and uncles in Japan, as the craft is not taught in schools or universities. But at age 18, rather than join the profession, he left Japan to see the world. He worked on planning and reforestation projects in places such as Yemen and became aware of landscape architecture. In 1988, he came to the United States, earned a BLA and an MLA at the University of Illinois, and stayed. Seven years later, he joined the PJG, a return, in essence, to his roots. The intensive, hands-on training course that he and PJG colleagues created brings to fruition an idea he
JONATHAN LEY
“S
FOREGROUND
/GARDENS
carried around for 20 years: teaching North Americans the gardening skills and approaches that lie inside Japanese garden masters’ heads. The resulting 12-day immersive seminar, which this year had 16 participants, plus four instructors and several translators, is designed around his belief that a majority of Japanese gardening know-how can be taught. What cannot, he says, “the body learns” through experience. Until now, most anyone seeking indepth guidance from Japanese master gardeners had to travel to Japan, says Kristin Faurest, the director of the Japanese Garden Training Center. That requires time, money, Japanese language skills, and finding a master under whom to work. The PJG seminar, called Hands and Heart, teaches Japanese aesthetics, garden history and design, stone selection and placement, Japanese tool use, and pruning. Participants also engage in a morning ABOVE tea ceremony to understand a JapaInstructor Kazuo nese garden’s cultural underpinnings Mitsuhashi sketching and helping participants and observe how Japanese garden masters behave. Kazuo Mitsuhashi, a select stone for their projects. Tokyo native and a tea garden crafts-
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man for more than 40 years, says, “I hope students learn not just the material we teach but who we are as Japanese people and how we present ourselves, means Japanese gardening “isn’t acin ways that can lead to their own cessible to people who want to learn practice in the garden.” it,” he says, “and nothing’s on paper.” (At Japan’s universities, students The audience for the seminar is generally can only study Western mainly midcareer professionals landscape architecture, which was working in public Japanese gardens introduced in the 1920s.) “Garden in North America, which is who at- craftsmen are poor at explaining,” he tended the pilot seminar in 2016. But says. But they can learn, as he himFaurest says the program’s focus has self has. He strives to get instrucbroadened given the interest among tors to answer the question he was landscape design and construction forced to consider years ago when a professionals as well as students. University of Illinois teacher asked Seminar leaders believe the eco- him why he moved a rock a certain logical principles that Japanese gar- way. “I never thought about it, I just dening has encompassed for 1,000 did it,” he says. years—gardening in tight spaces, managing stormwater in aesthetically Compounding the teaching chalpleasing ways, and planting trees in lenge is the fact that Japanese garden clusters and at angles as they thrive craft, as described by Marc Peter in nature—are relevant to all 21st- Keane in a talk this past summer century landscapes, Japanese or not. in Portland, is “free jazz,” with few rules. Uchiyama tells students that Among Uchiyama’s challenges is in placing rock, 20 percent can be helping instructors articulate their learned from a textbook, but 80 thought process. Craftsmen in Japan percent is “application that often diaren’t trained to teach, he says. That verts from or contradicts the norm.”
JONATHAN LEY
UCHIYAMA IS DISPELLING THE MYTH THAT JAPANESE GARDENING IS UNTEACHABLE.
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After four days of classroom and studio work, this year’s students were bused to Smith Rock, a quarry in southeast Portland. They were told TOP LEFT to dress for hard labor. Under the Sean Peterson; guidance of an instructor, each of Sadafumi Uchiyama; translator Saki Yamada; four groups was given three days and instructor Mitsuru to design from scratch a tsukubai, a Yamaguchi at the place for guests to purify themselves tool workshop. before attending a tea ceremony. It contains a short path leading to a TOP RIGHT water basin surrounded by stones Yamaguchi teaching pruning. traditionally meant to hold specific objects such as a lantern. In Japan, BOTTOM says Uchiyama, the national exam Muto demonstrates for garden craftsmen allots students bamboo cutting for only four hours, working alone, for Jamie Morf, ASLA, and Fred Swisher. the same task.
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To plot the site, teachers suggested that students first decide on basin placement. “Back up, get a wideradius view,” the instructor Muto, from Kyoto, gently told his group. Then, “kneel up close to where the basin will be and take in the view, the trees behind.” Uchiyama urged his group, “Less talking. Use your eyes.” Students have the pick of the rock yard. Moving heavy rock themselves is new to some participants, and that’s intentional. In Japan, garden craftsmen design, install, and maintain their creations themselves.
module where participants were asked to bring a real-life problem to the group. Referring to a sunken garden space he’s been wrestling with, he says, “The group not only gave me ideas for what changes are possible to make, but how to look at the process of deciding what changes need to be made.” Uchiyama knows he can’t teach everything in less than two weeks. In the next few years, the PJG plans to begin offering beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels, twice a year, with the hope that participants will attend all three seminars over a several-year period. “I know the complexity, the challenges,” he says. Other attempts to teach this art have failed owing to cultural differences, he says. Traditional craftsman that he is, he plans to be “slow, deliberate, and careful” about the program, learning from trial and error, and getting it right.
Bonnie Bruce, a landscape designer from Portland specializing in ecological gardening in small spaces, says that learning about the weight of stone and its importance to the whole Apply for the 2018 seminars, July 19–30 will cause her to design differently. (intermediate level) and September Steven Pitsenbarger, a gardener at the 20–27 (beginner level), at Japanese Tea Garden at San Francisco’s japanesegarden.org/thecenter. Golden Gate Park, is used to physical work. Halfway through the seminar, KYNA RUBIN IS A FREELANCE WRITER IN PORThis biggest takeaway was a design LAND, OREGON.
JONATHAN LEY, TOP AND BOTTOM LEFT; KRISTIN FAUREST, RIGHT
FOREGROUND
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FOREGROUND
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DETAILS WOVEN IN PLACE
ECOLOGY AND CULTURE COMBINE IN EVERYDAY OPEN SPACE. BY GWENETH LEIGH, ASLA
uckland, New Zealand, is a city with a booming population and an affordable housing crisis. By 2031, it’s expected that four out of every 10 New Zealanders will call Auckland home. But with average city house prices sitting at $1 million, many can’t afford to live within the city limits. ABOVE
A woven wall system establishes a unique identity for the site while concealing stormwater infrastructure.
As a way to absorb future population growth, Auckland Council is delivering several new regional town centers around the periphery of the city. This includes Westgate, a 385-acre greenfield development located a half-hour drive northwest of Auckland. What
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sets this development apart is the design of its open space network— Kopupaka Reserve—where stormwater management is embraced as an opportunity for placemaking. The reserve provides 54 acres of green infrastructure for mitigating the environmental impacts of runoff from the streets and buildings of Westgate’s new town center. But the design addresses stormwater treatment with some untraditional twists—a lot of them, in fact. Instead of an engineered narrative of geometric ponds and concrete
culverts, woven timber walls snake their way through the landscape in the manner of an enormous unfurled basket. Recognition of Maori culture and identity serves an important role within New Zealand’s public realm. In 2014, Auckland Council collaborated with a network of Maori design professionals to produce Te Aranga Maori Design Principles for inclusion within the Auckland Design Manual. The principles provide design professionals and developers with protocols and guidelines for articulating Maori
DAVID ST. GEORGE
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FOREGROUND
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RIGHT
Timber walls provide wayfinding on pedestrian paths; their form references the original stream corridor alignment.
Walkway Playground Grass Vegetation Stream Stormwater pond
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interests and design aspirations in in a cultural context, a Maori worldthe built environment. view,” says Grant Bailey, a principal landscape architect at Isthmus. At Kopupaka Reserve, the Te Aranga principle of Taiao—protecting and A restoration management plan restoring the natural environment— was developed for the streams and was a primary focus for the New wetlands that establishes riparian Zealand firm Isthmus Group. Its margins 16 to 100 feet wide and landscape master plan for the site incorporates six treatment wetlands retained the natural character of ex- to filter runoff. Structured around isting stream corridors and inserted the wetlands are recreational amea woven motif where engineered nities such as seating areas, shared interventions were required. pathways, and play spaces. Connecting these spaces is a unique timber Within traditional Maori environ- crib wall system that acts as both a mental management, it is believed placemaking and wayfinding device. that all things contain mauri; it’s the life force that gives living things Historically, stream margins were their distinctive characteristics. Two important sites of occupation by the riparian corridors within the site, Maori. The locations where streams Totara Creek and Sakaria Stream, flowed into wetlands were particularhad become heavily degraded ow- ly important for food gathering. The ing to nutrient runoff from a nearby design team saw the convergence strawberry farm. Efforts to restore of the Totara and Sakaria systems the mauri of the stream corridors into the constructed wetlands as an in ways that protect water quality opportunity to recognize the cultural and promote habitat preservation significance of these confluences. became a key element of the project. Integrating the woven pattern of tra“It’s really about respect for the water ditional Maori fishing baskets—also
DAVID ST. GEORGE, TOP; GRANT BAILEY, LEFT
LEGEND
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FOREGROUND
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RIGHT
Stormwater infrastructure seeks to restore the degraded riparian system, protect water quality, and promote habitat preservation.
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known as hinaki—into the design of the retaining walls was a way to make reference to these cultural sites. The basketlike structures help manage the flow of sediment through the site while also providing habitats for plant and animal life. The permeability of the structures allows them to move and flex over time. “It’s about using a materiality that can allow the ecology to flow,” Bailey says. Consultation with three local iwi (Maori tribes)—Te Kawerau a Maki, Ngati Whatua o Orakei, and Ngati Whatua Nga Rima o Kaipara—was undertaken after these conceptual
GRANT BAILEY, TOP AND OPPOSITE; DAVID ST. GEORGE, BOTTOM
POND THREE OUTLET STRUCTURE PLAN AND CROSS SECTION
POND THREE OUTLET CRIB WALL EDGE DETAILS WALL END STRETCHER SKETCH, PLAN AND SECTION
ideas had first been explored. Bailey says it wasn’t intensive or collaborative from a creative sense, but it was an important process to ensure cultural sensitivities were identified and addressed.
forms through the open spaces required careful coordination with engineers. Peter Marchant from Coffey Engineers had previously worked at Phi Group and was brought in to assist in the design of the walls. “Grant wanted to disguise the engineering works and make them look beautiful, which is not the easiest thing in the world to do,” Marchant says. “We like to do concrete and square faces. Curves and those other kinds of things are a little harder.”
The firm used the Permacrib system, a typical off-the-shelf product offered by the Phi Group, to create the gravity retaining walls. The wall system consists of New Zealandgrown pine that is stacked and interlocked to create a timber cage. Auckland basalt stone fills the voids In addition to creating a unique idento create mass. The steps of creating tity for the site, the walls also conceal and inserting the large timber basket traditional stormwater infrastructure.
HEADER AND STRETCHER STACKED, PLAN AND SECTION
Components such as pipes, culverts, and stormwater outfall structures designed to meet the functional and maintenance requirements of the wetlands are hidden behind and below the crib walls. Entry to chambers behind the crib walls is available through manholes and ladders within the structures and accessible from the pathways and promenades surrounding the treatment ponds. Detailing the timber crib walls was a complex process, as was determining the foundation design that would achieve their desired sculptural form. Isthmus used SketchUp
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018 / 47
FOREGROUND
/DETAILS
SOME SEGMENTS CURL IN ON THEMSELVES LIKE WAVES ABOUT TO CRASH.
segments curl in on themselves like waves about to crash. Propositions have been suggested for areas where the timber walls provide enclosed experiences, such as a “bowl in a basket” skatepark and gardens featuring basketmaking plants for harvesting. Until further landscape stages are delivered, however, these bounded areas contain only empty voids, a ground plane filled with gravel, mulch, and weeds.
ABOVE
Referencing traditional Maori baskets, the structures enclose and define spaces to be programmed with a range of cultural and community uses.
town center, enfolding either side of Maki Street. Elsewhere, the sinuous timber curves follow the stream corridor alignment to the north and south. The central pond across from the town center is densely planted with wetland vegetation. The organic walls muscle their way along the southeastern edge of the pond and continue south toward areas of future residential development. Opposite from the timber walls and along the central pond’s western edge, curved earthworks are straightened into terraces of Cor-Ten steel walls and lined with picnic tables and seating areas, providing a more formal frontage to the adjacent retail precinct.
With 60 percent of the town center completed, Kopupaka Reserve is slowly taking shape. So far, more than 1,000 linear feet of crib wall have been incorporated into the site. Earthworks have been kept away from riparian margins to protect the natural character of the corridor. Where elements such as treatment ponds or culverts are proposed, the crib walls are inserted to express these human-made intrusions. The generous scale of the timber walls is in keeping with the mass The weave of the crib walls has been of the surrounding big box retail, inserted as a gateway feature along wrapping around the site and rising the northern entry to the Westgate as high as 16 feet at sections. Some
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GWENETH LEIGH, ASLA, IS A LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT AND FREELANCE WRITER BASED IN CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA.
DAVID ST. GEORGE
to test landforms and model the crib walls and used AutoCAD for documentation. Bailey says prototype testing was undertaken in the studio to ensure buildability; construction was closely managed on site with the contractor.
Westgate is expected to accommodate up to 4,000 new residents and up to 10,000 new jobs. Shelley Wharton, manager of development programs at Auckland Council, says the open space network “wasn’t just about an engineered construction, but about making really great, desirable places for people to be in.” Mitigating the effects of the future development on the existing stream networks was essential, as runoff from the site would eventually enter the Waitemata Harbour, an ecologically significant site for marine habitat and fish breeding. The unusual material choice presented by Isthmus’s design required the council to take a leap of faith. “We’ve got to try new things sometimes,” Wharton says. “And to make something look amazing, sometimes you have to use different materials.”
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MATERIALS SOLID AS A ROCK THE STONE INDUSTRY ADOPTS A NEW SUSTAINABILITY STANDARD. BY MEG CALKINS, FASLA
ABOVE
GGN maximized the accuracy of CNC milling to create the forms for a black granite fountain cascade at the Plaza at City Center in Washington, D.C.
n 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design, Bill Browning, an environmental designer and founder of Terrapin Bright Green, cites “material connection with nature” as a significant principle. In other words, materials from nature, with minimal processing, can be used to construct the built environment—reflecting the local geology and connecting people to a place and natural setting. More than any other material, stone fulfills this “pattern”—often seamlessly settling a built landscape into the larger natural context. Yet in some cases, heavy stone can travel thousands of miles between harvest and use—offering absolutely no connection to the local natural landscape and creating a substantial environmental footprint.
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Council (NSC) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) offers criteria for reducing the environmental impacts of stone harvest and processing and requires a chain of custody for stone so consumers can know for sure the path their “local” stone has traveled. The stone quarrying process is often lumped together with metal mining’s heavy blasting and toxic runoff, but Kathy Spanier, the marketing director at Coldspring in Minnesota and a participant in the development of the new stone standard, emphasizes that it is not similar at all. In metal mining, the stone is blasted apart to get at the metals. This can result in acid mine drainage from metals and toxic runoff from the blasting explosives. Conversely, the aim of stone quarrying is to gently lift large blocks of stone out of the quarry. Explosives are used, but minimally, and quarry stone does not usually contain toxic metals, so runoff is more benign.
GGN
I
Stone holds great potential to be a highly sustainable construction material for use in paving, stairs, and walls. It can be extremely durable, with relatively low embodied energy (energy used to produce a material), and nontoxic. However, a study from the University of Tennessee estimates that more than half of all dimension stone—defined as any stone that has been cut or shaped for use in construction—is imported, primarily from China, India, and Brazil, owing to far lower labor costs and fewer worker safety regulations, which combine for a lower product cost. Some of this stone might have been harvested in the United States, sent overseas for processing, then returned as “imported stone.” Minimal records of stone harvest, sales, and processing make it challenging to track stone’s path to market. Additionally, environmental impacts from waste and water use in stone quarrying and manufacture are not insignificant. Fortunately, a new standard from the Natural Stone
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FOREGROUND
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THE IMPORTANCE OF DETAILING STONE STRUCTURES FOR DECONSTRUCTION AND REUSE SHOULD NOT BE IGNORED.
As a consultant on the new NSF/ ANSI standard, Jason McLennan, the board chair of the Living Future ABOVE Institute, observed that habitat imSandstone for the pacts of stone quarrying are a fracBarangaroo project tion of those in the logging industry, in Sydney by PWP Landscape Architecture as they are not nearly so land consumptive. This is partially because was quarried directly on the project site. stone deposits can be quite deep—
54 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
quarry material is waste, and that between 6 percent and 69 percent of further waste is produced from fractured or damaged slabs during the fabrication phase.
The market for beneficial reuse of stone waste is quite strong, as it is used for aggregate applications such as road base, backfill, and in concrete and asphalt. Large blocks of stone that are inappropriate for dimension Waste is a major environmental im- stone are used whole for benches, pact of the quarrying and fabrication walls, and other monumental landprocess for dimension stone. For scape applications. example, it is not uncommon for 30 feet of “overburden” (soil and After harvesting, there can be mulloose stone) to be removed before tiple steps to achieve dimension limestone suitable for dimension stone. In primary processing, the stone use is harvested. A 2008 study large blocks lifted from a quarry by the U.S. Department of Transpor- are cut into slabs using a variety of tation, a major consumer of stone saw types. For rough-cut dimension waste, estimates that 175 million stone, this may be the only step, and tons of quarrying waste is produced it often happens near the quarry. in the United States annually. Waste But for most applications, the next varies widely by stone type and de- steps are finishing the stone to the posit, and the University of Tennes- required surface specification and see study estimates that between exact dimensions. Some of this fin3 percent and 93 percent of total ishing is mechanical, but some is
PWP LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
granite deposits, for example, can extend down 300 feet—allowing for the harvest of large volumes of material in a relatively small surface area. That said, there are still habitat impacts from removal of vegetation and soil, air quality impacts from airborne particulates, and quarry restoration is still largely unregulated, meaning excavation sites are often simply abandoned.
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/MATERIALS
precise dimensions for applications with tight tolerances, it is more likely that it will be shipped overseas, where labor costs are low for skilled stone workers. This, combined with low shipping costs, makes economic if not environmental sense. From an environmental standpoint it can increase the embodied energy by fivefold. It can also be a social sustainability concern, as there may be human rights violations in the workers’ wages and safety conditions.
TOP RIGHT
At the Eskenazi Health hospital, David Rubin, ASLA, used blocks of limestone from a quarry just an hour south of the Indianapolis project. ABOVE AND RIGHT
In 2012, Zaha Hadid designed this sculptural wave pattern for marble wall panels, exploiting the ability of CNC milling to create accurate and repetitive sculptural forms.
completed by hand, hence the need for skilled labor. Some smaller quarry owners don’t engage in processing of their stone; instead they sell the large blocks to fabricators who may be located far from the quarry or even overseas. Where stone must be cut to very
56 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
Molly Bourne, ASLA, a principal at MNLA (formerly Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects), is aware of the environmental impacts of imported stone. “We are not interested in stone that has made a large loop around the world, so we try to write our specs so that stone from overseas doesn’t get used,” says Bourne. On public bid jobs, they try to thoroughly describe stone qualities, such as density and appearance, that they know will result in the use of local or regional stone. Bourne adds that it can be very challenging to work with stone cut in China when some dimensions or field conditions are not quite right. Very few contractors have the skills to adjust the fine cuts
on site, so it has to be installed as is or reordered, which can slow construction substantially. Computer numerical control (CNC) stone fabrication is starting to bring dimension stone processing back to the United States as the price of CNC technology and equipment comes down. CNC technologies are used for cutting, edging, polishing, grooving, and carving dimension stone. Martina Diamantini of Citco in Milan, producers of Zaha Hadid’s 2012 sculptural stone panels, says that CNC milling is the most common method used by their firm for three-dimensional stone works, and CNC water jets are used for twodimensional stone carving. Custom fabrication can be simplified using CNC technologies, and more complex forms can be produced. Along with reduced equipment costs, CAM software, which interfaces with the equipment, has become more user friendly, resulting in ease of use for even the novice. This won’t necessarily bring the price down, but eventually it could mean that stone is fabricated closer to the site rather than overseas, and
LAND COLLECTIVE, TOP RIGHT; CITCO, BOTTOM AND INSET
FOREGROUND
ANSI/NSC 373 2013 SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION OF NATURAL DIMENSION STONE Summary of required and optional strategies REQUIRED STRATEGIES
STRATEGIES TO EARN POINTS
Water
Inventory water use Recycle water—Minimum 25 percent for processing and quarry operations
Points for recycling more water, treating water, diverting sludge for reuse
Transportation
Provide a chain of custody (COC) using the COC standard Create program to improve transportation efficiency
Site management
Create a site management plan for maintenance and operations of facilities
Points for establishing ecosystem boundaries, executing environmental impact reports, and verifying plans through a third-party organization
Land reclamation and adaptive reuse
Create a postclosure reclamation plan
Points for community involvement with plan and exemplary plans
Corporate governance
Document prohibition on forced and child labor and prevention of discrimination
Points for employee participation in community service work and creation of a social accountability plan
Energy
Inventory energy use and type
Points for energy reduction, development of a carbon management program, and renewable and alternative energy sourcing
Create a management plan to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions
Excess process materials and waste
Inventory excess materials and solid waste
Points for excess materials and solid waste reduction
Implement a program to manage excess process material and reduce waste
Safer chemical and materials management
Create a chemical inventory
Points for safer chemical management program and elimination of chemicals of concern
Create a chemical management plan
Human health and safety
Create an occupational safety plan
Points for documenting improved workplace safety records
Perform an air emissions inventory with sources identified Create an air emissions management plan
Innovation
Points for documenting and demonstrating innovative processes that lead to improvement in human health and safety, transportation efficiency, and waste reduction or reuse
SOURCE: ANSI/NSC 373 2013 SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION OF NATURAL DIMENSION STONE SITES® AND LEED AND THE STONE STANDARD
it could allow smaller fabricating dard called ANSI/NSC 373-2013 Suscompanies to compete with larger tainable Production of Natural Diinternational outfits. mension Stone. Coldspring’s Kathy Spanier was one of the founders of A new app called the Stones of North the standard along with a multidisAmerica Stone Selector was created ciplinary group including academby the Building Stone Institute and ics, green building consultants, and the Marble Institute of America to stone industry businesses. Work assist designers in locating locally on the standard began 12 years ago quarried and fabricated stone. It is a when the NSC recognized that stone searchable database where users can was being left out of the sustainable input a zip code and search for quar- materials conversation despite its obries within a certain distance. It is vious potential as a green material. still possible, however, that the stone could be harvested near a project site The multiattribute standard is debut sent elsewhere for processing. signed to encourage sustainability practices in the natural dimension The NSC and ANSI have recently stone industry. It offers a series of released a quarry certification stan- environmental, social, and human
LEED v4 and SITES v2 both offer credits designed to move construction material manufacturers toward more responsible raw material sourcing and manufacturing practices. Moving far beyond previous criteria such as recycled content, these credits are designed to encourage manufacturers to monitor and reduce their energy use, water use, and waste production. Both SITES v2 and LEED v4 offer multiple points for projects that specify products from manufacturers who provide lifecycle data for their products, including where the raw materials were sourced and how ecological impacts at the extraction site were reduced. And they both reward projects that specify products from manufacturers with improved practices. The kind of data collection and improved practices that quarries and fabricators are required to perform under the NSF Stone Standard can contribute to the achievement of these SITES and LEED credits.
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018 / 57
/MATERIALS
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT
At the Eskenazi Health hospital, Rubin valued these “ridgeback” blocks for their weathered appearance that he says reflects the beauty of nature; granite blocks for the hills on Governors Island in New York Harbor, designed by West 8 in collaboration with MNLA, were salvaged from a seawall on the island’s west side; OJB Landscape Architecture used locally sourced Texas Pink granite for paving at 1100 Louisiana in Houston.
health metrics for stone quarries and fabricators to improve their practices. Certification under the standard is third-party verified by NSF International, and quarries must periodically recertify to maintain their status. A chain of custody is also required for certification under the standard. Much like a lumber chain of custody, this requires documentation of the stone at every phase of its journey to the project site, providing assurance to the consumer that the stone has not been sent overseas or across the country for processing without their knowledge.
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To date, five companies with multiple quarries are certified under the standard: TexaStone Quarries, Coldspring, Northern Stone Supply, Stony Creek Quarry, and Michels Stone. Some of these companies operate multiple quarries, and not all of each company’s quarries are certified. For instance, Coldspring has certified its main facility in Cold Spring, Minnesota, and plans to certify quarries in California next. Spanier believes the growing adoption of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) v4 and the Sustainable Sites InitiativeTM (SITES®) should encourage more stone quarries and fabricators to engage in stone certification, as certified stone can contribute to achievement of credits. Given that durability is one of stone’s most significant attributes, the importance of detailing stone structures for deconstruction and reuse should not be ignored, as stone can be used
over and over again. Designing stone structures for deconstruction can contribute to SITES and LEED v4 credits. Ronald “Chip” Trageser, FASLA, a managing principal with OJB Landscape Architecture, set large blocks of stone paving at Enterprise Plaza in Houston directly on paver pedestals, holding them in place with nothing but gravity and the weight of the stone. There has been no movement in the 10 years the plaza has been in place, but the stone will be easily removed when the time comes. Trageser also used Z clips to attach stone veneer to plaza walls. These stainless steel clips minimize or eliminate the need for mortar, which will also facilitate deconstruction. Taken together, the new standards, innovations in stone-working technology, and greater transparency in the stone industry will contribute to the sustainability performance of stone. Additionally, capitalizing on the natural durability of stone through detailing for longevity of structures, deconstruction, and reuse can put stone front and center in the sustainability conversation. MEG CALKINS, FASLA, IS A PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AT BALL STATE UNIVERSITY. SHE IS THE AUTHOR OF MATERIALS FOR SUSTAINABLE SITES AND THE EDITOR OF THE SUSTAINABLE SITES HANDBOOK.
LAND COLLECTIVE, TOP LEFT; OJB LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, BOTTOM LEFT, MATHEWS NIELSEN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS, RIGHT
FOREGROUND
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FOREGROUND
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GOODS GLASS POOL FENCE
Aquaview fencing provides a nearly invisible barrier, leaving sight lines unobstructed. Each glass panel is made from a half inch of tempered safety glass, with a selection of stainless steel mounting clamps available to securely hold the fence in place. FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT WWW.AQUAVIEWFENCING.COM.
BEYOND BORDERS FENCES, WALLS, AND ENCLOSURES FIT FOR ANY PROJECT.
AMERICAN PRAIRIE
This line of reclaimed boarding by Pioneer Millworks comes in a variety of species salvaged from California fences (Redwood shown). Because they are naturally weathered, each board takes on a unique hue, texture, and dimension. Boards can be left unfinished, with ecofriendly prefinish options available. FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT WWW.PIONEERMILLWORKS.COM.
62 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
AQUAVIEW FENCING, TOP; COURTESY PIONEER MILLWORKS, BOTTOM
BY KATARINA KATSMA, ASLA
ARCHITECTURAL PANELS
These custom pieces by SteelCrest can be used for a variety of applications including railings, dividers, security gates, fencing, and screens. Designers can select from a variety of patterns, finishes, thicknesses, and materials depending on the use requirements of the project. FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT WWW.STEELCRESTONLINE.COM.
CANTILEVERED BENCH
This custom bench by Tournesol Siteworks was designed in collaboration with Rios Clementi Hale Studios to enclose a rooftop lounge for residents to enjoy. The bench adds richness to the design with textured wood, while making use of the ample amount of wall space snaking throughout the project.
COURTESY TOURNESOL SITEWORKS, TOP LEFT; COURTESY STEELCREST, TOP RIGHT; COURTESY FE INDUSTRIES INC., ARCHITECTURAL FENCING, BOTTOM
FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT WWW.TOURNESOLSITEWORKS.COM.
DAUNIA
Recommended for industrial, commercial, and residential use, this fence by Fe Industries is strong on geometry and symmetry. Each product is made from steel and can be finished with hot-dip galvanizing, commercial brush blast, electrostatic powder top coat, or a color of the designer’s choice. FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT WWW.FEINDUSTRIESNY.COM.
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018 / 63
FOREGROUND
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IMAGEWALL
Designed to fit any space, the ImageWall by Zahner is made from metal laser-cut panels that render as an image from a distance. Through an easy-to-use online tool, almost any image can be used to create a unique product for an artistic centerpiece or fencing project.
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FOREGROUND
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MODULAR FENCING
Selected from a portfolio of patterns available from BŌK Modern, this security fence in Dublin, California, keeps children at a safe distance from the attraction while blending in with the landscape. Fence projects can be customized by material, weight, pattern, and finishing choices.
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The MAX IV particle accelerator rises beyond Snøhetta’s undulating landscape, page 88.
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018 / 69
A FOREST IN THE CITY IN THE FOREST
BY JONATHAN LERNER
70 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
TIMOTHY HURSLEY
IN ATLANTA, A SURVIVING OLD GROWTH WOODLAND BECOMES A TEACHING TOOL.
FERNBANK FOREST
A pair of biomimetic tree pods lures visitors out into the tree canopy.
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018 / 71
LEFT
A
TLANTA’S Fernbank Museum of Natural History occupies a formidable 1992 postmodernist structure by Graham Gund Architects. Visitors enter through a lobby that looks down into an octagonal atrium dominated by enormous dinosaur skeletons posed as if on the brink of carnage. Beyond the atrium’s glazed rear facade is a narrow concrete terrace. Then the ground behind the building pitches steeply down 45 feet to a creek. So from inside, there’s a horizontal view straight out into the tree canopy, a promise of respite from the vaguely daunting scale and sense of menace inside. This wooded ravine, which is sort of the reason the museum exists, was neglected and inaccessible until a recent intervention by Sylvatica Studio. Now, beginning right at the atrium’s back doors and set into the terrace’s pavement, the wooden planking of an elevated walkway
72 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
leads into the trees. Not far along the walkway, just visible where it turns, a 26-foot-high, latticelike but curvilinear “tree pod” beckons from the midst of branches and leaves. Its shape and color mimic the blossom of the tulip tree, a common tree in these woods. The pod is a place to stop, or sit, gently protected by its rounded tracery. But it also offers a sweeping panorama down to the creek and streamside meadow. “It’s 35 feet off the ground. We wanted people to feel slightly—not afraid—but thrilled. ‘What is this experience I’m having?’” explains Sylvatica’s founder, Susan Stainback, ASLA. From the tulip pod, a second one shaped like a cluster of fern fronds is visible farther along. Stainback says, “It was important that these moments appear to be an organic extension of the forest. So the idea of using biomimetic form was compelling.” The walkway itself can be felt to sway slightly as people pass, and this is on purpose. “We wanted to transcend that physical, mechanical, structural experience of the museum right at the beginning.”
DORIAN SHY
Until now most known for its dinosaur collection, the Fernbank Museum is now a portal to a stand of old-growth forest.
SITE PLAN 1 FERNBANK FOREST 2 FOREST TRAIL 3 COBBS CROSSING 4 FERNBANK WILDWOODS
1
5 FERNBANK MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 6 DEEPDENE PARK
2
7 DELLWOOD PARK
CL
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3
4 5
7
PO
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AREA SHOWN IN DETAIL ON PAGE 75
NA VE
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SYLVATICA STUDIO, TOP; COURTESY SYLVATICA STUDIO, BY REED HILDERBRAND, BOTTOM
ABOVE
The acquisition of the property called Cobbs Crossing connects the museum to the surviving forest. RIGHT
Detailed immersion studies were made of the old-growth forest, allowing pathways to lead visitors to areas where the perception of nature is enveloping.
In addition to a master plan for the Fernbank In 2011, the museum was prompted to articulate a property, Sylvatica’s project there comprises a strategic plan, because a 48-year lease was ending, network of paths, viewpoints, and outdoor educa- under which the forest had been managed and tion spaces accessed via the canopy walkway, plus habitat restoration on the wooded hillsides, stream banks, and lowland meadow of the 10 acres immediately next to the museum building. This area, now called the WildWoods, serves visitors as introduction, inducement, and a portal to a significant surviving stand of old-growth forest, for the restoration and management of which Sylvatica has also developed a scheme. “The big idea was to create a direct connection to the forest, both programmatically and physically,” Stainback says. Until recently, museum and forest were separated by a small intervening tract; its acquisition makes the latter finally possible.
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018 / 73
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restoration projects and became “known as one of the leading firms in Atlanta relative to ecological planning and sustainability,” she says. Because of the success of those projects, they were asked to interview at Fernbank against AECOM and some of the larger, more traditional architecture, engineering, and landscape architecture firms. Atlantans sometimes refer to their town as “a city in a forest”—it has tree canopy over nearly 48 percent of its area. Some of this is remnants of the virgin forest that once blanketed the American East. Fernbank is located in an especially leafy early suburb, Druid Hills, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and his sons. Given the constructed naturalism typical of their work, it is ironic that such a significant stand of undomesticated forest
ABOVE
The elevated walkway is supported by columns designed to disappear amid the tree trunks.
TIMOTHY HURSLEY
used for education by DeKalb County. The plan’s three goals were to “tie back to the legacy of the forest, to physically connect the museum to the forest,” says Jennifer Grant Warner, the museum president and CEO, and “to identify where we have areas of opportunity” elsewhere on the grounds to express the institution’s mission. Translating these intentions into landscape architecture and restoration has been a big undertaking for a small, young firm; besides Stainback, there are only Ryan Jenkins and Curtis Alter. An Atlanta native, Stainback founded Sylvatica after having studied and worked in Boston. She moved home to “try to have a positive influence on a place that I cared about that wasn’t already saturated with people coming out of the schools in the Northeast,” she says. Sylvatica completed several smaller environmental
SITE PLAN DETAIL
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2
3
4
7
5
CR
EE
8
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1 KENDEDA PAVILION 2 WETLAND MEADOW 3 ADVENTURE OUTPOST 4 ISDELL WILDLIFE SANCTUARY 5 LOWLAND MEADOW 6 MONTGOMERY TREE CANOPY WALKWAY 7 PETAL POD
SYLVATICA STUDIO
8 FERN POD
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9 FERNBANK MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018 / 75
SITE ANALYSIS
Existing parking lot Museum roof Wetland Surface bioretention and underground detention South Fork Peavine Creek 100-year floodplain
HYDROLOGICAL SYSTEMS
Predominant Species Tulip tree - Liriodendron tulipifera American beech - Fagus grandifolia
Acer, Carya, Carpinus, Liquidambar, Pinus, Quercus, Tsuga, and Ulmus species
MATURE TREE INVENTORY
Tree canopy walkway Main circulation spine
Fernbank Forest connection
Primary
Secondary
ACCESSIBLE CIRCULATION
Adventure Outpost
Flow way trail Tree pods
Education pavilion Dig Pit exhibit Sensory wall Nature Gallery Creekside boardwalk
Nature Stories
Riparian bank planting Native shady wetland restoration Lowland Meadow restoration
Mesic Forest restoration Buffer planting Native trees, shrubs, and ground cover
PLANTING ZONES
76 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
SYLVATICA STUDIO
EXPERIENTIAL EDUCATION AREAS
ELEVATED WALKWAY AXON
ABOVE
SYLVATICA STUDIO
Placement of the walkway and tree pods was calculated in relation to the pitch of terrain and height of existing trees.
is situated there. It’s as if the existing contours sted lake—and in Fernbank Forest, at 65 acres and vegetation required the Olmsteds to specify said to be the largest original Piedmont woodland less manipulation than usual. surviving in an urban context. One bit of artifice they did envision, damming a creek for a lake, was never constructed. And the owner of a sizable tract sought by Druid Hills’ developers refused to sell. The owner’s daughter, Emily Harrison, a visionary early environmentalist who named their property Fernbank, persuaded her siblings to sell their last 70 acres to what is now the nonprofit Fernbank, Inc., in 1939. Fernbank was originally formed to establish a school for nature education. The school was never built, but the educational purpose is now embodied in the museum—which sits in a spot that would have been partly inundated by that Olm-
The WildWoods walkway leads around and down toward the creek and the forest proper, in some places at grade and in others raised. From below, the columns supporting it and the pods aren’t easy to pick out. They are smaller in diameter than the largest trees, and painted a slightly greenish gray so they simply read as trunks. They also mimic trees in how they are “planted.” Each column sits on a small rectangular plate, from which two steel piles descend into the ground. “It lands at the ground just like the root flare of a tree, and then it has the in-depth structure below,” Stainback says. The plates are aligned with the topography,
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018 / 77
SYLVATICA STUDIO DESIGNED MOMENTS THAT APPEAR TO BE AN ORGANIC EXTENSION OF THE FOREST.
78 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
ABOVE
The form of the tulip tree blossom inspired one of the tree pods. OPPOSITE
SYLVATICA STUDIO, TOP; TIMOTHY HURSLEY, OPPOSITE BOTTOM
In the uncommon experience of walking through the tree canopy, the pods give visitors a chance to pause and get oriented.
not with the structure above them. Detailed drawings were made to determine the siting of these walkway supports relative to the trees’ critical root zones. “It was threading the needle.” At points there are simple interpretive installations depicting things like animal tracks and scat, different kinds of bark, and the variety of textures in nature. “WildWoods is a way to prime your senses, so when you go into a place like the forest, you’re really observing,” Warner says. There’s a rudimentary weather station, and the Fernbug Hotel for pollinators. Interpretive text is minimal. “We didn’t want it to be signapalooza,” Warner says. A screened pavilion projecting over the hillside serves as classroom and lab. Side paths lead to educational play areas aimed at different age groups. An outdoor Nature Gallery shows rotating installations; the first one was the Atlanta sculptor J. D. Koth’s hobbit-like domed and spired structures of woven branches, irresistible for small people to clamber through. In an area meant for ages eight and younger, called Nature Stories, a simulated creek where water flows down a network of rocky channels has hinged gates that allow kids to direct the stream. (On a recent morning, right after many Atlanta facilities had observed “a day without water,” turning off fountains, some kids were playing near this still-dry water feature. When a trickle suddenly began to emerge, first one and then another noticed, and the collective race to dam the flow was on. “C’mon!” “You want to try it?” “We can beat this!”)
The exhibits themselves were designed by the Los Angeles-based Thinkwell Group, but the thought behind their siting is a significant, if subtle, example of Sylvatica’s approach to the WildWoods plan. Nature Stories and a more physically challenging area for older kids called Adventure Outpost are not visible on first emerging from the museum, but are close enough to be heard and noticed— and easily reached, with quick return, too, to use the building’s services. The Nature Stories space was previously an aboveground detention pond, so there were no large trees to be removed; now this space sits atop an underground stormwater detention system with increased capacity. The Nature Gallery area was heavily invaded by invasive shrubs, so there, too, few desirable plants were sacrificed. By no means was all the educational intent left to the exhibition designers. There is a route from the creek back up to the museum through a rather steep draw, passing twice under the much longer winding path of the elevated walkway. If ignored, it would almost certainly have been trampled into an informal line of desire anyway. Sylvatica’s solution was to establish it with a series of short flights of steps, unpaved but rustically defined by timbers. This is also an ephemeral flow way. The slope has been stabilized, as if randomly, with big rocks, and at several points the path itself is crossed by granite curbstones laid on their sides atop gravel and riprap. Stainback explains, “The drainage in
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PLAN A natural flow way offers a quick route back up from the creekside. RIGHT
The walkway’s route and supports were sited to respect the trees’ critical root zones.
a small storm flows under the ground, through those rocks, and into the wetland. In large storms it flows over the granite. It gives people immediate contact with that experience. You can see it happening. You can even walk through it.” The plantings here are based on vegetation patterns in similar North Georgia draws, including native azaleas and ferns, mayapple and pawpaw, and umbrella tree and American hornbeam. In a larger sense, “our project site is a good place to teach about hydrological systems as part of Fernbank’s natural science programming,” Stainback says. The eastern subcontinental divide runs less than a mile away. “One of the great ecological strengths of Fernbank Forest is that because of the topography, urban runoff from lands around ↘
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1 CREEKSIDE BOARDWALK
1
2 WETLAND
2
3 LOWLAND MEADOW 4 PETAL POD 4
5 FERN POD
6
3
6 FLOW WAY TRAIL 7 MUSEUM
5 TRUNK
7 N
STRUCTURAL ROOT PLACE CRITICAL ROOT ZONE
TIMOTHY HURSLEY, TOP; SYLVATICA STUDIO, BOTTOM
ABOVE
ELEVATED WALKWAY AND TREE POD SECTION
SOUTH FORK PEAVINE CREEK
CREEKSIDE BOARDWALK AND LOWLAND MEADOW
ELEVATED WALKWAY AND TREE PODS
MUSEUM TERRACE
ELEVATED WALKWAY FOUNDATION PLAN AND SECTION ELEVATION
WALKWAY COLUMN BASEPLATES
PIPE PILE HELICAL ANCHOR
SYLVATICA STUDIO
UNDISTURBED SUBGRADE
ABOVE
Baseplates are oriented to be parallel to the topography.
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PHASE 1 PLANTING PLAN Lowland Meadow Restoration ZONE A
Carex annectens (Yellowfruit sedge) Carex frankii (Frank’s sedge) Chasmanthium latifolium (Indian woodoats) Cyperus esculentus (Yellow nutsedge) Dichanthelium clandestinum (Deertongue) Glyceria striata (Fowl mannagrass) Juncus effusus (Common rush) Scirpus atrovirens (Green bulrush)
KENDEDA PAVILION
ZONE B
Andropogon glomeratus (Bushy bluestem) Andropogon virginicus (Broomsedge bluestem) Chasmanthium latifolium (Indian woodoats) Chasmanthium sessiliflorum (Longleaf woodoats) Elymus virginicus (Virginia wildrye) Sorghastrum nutans (Indiangrass) ZONE C
Scirpus atrovirens (Green bulrush) ZONE D
Lobelia cardinalis (Cardinal flower) ZONE E
Juncus effusus (Common rush) ZONE F
Andropogon glomeratus (Bushy bluestem) ZONE G
Osmunda cinnamomea (Cinnamon fern) Osmunda regalis (Royal fern) SOUTH FORK PEAVINE CREEK
MONTGOMERY TREE CANOPY WALKWAY
ZONE H
Bidens aristosa (Bearded beggarticks) Eutrochium purpureum (Sweetscented joe-pye weed) Helianthus angustifolius (Swamp sunflower) Panicum virgatum (Switchgrass) Rudbeckia laciniata (Cutleaf coneflower) ZONE I
Chasmanthium latifolium (Indian woodoats) Coreopsis grandiflora (Largeflower tickseed) Hibiscus coccineus (Scarlet rose mallow) Panicum anceps (Beaked panic grass) ZONE J
Iris virginica (Virginia iris) ZONE K
N
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SYLVATICA STUDIO
Eutrochium purpureum (Sweetscented joe-pye weed)
ZONE L
TREES
ABOVE
Andropogon virginicus (Broomsedge bluestem) Helianthus angustifolius (Swamp sunflower) Hibiscus coccineus (Scarlet rose mallow) Rudbeckia laciniata (Cutleaf coneflower) Sorghastrum nutans (Indiangrass)
Carpinus caroliniana (American hornbeam) Fagus grandifolia (American beech) Magnolia tripetala (Umbrella tree) Magnolia virginiana (Sweetbay) Nyssa sylvatica (Black gum) Quercus phellos (Willow oak)
The lowland meadow has been replanted with native grasses including river oats.
ZONE M
Andropogon glomeratus (Bushy bluestem)
SHRUBS
ZONE N
Cephalanthus occidentalis (Common buttonbush) Ilex verticillata (Common winterberry) Itea virginica (Virginia sweetspire) Sambucus nigra ssp. canadensis (American black elderberry)
TIMOTHY HURSLEY
Rudbeckia laciniata (Cutleaf coneflower)
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subwatershed. Rainwater that falls in the forest simply runs over leaf litter, to the stream, and then out. The few residential lots that do send in overland runoff tend to be very deep and wooded.” The challenge of simultaneously rendering the old forest accessible and ensuring its healthy preservation was addressed by the complex siteanalysis phase of master planning. Some areas of investigation would be pretty obvious to delve into, such as topography, vegetation, species, hydrology, and soils. Soil carbon sequestration
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levels, by the way, were found to be very high, confirming that the land had not been plowed. Other queries were more rarefied. The imperative to provide visitors with a distinctive and revelatory, even profound, experience made analysis and diagramming of immersion in the forest, and its perceived edges, especially vital. The property, after all, is not enormous. Knowing where within it the perception of being surrounded by nature is complete and where hints of the encroaching built environment begin to intrude indicated the best locations for trails that have an educational purpose. Places “where one feels more immersed
ABOVE
The pods’ soft lighting enhances the illusion of floating in the trees. OPPOSITE
Without steps and handrails, the flow way would likely have been a destructive pathway of desire.
TIMOTHY HURSLEY
→ it doesn’t flow into it. The forest is in its own small
VIEWS ARE FOCUSED ALONG CORRIDORS THAT EMPHASIZE IMMERSION IN THE NATURAL SETTING.
DORIAN SHY
tend to be the areas where plant growth is most dense and diverse, where soils are least disturbed, and where wildlife and natural systems tend to be more intact,” Stainback says. Even in the WildWoods, which, though wooded, has been historically much disturbed, these studies indicated where views could be “focused up and down these immersed corridors, and directed away from the areas that take one out of the natural setting.”
substantial population of salamanders, for example, presumably sheltering for now under the patches of ivy. So it’s an ongoing, slow process. “Emphasis on slow,” Gus Kaufman, a birder who leads Audubon Society walks in the forest, grumbled recently, adding that the name WildWoods “is awfully pretentious—it’s not wild woods.” Residents of Druid Hills, famously protective of their historic neighborhood, became supportive of the museum’s plans once, as Warner says, “we Given the potential for erosion and habitat de- sat with them in their backyards”; they grasped struction, the elimination of invasive plants is that if anything, the master plan would channel being done painstakingly, by hand. There is a the Olmstedian spirit of the place. But, as often
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the forest as a teaching tool for as many people as possible.” Entry now requires a museum ticket: kids $16, adults $18. But the educational mission has been enhanced. Since WildWoods opened and the forest reopened, museum attendance is up by about 15 percent. There are five new outdoor programs for K–12 students. Schoolkids on field trips pay $7, though of the 50,000 who come every year, 15,000 from high-poverty Title 1 schools pay a further reduced, or entirely waived, admission. The husbanding of a nearly pristine environment involves
TIMOTHY HURSLEY
occurs with projects on what is perceived to be public land, even when it isn’t, some people have been resentful, specifically of the fact that access to the forest was closed for a period and is now limited, whereas it was freely open when managed by the county. Stainback recalls “preposterous” assertions by a few people on social media: The museum was going to log the forest, or install a zip line. Of course, the invasive species presence says something about the county’s long management of the property. Still, an online petition with 751 signatures objects to what Fernbank has done and asserts its “inherent duty to use
LEFT
A screened structure projecting into the trees serves as classroom and lab.
Project Credits
limits. “That’s something we had to address” in public presentations, says Stainback, who believes that to most people it became clear “that we understood the more intimate details about the place and were passionate about communicating those to people, and about producing aesthetically compelling graphics that pulled them in, that allowed them to access what we were feeling so strongly attracted to and passionate about protecting.” JONATHAN LERNER’S MEMOIR, SWORDS IN THE HANDS OF CHILDREN: REFLECTIONS OF AN AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY, WAS PUBLISHED IN 2017.
CLIENT FERNBANK MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY/ FERNBANK, INC., ATLANTA. PRIME CONSULTANT, LEAD PLANNER, LEAD DESIGNER SYLVATICA STUDIO, ATLANTA (SUSAN STAINBACK, ASLA, PRINCIPAL; RYAN JENKINS, ASSOCIATE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT; CURTIS ALTER, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT). MASTER PLANNING AND LANDSCAPE CONSULTANTS REED HILDERBRAND, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS (JOHN KETT, ASLA, PRINCIPAL). ARCHITECT PERKINS+WILL, ATLANTA. CIVIL ENGINEER LONG ENGINEERING, ATLANTA. STRUCTURAL ENGINEER UZUN + CASE, ATLANTA; CFD STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING, ATLANTA. ECOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT/FOREST STEWARDSHIP PLAN STEVEN N. HANDEL, HONORARY ASLA, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PROGRAM IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION, NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, AND HARVARD UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF DESIGN, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS; CHRISTINA M. K. KAUNZINGER, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY. HISTORICAL/CULTURAL EVOLUTION OVERVIEW TUNNELL AND TUNNELL LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, ATLANTA. EXHIBIT DESIGN THINKWELL GROUP, LOS ANGELES. PLANTING CONTRACTORS BOAK LANDSCAPING, CUMMING, GEORGIA; ROCK SPRING RESTORATIONS, ATLANTA GENERAL CONTRACTOR VAN WINKLE CONSTRUCTION, ATLANTA.
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RIPPLE EFFECT
THE SMALL AND THE INFINITE: MAX IV LABORATORY LANDSCAPE. BY JESSICA BRIDGER
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T
his story begins, like all good stories must, in the last ice age. Glaciers sat over Sweden, compacting the earth, helping to create dense clay soil. Thousands of years and a glacial retreat later, the city of Lund developed on the peninsula’s southeastern lobe. Lund University helps to anchor the present-day city, home to about 90,000 and a leading location for scientific research. nomena at the subatomic level. A topographically exuberant 19-hectare landscape by Snøhetta cocoons the MAX IV buildings, designed by FOJAB, both the result of a public competition held in 2009. The landscape is a terrain of mounds that pitch and roll in a pattern that responds both to the traffic on an adjacent road and the tangents of photons. It’s so scientific that it all ends up being a bit mystic.
FELIX GERLACH
Lund is also home to the new MAX IV Laboratory, which houses a synchrotron particle accelerator that creates electromagnetic radiation in the form of photons. Opened in June 2016, the synchrotron buildings were built some 10,000 years after the ice retreated, leaving solid terrain, an ideal foundation for stabilizing extraordinarily sensitive experiments. MAX IV is used to study materials, chemicals, and phe-
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© ABML4
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LEFT
The MAX IV Laboratory is home to a synchrotron particle accelerator—and a landscape that helps this high-tech equipment function.
On a wet, cold day in late October, the ride from Copenhagen Central Station to MAX IV took just over an hour. Copenhagen, Malmö, Lund, and other smaller Swedish and Danish towns in the area form an urban agglomeration known as the Øresund region. Its development was facilitated by the construction of the beautiful Øresund Bridge my train rockets over—a project to knit together cities and countries for local, supraregional, and national gain. This international concentration of economy, knowledge, and population helps to feed places like Lund, to make them viable centers for research and commerce—and the state-of-the-art university facilities in Lund help bring people to the region in pursuit of knowledge. The sky hung low, as coastal skies do, and there was a peculiar puddled wetness visible all around as the final kilometers of the trip were covered in a friendly colored bright green city
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RIGHT AND BELOW
Lund, in southern Sweden, has the perfect stable soil for delicate experiments and landforms. OPPOSITE
MAX IV Laboratory is a large facility for studying very small things that underpin our entire world.
bus, traveling on a rural-seeming road to MAX IV. In subsequent activities, the reality of clay soil and wet weather would come into focus, but the impression was first one of a lush landscape typified by a peculiar Scandinavian restraint and northern atmosphere, punctuated by not-unattractive office parks. MAX IV’s landscape sits directly next to a section of the E22 highway, which begins in England and, with the help of massive car ferries, continues into Russia, stretching
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some 5,320 kilometers to its end in the south-central Russian city of Ishim. Even the context of travel is both local and massive at the same time, though on site the buildings of the synchrotron are more impressive than the highway. MAX IV has two large central structures: a tower, containing labs and offices, which rises protectively above the three-story-tall storage ring of the synchrotron itself, 528 meters in circumference. Electrons, shot out of an electron gun, are sped up to nearly the speed of light along a
“linac” (linear particle accelerator). They are then propelled around the big ring and a smaller one, only 96 meters in circumference. Tangents from these rings, known as “beamlines,” are split off into lab rooms, each one custom-made for particular research trajectories. The fast photons produce radiation in the form of X-rays, allowing, among other things, radiography—similar to the familiar ghostly images of a broken bone, but with an imaging system that is orders of magnitude more sensitive.
© KLAS ANDERSSON, TOP; © MAX IV, BOTTOM; FOJAB, OPPOSITE
THE BUILDINGS RISE FROM WHAT AT FIRST APPEAR TO BE SIMPLE, SMALL HILLS.
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TOP TO BOTTOM
Parametric techniques were used to generate a landscape of bumps.
The landscape at MAX IV works in three distinct movements: a rationale for landforms based on vibration mitigation, a need to use earth excavated from the foundation on site, and a requirement for stormwater management. Appropriate plantings complement the formgiving trifecta. Wandering the result feels a bit like enjoyable trespassing, even though it was important to Snøhetta to make something like a public park. Most research facilities are closed off, their landscapes gated. At MAX IV, a gravel path
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© SNØHETTA
The landscape surrounds the whole of it; the buildings rise from what at first appear to be simple, small hills. Yet the lonely location, atomically small experiment parameters, and seemingly mundane mounds disguise a complex set of operations that foretell the future of Lund in an act of urbanized landscape creation that extends from our current, posttruth era back to that ice age idyll.
© SNØHETTA
TOP TO BOTTOM
The design of the landforms responds to both the functioning of the synchrotron and the adjacent infrastructure.
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“I THINK MYSELF THAT THE HILLS ARE TO BREAK THE BORING LANDSCAPE, BUT THE OFFICIAL MOTIVATION IS THAT THEY ABSORB VIBRATIONS.”
TOBIAS SELNAES MARKUSSEN, THIS PAGE; © SNØHETTA, OPPOSITE
MIK AEL ERIKSSON
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RIGHT
Similar facilities elsewhere would be fenced off, but MAX IV is part of a larger urban development strategy. OPPOSITE
The landscape is almost otherworldly, devoid of explicit program, but public.
winds through the landforms and past the two retaining ponds, but it is undoubtedly more fun to tromp around on the bumpy terrain itself. Bricks, lumps of aggregate, stones, and mixed till are visible through the autumn-darkened grasses and forbs, betraying its cut-and-fill heritage. Small things make up a much larger whole at MAX IV, in many ways. MAX IV needed to have a deep foundation laid in the glacially compacted clay soil to ensure it could deliver stable readings, unaffected by unwanted inputs that might come from its physical siting. The landforms were inspired by the idea of mitigating vibrations from the adjacent highway. The thinking was that the flatter the landscape, the more vibrations would reach the site, thus the bumps. The mounds pitch and roll at a wavelength pattern that corresponds to the traffic vibration and responds to the circular form of the synchrotron building. This 3-D field
of amplitude significantly increases the surface area of the landscape, dampening vibration. While the power of landscape architecture is considerable, the site for MAX IV had to be deemed sufficiently stable as a base condition before any construction. A chance encounter in the MAX IV cafeteria with Mikael Eriksson, machine director for the series of MAX labs, beginning with the first, MAX I, in 1983, shed some light on the topic. “I think myself the hills are to break the boring landscape, but the official motivation is that they absorb vibrations,” Eriksson said. “I saw the evaluation of that, it does impact, dampening by about 10 percent or so.” The clay soil of the site is “ideal as it absorbs vibrations, contrary to stone or rock,” said Eriksson, who is also professor emeritus of both Accelerator Technologies at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and Accelerator Physics at Lund University.
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RIGHT
The MAX IV tower contains laboratories and offices. INSET
MAX IV rises from a flat landscape, surrounded by roads and power lines, like the hint of a state-of-the-art future.
The second rationale for the project is the requirement that the site could be returned to its initial state—fallow farmland—if needed. This meant that the cut-and-fill balance needed to equal zero. Southern Sweden is the location of the country’s major produce, plant oil, and grain production, owing to its soil profile and longitude that enable the longest possible growing season relative to Sweden’s geographic position. While agricultural uses are still active around Lund—farms with typical red farmhouses are visible from MAX IV
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and the train from Copenhagen— urban development has displaced farming, as it often does. Farming created monocultures, taking over from fields and forests intact since the ice sheets pulled back, perhaps not as pastorally idyllic as one might hope, but certainly as dramatically manipulated as the landscape now at MAX IV.
Snøhetta used parametric form generation, done in Rhino’s Grasshopper 3-D plug-in, to generate the landforms at MAX IV. Simply say the world “parametric” in a room of architects, landscape architects, urban designers, and planners, and you will be met with a lot of eye rolling. This is not unwarranted—what is essentially a form generating
FELIX GERLACH
Thus the landscape architecture assists in the role of the land itself in protecting subatomic readings from unwanted interference.
method with considerable aesthetic appeal has, for at least the past decade, often been treated as an end, and not a means. Rules are fed into the program, and three-dimensional forms result. The description of inputs is expectedly complex, but reflects actual conditions on site and produced outputs that have an actual, measurable impact. In the
case of MAX IV, the wavelength of the traffic vibration, tangent lines extending from the 528-meter circle of the synchrotron, and a set of waves radiating out from it were plugged in to create an amplitude—resulting in a bumpy surface—to reduce the on-site vibration to as close to zero as possible. Jenny Osuldsen, a project architect with Snøhetta, said,
“For once we can use parametric design in a real way.” The coordinates for the landforms were then fed into GPS-controlled bulldozers, enabling not only a zerosum game of cut and fill, but also no relocation of soil off-site during the building process. “It was like using a bulldozer to make a 1:1 3-D printed
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Scrambling up some of the higher mounds, some more than a story from ground level, one enters into a landscape of surprising power— and a wish to be as sure-footed as a mountain goat. The avowedly artificial topography pitches and rolls in
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a controlled riot of earthen bumps, yet it is topped by rough and tough vegetation, a point–counterpoint with a wild–fake effect. Puddles pool in the valleys, and the road at points nearly completely disappears from view, though high-voltage electricity pylons and the synchrotron facility assert a human edge in the proceedings. The plantings were done in two movements, in consultation with Professor Mørten Hammer from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). The first was a highly curated mix of seeds deemed appropriate to the site conditions and locality by a study of the Kungsmarken Nature Reserve. It included sedges (Carex), woodland bulrush (Scirpus expansus), water manna grass (Glyceria fluitans), and purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria), among others. The second
was more inventive, and ultimately ABOVE more successful. Instead of copying The MAX IV entrance forecourt. and pasting the plant list found at Kungsmarken and leaving it at that, the team decided to use the reserve rather more literally: Cuttings were taken from the reserve itself, essentially a hay mix from mowing maintenance, and spread over the topography. “It was slow in the start with the meadow, but the ‘hay method’ actually worked. It takes three to five years to take hold completely,” said Osuldsen. In addition, smaller shrubs and trees were planted, including bloodtwig dogwood (Cornus sanguinea), firethorn (Pyracantha), snowberry (Symphoricarpos), and an amazing amount of large gray willow (Salix cinerea). The vegetation is rambunctious, weedy, and wonderful. A field of taller plants with some late sunflowers abutted the road.
TOBIAS SELNAES MARKUSSEN, TOP AND OPPOSITE
model,” said Osuldsen, with a laugh. This was made possible through the client-contractor duo of Wihlborgs and Peab. “We thought it would be way too expensive to use GPS, but it was the contractor who suggested it, the guys working in the dirt. They told us, ‘We’ve executed golf courses in that way,’” said Osuldsen. The 3-D model was fed into the bulldozers, images were taken to record progress, and, in a matter of months—from the start of design in April 2011 to September 2011—nearly half of the landscape was built.
LEFT
The service spaces and entrance forecourt at MAX IV are sensitive to function and to sustainability concerns. INSET
The landscape is meant to be experienced, and can be traversed on or off the paths provided.
The soil itself, visible between stems and solids, is a reddish-brown, and slides underfoot like any proper clay should when wet. After nearly toppling off the side of one mound, one can understand why there is a plan to use sheep to maintain them. Capturing stormwater on this clay soil is as easy as getting covered in mud. Snøhetta designed two retaining ponds, one for a one-year storm and the second for a 100-year storm. In a glacially given landscape, the 100year storm seems inconsequential, beneath mention. At our middle— and middling—human scale, near a yellow sign warning of radiation, the pond, with a bit of water following a recent rain, looked moodily impressive, especially when cold wind ruffled its surface, rippling it lightly. Sustainable designs often suffer for lack of beauty, but retaining ponds done well have a serious
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Inside the lab, everything was climate controlled, tubes snaked around brightly colored metal objects, and screens sat waiting for researchers to boot up experiments. Aluminum foil, as one would have in a kitchen, was in evidence everywhere, as it is as good an insulator in a billiondollar research lab as in a walk-up in Brooklyn. There was a feeling of serious work being conducted—and the necessity for the frequent use of dosimeters to track radiation exposure. Outside, the smell of autumn decay and mineral-rich earth mixed with the ozone of rain, a bouquet of smells much the opposite of the
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This landscape, which invites contemplation, is complemented by a controlled, if overly horizontal, courtyard-like space inside the large synchrotron ring. The interior space inside the ring is massive, some 16,000 square meters in area. It is accessible only by going over or under the ring, but it needed to be passable with a truck and therefore largely empty. Inspired by landscape labyrinths, it is designed to be a maze of sorts, made from limestone pavers set into a pattern. A central pergola invites a lunchtime linger. The whole space is bounded by a red-surfaced running track, to pro-
FELIX GERLACH, TOP; TOBIAS SELNAES MARKUSSEN, BOTTOM
profundity, like any good body of machine-tang and nearly clean-room water—or glacial ice. sterility of the lab areas.
ABOVE
The interior courtyard in the “big” synchrotron ring had functional constraints, but its program includes a labyrinth and a running track. OPPOSITE
A swing in the interior courtyard.
vide a place for visiting scientists to let out their mid-experiment jitters with a brisk jog. Many come for a short time and have ample anxious downtime while their experiments run their course. A selection of young trees punctuates the space, including durmast oak from Norway (Quercus petraea), ailanthus (Ailanthus altissima), European chestnut (Castanea sativa), and more. All were sourced from a nursery near the site. Seen from the upper-story cafeteria in the synchrotron complex tower, the space looks a bit like a big diagram, but it is hard not to be moved by its nearly sublime scaled context.
particles to give momentum to urban development. Lund will soon be home to a spallation station, known as the European Spallation Source (ESS), which uses protons in place of electrons to produce neutrons. Experiments at MAX IV can even have complementary components carried out at ESS. MAX IV and ESS ground the municipality’s plan for a “Science City,” which, while a somewhat tired concept nowadays (one research cluster does not a science concentration fit for city expansion make, but every urban development plan needs a catchy tagline these days…), seems entirely appropriate to Lund, given the facilities there. Yet MAX IV is only half of why the Most interesting is the use of nuclear region is excited about propelling physics facilities to ground a devel-
opment plan, when “many similar facilities are located in industrial areas, or even in a military context. The equivalent of ESS in the USA is located in [a] fenced military area,” said Eva Dalman, the city’s project manager for Lund Northeast, aka Science City. The scale of the clusters of buildings is not exactly at a walkable one quite yet, and a proposed tramline will not be operational until 2020. But in this landscape, one of fields and red Swedish barns and low-slung housing, these cutting-edge technologies have already drawn multinationals like Sony and a spiffy new hotel to cater to visitors, including the 2,000 scientists, plus support staff, who
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ABOVE
An overview of the MAX IV campus. RIGHT
are expected to use MAX IV annually. The structural plan shows open plots for further development, which is intended to include housing for about 50,000 people and associated urban services and amenities. It also clearly indicates that most of the surrounding landscape, complete with a low observatory hill, will remain intact as its agricultural monoculture, a productive green backdrop. There’s something smart about the Science City plans, beyond the obvious. A pool of water in one of the bump depressions at MAX IV magnifies the autumn-blackened grass below its surface. It is a single moment in a field of lumps and bumps, all made to a purpose, all avowedly “unnatural” in their human genesis. Yet it is part of a much larger whole, one that follows patterns of growth and change, season by season and year by year. At the same time, the immensity of this is composed of
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© ABML4, TOP LEFT; TOBIAS SELNAES MARKUSSEN, BOTTOM
Jenny Osuldsen, a project lead at Snøhetta, strides across the varied landscape at MAX IV.
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TOBIAS SELNAES MARKUSSEN
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LEFT
Landscapes and landforms, photons and protons, glaciers and eons: Everything fits together like a puddle nestled in the undulating landscape.
photons, neutrons, and strange and down quarks: the elementary particles of the universe. Just as a science campus can help to build a new urban area, and a synchrotron can assist in the development of better cancer treatments, in the end it is all about the rain collecting in a puddle as trucks speed by, just over the bumps in the distance. JESSICA BRIDGER IS AN URBANIST, JOURNALIST, AND CONSULTANT BASED IN BERLIN. SHE WORKS WITH THE UNITED NATIONS, SCHINDLER GROUP, ETH ZURICH, AND OTHERS ON PROJECTS RELATED TO LANDSCAPE AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT.
Project Credits CLIENT FASTIGHETS AB ML 4, MALMÖ, SWEDEN (JOINTLY OWNED BY PEAB AND WIHLBORGS). ARCHITECT (BUILDINGS) FOJAB ARCHITECTS, MALMÖ, SWEDEN. LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE SNØHETTA, OSLO, NORWAY (JENNY B. OSULDSEN, KNUT BJØRGUM, PÅL EIDE HASSELBERG, FRODE DEGVOLD, MARTIN BRUNNER, AND KARI STENSRØD). COLLABORATORS TYRENS ENGINEERS, MALMÖ, SWEDEN.
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Detail of Clouds over Olana, 1872, by Frederic Edwin Church, Oil on paper 8 11⁄16 x 12 1⁄8 inches, OL.1976.1. Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, New York, Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation.
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A VIEW OF THE
WORLD
THE RESTORATION OF OLANA, THE HOME OF THE PAINTER FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH, RECOVERS A PHILOSOPHY OF ART AND LIFE HE EMBEDDED IN THE LANDSCAPE. BY MAC GRISWOLD
AM BUSY LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURING. I have nearly completed a cliff about a hundred feet in height,” wrote the American landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church to a friend in 1887, using the approximate term for the profession a decade before the founding of the American Society of Landscape Architects. The “cliff” was probably the sheer western side of the hill on which he’d built his house, Olana, high above the Hudson River. Church added his new studio wing in that location the same year.
“I
Sixty-one years old and painfully crippled by arthritis, Church had painted mesmerizing panoramas that gripped American and European audiences at midcentury, beginning with Niagara in 1857. Then, in 1859, came the public display at the Lyrique Hall in New York of a single jaw-dropping painting, The Heart of the Andes (about five by 10 feet). Its scope sweeps from
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BETH SCHNECK PHOTOGRAPHY, 2013, BSCHNECKPHOTO.COM, TOP; FREDERIC JOSEPH CHURCH, PLAN OF OLANA, SEPTEMBER 1886, INK AND WATERCOLOR ON PAPER, 22 1⁄8 X 36 1⁄4 IN., COLLECTION OLANA STATE HISTORIC SITE, NEW YORK STATE OFFICE OF PARKS, RECREATION, AND HISTORIC PRESERVATION, BOTTOM
ABOVE
Ecuador’s distant, snow-covered Mount Chimborazo down to a foreground plantscape so microscopically detailed and botanically correct that some dizzied viewers—who had been provided with opera glasses—even fainted.
state road incursions. The designed landscape inadvertently survived—silent but intact. The young art historian David Huntington, visiting the dilapidated house in 1953, was staggered by what he saw, including a trove of Church’s sketches of his property and a detailed 1886 map of the place.
OPPOSITE
Tastes changed. The triumphal national narrative celebrated in Church’s work fell out of favor after the Civil War. Church’s reputation by the time of his death in 1900 was totally eclipsed. The beauty of his great Persian-style “castle” was uglified by 20th-century tastemakers into a “Victorian” monstrosity. His views were scumbled and blurred by unchecked growth. Land was sold, outbuildings demolished, corners lopped off the property by
The spectacularly rapid story of Olana’s initial salvation from proposed auction and land development in 1964 has been told elsewhere, most completely by the landscape historian and professor of American studies David Schuyler, who sits on Olana’s National Advisory Committee. Importantly, by 1966 New York State had become Olana’s proud owner, as vested in the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. A nonprofit, the forerunner of what is now known as the Olana Partnership, led the site development.
The sweeping Hudson River and Olana’s renewed landscape today, seen from Church’s “castle.”
The painter’s son, Frederic J. Church, mapped the nearly completed landscape in 1886.
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COMBINED STRATEGIC LANDSCAPE DESIGN PLAN
OLANA CENTER
FARM
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SEE PAGE 120 FOR FERME ORNÉE DETAIL NELSON BYRD WOLTZ /THE LA GROUP
STRUCTURE IN DISUSE STRUCTURE IN USE PARKING RESTORED CARRIAGE ROAD PAVED ROAD PARKLAND/OPEN FIELD/MEADOW WETLAND FOREST WATER HISTORIC PROPERTY BOUNDARY
HOUSE ENVIRONS SEE PAGE 121 FOR HOUSE ENVIRONS PLAN
MARK PREZORSKI, RIGHT
More than 40 years later, in 2009, the Cultural Landscape Foundation added Olana to Landslide, its watch list of public landscape treasures at risk. (The term “cultural landscape” was only clearly defined in 1994 with National Park Service Preservation Brief 36, Protecting Cultural Landscapes: Planning, Treatment, and Management of Historic Landscapes, by Charles Birnbaum, FASLA.) The 20th-century childhood of a national cultural landscape movement coincided with the early steps of Olana’s recognition as a landscape masterwork. ABOVE
The painter’s view of the river and the Hudson Highlands from his studio window.
As the house restoration neared stability, more serious attention was paid to treating Church’s design of his home surroundings as a work of art. A white paper, also by Birnbaum, singles out the 1996 historic landscape report by the landscape architect Robert M. Toole to be “the essential starting
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EXISTING LAND USE
OLANA CENTER
HOUSE ENVIRONS
LEGEND STRUCTURE IN DISUSE STRUCTURE IN USE PARKING RESTORED CARRIAGE ROAD PAVED ROAD PARKLAND/OPEN FIELD/MEADOW WETLAND FOREST WATER HISTORIC PROPERTY BOUNDARY
Piece by piece, with funding through private donations and New York State grants, and with assistance from the state parks commissioner Rose Harvey and the deputy commissioner for capital projects John Pocorobba, parts of Church’s original visionary landscape were brought back: first the farm, then parts of the wider landscape and the house environs. The historic footprints
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of agricultural fields were located; native meadows were established with the help of the ecological landscape designer Larry Weaner, Affiliate ASLA; second-growth and invasive plants were removed. In 2015, restoration of the house environs alone ran to nearly half a million dollars, two-thirds of it from the state, the remainder raised by the Olana Partnership. A massive retaining wall that cradles the house on its rocky overlook was repaired. The plant orders for what is referred to as “the Mingled Garden,” Olana’s sole “flower garden,” were used to replant the area. That year, Church’s prized borrowed view from Olana over the “cliff” to the river below was cleared for the
NELSON BYRD WOLTZ /THE LA GROUP
point for understanding the evolution of Olana’s visual and spatial relationships over time.” Then came the hiring of a landscape curator. Thomas Woltz, FASLA, of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects (NBWLA), whose firm was first engaged in 2011, recalled, “We had come to an object that had been saved—the house, at a cost of many millions—but the irony was, nothing of the intentional and composed landscape remained truly visible.”
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OLANA CENTER
HOUSE ENVIRONS
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STRUCTURE CARRIAGE ROAD ORCHARD CULTIVATED GROUND PASTURE PARKLAND/OPEN FIELD ‘SWAMP’ FOREST WATER PROPERTY BOUNDARY
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first time in decades and the steep slope was some returned to their original 10-foot width, the understandreplanted with natives. ing of views both internal and borrowed grew. Multiple vantage points designed by Church were cleared around the full 360 “We had to figure out a way to share ecology goals degrees of the house’s elevation. Church’s original approach up with the state,” says Woltz, looking back over the the steep slope to the house proved to be too convoluted for toprocess so far. “We had to be able to clear trees day’s proposed visitation traffic. However, the present-day route [not a Department of Environmental Conserva- still sticks close to the west shore of a 10-acre lake, the sight of tion (DEC) practice] so as to create a warm sea- which announces to visitors that they have arrived at Olana. son native meadow, increase habitat, encourage greater biodiversity. We had to find the confluence The landscape of Olana was Church’s culminating work of of values and principles with the DEC to break art. The artist himself recognized what he was doing. In a letdown siloed science.” ter to a friend he wrote in 1884, “I have made about one and three-quarters miles of roads this season, opening entirely As each step unfolded, and particularly as Church’s new and beautiful views—I can make more and better landfive miles of carriage roads were stabilized and scapes in this way than by tampering with canvas and paint
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HISTORIC VIEWSHED
in the Studio.” As one of Central Park’s commissioners, and a friend of Frederick Law Olmsted, Church was familiar with what Olmsted called “passages of scenery,” both internal and external to a composition.
the long record in the Hudson River Valley (dating to the 1960s) of managing growth to the benefit of all players—including Olana—stands as a landmark.
“The viewshed was Church’s muse,” says Mark Prezorski, Olana’s senior vice president and creative director. Ned Sullivan, the president of Scenic Hudson, Inc., which has helped negotiate practical solutions to proposed intrusions into the Olana viewshed, notes that today Hudson River Valley easements include nearly 3,000 acres of what Olana “sees.” Those acres protect not only the views themselves but also agricultural and ecological resources, endangered species, and orchards. In a national political climate that emphatically does not favor conservation or grassroots environmentalism,
The Strategic Landscape Design Plan for Olana, a crucial document that resulted from a highly collaborative process between the client and multiple consultants, tallies existing site conditions and strenuously evaluates Olana’s future development. NBWLA, which received a 2017 ASLA Professional Honor Award for the plan, took the lead, partnering with the LA Group, a Saratoga Springs, New York, firm already under contract with the state. The landscape architect and histo-
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CIRCULATION
LEGEND
NELSON BYRD WOLTZ /THE LA GROUP
Parking Restored carriage road Paved road
rian Suzanne Turner, FASLA, of Suzanne Turner Associates, created a comprehensive timeline (1794–2012) to ensure fidelity to “Church’s careerlong, three-dimensional composition—the Olana landscape.” The state’s Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation conducted a detailed woodland survey. Given how drastically historic house visitation has shrunk nationwide, the team called on Camoin Associates, economic analysts and development planners, to conduct tourism market studies. Input from an experienced Hudson River Valley farmer, Zach Wolf, then the director of the Growing Farmers Initiative at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, was critical to developing Olana’s
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farm plan. The LA Group spearheaded a flexible long-term budget that itemizes big-ticket projects, a program vital for fund-raising. HE GIFTED 18-year-old Church first came to the Hudson River Valley in 1844 to study with the landscape painter Thomas Cole, later acknowledged as the founder of the Hudson River School. That artistic apprenticeship was followed by a two-year tropical trek across South America, passionately tracking the footsteps of his intellectual mentor, Alexander von Humboldt, the Prussian geographer, naturalist, and explorer. In his wide-ranging scientific treatise, Cosmos, Humboldt classed landscape painting as a principal mode for expressing love of nature. Church set out to be the consummate landscape painter, and succeeded. The landscape architect Laurie
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SLOPE ANALYSIS
THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE
A white cross marks the house. Combined slope and visibility studies produced an ideal visitor center location that maximizes views from the center while remaining unseen from the house.
PERCENT RISE 0-5 percent 5.01-8 percent 8.01-12 percent 12.01-19 percent 19.01-24 percent 24.01-29 percent 29.01-50 percent
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LEGEND Observer point of view Not visible Visible
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NELSON BYRD WOLTZ /THE LA GROUP
VISIBILITY ANALYSIS
VISIBILITY AND SLOPE COMPOSITE
LEGEND Observer point of view Visible Percent Rise 0-5 percent 5.01-8 percent 8.01-12 percent
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Olin, FASLA, who has scrutinized Olana and Church’s depictions of it over the past decade, says, “It’s a design, a composition, a painter’s composition of a world that Church then turned around, and from which he made his own work.” Both in art and in life, Church was drawn to the rocky physiognomy of mountains—the Andes, the sandstone cliffs of Jordan’s Petra, the Hudson Highlands. The artist bought the hilly, worn-out farm directly across the river from Cole’s studio in 1860. He and Isabel Carnes married—she became the mother of six. Richard Morris Hunt designed a picturesque new residence, Cosy Cottage, their vine-draped home for 10 years. The
old farmland was revived and transformed into a productive American ferme ornée. Within only a few years, Church had planted “several thousand trees”—both nursery stock for orchards and native species for the beginnings of his long campaign to reforest his property. He fertilized with his own matured compost: “muck” excavated from the farm’s swamp bottom. As early as 1864, Church had formulated a “comprehensive landscape design scheme for the future” although he had not yet acquired the steep acreage where the new house would stand. In 1865 the Churches’ two young children, their first, died of diphtheria within one week. Rebuilding their lives, in 1867 they set off on a pilgrimage to the Old World, most notably the Middle East. For 18 months Church sought and found
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FERME ORNÉE
EXISTING CONDITIONS
PORTION OF NORTH ORCHARD TO BE EVALUATED AT A LATER DATE DUE TO CURRENT PRESENCE OF RARE PLANT SPECIES IN THIS LOCATION
blazing light, ancient empires, fresh artistic inspiration for new Every great designed landscape is powered by landscape canvases—and renewed Christian belief. ideas inscribed wordlessly on the soil itself. Restoration of place presupposes a deep understandChurch was part of a midcentury transatlantic intellectual ing of the philosophy—even the psychology—of boom, scientific as well as artistic. It produced a torrent of its maker, and of the historic context over time. influential ideas, works, and discoveries about nature, and in For example, Church espoused Humboldt’s sciences such as geology and the field of ecology (a term coined encompassing view of creation, science, and by the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel in 1869). In 1854, nature, a view that fit comfortably with his own Henry David Thoreau’s Walden focused on the homestead Christian beliefs. Darwin’s theory of random in the wilderness, a theme that engaged many American art- natural selection—competition and struggle— ists, including Church, during a time when society was “torn shredded that comfort. During the ensuing between a worship of nature and a need to dominate it,” as decades while Church shaped Olana, the debate Turner writes. In 1859, the year that The Heart of the Andes between Humboldt and Darwin raged in public caused such a public stir, Alexander von Humboldt died and and private. “Humboldt’s concept of nature— Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species appeared. what he called ‘one great whole animated by
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HOUSE ENVIRONS PLAN
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2 LAWN TERRACE/ PLINTH RESTORATION
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6 PATH FROM UPPER PARKING LOT TO BUS TURNAROUND
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OA D
the breath of life’—would come to seem like a beautiful, but impossible, vision,” writes the art historian Jennifer Raab in Frederic Church: The Art and Science of Detail (Yale University Press, 2015).
used three primary discovery methods, he adds: high-tech mapping, calculations of slopes and grades, and art history. “Our tools were gigantic,” he continues, “chain saws and huge seeding and grading equipment. The moves are big and compositional.”
Both Raab and Stephen Jay Gould, the American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and science writer, even while admitting other factors were at work in Church’s creation of Olana’s landscape—rheumatism, no market for his paintings—touch on what they see as Church’s wrestling match within himself. “You could feel the bones of the design,” Woltz recalls. “We unearthed them, and found the voice.” The team
Olana’s scale and “the bones,” the basic materials—stone, soil, water, slopes, massed vegetation, and views—invite comparison with works by 20th-century earthworks artists such as Richard Long, Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, James Turrell, and others who created sitespecific works. Smithson, before he created Spiral Jetty, called Olmsted the first “earthworks artist.” Like them, Church was establishing the importance of designed landscape as art, but his purpose differed. For them, land art began as a
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LEFT
The painter framed his distant south view with Persian architecture. OPPOSITE
protest with a desire to divorce themselves from the gallery erty as the historic core: main market. It developed into an exploration of process, entropy, house, farm complex, and the the ephemeral. lake. Along with questions of parking, slopes, and grades, the The resolution Church presented within his landscape com- team also asked themselves “At position was Humboldt’s—that nature is an ordered web, what point does your body feel integrated, collaborative, and purposeful. Church’s argument, at rest? Safe in the Olana landwithin himself and as a Christian, was with Darwin’s mecha- scape?” The 4,500-square-foot nism of natural selection. If Church’s library records are cor- building (planned to expand to rect, although he owned Darwin’s other works, his library (110 7,500 square feet) and 50-car books on science and natural history) did not include On the parking lot close to the main Origin of Species. Church’s answer to the Humboldt/Darwin entrance will be nestled almost discourse—which would historically end badly for Christian invisibly within a dip in the belief in the rock-solid perfectibility of nature—was expressed land south of the lake. Its viewas a holistic design. Olana’s entirety, in detail as well as view- shed opens successively to the shed, deserves a place within the questioning America of lake, then the farm complex, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Emily the parkland, and beyond to the Dickinson. main house. It will create a visitor who perceives both Church HE GIGANTIC planning exercise that is the strategic design the artist and a landscape that plan ultimately “positions Olana for future growth, which is far more than a house surrounding. Equally is inevitable, based on many other factors in the region,” says important, although visitors will be able to see Prezorski. The site selected for the Olana Center was chosen the house from the center, and from there be able after consideration of 13 possibilities, winnowed to five, then to take most of the walks toward and around the two. The team identified a broad triangle within the prop- house, the house will not see the center. Finally,
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ANDY WAINWRIGHT, LEFT
A north-facing aerial catches the lake, the farm, and a viewshed preserved by easement and purchase.
STEVE COHEN PHOTOGRAPHY
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BELOW
Church worked closely with the architect Calvert Vaux on the design of the main house at Olana. OPPOSITE
BETH SCHNECK PHOTOGRAPHY, BSCHNECKPHOTO.COM, TOP RIGHT; MARK PREZORSKI, OPPOSITE
Above the visitor center site, a newly cleared and planted native meadow opens a view across the farm to the distant house.
the team analyzed views from all major internal points on the property out across the wider landscape to the Hudson and the Catskills. They concluded, “If Olana has a mandate to protect views, Olana should not compromise views to and from Olana.” Despite its heavy programmatic freight (balancing biographical, artistic, historical, environmental, ecological, and visitation requirements), the design plan effectively exposes and heightens—without altering—Church’s achievement. “For the first time since Church’s death,” says Sean Sawyer, the partnership’s president, “the [plan] has given us a map to reunify Olana’s diverse elements.” A work of art, a public park with renewed healthy woodlands as well as open spaces, a sustainable farm, a linchpin of the regional economy, a magnet attracting private and public regional easements, a benchmark for the forensic restoration, preservation, and management of any historic site: This is Olana, past, present, and future. MAC GRISWOLD IS A MEMBER OF THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE FOUNDATION’S STEWARDSHIP COUNCIL. HER MOST RECENT BOOK IS THE MANOR: THREE CENTURIES AT A SLAVE PLANTATION ON LONG ISLAND (FARRAR, STRAUS, AND GIROUX, 2013).
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Fully Integrated Stairs
Random-Pattern Tall Walls
Freestanding Columns
CIRCLE 221 ON READER SERVICE CARD
Multi-Angle Corners
© 2014 Kiltie Corporation • Oakdale, MN
THE BACK THROUGH THE REPELLENT FENCE: A LAND ART FILM
Directed by Sam Wainwright Douglas Big Beard Films, throughtherepellentfence.com
MICHAEL LUNDGREN/COURTESY POSTCOMMODITY
Borders separate and entangle us. They call attention to what isn’t ours, and where we aren’t welcome, as well as who and what we hope to keep close. Political boundaries like the U.S.–Mexico border have attracted artists for decades, seemingly drawn to the border’s power to set the horizon and enforce perspective. In 2015, Postcommodity, a collective of indigenous artists whose work is featured here, created an installation that drew the eye, literally across the border. The artists’ process, tracked in the new documentary Through the Repellent Fence, makes visible both the weight and the breadth of the border’s influence.
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GARDEN INDUSTRY DAVID RUBIN’S RARE TOOL COLLECTION FOLLOWS HORTICULTURE AS IT GREW TO NEED THE INSTRUMENTS OF ART. BY BRADFORD MCKEE / PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAHAR COSTON-HARDY
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N THE 19TH CENTURY, certain French hedge shears were made by blacksmiths to form the shape of a heart below the blade hinges—it was a sort of signature. Mistletoe was then as much a scourge on trees as it is now, so a mistletoe cutter was an important tool for a gardener to have. There were also cutters for asparagus and gooseberries; strawberries and ferns had their own spades. To pull fruit from trees, the French made metal cups, hoisted on poles, that had serrated rims to cut the stalks. One elaborate version of fruit picker in the vintage garden tool collection of David Rubin, ASLA, has an armorlike domed lid that cuts by snapping shut and catches the fruit in a cup lined with leather.
office of his firm, LAND Collective, in downtown Philadelphia, a long, deep space where you can also see the landscape architecture projects the firm has in progress (of recent note are those at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and in Columbus, Indiana, the hothouse of celebrity architecture). Rubin says he found some of his first vintage tools at the stall of a dealer, Deborah Cutler, on Portobello Road in London. “She would go out into the French countryside to find these things,” Rubin says. “I would also just wander and find things.” Serious collectors look for “the rarer, more curious, more unusual” tools, Cutler said in an e-mail. “David’s collection has beautiful and scarce items.”
weaponry. They’re a collective reminder of how violent the garden arts can be. After all, in an early artist’s depiction, Cain kills Abel with a spade.
Rubin came to gardening the usual way, as a kid on a suburban lot. He remembers it as a liberating experience during what could be an awkward coming of age. It remains a refuge to him. “I reduce my blood pressure when I go to the garden,” he says, which he does at his cottage on the New Jersey shore. His preoccupation with ancient implements is fueled in part by a bit of time travel, a direct connection to the people who handled these tools for long days of work on vast estates a couple hundred years ago. But he also feels a fusion of aesthetics and utility The silhouettes are powerful. There in these handmade objects. “It links Rubin has mounted his tool collection are prongs, teeth, blades, and billhooks you to the doer,” Rubin says, “who at the entrance of the new storefront —the sharp edges of horticultural links you to a visionary plan.”
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(1) Dividing spade, English; (2) Clay spade, English, c. 1900; (3) Four-tine border fork, English, c. 1920; (4) Peat spade (Harrison, Wisbech), English, c. 1900; (5) “Little Wonder” hedge trimmer, English, c. 1910; (6) Three-tine border fork, English, c. 1900; (7) Mistletoe cutter and branch saw, English, Victorian; (8) Burle oak compass, English, 18th century; (9) Astor lawn cutter, English, c. 1920; (10) Mistletoe cutter; (11) Edging knife, English, c. 1915; (12) Brass + zinc insecticide sprayer, early 20th century; (13) Clay spade, English; (14) Conservatory bellows; (15) Dibber, English; (16) Insecticide puffer, early 20th century; (17) Hand-forged branch lopper, French, early 19th century; (18) Assorted asparagus cutters, French; (19) Code Hal ime hedge trimmer, c. 1930; (20) Potato dibber, English, 19th century; (21) Mistletoe cutter; (22) Copped Hall grape preserver bottle, English, 19th century; (23) Hand-forged hedge clipper, early 19th century; (24) Vineyard secateurs, French; (25) Hand-forged hedge clipper, English, early 19th century; (26) Hedge clipper, English; (27) Strawberry spade; (28) Fruit picker, 19th century; (29) Hedge trimmer, English, 19th century; (30) Hand digging fork, English, 19th century; (31) Daisy grubber, English, late 19th century; (32) Mistletoe cutter; (33) Victorian cucumber straightener; (34) Dibber; (35) Victorian triangular garden line; (36) Hand-forged branch lopper, French; (37) Hand-forged hedge trimmer, English; (38) Unusual three-tine hand fork; (39) Digging fork, English, c. 1950; (40) Vineyard secateurs, French; (41) Insecticide puffer; (42) Apple picker, French, early 20th century; (43) T-handle strawberry spade; (44) Assorted brass hose bibs (and one fountain head at right); (45) Digging fork, English; (46) Hand-forged hedge trimmer, English, early 19th century; (47) Glass wasp trap, French, 19th century; (48) Vaughan fern trowel, English; (49) Hand-forged lopper, French; (50) Secateurs; (51) Conservatory insecticide bellows; (52) Ash-handled children’s fork, English, 18th century; (53) Small digging fork; (54) Bulb sorter; (55) Dibber; (56) Hedge trimmer, English, late 18th century; (57) Hedge trimmer, English or French, late 18th century; (58) Hedge trimmer, French, late 18th century; (59) Hand trowel; (60) Fruit picker; (61) Handforged hedge trimmer, English, 19th century; (62) Very rare insect scraper metal glove, English; (63) Tin fruit picker, Victorian; (64) Hand-forged mistletoe cutter, French, early 19th century; (65) Apricot picker, French; (66) Gooseberry pruner, late 19th century; (67) Greensleeves shears; (68) Bonsai trimmer; (69) Fruit picker, French, late 19th century; (70) Fruit picker, French; (71) Fruit picker, French; (72) Branch lopper, French, late 19th century; (73) Billhook, English, late 18th century; (74) Parrot beak secateurs, French, c. 1900; (75) Sliding mechanism multicut trimmer, English, early 20th century; (76) Dibber; (77) Glass wasp trap, French, 19th century; (78) Dibber, English, 19th century; (79) Compost thermometer; (80) Parrot beak secateurs by Newall; (81) Watering can, French; (82) Hedge trimmer, French or English, 19th century; (83) Astor multishear trimmer, English, c. 1920; (84) Spong “hedgehog” trimmer, English, c. 1910; (85) Multiblade hedge trimmer, early 20th century; (86) Strawberry spades, English, late 19th century; (87) Dibber, English, early 20th century; (88) Dibber, early 20th century; (89) Dibber, 18th century; (90) Hedge trimmer, English, early 19th century; (91) Barrows patent pruner, English, c. 1900; (92) Hedge trimmer, English, early 19th century; (93) Billhook, French, late 18th/early 19th century; (94) Strawberry spade, English; (95) Strawberry spade, English; (96) Potato dibber; (97) Glass wasp trap, French, 19th century; (98) Strawberry spade; (99) Parrot beak secateurs.
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THE BACK
/
BOOKS MAKE YOURSELF COMFORTABLE BE SEATED BY LAURIE OLIN; SAN FRANCISCO: APPLIED RESEARCH + DESIGN PUBLISHING, 2017; 213 PAGES, $34.95. REVIEWED BY JANE GILLETTE
A
t a time when the digital world undermines our attention to the physical environment and, more disastrously, when people worldwide are struggling with natural disasters as well as those resulting from “political repression, ethnic tensions, and economic disparities,” Laurie Olin, FASLA, admits that “it may seem odd or untimely to concern oneself at such length with how poorly or well-designed seating can influence our experience of public space and community.” We would have been tempted to agree—until we experienced Olin’s wonderful book, Be Seated. For one thing, his theoretical framework is sound. After all, he reminds us, the subject matter of seating becomes more important if we consider, first, that public spaces can “generate new possibilities for community” and, then, that one of the keys to successful public spaces is “how, where, and why we sit in them—both alone and together.” In Be Seated, Olin convinces us that seating is important in the larger world’s framework by interweaving architectural history, design considerations, and snatches of autobiography in a way that makes the resulting book a conveyance of poetic enlightenment as well as useful information. This is no small matter for what amounts to a relatively short book on seating. Olin begins with a brief and fairly straightforward history. While stressing that he is not providing a comprehensive survey, he touches on the importance of the Roman waystations that “engendered an urban conviviality,” the general
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disappearance of public spaces in the Middle Ages, and their reappearance in the 15th century with such Italian examples as the Piazza Signoria and various projects in the Netherlands. In the 19th century came the development of the park as the home site of the bourgeoisie and the various developments of the “Ruskinian industrial aesthetic.” Eventually, in the early 20th century, we were left with the empty spaces encouraged by modernism. This historical account acquires poetic beauty as Olin explores the sociology of sitting, tying things together—but never too tightly—with the projects created over the years by the various versions of the Olin firms. Of particular importance is his concern with the ordinary, the everyday. He mentions many of the sociological investigations of landscape (Stanley Cavell, Jane Jacobs, Kevin Lynch, Donald Appleyard, Michel de Certeau, and Jan Gehl, among others) as well as his own adventures. For example, one of Olin’s first professional forays involved producing designs for “beds, desks, shelving, railings, light fixtures, and hardware” for new dormitories and science buildings at Western Washington State College, an experience that made him consider “the practical needs of the people who would be using the places we were designing.” In 1969, he rented a studio in a hotel on Skid Road in Seattle—where he hung out on the streets and soon learned “how inhospitable most of the public realm was.” And when Olin was a fellow
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/BOOKS
bled on the pages—for example, the “Try to obtain” near a rendering of two chairs by Alvar Aalto and Bruno Mathsson.
at the American Academy in Rome, he studied “the natural habitat of working- and middle-class Italians in Rome,” which he felt showed “a series of interlocking territories” that in their aggregate produce “a vast multilayered organism very like a living forest.” Throughout the book we witness similar examples of Olin’s concern with the spatial habitat, especially its effects on its poorest inhabitants, like the homeless who inspire some designers to create benches with extra arms to prevent their use as beds. Likewise, throughout the book we CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT sense an undertone of a despair voiced only occasionally, as Olin sketches some in a comment on the scholars at the Bartlett School in London examples: a view of his who explore the physical and social structure of public space: Philadelphia apartment in 1974 with a Viennese “Most of this exemplary work thus far has had negligible effect upon the design of public seating in America.” bentwood café chair and two American wicker porch chairs, “a rustic version of an Adirondack chair,” and two chairs of bent and folded plywood by Alvar Aalto and Bruno Mathsson.
The overall tone of the book is, however, far from grim. Visual beauty is provided throughout by Olin’s sketches, paintings, and photographs, which are not just illustrations for the text but examples of a variety of solutions for the problems at hand. Some of the drawings are amusing, all are enlightening, and, on an even lighter note, it’s fun to try to read what he scrib-
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Through both text and drawings the reader gradually learns of Olin’s preference for loose chairs, long curved benches, and the use of a variety of seating in most spaces. If one theoretical stance prevails, it probably comes in the chapter titled “Simple Truths in Plain Sight,” which focuses on the way that ordinary people of various ages use seating. It’s a chapter filled with illustrations and observations that will hold the attention of designers despite what could be to some degree a warning: “There are habits and principles for the design of seating but truly no rules, which accounts for why there has been so much experimentation and continual redesign of what seems a most ordinary problem.” The discussion of this experimentation includes brief mentions of a range of landscape architectural designers—including James Corner, ASLA; Martha Schwartz, FASLA; and Chris Reed, FASLA—but it takes its fullest expression in the work of the Olin firms, a depiction that brilliantly expands on what most landscape architects come up with when they try to describe their design practices in print format. For example, Olin reminds us that his office has “never attempted to create any particular imagery nor affect a house style,” and neither his partners nor himself have ever “set out to make furnishings that are strident or call attention to themselves.” Nevertheless
SB 35, PEN AND INK, 1976, TOP LEFT; SB 133, PEN AND INK, 2002, BOTTOM LEFT; SB 18, GRAPHITE PENCIL ON COATED PAPER, 1968, RIGHT; LAURIE OLIN, ALL SKETCHES
THE BACK
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FROM TOP TO BOTTOM
In Olin’s sketches, seating is an integral part of the ambience: horizon scanners in canvas slings in Argyll, Scotland; afternoon arrangements in the Luxembourg Garden; Native Americans facing the central square of Santa Fe.
its the good management of Daniel Biederman for the park’s success: “Parks are imbedded within communities and must be managed like any other aspect of our world.” In the design of Battery Park City, “I made a conscious decision to eschew invention regarding its furnishings, proposing instead to use items previously developed for the city’s parks by the designers who worked under Frederick Law Olmsted and Robert Moses.” In the late 1970s, at the time of New York City’s near bankruptcy and “huge crisis of confidence,” Olin used this “mixed palette of these familiar elements, whether beloved or banal,” to make clear that the buildings and spaces of Battery he goes on to admit that “frequently I’ve stretched things, Park City were “an extension of the existing civic realm—not making benches longer and more generous than is usual or some urban Frankenstein”—like the Pan Am [now the Met expected—or, possibly, needed—for the sheer pleasure of it,” Life] and World Trade Center buildings. an endearing and quite understandable confession. Olin also includes jokes—and failures, for example, the 16th Two well-known successes—Bryant Park and Battery Park Street Mall in Denver and Pershing Square in Los Angeles, City—inspired different design solutions. In Bryant Park— both of which receive Olin’s detailed criticism. But “Win a begun in 1980—Olin transformed what had become known few. Lose a few,” he concludes and moves on to later winners, as Needle Park by adding more entrances, improving visibility, including the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden in and creating a new movable chair in Bryant Park Green. But Washington, D.C., as well as the antiterrorism defenses at the even Bryant Park wasn’t just a matter of design. Olin also cred- Washington Monument and a rebuilding of Columbus Circle,
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SB 126, PEN AND INK, 2000, TOP; SB 132, PEN AND INK, 2002, CENTER; SB 144, PEN AND INK, 2007, BOTTOM; LAURIE OLIN, ALL SKETCHES
THE BACK
/BOOKS
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT
How people sit in New York City’s Bryant Park, Battery Park City, and Columbus Circle, and at Director Park in Portland, Oregon— all designed by Olin.
both of which offer similar solutions at the bases of obelisks, seating that has “proved to be both aesthetically successful and extremely popular.” The latter project also provides one of the book’s most daring jokes, one that will resonate with anybody who has to deal with clients. When facing “knuckleheaded bureaucratic vandalism” in the form of a demand for the addition of armrests to prevent the homeless from stretching out and sleeping, Olin designed a device that could be fitted over the benches to make them uncomfortable and also make them look like…what? Canoes? Canoes! These reminders of the Native American protests frequently launched on Columbus Day silenced the bureaucrats: “I never heard about armrests for the Columbus Circle benches again.”
through inept or negative design. But design doesn’t make people do anything. It can, however, afford certain activities—even encourage them—and that possibility is something to be considered and cultivated.” For example, even if the designer can’t always control results, the overall effect of the design may be positive. His example is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, where Olin aided Peter Eisenman in the creation of a beautiful memorial, which is nevertheless the site of frequently criticized “perching, sitting, and gathering” when people “rest, check their phones, consult a map or guidebook, meet a friend for lunch,” and so forth. The memorial is not designed for such activities, but they are not evidence of disrespect for the memorialized. Rather “the unanticipated integration of the memorial into the quotidian life of Berlin is a good thing—humanity rises from its ashes and goes on.”
Thus we come full circle in this review, which has perhaps understated the true poignancy of Be Seated. It’s not just the drawings. It’s not just the mixture of architectural, sociological, and firm history. It’s not just the straightforward stating of design principles and ideas about public space. Rather, the moving quality of the book lies in its recording of a specific The continuing prevalence of the homeless on park benches concern in the life of a renowned landscape architect, one of nationwide points to a major truth in Olin’s account: Design- the most important of our era. ers can’t do everything. “Designers and their designs cannot enforce sociability. They can defeat civic participation…they can JANE GILLETTE IS A FORMER FEATURES EDITOR AT LAM. HER BOOK, THE TRAIL restrict or channel movement, and they can prevent sociability OF THE DEMON AND OTHER STORIES, IS AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
144 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
PETER MAUSS/ESTO PHOTO, OLIN, TOP LEFT; LAURIE OLIN PHOTO, OLIN, TOP RIGHT, BOTTOM LEFT, AND BOTTOM RIGHT
THE BACK
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/BOOKS
BOOKS OF INTEREST THE WHALES’ MOVEMENTS COULD HELP US DOCUMENT THESE UNDERSEA MOUNTAINS.
VISUALIZING THE UNIVERSE: ATHENA TACHA’S PROPOSALS FOR PUBLIC ART COMMISSIONS 1972 2012
WHERE THE ANIMALS GO: TRACKING WILDLIFE WITH TECHNOLOGY IN 50 MAPS AND GRAPHICS
EDITED BY RICHARD E. SPEAR; WASHINGTON, D.C.: GRAYSON PUBLISHING, 2017; 232 PAGES; $45.
BY JAMES CHESHIRE AND OLIVER UBERTI; NEW YORK: W. W. NORTON & COMPANY, 2016; 174 PAGES, $39.95.
With diagrams and photographs, this book acts as a portal into the realm of public art commissions, and demonstrates the level of thought and strategy it takes to see work realized. Tacha’s work is varied, complex, and detailed, all the way down to cost and materials itemizations. In a description of the vision for her built work titled “Merging,” Tacha describes the waterfall terraces as “meeting at angles…a metaphor for two historic events” that shaped the sculpture’s site in Cleveland.
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THE MAKING OF THREE GARDENS BY JORGE SANCHEZ; LONDON AND NEW YORK: MERRELL PUBLISHERS, 2017; 208 PAGES, $70.
Immaculately pleached trees and inventive details are the marks of the Palm Beach, Florida-based SMI Landscape Architecture’s take on the formal garden. In this showcase of his design acumen, principal Jorge Sánchez highlights three residential projects. His appreciation for each site’s history, climate, and flora are evident. Of the Turtle Bluff estate, he writes of “…how the garden constantly changes in response to the ocean, the time of year, and the variety of plants.”
This book uses illustrative mapping to tell the story of tracking animal species’ movements across the globe. The humpback whale, for example—listed as a threatened species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature—has an affinity for South Pacific seamounts. The whales’ movements could help us to document these undersea mountains, many of which are uncharted. The book’s striking visuals highlight the activities and population densities of some of the world’s most fascinating animals, revealing patterns and spatial relationships that may answer long-held questions about Earth’s other inhabitants.
148 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
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158 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
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PHONE 800-258-2535 717-951-1064 888-535-5005 763-972-5237 202-417-2161 877-227-8538 864-627-1092 800-441-3573 215-541-4627 847-835-5440 800-697-2195 970-491-7283 800-547-1940 240-813-1117 800-888-9768 312-895-1586 305-857-0466 970-236-2031 800-233-3907 800-598-4018 800-547-4045 716-689-8548 800-363-9264 800-873-3321 800-451-0410 617-774-0772 251-471-5238 888-315-9037 800-450-3494 866-733-8225 717-637-0500 800-233-1510 206-276-0925 800-338-4766 715-687-2423 800-747-8971 800-284-8208 703-361-7000 877-252-6323 800-430-6205 800-328-0035 954-349-2525 800-448-7931 213-255-2060 800-552-6331 510-632-0853 714-633-3732 888-823-8883 800-247-2326 800-376-7466 800-356-9660 800-832-7383 800-334-8689 508-285-5800 760-707-5400 718-963-0564 616-399-1963 951-256-3245 310-745-8905 508-842-4948 877-794-1802 323-846-6700 800-221-1448 402-421-9464 519-882-8799 760-966-6090 877-255-3146 800-875-5788 800-939-1849 847-588-3400 877-489-8064 800-787-3562 800-448-7931 498-943-6005-150 800-542-2282 301-365-2100 800-770-4525 301-855-8300 800-590-5552 800-388-8728 604-626-0476
PAGE # 53, 164 166 29, 161 166 5 139 15 165 C2-1, 164 34 149 155 65, 163 145 154 43 148 155 160 3, 161 150 164 37, 161 166 9, 161 35, 163 141, 166 39, 163 16, 162 10, 165 153 11, 164 51, 160 60, 160 31, 164 55, 160 147 59 23 25, 45 19, 163 2 162 162 156 161 149 50 166 C4 61, 163 156 49, 165 154 150 152 152 13 155 160 4 162 33 161 41 156 151 155 148 67, 162 165 163 68 157 21 164 126, 160 162, C3 151 27 143
THE BACK
/ADVERTISERS BY PRODUCT CATEGORY
BUSINESS SERVICES Rico Associates
508-842-4948
160
DESIGN CONSULTANTS Design Workshop
970-236-2031
Columbia Cascade Company
800-547-1940
65, 163
Landscape Forms
800-430-6205
25, 45
Goric Marketing Group Inc.
617-774-0772
35, 163
Madrax
800-448-7931
162
Greenfields Outdoor Fitness
888-315-9037
39, 163
Moz Designs
510-632-0853
161
Landscape Structures, Inc.
800-328-0035
19, 163
Petersen Concrete Leisure Products
800-832-7383
156
QCP
951-256-3245
13
Salsbury Industries
323-846-6700
162
155 PAVING/SURFACING/MASONRY STONE/METALS
DRAINAGE AND EROSION
Acker-Stone Industries Inc.
800-258-2535
53, 164
Sitecra
800-221-1448
33
Iron Age Designs
206-276-0925
51, 160
Envirospec, Inc.
716-689-8548
164
Sitescapes, Inc.
402-421-9464
161
Ironsmith, Inc.
800-338-4766
60, 160
Hanover Architectural Products, Inc.
717-637-0500
153
Thomas Steele
800-448-7931
68
Invisible Structures, Inc.
800-233-1510
11, 164
Victor Stanley, Inc.
301-855-8300
162, C3
Kafka Granite
715-687-2423
31, 164
Wishbone Site Furnishings Ltd.
604-626-0476
143
Pavestone c/o The Quikrete Companies
800-376-7466
C4
Pine Hall Brick Co., Inc.
800-334-8689
49, 165
SofSURFACES, Inc.
519-882-8799
41
Amish Country Gazebos
717-951-1064
166
Soil Retention Products
760-966-6090
156
Classic Recreation Systems, Inc.
800-697-2195
149
Spectraturf
800-875-5788
155
Easi-Set Buildings
800-547-4045
150
Tri-State Stone Co. for Carderock
301-365-2100
164
Gothic Arch Greenhouses
251-471-5238 141, 166
Wausau Tile
800-388-8728
27
Poligon, A Product of PorterCorp.
616-399-1963
152
Renson, Inc.
310-745-8905
155
Structureworks Fabrication
877-489-8064
165
EDUCATION Chicago Botanic Garden
847-835-5440
34
Colorado State University
970-491-7283
155
FENCES/GATES/WALLS DAC Industries
800-888-9768
154
Keystone Retaining Wall System
800-747-8971
55, 160
Versa-Lok Retaining Wall System
800-770-4525 126, 160
GREEN ROOFS/LIVING WALLS greenscreen
PLANTERS/SCULPTURES/GARDEN ACCESSORIES 800-450-3494
16, 162
LIGHTING
STRUCTURES
Campania International, Inc.
215-541-4627 C2-1, 164
David Harber Ltd.
312-895-1586
43
HADDONSTONE
866-733-8225
10, 165
Aquatix by Landscape Structures
763-972-5237
166
Old Town Fiberglass
714-633-3732
149
Most Dependable Fountains
800-552-6331
156
WATER MANAGEMENT AND AMENITIES
Louis Poulsen
954-349-2525
2
Meteor Lighting
213-255-2060
162
Planters Unlimited by Hooks & Lattice
760-707-5400
150
Roman Fountains
877-794-1802
4
Sterling Lighting
800-939-1849
148
Planterworx
718-963-0564
152
Waterplay Solutions Corp.
800-590-5552
151
Sternberg Lighting
847-588-3400
67, 162
Tournesol Siteworks/Planter Technology
800-542-2282
21
Architrex, Inc.
202-417-2161
5
Permaloc Aluminum Edging
800-356-9660
61, 163
Sure-Loc Aluminum Edging
800-787-3562
163
LUMBER/DECKING/EDGING
PLANTS/SOILS/PLANTING MATERIALS
MEDIA Topos Magazine
Bartlett Tree Expert Company
877-227-8538
139
Bio-Plex Organics
800-441-3573
165
Ernst Conservation Seeds
800-873-3321
166
Partac Peat Corporation
800-247-2326
166
Plantation Products
508-285-5800
154
498-943-6005-150 157 STREET FURNISHINGS AND SITE AMENITIES
OUTDOOR FURNITURE
ANOVA
888-535-5005
29, 161
DeepStream Designs
305-857-0466
148
59
Doty & Sons Concrete Products
800-233-3907
160
50
DuMor, Inc.
800-598-4018
3, 161
Equiparc
800-363-9264
37, 161
Forms+Surfaces
800-451-0410
9, 161
Keystone Ridge Designs, Inc.
800-284-8208
147
Kornegay Design
877-252-6323
23
Country Casual Teak
240-813-1117
145
Kingsley Bate, Ltd.
703-361-7000
Paloform
888-823-8883
Solus Décor, Inc.
877-255-3146
151
PARKS AND RECREATION Berliner Play Equipment Corporation
864-627-1092
15
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018 / 159
BUYER’S GUIDE ®
First and Lasting Impressions®
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VAYA FAMILY benches, lounge chairs and tables | powdercoated aluminum frames FSC® 100% Cumaru hardwood slats | table tops also in VividGlass laminated glass www.forms-surfaces.com
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018 / 161
162 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018 / 163
BUYER’S GUIDE
health
Form & Function. Forever.
BUYER’S GUIDE
Style
Experience the AckerStone Difference.
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164 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
BUYER’S GUIDE
CONTRIBUTE TO THE FIELD
The Field is a place to exchange information on issues and challenges faced in recent work and to share thoughts and reactions to current events and research. All contributions are by ASLA members, for ASLA members.
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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018 / 165
BUYER’S GUIDE
Restoring the native landscape GAZEBOS
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166 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
www.asla.org www.landscapearchitecturemagazine.org
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/
BACKSTORY
OPEN BOOK INTERBORO’S THE ARSENAL OF EXCLUSION & INCLUSION IS A CATALOG FOR SPATIAL JUSTICE. BY JENNIFER REUT
168 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE FEB 2018
T
he antic cover image for The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion (Actar Publishers, 2017) has a stealth charm. Produced by Interboro, an urban planning and architecture firm known for inclusive design, the book provokes serious questions about the right to urban space, while the cover plays like a cartoon of a busy city inhabited by anthropomorphic birds. It’s more Richard Scarry than Richard Florida. The arsenal in Arsenal is a range of tactics and policies that have been, per Interboro, weaponized—made into agents in a covert war over who gets to be where and who decides. The book’s encyclopedic format allows the reader to range across ideas small and
large, from Accessory Dwelling Unit, a weapon of inclusion because of its ability to increase density and make cities more affordable, to Youth Curfew, a weapon of exclusion that uses a temporal, rather than a physical, fence to keep certain populations out of public space. Interboro says that Arsenal’s cover is a riff on Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s painting Netherlandish Proverbs, a visual compendium of Dutch homilies that would have been wellknown to its 16th-century audience. Like its inspiration, Arsenal’s cover conceals its didactic program within a visually playful landscape, exposing human foibles acted out in public space.
INTERBORO AND LESSER GONZALEZ
THE BACK
R E C E P TA C L E N A M E
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