Landscape Architecture Magazine LAM-2018-june

JUNE 2018 / VOL 108 NO 6 US $7 CAN $9

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE

ON THE

RISE Oehme, van Sweden’s artful turn in Montana

MARIO SCHJETNAN Three new projects in Mexico City

CYCLE TIME IN COPENHAGEN Bike islands around a new rail hub

OUT WITH HARASSMENT How firms do—and don’t—end it.

THE MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS

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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE THE MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS

LAM 8 INSIDE 12 LAND MATTERS

46 TRANSIT

The Better Underbelly Bowen Place Crossing by Spackman Mossop Michaels is more than just a shady underpass.

BY GWENETH LEIGH, ASLA

58 PLAY

FOREGROUND 16 NOW The benefits of biochar; a landscape artist in residence for the Baltimore Museum of Art; the lessons of New Orleans’s resilient Batture; nature’s effects on mental health in cities; and more.

EDITED BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

34 OFFICE

Processing Through Play A study gives credence to intuitive ideas about designing playgrounds for kids who have sensory processing disorder.

BY JEFF LINK

66 GOODS

Ground’s the Limit It might be a good time to upgrade what’s underfoot.

BY KATARINA KATSMA, ASLA

Sudden Impact Principals from three firms discuss how internships can offer a learning experience for everyone involved.

RASMUS HJORTSHØJ

BY WENDY GILMARTIN

4 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

“ THEY PRACTICE A VERY ARCHITECTURAL LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE.” —DANIEL ELSEA, P. 86

FEATURES 76 KNOCK IT OFF

THE BACK 140 WHAT HAPPENED HERE

Design professionals are saying #MeToo, too.

Do sexual harassment policies in the workplace go far enough?

Marked, Unmarked, and Remembered: A Geography of American Memory shows us places still haunted by history.

BY BRIAN BARTH

BY MAGGIE ZACKOWITZ

148 BOOKS 86 COPENHAGEN COOL The firm COBE gives two public spaces in the Danish capital a new look and renewed purpose as transportation infrastructure.

The Call of the Sprawl A review of Infinite Suburbia, edited by Alan M. Berger and Joel Kotkin, with Celina Balderas Guzmán.

BY DANIEL ELSEA

BY GALE FULTON, ASLA

100 THE DREAM SELLER Mexico City is a place with significant water challenges. Mario Schjetnan, FASLA, designs places to meet them.

168 ADVERTISER INDEX 169 ADVERTISERS BY PRODUCT CATEGORY

BY JONATHAN LERNER

184 BACKSTORY 118 THE MAJOR SCALE Oehme, van Sweden’s design for the wide open spaces of Tippet Rise prove that Montana is a great place for art.

Oh, and Cars, Too Los Angeles isn’t known for being pedestrian-friendly, but its Great Streets Initiative is changing that image.

BY JENNIFER REUT

BY NATE BERG

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018 / 5

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

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

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

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

PRODUCTION

MANAGING EDITOR Maggie Zackowitz / mzackowitz@asla.org

PRODUCTION MANAGER Sarah Strelzik / sstrelzik@asla.org

ART DIRECTOR Christopher McGee / cmcgee@asla.org

MARKETING

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

COPY CHIEF Lisa Schultz / lschultz@asla.org

Tippet Rise Art Center in Fishtail, Montana, page 118.

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

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BACK ISSUES 888-999-ASLA (2752) Landscape Architecture Magazine (ISSN 0023-8031) is published monthly by the American Society of Landscape Architects, 636 Eye Street NW, Washington, DC 200013736. Periodical postage paid at Washington, D.C., and additional mailing oices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Landscape Architecture Magazine, 636 Eye Street NW, Washington, DC 20001-3736. Publications Mail Agreement No. 41024518. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to PO Box 503 RPO, West Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 4R6. Copyright 2018 ASLA. Subscriptions: $59/year; international: $99/year; students: $50/year; digital: $44.25/year; single copies: $7.

Landscape Architecture Magazine seeks to support a healthy planet through environmentally conscious production and distribution of the magazine. This magazine is printed on FSC® certified paper using vegetable inks and is co-mailed using recyclable polywrap to protect the magazine during distribution, significantly reducing the number of copies printed each month. The magazine is also available in digital format through www.asla.org/ lam/zinio or by calling 1-888-999-ASLA.

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

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

6 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

LIZ STETSON

NATIONAL ASSOCIATE REPRESENTATIVE Magdalena Aravena, Associate ASLA

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LAM

INSIDE

/

CONTRIBUTORS JOANN PLOCKOVA (“Mood Enhancers,”

page 26) writes about design, architecture, and cities from Prague. You can follow her on Instagram @joann_plockova.

“One of the first questions participants are asked is, ‘Are you indoors or outdoors?’

Reflecting back on the week via feedback sessions, many said, ‘Actually, I was finding I was indoors a lot, and it made me want to go outdoors more.’”

JENNIFER REUT (“The Major Scale,”

page 118) is the senior editor at LAM and writes frequently for the magazine. You can follow her on Twitter @JenniferEditor.

“In late February, long a er Tippet was closed to visitors for the season, Tippet’s ranch manager, Ben Wynthein, let me pore over hundreds of pages of handwritten notebooks and research documents so that I could have a better understanding of how a modern ranch is managed into ecological health.

I could have easily written an entire feature just on his work.”

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.

8 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

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LAM

LAND MATTERS

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HISTORY IN EDGEWISE I

’m not sure how many magazines with advisory boards actually put them to work, but at LAM, we meet with ours monthly by phone and ind their advice invaluable. The LAM Editorial Advisory Committee (you can see its members on our masthead, page 6) is drawn from a cross section of ASLA’s membership. Each month, a diferent member leads the call, along with a backup, and those two people together set the agenda and lead the conversation. The topic is entirely of their choosing. Those of us on the magazine staf occasionally chime in, but mainly we listen.

published volumes on Chinese and Mughal landscapes, and recently produced a book of nearly 500 pages on sub-Saharan African landscapes (that is, landscapes made “by and for Africans”) drawn from a 2013 symposium. These and certain other texts provide rich material, Way said, but have not yet been tailored to introductory surveys of landscape history. “What is a little more available are some urban and architectural histories” outside the canonical landscape realms of England, France, Italy, and the United States, Way said. “But we need urban environmental histories, otherwise we end up talking about architecture as if A recent call was led by two early-career professionals who fo- landscape were merely background.” cused the conversation on the ways landscape history is taught in landscape architecture schools. In particular, they wanted to Meyer, at the University of Virginia, said she thinks the acaddress the overwhelming bend in the history curriculum toward creditation standards for landscape architecture degree programs European design traditions and values. “We don’t see a lot of should call for “nonwestern material and exposure in the history landscape architecture not designed by white men,” one said. class.” (The standards of the Landscape Architectural Accredita“What do we accept as ‘high design,’ and how can we challenge tion Board require history and theory, but don’t prescribe content how these [notions] are rooted in Eurocentric design principles?” in detail.) Teaching slots are scarce, as are historians, whose ields of expertise vary and may or may not include what students are The question expands easily beyond high design to human spa- currently missing. “But it raises interesting questions about how tial behavior, preference, and need. In any case, it’s an especially schools can do the things we’re not doing right now,” Meyer said, pertinent subject given the broad recognition within landscape such as ofering web-based instruction to bring in the teaching architecture that the profession is overdue for diversiication of faculty at other institutions—Meyer mentioned, for instance, if it is to address the issues confronting the modern world. Dede Ruggles at the University of Illinois for her knowledge of “In the past, landscape architecture history was taught along Islamic landscapes. And the Center for Cultural Landscapes at European garden types and sprinkled in other inluences such UVA is planning a digital resource for teaching landscape history as Chinese and Japanese gardens,” noted one of several com- that would allow broad access to research and teaching modules mittee members who is a university educator. “Now that it’s a “related to new methodologies in landscape history,” she said. global profession, people are talking about other inluences. A (For more information on this efort, see “Written in Place,” by lot of people elsewhere are trying to make sense of landscape my colleague Jennifer Reut, in LAM’s November 2017 issue.) intention and experience. I think there’s enough out there to “Until the course material seems more relevant, and until the at least incorporate some of these aspects and relect a global faculty look more like the students we want to have, all those understanding of landscape architecture.” things have to be happening together.”

In sharing some notes from this conversation with two teaching landscape historians, Elizabeth K. Meyer, FASLA, and Thaïsa Way, ASLA, I received no disagreement on the points raised. Though each of them did cite entrenched realities that limit the academy’s ability to build up non-European perspectives in landscape history courses.

Problem one: “There is little scholarship,” observed Way, who is on the University of Washington faculty. “Or, I should say, much less scholarship about non-Eurocentric landscape architecture from a historical perspective.” The Garden and Landscape Studies program at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., has

12 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

Landscape history as it’s now apprehended may indeed begin in the European garden. But that is not where it ends. To confront existential perils that are emerging globally, particularly those wrought by climate change, landscape architecture graduates will beneit from a greater literacy in the ways people are challenged to live the world over, not merely how they construct leisure or beauty.

They will need this knowledge, and they are also pining for it.

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FOREGROUND

PHENOLOGICAL SHIFT

Cotton grass begins to flower in late spring— which, one study says, is arriving earlier in Arctic climes, in NOW, page 16.

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018 / 15

FOREGROUND

/

NOW EDITED BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

SOIL SUPPLEMENT BIOCHAR SHOWS PROMISE IN STRENGTHENING THE PERFORMANCE OF LANDSCAPE SOILS.

BY LESLEY PEREZ, ASSOCIATE ASLA

TOP

A test plot berm with biochar at Bartram’s Mile, showing seeded meadow establishment.

BOTTOM LEFT AND RIGHT

Small particle sizes in a high-quality biochar.

The microbiological habitat that biochar helps to create in soil can benefit root health.

hen a stretch of formerly industrial waterfront along Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River needed rehabilitating into public green space cheaply and efectively, Andropogon Associates’ Emily McCoy, ASLA, thought of biochar. She says the project “had a super-low budget, but we had lofty aspirations for the restoration of the soil and woodland.” Biochar, a carbon-rich soil amendment made by heating biomass in a low-oxygen environment, has been shown to strengthen soil structure, improve moisture and nutrient retention, and increase plant growth, among other virtues. McCoy hoped it would help build up soil in the highly de- symbiotic relationship that greatly graded landscape, and do so as quickly as possible. afects microbiology and plant health.

And because one application can last Horticulturists and growers have largely em- hundreds of years, its value only imbraced biochar for its efects on plant health and proves with the passage of time. irrigation needs. However, questions regarding its value in broader, less intensively managed Biochar’s performance is most notable in particular environlandscapes remain. In Philadelphia, Andropogon ments. “The lovely volcanic soils of the Paciic Northwest won’t created a semi-experimental design within the see as much of a boost from the biochar as areas like the sandy riverfront project, now known as Bartram’s Mile, soils of northern New Jersey or southern Florida,” Highland forming berms where biochar would be incorpo- says. There also has been promising research into biochar’s rated and the plantings’ performance would be use in green roofs and stormwater retention basins, where it shows dramatic improvements in retaining moisture, binding monitored over the next three years. pollutants, and preventing nutrient leach.

“In highly degraded urban soils, biochar can be fantastic for what it can do for holding water, nu- After two years of the study, McCoy says her team is “seeing trients, and microbiology,” says Mark Highland some trends that biodiversity is a little higher in the biochar of Organic Mechanics, a Pennsylvania-based soil plots.” But with so many uncontrollable site variables in place, company. The material’s highly porous structure, she can’t deinitively say it’s because of the char. However, she which resembles a latticed carbon sponge, creates and her colleagues believe in biochar’s potential, particularly a reliable architecture in which microorganisms in areas such as urban restoration and bioremediation. With can lourish, while also providing their carbon, growth of the global biochar industry on a steady upward mineral, and energy nutrient needs. When added trajectory of about 15 percent annually, ongoing research and to soil, biochar sets up conditions for a long-term guidance will no doubt be forthcoming.

16 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

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FOREGROUND

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TOP RIGHT

The artist Paula Hayes poses with one of her Trapeze chandeliers, inspired by the northern lights.

REVIVING “BALTIMORE’S FRONT PORCH”

PAULA HAYES HAS A VITAL MISSION AS THE BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART’S FIRST LANDSCAPE ARTIST IN RESIDENCE.

BY KIM O’CONNELL

RIGHT

W

hen Chris Bedford became the new director of the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in 2016, he had a grand vision: to break down the walls that had built up between the century-old museum and the city around it. “One of my primary goals is to take the museum from unconscious introversion to really emphatic and conscious extroversion,” Bedford says. One way he is doing that is by hiring the designer Paula Hayes as the museum’s irst landscape artist in residence.

Hayes’s charge over the next two years is to reactivate a museum landscape that, though elegant, could use a refreshing and democratizing new concept. The 7.5-acre site includes the historic classical revival museum building designed by John Russell Pope, along with two sculpture gardens and other outdoor areas. Bedford hopes that Hayes’s residency will result in an evocative landscape that

18 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

relects the history and diversity of Baltimore, which is more than 60 percent African American.

“This is the birthplace of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the home of Amy Sherald, Michelle Obama’s portrait artist, who sits on our board,” Bedford says.

“In lots of ways it’s a creative epicenter. And yet it also has enormous economic and social challenges that go way, way back. So the question is: How do you take this museum and turn it toward the city in a very meaningful way?” It’s a question that other institutions in historically black neighborhoods are grappling with in Baltimore and elsewhere. To similar ends, the museum recently announced plans to sell seven works by white male artists to allow the purchase of other pieces by women and artists of color.

BÉATRICE DE GÉA

Titled Egg, this planted work was part of Hayes’s commissioned installation at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010.

FOREGROUND

/NOW

RIGHT

The current BMA landscape includes the Levi Sculpture Garden, designed by Sasaki Associates in the late 1980s.

BELOW

Hayes says she will ind answers irst by engaging with the museum staf and the surrounding urban community, with design and installation beginning later this year. Based in New York City, Hayes is a visual artist who has long used plants in her work, which ranges from smaller-scale terrariums to large public landscape installations. Her work is characterized by its soft, unmanicured appearance, unexpected shapes, and celebration of wildness. Notable works include a botanical sculpture for the Museum of Modern Art that took inspiration from mating slugs and her Gazing Globes installation at New York’s Madison Square Park that featured illuminated orbs illed with discarded items. “She uses materials that are intrinsically familiar and therefore more accessible and democratic,” Bedford says.

be physically engaged. You have to notice a lot of things, and it takes time.” Hayes will spend some of that time in the museum archives poring over historical landscape plans and plant lists. “I’m very aware of how historical constraints might seem like limitations, but I like opportunities where you can revitalize something or see it anew while respecting the past.”

Pope’s original vision was for the museum to be a community gathering place, the city’s front porch, Bedford says. “My aspiration for Paula,” he says, “is for her to turn the BMA campus into a stunningly beautiful commu“The grand view of the project is revitalization and nity garden that becomes a gathering connection,” Hayes says. “Landscape architecture space for the whole city, to become and design are not just theoretical; you have to Baltimore’s porch again.”

20 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART, TOP RIGHT; YASUNORI MATSUI, BOTTOM LEFT

A Gazing Globe, filled with recycled materials, is illuminated as part of Hayes’s 2015 installation in New York City’s Madison Square Park.

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FOREGROUND

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READY AND WATCHING ON THE RIVER SIDE OF NEW ORLEANS’S LEVEES, THE BATTURE IS A CASE STUDY IN RESILIENCE.

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

A

s more and more cities seek to immunize themselves against the threats of climate change, a small, unplanned community outside New Orleans known as the Batture ofers an alternative approach to mitigating risk. The Batture is an informal settlement of mostly handbuilt houses that hugs the river side of the large earthen levee that separates Jeferson Parish from the Mississippi River. It has existed in some form or another since the 18th century and at its peak consisted of some 400 houses, often referred to as camps by residents.

ABOVE

A diagram shows the relationship of homes inside and outside Louisiana’s levee system relative to the Mississippi River’s water level.

22 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

If living outside the city’s lood protection system seems like an inherently risky proposition, Batture residents also have a near-constant awareness of that risk, says Carey Clouse, a professor of architecture and landscape architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In a recent paper published in Landscape Journal, Clouse and her coauthor, Zachary Lamb, argue that New

CROOKEDWORKS

Today, the population hovers around just 15 or 16 people. Although Batture residents don’t own their property, they do now have the tacit support of the local government, which has provided municipal water, electricity, and postal service in recent years. Some of the current residents likely are economic refugees, but others, such as Macon Fry, a retired public schoolteacher who is working on a book about the Batture, simply want to live near the water. “There’s this tremendous sense of place,” Fry says of the sliver of land created by the levee.

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FOREGROUND

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ABOVE

High water in the Batture. Residents’ firsthand knowledge of the river’s behavior is their first line of defense.

Orleans’s levee system “decreases the frequency of emergencies but increases the likelihood and severity of eventual crises,” leading to an ill-prepared populace and perilous regulatory systems.

During Hurricane Katrina, for instance, nearly 80 percent of buildings within the city looded because the base lood elevation is often just four feet, a regulation that ignores the possibility of levee failure. Meanwhile, along the Batture, where design decisions are informed by the seasonal luctuations of the Mississippi River, the camps generally weathered the storm without incident, having been built above the river’s peak lood level (about 17.5 feet). Should they ever take on water, the camps are responsive. As the authors note, some have been built to be “hosed out and brushed of after the loodwaters subside.”

In other words, Fry and his compatriots are highly literate in the nuances of this luvial realm, a familiarity that is their irst line of defense.

“People who live in the desert aren’t surprised or worried when it’s hot or sunny or dry, so people who live on the river don’t tend to get their knickers all twisted when the river comes up,” he says.

24 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

Resilience planning often focuses on minimizing risk to the greatest degree possible. But the Batture suggests that exposure to some level of risk can be an efective tool for building social resilience. “Having more frequent experience with the threat can trigger a change in the way you live,” says Jef Hebert, who, as the chief resilience oicer for the City of New Orleans, helped spearhead the creation of the Gentilly Resilience District, a series of city-led landscape projects intended to better manage stormwater but also reintroduce water to the cityscape and reestablish a connection between residents and the city’s hydrology. Hebert, who is now the vice president of adaptation and resilience at the Water Institute of the Gulf, says environmental literacy is a key part of the Gentilly project and the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan in general. If planners can’t bring the city to the Batture, they can bring aspects of the Batture to the city. “When you can’t see the water,” Hebert says, “and you can’t see the risk, how do you bring that to people so that they can understand it?”

TIMOTHYA. SCHULER, EDITOR OF NOW, CAN BE REACHEDAT TIMOTHY ASCHULER@GMAIL.COM AND ON TWITTER @TIMOTHY_SCHULER.

CAREY CLOUSE

This legibility is something planners, city oficials, and even insurance companies should encourage, Clouse says. Within the bowl of New Orleans, there is almost no awareness of the waterline of the Mississippi River or Lake Pontchartrain, but “on the Batture side, all of those houses are built knowing exactly where the waterline will be,” she says. “That’s the irst lesson that we can learn: Perhaps it makes sense to provide places in other communities for more legible, eyes-wideopen development.”

/NOW

A

MOOD ENHANCERS A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY TEAM EXAMINES THE EFFECTS OF NATURE ON THE URBAN MIND IN REAL TIME.

BY JOANN PLOCKOVA

ccording to the results of the pilot phase of a project called Urban Mind, nature does indeed nurture. Urban Mind uses smartphone technology to assess the impact of nature on mental well-being in cities, merging the immediacy of real-time data collection with a growing body of evidence about environments and mental health. Developed in response to an open call put out by the Van Alen Institute, the research project and open source app were created by a cross-disciplinary team including the neuroscientist Andrea Mechelli of King’s College London, the artist and researcher Michael Smythe of Nomad Proj-

ects, and the landscape architects Preceded by a baseline assessment Johanna Gibbons and Neil Davidson that included demographics and trait of J & L Gibbons. impulsivity (an indicator of those at greater risk of mental health issues), It’s one of several smartphone-based the app poses a series of questions studies, including LondonMood and that asks participants about their Mappiness, that explore the efects current environment (Can you see of the environment on mental well- trees? Can you hear birds singing?) being, but Urban Mind is distin- and mental well-being in the moguished by its cross-disciplinary team ment. Prompts were sent to particiand the inclusion of speciic types pants seven times per day over a peand amounts of nature—sky, trees, riod of one week. Data was collected birdsong, and so forth. “We’ve had a in real time using a technique called long-standing interest in how nature ecological momentary assessment. and landscapes inluence our health,” “So as you’re walking around the city Davidson, a partner at the London- or in your oice, the questions you’re based irm, says. “In regard to mental asked require a response within a health, we always had a sort of instinct fairly limited time frame,” Davidof how important it might be, but son says. “What that means is that there’s been a lack of robust scientiic the responses you are getting are data to support that hypothesis.” without bias.”

As a member of the mixed team of academics and practitioners, “we saw some beneits in the diferent disciplines challenging each other’s preconceptions,” Davidson says.

J & L Gibbons brought a knowledge of city planning, a strong interest in research, and a decade of experience working with the mayor of London on a policy framework project focused on the city’s green infrastructure plans. “We think landscape architects are quite well placed across a lot of disciplines to see where there might be opportunities to connect the dots,” Davidson says.

26 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

Results, published in January in BioScience, showed that exposure to natural elements such as trees, sky, and birdsong positively afect mental well-being in the moment, but also that those efects linger beyond the moment. And for people with more potential to develop mental health issues, those benefits were even greater. “In real terms,” Davidson says, “this might inform the work of landscape architects to inform a frequency and a distribution of urban nature interventions that can lead to the improved long-term well-being for urban communities.”

URBAN MIND

FOREGROUND

FOREGROUND

/NOW

EARLIER, BIRDS

E

ach spring, the northern wheatear, a type of Old World lycatcher that weighs less than one ounce, lies from sub-Saharan Africa to Alaska and the Canadian Arctic to breed. It’s an extraordinary journey—9,000 miles each way in some cases—but researchers are worried that in the future, the birds will arrive in the Arctic and ind an alien and inhospitable environment.

Around the world, in a phenomenon known as phenological advance, spring is coming earlier than it has in recent decades, but according to a new study published in Scientific Reports, the rate of that increase is not uniform. For every 10 degrees latitude, spring comes an average of four days sooner than the decade prior, which means the most dramatic change is occurring near the poles.

ABOVE

The advance of spring in places like Greenland (top right) could imperil migratory species such as the Northern wheatear (inset), which breeds in Alaska and the Canadian Arctic.

“It’s getting warmer, and it’s getting warmer faster the farther north you go,” says Eric Post, a professor of climate change ecology at the University of California, Davis, and a coauthor of the study. If in Washington, D.C., spring arrives four days earlier than it did a decade ago—as indicated by the emergence of certain leaves and lowers, and certain animal behaviors—in the Arctic, it can arrive more than two weeks early.

28 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

This seasonal acceleration could spell disaster for migratory species such as the northern wheatear, whose diet mainly consists of insects and berries. The bird could ind a shorter and shorter window of food availability if the evolutionary cues prompting northward migration cease to align with the onset of spring in the Arctic. “The growing season at really high latitudes can be a matter of weeks, and if something is shifting the timing of its activity by 15 or 20 days, that’s almost an entire season of productivity,” Post says.

This “desynchronization of food webs” could threaten not just individual species but entire ecosystems, says Michael Mann, the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, who also contributed to the study.

“Evolution simply hasn’t provided living things with the capacity to adapt to changes as rapid as we are seeing,” he says.

More worrisome yet is that the Arctic tends to serve as a bellwether for the rest of the planet.

“What we’re seeing at high latitudes is the future for low latitudes,” Post says. “There’s a saying, ‘What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.’”

ERIC POST/UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS, TOP RIGHT AND BOTTOM LEFT; BY FRANK VASSEN FROM BRUSSELS, BELGIUM CC BY 2.0 , VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, INSET

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A COOLER CANOPY IN SUBURBAN SYDNEY, A LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT QUANTIFIES THE VARIABLE EFFECTS OF STREET TREES.

BY GWENETH LEIGH, ASLA

TOP

In lieu of a traditional master plan, design options were communicated through diagrams showing visual efect, economic savings, and environmental impact.

L

ibby Gallagher spent two years collecting data as a PhD student at the University of Sydney on how the diferent forms, species, and age ranges of street trees afect their ability to lower temperatures, sequester carbon, and reduce household energy costs. “It was an onerous process, to be honest,” says Gallagher, a landscape architect and the director of Gallagher Studio in Surry Hills, New South Wales. Now, however, that hard-earned data is the backbone of Cool Streets, an initiative Gallagher created with community planners Cred Consulting.

Gallagher’s modeling revealed that nontraditional street planting designs —such as using asymmetrical layouts and a mixture of species—helped keep neighborhoods cooler. However, maximizing beneits relied on trees’ reaching maturity, and survival can be tough for juvenile tree stock. Cool Streets wants to improve

30 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

their chances by helping residents metrical design using small, combecome better tree stewards. pact trees. The option delivered few beneits in terms of cooling.

The program measures the potential impacts of diferent street plant- So the Cool Streets team devised ing strategies. For instance, a young, ways of maintaining a “neat” appear16-foot-high tree can save up to ance using bigger trees that were AU$100 on a household’s annual elec- four times more efective at cooling tricity bill. Within a few decades, the temperatures and reducing energy annual savings can grow to AU$400. bills. The majority of residents were The Cool Streets team uses this infor- swayed by the data and decided to mation in neighborhood workshops implement the alternative design. as a way to help residents determine planting designs for their streets.

Cool Streets has caught the attention not only of local city councils, but For example, Boonderoo Avenue also of residents who are keen to in suburban Glenwood, New South implement similar street planting Wales, is just under a decade old; strategies in their neighborhoods. street trees had never been incorpo- A methodology is being developed rated. The Cool Streets team shared in hopes of replicating it across the multiple canopy options with street country. “Climate change can feel residents, each accompanied by data so overwhelming,” Gallagher says. quantifying impacts of CO2 emis- “Being able to empower people to sions and household power bills. do something from their street and Desiring the appearance of neatness in their neighborhood opens up a and order, residents opted for a sym- dialogue to new possibilities.”

GALLAGHER STUDIO

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OFFICE

THREE FIRMS DISCUSS HOW THEIR INTERNSHIP PROGRAMS BENEFIT BOTH INTERNS AND STAFF.

BY WENDY GILMARTIN

W

ABOVE

A studio team at work in EDSA’s Fort Lauderdale oice.

ith summertime come internships, those short stints of employment when students get the chance to enrich their academic experience with the practicalities of the real world. Of course, it’s an exciting time for interns, seeing how it all works for the irst time. But how are oices reciprocally enriched by their internship programs? Once on board, how do interns it into an oice structure, and how do they afect day-to-day workflow? Three design offices explain their approach to taking on summer interns and discuss the impacts on ofice culture and resources. Interviews have been edited and condensed.

34 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

EDSA FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA DOUG SMITH, ASLA, PRESIDENT AND PRINCIPAL; CARA CRITCHLOW, DIRECTOR OF HUMAN RESOURCES; JILL MARTINEZ, EXECUTIVE VP OF MARKETING

What’s the onboarding process like for interns, and where do they go from there?

CARA CRITCHLOW: So, the irst week, the HR team works with a few different designers from our office, diferent levels, typically associate seniors, to put together a program and a schedule for their week one.

The program very much outlines the design challenge for them for that week. We try to ind a current project that’s happening around the office, something tangible where they can go on a local site visit or see a comparable site locally to give them design ideas and inspiration, all of that. Kickof week runs as a design challenge. At the end of the week, they present the indings and their concepts to the irm as a whole, so the irm can see their talent, their experience, their ideas, and then we celebrate the end of their irst week and welcome them into different design studios. That week gives us

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an opportunity to understand their skill sets better, so we can place them in studios where we feel they would be most successful for the term of their internship.

DOUG SMITH: We ask an associate or a senior associate to step in and help organize. We also look at that as a leadership opportunity for some of our younger staf to come in and lead the interns through a design process and sort of mentor them through the week. There are a couple of beneits, not only for the interns, but for some of our younger staf to step up and get a little bit of leadership experience. We think of the interns as entry-level employees, and the tasks that we put on their plate are no diferent than what we ask the interns to do, and of course we give a lot of guidance.

ABOVE

Mike Fargnoli, Associate ASLA, in EDSA’s oice.

CRITCHLOW: We run four programs throughout the year. For our spring and summer program, which runs January through August, we typically take anywhere from four to 10 interns, depending on what our

36 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

staing coniguration and our projected work needs are. For our summer program, which tends to be our largest program, it’s a short 10-week run, and we typically take anywhere from 10 to 15 interns.

How has the structure of the diferent intern programs evolved over the years?

SMITH: This is the 58th year of the irm, founded in 1960, and I think from the very start, Ed Stone had interns who came into the fold within the practice, probably very informally in the early years of the irm. I have been here 30 years, and I would say we’ve had what I would call a formal internship program for a good 25 years, where we really put a structure around it in the way we brought the group of people in. And then we introduced the process of the design charrette exercise, which allows that group of interns to get to know each other and learn how to work in a team environment with somebody that they’ve never met before, and that sets them up to launch into the rest of their internship.

Behind the scenes, how does this extensive intern program affect resources?

CRITCHLOW: HR and the leadership of our irm both see impacts, although we ind it very worth the time invested, for sure. HR does spend a good portion of our year reviewing applicants, and we work with our marketing teams who’ve designed for us some really cool campaigns over the past several years. We have a great advertising process for the internship program itself, which is bringing in a good number of applicants to us. We lean on designers here at all levels to review the portfolios, and HR is interviewing via Skype. And then we get together as a team and make decisions on who we feel best its the irm.

SMITH: Because the program is rolling through the year, it really has become part of the day-to-day structure of the company and, with regard to mentorship and education, it’s not just interns, it’s really a learning opportunity for everybody in the irm.

It takes a little bit more time with an intern because there’s more for them to understand and be exposed to, but it really is a part of the process that we go through with teaching each other problem-solving tools. There’s always a renewed sense of energy when we have a new batch of interns coming in, and that charrette week has a lot of energy at the end when they make their presentations. And then they sort of distribute out into the irm—the new blood out there in the ranks is always a good thing.

C&I STUDIOS

FOREGROUND

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FOREGROUND

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“IT’S NOT JUST INTERNS, IT’S REALLY A LEARNING OPPORTUNITY FOR EVERYBODY IN THE FIRM.”

Could you talk speciically about those campaigns and the coordination between marketing and HR and the principals?

CRITCHLOW: Marketing will talk to recent hires in the irm or even candidates that we’ve had in for internship programs and say, “What would attract you, or what works?” Our campaign from this past year was a superhero-themed campaign where we introduced “landscape architecture superheroes.” I think we had a really good draw from students with that campaign. Everybody referenced it when we visited campuses this year.

We did a campaign about having a good day at the oice when your arm is covered in marker because that means you were on the boards drawing and creating. I think we had a poster full of dirty, markered-up arms.

ABOVE

The Starr Whitehouse oice in New York.

JILL MARTINEZ: Anytime that you hire anybody, you want to make sure that they’re a it for your company culture. I think that the marketing campaigns and the concepts that we put out into the marketplace portray what our guiding principles are and what our core values are as a company: hand graphics and technology and the stewardship of the land. All that comes into play so that we are attracting the right people who are going to really enjoy their internship experience with us.

38 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

STARR WHITEHOUSE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS AND PLANNERS PLLC NEW YORK CITY STEPHEN WHITEHOUSE, ASLA, PARTNER AND FOUNDER

How do interns work into the structure of the office?

We don’t have a formal intern program. I think there is a challenge to structuring an experience for the interns that is both interesting and, I hope, beneficial for them, and beneicial for the oice as well.

The challenge is that you want to keep the intern busy. Honestly, we don’t want to turn the oice upside down, but want to ind the projects in which there is the potential for making a contribution with a short engagement to the project. We do try to have interns directly involved in ongoing projects and diferent types of work. If we have a research project, something that we have been interested in that maybe has been a little bit back-burnered, that could give the intern a sort of steady and ongoing set of interests and responsibilities while the rest of the projects may be going in and out.

Last year, we had two interns, landscape architecture interns—I think

the most we ever had. At that time, we had active planning projects in process, so we had people involved with regional or area research and graphics, and we were doing public participation meetings. They were actively involved in those. We had another project that was in construction, and one of our interns joined our staf for about eight days of summer planting. So, in a way, this is not that dissimilar from how our people work as well. We tend not to have strict specializations within the oice, and we expose the younger professionals to as many corners of practice as we can. The other thing I feel obligated to say, and this is certainly true for anyone, I think we’ve had some unpaid interns who have been here for a week between semesters or a couple of weeks max.

That’s happened a few times. I think only once did we have an unpaid intern over the summer and, honestly, I greatly prefer to pay interns, and I think it’s important. I think it’s important in terms of the seriousness with which they’re taken inside the oice. And I also think, in regard to students and their education, I like to hold out the notion that landscape architecture is a profession whose practitioners get paid.

STARR WHITEHOUSE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS AND PLANNERS

—DOUG SMITH, ASLA, EDSA

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FOREGROUND

/OFFICE

“THAT SORT OF ENERGY AND ENTHUSIASM THAT INTERNS BRING TO THE OFFICE IS INFECTIOUS.” —STEPHEN WHITEHOUSE, ASLA, STARR WHITEHOUSE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS AND PLANNERS

What are the impacts of internships on the staf?

For the last several years, an intern has tended to become attached to an associate or project manager. It’s more than shadowing: That person becomes their direct supervisor on the core group of things that they’re dealing with. Fortunately, we’ve been busy enough that those project managers have had no diiculty in giving the interns a whole group of useful and challenging things to do.

In terms of the value, we are, as a profession, a strange vestige of the apprenticeship system, in that we have degrees, but don’t have licenses until we gain experience. So we don’t necessarily expect interns to express or exercise all manner of judgment that comes with years of experience, but I will say one thing, that they bring a couple of wonderful things to the oice. We love their energy. We have a somewhat youthful oice anyway, but that sort of energy and enthusiasm that the interns bring to the oice is infectious. While they may have things to learn about the use of software for producing professional documents, boy, do they tend to bring an awful lot of computer, graphics, and visualization skills. Many of them make real contributions in terms of visualizing projects and communicating them to clients and the public.

And ideally, we like it as well if they come away from the summer with not just three lines on their résumés, but a couple of things that look good in their portfolio. This is every bit a reasonable exchange. So, they should

40 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

be able to come away with a good experience of value. We’ve actually been space constrained a bit over the last couple of years, but we have managed to it people in [laughs].

Nobody’s working in a closet or anything?

And nobody’s working on a 10-yearold computer without current software. We don’t have a formal feedback process for internships, so my statements are somewhat impressionistic now, not data based.

But, in terms of our own interest as a business, it’s important for us to meet young people in the ield, and likewise, through professional events and other related events in New York and through the networks of the people who work for us, to be aware of professionals at all levels.

TINA CHEE LANDSCAPE STUDIO LOS ANGELES TINA CHEE, DESIGN PRINCIPAL AND PARTNER

What’s the overall structure like at Tina Chee Landscape Studio?

We have two full-time principals and, from time to time, a couple of freelancers who help us out on speciic tasks.

In addition to your other principal and the occasional freelance staf, you also take on interns?

That’s something we started to do last year, and we’ll have a few interns this summer as well. This summer

we’re going to have three interns joining us. We’ve basically identiied very speciic tasks we would like explored. It could be, for example, building a physical model at various scales. Or developing a couple of renderings. Basically, things that maybe are not speciically something that’s required for a project deadline, but more something that’s an exploration or a study on a certain project.

We plan for itting tasks within the time frame of when interns are available. For example, we’re working on the January 8th memorial. It’s in remembrance of the shooting of the former Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifords from Arizona [and 18 other people, six of whom were killed]. It’s a one-acre project on a four-acre site in the old historic part of [Tucson].

And our proposed structure has got a landform shape. We would like to really study the form, and how we’re going to build the exterior. It’s a little bit of a blend of landscape and architecture with a highly articulated architectural form, but one that is softened by landscape. We will have the interns build that over the summer. We had to go through several iterations due to budget constraints, as any typical project would, and so we have already existing models, but we’re going to build another model of the current version. But we still need to study constructability and materiality. Those models will be important to show to contractors and the client, of course. But these are extra things that maybe we don’t need to do, but we want to do them for ourselves.

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FOREGROUND

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“I TRY TO FIND A TASK THAT WOULD SUIT THE SKILL SET OF THE INTERN, AND ONE I KNOW THEY WILL SUCCEED AT.” —TINA CHEE, TINA CHEE LANDSCAPE STUDIO

ABOVE

Tina Chee (left) and Marc Salette (right) at the Tina Chee Landscape Studio.

How do you know the intern’s skill set will mesh with the speciic tasks?

As a studio instructor of both landscape architecture and architecture, I work with students on a daily basis, so I get to know them. I think teaching is kind of the best source of inding interns and potentially

42 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

Virginia coming this summer. I’m really excited about that.

What kind of impact will interns have on you and your resources, or even the space of the office itself?

Where will you put everyone?

For interns speciically, I need to attend to quality control. We had an intern last year who had a bit of a learning curve with modeling software. The modeling needed a certain precision level that maybe she had not been used to in school. I had to invest more review time. In terms of space, we’re just in an open ofice. Obviously, I’ll be keeping more personal information a little bit quieter, for example, when I’m on the phone in the open studio. But, with the interns, especially ones I don’t already have a relationship with, the security of iles is very important to me. I think that would be important to anybody. You have to understand once you’re in an oice structure sharing iles with somebody, it can be copied, it can be deleted by accident, whatever the case is. So, for ile security, I really try to limit the types of iles they have access to, for example, and obviously, I’ll have to keep copies in case something does go wrong! But those are the normal challenges one has with any new people in the oice.

WENDY GILMARTIN IS A WRITER AND ARCHITECT IN LOS ANGELES. THE FOUNDING PRINCIPAL OF WENDY GILMARTIN ARCHITECTURE, SHE TEACHES IN THE COLLEGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN AT CALIFORNIA POLYTECHNIC STATE UNIVERSITY, POMONA.

TINA CHEE LANDSCAPE STUDIO

And something you likely wouldn’t have time for in the day-to-day work of the office yourself?

Absolutely. Yeah, now with computers, renderings can provide a really accurate representation of the elements of a project, but we really believe that there’s something special about seeing a physical model. It’s something that takes many hours to do well. And I think it’s kind of a nice thing also for interns to do, to take the time to build these things, and it’s something they’re capable of doing. I try to ind a task and a project that would suit the skill set of the intern, and one I know they will succeed at. I don’t want to give them something that would be too frustrating, but something that is still challenging at the same time.

entry-level staf, because you already know them. Sometimes it’s about personality, if it clicks or doesn’t click—that’s one level. And then you get to see how they work on their own projects, their intensity level.

Can they listen to what you advise them to do? Can you see how they carried out that speciic advice? We can assess and see their thinking.

It’s like a mini trial almost, like a little test run. Students are great, because you have that trust level with them already. You believe in them.

They trust you because you’ve built a relationship together already. I am hiring somebody this summer who I have not previously had as a student.

I just posted at a local university, and somehow this posting got put on other websites, so we’re getting résumés from students from all over the country. And we are selecting those candidates based on Skype interviews, and really scrutinizing the portfolios, in addition to asking pointed questions: “Is this individual work or group work?” We will ask about worklow process to see what they’re thinking about, maybe the various techniques they use and so forth. There are extra checks we have to put in place to know if what they are presenting is really their work, because we don’t have that existing relationship with them. We also ask what they plan for the rest of the summer in their free time, just to get to know their personality, what their interests may be outside of work, to see if it’s a good it with us. We have one person from the University of

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TRANSIT THE BETTER UNDERBELLY

A PATH AND TWO WALLS TAKE PEDESTRIANS BEYOND THE ORDINARY EXPERIENCE.

BY GWENETH LEIGH, ASLA

ABOVE

A dangerous pedestrian at-grade road crossing was replaced with Bowen Place Crossing, a carefully considered underpass.

oo often, highway underpasses are perceived as the netherworlds of the public realm. Their viability as pedestrian passages is hindered by infrastructure that’s frequently dark, smelly, and regarded as unsafe.

So when plans were announced in 2011 to build an underpass beneath a busy commuter road in Australia’s capital city of Canberra, locals were skeptical. “Exciting New Mugging Opportunity,” headlined RiotACT, a popular community website.

46 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

Seven years and eight prestigious design awards later, Bowen Place Crossing is a project that has surprised its early critics. It sits nestled within the sweeping carpets of green lawn and gum trees of Canberra’s Parliamentary Zone, alongside distinguished national institutions such as the High Court, the National Library, the National Gallery of Australia, and Parliament House. With a ceremonial backdrop of this signiicance, its design demanded high

quality. The design team looked to the grand civic landscape to shape the journey of this pedestrian crossing. And, by the way, it’s also an underpass.

A product of 1960s planning, Bowen Place had always been a road to facilitate the movement of cars—not pedestrians—through the Parliamentary Zone. Having the popular National Gallery of Australia and its sculpture garden located next to the

IAN MARSHALL

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FOREGROUND

/TRANSIT

RIGHT

The design focused on minimizing the visual impact of the underpass so as not to detract from the existing heritage landscape.

PLAN 1 LOOKOUT 2 SHARED PATH TO LAKE EDGE 3 DEFERENTIAL (PRECAST) WALL

road further complicated issues of pedestrian safety and access. Where it intersected with a popular shared path connecting people to the nearby Kings Avenue Bridge, cyclists and pedestrians were left to fend for themselves. Curb cuts, some concrete barriers, and a traic island were the only provisions to help people navigate their way across four lanes of traic. The cloverleaf shape of the roadway added to this challenge by hindering sight lines toward oncoming cars. Years ago, my ive-year-old teetered on his training wheels into the intersection without me. He made it through, but my heart nearly didn’t.

4 ASSERTIVE (WEATHERING STEEL) WALL 9

5 NEW UNDERPASS 6 NEW BRIDGE

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The National Capital Authority (NCA), the agency responsible for oversight of the area, recognized that Bowen Place presented a signiicant conlict. As the road was firmly embedded within Canberra’s broader transport network, altering traic movements was not possible. Options of an overpass and underpass were proposed to the public during consultation. The community’s concerns around the accessibility and visual impact of a footbridge within the heritage

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FOREGROUND

/TRANSIT

ASSERTIVE WALL

ABOVE LEFT

The Assertive Wall is upright and shorter, mostly seen from within the underpass.

The Deferential Wall is more exposed, using of-white concrete to blend with the existing material palette.

ABOVE RIGHT

The underpass connects to walking and cycling routes along the shores of Lake Burley Griin.

landscape deemed it undesirable. It was decided that “g0ing under the road rather than over it was the better design solution,” says Andrew Smith, the chief planner at the NCA. However, its insertion into a nationally signiicant landscape prohibited it from being an average piece of anonymous infrastructure.

needed to understand what the project entailed. An engineering irm was hired to design an accessible path connecting pedestrians from Kings Avenue Bridge down to the existing shared path at the lakeside.

The exercise revealed the project complexities of excavating below Bowen Place and incorporating two bridges, waterproofing, drainage, and landscape. It also provided the Before the NCA could explore NCA with the cost for the project ideas that were outside the tradi- (AU$10 million), including a budget tional underpass tool kit, they irst that covered construction work and

50 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

fees. What the design didn’t deliver was a civic quality to the site—but it wasn’t expected to. “Engineers are systems thinkers, not place or context thinkers,” Smith says.

A competition was held that required teams of architects and landscape architects. The winning entry, by Lahznimmo Architects (LNA) and Spackman Mossop Michaels (SMM), treated the site as a piece of connective infrastructure designed to emphasize the broader monumental

LAHZNIMMO ARCHITECTS AND SPACKMAN MOSSOP MICHAELS, TOP AND BOTTOM LEFT; CATHERINE DUNG, BOTTOM RIGHT

DEFERENTIAL WALL

ABOVE NATIONAL CARILLON

The design of the underpass considered ways infrastructure could be a civic experience.

LEFT

The framing of views toward the carillon influenced the design’s layout and orientation.

BELOW

NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA

LAKE BURLEY GRIFFIN

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The curve of the shared path emulates the existing cloverleaf roadway.

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landscape around it. Says Andrew Nimmo, a director at LNA, “We were conscious it had to take its cues from the setting, not set up its own rules as such.”

The site of the Parliamentary Zone is a place of powerful statements. The brutalist style of the High Court and the National Gallery dominate the precinct with strong angular shapes and masses of raw concrete surfaces.

The nearby Kings Avenue is one of three major symbolic avenues dein-

ing the broader Parliamentary Triangle around which the capital is organized. Connecting these elements is a 100-year-old heritage landscape illed with formal deciduous plantings and clusters of native woodland. As a landscape already illed with grand gestures, the NCA was looking for a design that “didn’t try and visually pick ights but had enough strength and character to be redeemed to sit on its own,” Smith says.

The components of the inal design are essentially a path, two walls, two bridges, and a rain garden at its terminus near the lake. But to describe the scheme as simple betrays the complexities behind each design decision.

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018 / 51

FOREGROUND

/TRANSIT

ochre tones contrast with the outer Deferential Wall, where of-white panels of polished concrete lean against the landscape, spread out like a deck of cards. In contrast to the upright character of the Cor-Ten steel, the concrete panels undulate against the landscape. Each sequentially tilts half a degree, taking the wall from being vertical at either end of the path and relaxing into a slow outward lean in the middle.

The end points of the shared path were determined by lakeside views TOP LEFT framing the National Carillon (a The bridges were poured in a series of gift from the British government sections. The sides commemorating Canberra’s 50th and upturns work as anniversary). The curved form of a continuous beam, the path connecting these two points lending a sculptural emulates the cloverleaf shape of the quality. existing roadway. The slope was purABOVE AND RIGHT posefully kept at 1:33 to eliminate The area of greatest the need for ramps, rest spots, and height diference is also handrails. Catherine Dung is an aswhere the Deferential sociate director at SMM who worked Wall has the greatest on the project. “Everybody shares the lean, allowing the space, nobody feels excluded, and structure to work more eiciently. nobody feels like they are singled

52 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

out by being provided with a special structured space,” she says.

The sculptural form of two concrete bridges connects Bowen Place overWrapping either side of the path head; in the void between them, you are two wall typologies, their mate- can see sky. Where the path termiriality relective of other landscape nates near the lake is the large rain elements found within the Parlia- garden illed with local species for mentary Zone. To emphasize their iltering stormwater. contrasting qualities, the design team describes the two structures It was important that this suite of as the Assertive Wall and the Def- landscape elements deined the exerential Wall. The Assertive Wall is perience of the site, rather than be made of rusted Cor-Ten steel and dictated by the terms of the underwraps tightly along the inside curve, pass. Areas beneath the bridge were purposefully crinkled where space is made to feel as light and spacious more compressed. Its taut form and as possible “so that you don’t feel

BRETT BOARDMAN, PHOTO; LAHZNIMMO ARCHITECTS, BOTTOM LEFT AND TOP RIGHT

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FOREGROUND

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IT WAS IMPORTANT NOT TO VIEW THE UNDERPASS AS A TUNNEL, BUT AS “A CUT WITH TWO BRIDGES OVER IT.” —CATHERINE DUNG

Lighting in the underpass uses fully recessed fluorescent fittings.

54 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

wall. The concrete panels just sit on it, ixed into the retaining wall with stainless steel screws. The design of the precast panels was kept deliberately simple, with height as the only changing variable. This again helped save on costs, as the pour of each panel didn’t require a new mold, just a shutter to adjust for panel length.

The popularity of Bowen Place Crossing has prompted the NCA to look at the pedestrian crossings along Kings Avenue Bridge, which are now deemed too narrow to manage the increased flow of people from the underpass. The success of the crossing stems from its ability to challenge stereotypes around infrastructure design—in this case, turning an underpass into a broader landscape experience. “It’s nice that it’s not a park, it’s not a plaza, it’s not one of your more conventionally understood landscape projects,” Dung says. “It’s a path. Not to make In contrast to the bridges, the con- it sound less than it is, but it’s a path. struction methodology of the retain- And the fact that the path is so much ing walls saved substantial costs. more is a really great thing.”

The large sweeping curve for the Deferential Wall worked as a hori- GWENETH LEIGH, ASLA, IS A WRITER AND zontal arch for holding back the soil, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT BASED IN CANBERRA, held in place by a simple shotcrete AUSTRALIA.

BRETT BOARDMAN

ABOVE

claustrophobic in there,” Dung says.

Path dimensions widen from four to six meters beneath the bridges to promote a sense of openness. It’s also where the path has its straightest run. The space feels further widened by the exaggerated lean of the precast concrete panels, which tip here to their shallowest angle of 45 degrees. Instead of proposing a single bridge that clipped together the two lanes of traic from Bowen Place overhead, two separate structures were designed to allow light to penetrate through. According to Dung, it was important not to view the underpass as a tunnel, but as “a cut with two bridges over it.”

The curved geometry of Bowen Place required the overpass structures to span distances that were diicult to construct with precast elements. Instead, the bridges were made from post-tensioned concrete.

While this kept the structures as thin as possible, the practicalities of pouring the bridges in situ took months to get right given the cloverleaf form of the road. “It was a nightmare,” Smith says. “We lost months just ixing that up.” Further complicating matters, the clearance of the shared path beneath the bridges was restricted by an unmovable 1,500-millimeter-diameter stormwater pipe. “We didn’t really know exactly where it was till we dug it up,” Nimmo says. “Almost every 20 to 30 millimeters became quite critical, in terms of making it all work.” After a delayed start because of funding issues, the project was completed in September 2015.

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FOREGROUND

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PLAY PROCESSING THROUGH PLAY A PILOT STUDY SUGGESTS PLAYGROUND EQUIPMENT CAN PROVIDE SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL BENEFITS FOR CHILDREN WITH SENSORY DISORDERS.

BY JEFF LINK

ABOVE

A child swings from the hood of a roller slide at an inclusive playground designed and built by Landscape Structures at the STAR Institute for Sensory Processing Disorder in Greenwood Village, Colorado.

ucy Miller lost her sight when she was 16 and, in 1970, underwent one of the nation’s irst corneal transplants. A procession of specialists flitted in and out of her recovery room—doctors, nurses, residents, fellows—but she recalls thinking Nearly half a century later, Miller, that only the occupational therapist who is the clinical director of the was interested in her as a person.

STAR Institute for Sensory Processing Disorder just south of Denver, Shortly after her release from the hos- has become one of the nation’s prepital, she abandoned her plans to go eminent scholars on sensory proto law school and headed to graduate cessing disorder (SPD). This term is school at Boston University to study used to describe diiculty with “one occupational therapy. It wasn’t only or more of the sensory processes

58 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

that occur along the neurological pathway, from detecting stimulation to regulating the input and output, to interpreting the sensations correctly, to responding accurately, and inally, to turning the sensory input into meaningful responses,” as she explained in her 2014 book, Sensational Kids: Hope and Help for Children with Sensory Processing Disorder.

Falling into six subtypes and described by a range of symptoms, sensory processing disorders are difficult to describe succinctly. A child who overresponds to stimuli, Miller explained to me, might be intensely bothered by the sound of a ire engine. An underresponsive child might hold a light bulb long enough to get burned. A child with a sensory-based motor disorder may have trouble coordinating movement to print legibly, put on socks, or play team sports. Children with SPD may bite, push, or ight. Many are kicked out of schools.

COURTESY STAR INSTITUTE FOR SENSORY PROCESSING DISORDER

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the care and attention of her former occupational therapist who had led her to this decision. In the hospital, over several months when her eyes were surgically detached from her skull, she noticed her other senses had grown sharper. She wondered why, neurologically, this had happened, and was determined to ind out. So, in her early twenties, still in graduate school, she embarked on a summer mentorship at the Torrance, California, clinic of Jean Ayers, the originator of a then-emerging ield exploring the relationship between the sensory processing dysfunction and the behavior of children with disabilities.

FOREGROUND

/PLAY

eras and recorded using wireless microphones attached to adults on the playground who remained within range of the majority of the children.

Children peek out the porthole windows of the Cozy Dome by Landscape Structures. The dome ofers opportunities for socialization and an enclosed space for overly aroused children to calm themselves.

But playgrounds may be able to help children avoid such painful trajectories. A six-month pilot study led

by Miller and published in the peerreviewed Journal of Occupational Therapy, Schools, and Early Intervention showed that school-aged children engaging at an inclusive playground designed by Landscape

60 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

Structures demonstrated increased verbalization and positive afect, and showed instances of motor planning, symbolic play, novel use of play materials, and self-regulation.

These behaviors are associated with the treatment goals for children with sensory challenges and are beneicial for the development of all children, Miller says.

The pilot study was conducted at the STAR Institute, where Miller directs a multidisciplinary clinical team that provides treatment for roughly 700 families a year. It used a behavioral coding scheme developed by Miller, along with Stephen Camarata, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Vanderbilt University, and Sarah Schoen, an occupational therapist at the STAR Institute, to evaluate playground equipment used by 140 typically developing children and 41 children with a variety of developmental disabilities, including autism, attention deicit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and sensory and regulatory disorders. During weekly two-hour playground sessions, children were observed by video cam-

When analyzed, behaviors such as digging in a sand and water table, climbing a Möbius strip-shaped climbing wall, sliding down the rungs of a roller slide, and spinning on the spinner (a bowl-shaped merrygo-round with seats providing postural support) revealed correlations between sensory stimulation and social interaction, motor planning and self-esteem, and play levels and positive afect. A preliminary indication is that a sensory-rich playground, aside from being fun, can support multiple areas of childhood development.

“I think people don’t realize playgrounds are about more than play.

COURTESY STAR INSTITUTE FOR SENSORY PROCESSING DISORDER

ABOVE

The disorder gained widespread public attention after a report by the Hartford Courant in partnership with the PBS news program FRONTLINE revealed that Adam Lanza, the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooter, was among those with SPD. Diagnosed with sensory integration disorder—now referred to as sensory processing disorder—Lanza was extremely sensitive to physical contact and loud noises. His isolation and psychological unrest represent the extreme edge of a dimensional disorder that Miller says can compound across a lifetime. “The disorder starts when a person has problems adapting to life. These kids become loners, they don’t have friends; the social aspect of their life is really impacted and critical,” she says.

The coding scheme measured the effectiveness of six types of playground equipment based on the percentage of time children expressed certain behaviors while using the equipment.

A total of 32 hours of videotape were analyzed. Using a method common to speech therapy studies, the researchers noted whether behaviors occurred at least once or did not occur at all during 60-second intervals, then extrapolated the results across ive domains: sensory features, social interaction, self-regulation, motor skills and motor planning, and play level. At a roller slide, for instance, children exhibited social interaction via “spontaneous verbalization” for 37 percent of the observed time and “turn taking” for 19 percent of the observed time.

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They are the foundation to children’s physical development, social and language development, and competence in daily life,” Miller says.

TOP LEFT

A child explores the acoustic properties of a concave drum.

TOP RIGHT

A child traverses a Möbius climber with adult assistance.

The structure is designed to support motor planning and development.

INSET

A playground herb garden.

hold promise as a way Catherine Lord, who is a profesto help children sor of psychology in psychiatry and with SPD self-regulate founding director of the Center for their behavior and relate to their peers Autism and the Developing Brain more easily. at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and was not involved in Miller’s One telling case study involved a child study, says the study is also signii- so overresponsive to touch that he recant for its methods. Unlike a ran- fused to wear underwear or brush his domized controlled trial in a clinical teeth. As explained in the report, an setting, a study at a playground in an increase in proprioceptive stimulaeveryday social context is diicult to tion on equipment such as the Möbiconduct using hard science. “There us climber and roller slide paralleled isn’t a lot of data related to everyday an increase in his self-regulation. opportunities for kids with autism It also paralleled increases in the boy’s spectrum disorders, or other kinds use of prompted and unprompted of disorders, to be exposed to physi- speech, displays of positive affect, cal experiences and peer interaction. and demonstrations of pride in his I think it is a really great step forward accomplishments (e.g., “Look, Mom, in the right direction.”

I did this myself!”).

hydrated.’ These are kids who people think can’t speak.”

A particularly promising aspect of the study, Miller says, relates to the proprioceptive sense, which, along with the vestibular sense, gives us awareness of movement, speed, and pressure on the joints and muscles.

Providing the right level of input to these “hidden” senses rooted in the nervous system, she believes, may

The ifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders does not recognize SPD as a condition separate from autism.

“I’ve tried for 18 years to get it listed as a separate diagnosis without success. All children with autism have sensory problems. Most with sensory disorders don’t have autism. [SPD]

62 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

Miller says several children made similar behavioral leaps. “Two kids playing in the sand and water were digging to China—digging, digging, digging—until one hit bottom three feet down and said ‘I made it. I made it. I got to China.’ Another who’d hardly ever spoken before said, ‘Thank goodness. Everybody in China will be

Both the children she describes had been diagnosed with autism. This is noteworthy as there is empirical debate over whether SPD is a distinct disorder or a collection of symptoms explained by other neurological deicits, such as autism or ADHD. “So many disorders involve the senses that to call these abnormalities SPD may be like diagnosing a person with a headache. A headache is not a diagnosis,” Lord says. “But the points I’m making shouldn’t belie the fact that occupational therapy and other kinds of treatment are very important and that the use of movement, space, and objects, along with social connections, can improve the lives of people.”

COURTESY STAR INSTITUTE FOR SENSORY PROCESSING DISORDER

FOREGROUND

/PLAY

ing. “Sensory integration has been hugely overlooked in the context of inclusive design. When people talk about inclusion, they tend to focus on physical disabilities, wheelchair access. Unfortunately, I think, many parents with children on the autism spectrum didn’t enjoy going to the playground and avoided it because overstimulated children misbehaved,” Kennedy says.

N

ABOVE

Four Hills Village Park in Albuquerque, designed by MRWM Landscape Architects.

is not a disorder in the sense of a broken leg or gall bladder; everybody falls somewhere on the dimension. Many aspects of mental disorders have this problem,” Miller says.

BELOW

Caregivers observe children at the Four Hills Village Park playground.

For a long time, the design community didn’t get it right, says Chad Kennedy, ASLA, a principal landscape architect at O’Dell Engineer-

However, this is beginning to change. Kennedy points to Sunridge Park in Rancho Cordova, California, where O’Dell Engineering’s incorporation of tiered sand beds, loose clay, a tuned drum set, and a spray pad offers children a variety of sensory experiences. O’Dell Engineering has also developed an inclusive play environment audit, a quantitative evaluation tool assessing play features—a grassy maze, nature playhouse, or xylophone—based on the cognitive, sensory, physical, and social opportunities they provide.

Greg Miller, FASLA, a principal at MRWM Landscape Architects and the current president of the American Society of Landscape Architects (and no relation to Lucy Miller), says his exposure to Lucy Miller’s ideas at ASLA’s annual meeting several years ago—and the subsequent talks they’ve given together—has inspired a sensory-rich design philosophy evident in several neighborhood parks and schools his irm has designed.

The approach extends beyond equipment speciication to include siting considerations, developmentally

64 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

graduated play spaces, side-by-side play elements, mixed scale use, and the integration of richly textured natural and manufactured elements.

Set against the Sandia Mountains, Four Hills Village Park in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as Miller describes it, is one example. Its tree canopy shades a path winding over hills and bridges. With little visible separation between the broader park and the play area, the path leads to a custom-built Landscape Structures play tower resembling an Ewok village with pods, net climbers, ropes, and bridges. The play area is surfaced in loose, engineered wood iber to create a “zero-edge play area” that blurs the transition between a playground and the rest of a park.

Maggie Daley Park in Chicago by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. and Governors Island in New York by West 8 are other examples of sensory-based design that, until recently, landscape architects practiced mostly intuitively, Greg Miller says. Now those instinctive decisions may have a stronger basis in science.

“Evidence-based documentation is a demonstration of the value of this approach. A lot of landscape architects are embracing these ideas and doing very cool projects incorporating these elements. But instead of operating intuitively, they will be able to code it back to research,” he says.

JEFF LINK IS A JOURNALIST BASED IN CHICAGO. HIS WORK HAS APPEARED IN FAST COMPANY, ARCHITECT, AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS. HE IS A GRADUATE OF THE IOWA WRITERS’ WORKSHOP.

COURTESY MRWM LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS

FOREGROUND

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FOREGROUND

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FOREGROUND

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FOREGROUND

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CK OFF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018 / 77

t

HE DESIGN INDUSTRY’S #MeToo moment arrived in March, when the New York Times published allegations of sexual misconduct against the architect Richard Meier. A total of nine women have come forward to paint a picture of decades of lecherous behavior that was well known to senior members of Meier’s irm, who did little to intervene.

The uncomfortable spotlight on the culture of prominent architecture irms has created an opportunity to bring once-private conversations among women at design irms into a wider arena. “We all knew our industry was not immune,” says Megan Born, ASLA, a landscape architect and partner at PORT Urbanism in Philadelphia. “Not only are women typically the ones being harassed, they are often tasked with the responsibility of understanding the problem and inding solutions. I think everyone in the ield needs to look at this together and decide it is an issue they want to take on.”

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According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), surveys have found that up to 85 percent of women have experienced some form of sexual harassment at work. A recent survey of nearly 1,500 architects by the Architects’ Journal, a British publication, found that one in seven women at design irms had experienced sexual harassment in the previous year. In light of recent events, the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, which has long focused on highlighting the contributions of women in the design professions, is working with the American Institute of Architects (AIA) to develop new ethical guidelines aimed at curbing sexual misconduct and petitioning state licensing boards to mandate ongoing sexual harassment training as a requirement for maintaining licensure. There’s no data available to clarify the scope of the problem in landscape architecture, but among a half-dozen women in the profession interviewed for this article about their personal experiences, none said they’d never experienced uncomfortable behavior of a sexual or gendered nature in the workplace. None had experienced, or knew of, instances of Harvey Weinstein-

level harassment. But as Evalynn Rosado, the director of business development and operations at DLANDstudio Architecture + Landscape Architecture in New York, put it, “People are very, very quiet about that once it has happened.”

Among those interviewed for this story, I also spoke with four male landscape architects, some of whom expressed doubt that sexual harassment was more than a rarity in the profession. Those assertions may have something to do with misconceptions about what actually constitutes sexual harassment.

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CCORDING TO the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund website, federal law recognizes two types of sexual harassment: quid pro quo harassment (demanding or requesting sexual favors in exchange for preferential treatment in the workplace) and unwelcome behavior of a sexual nature. Both are considered a form of discrimination under the 1964

Civil Rights Act, as is gender harassment— making derogatory comments about women at work, for example.

Jane Stapleton, a co-director of the Prevention Innovations Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, says a strong sexual harassment policy is one that provides detailed examples of what is and is not considered sexual harassment, using scenarios relevant to the employer’s workplace context. But exactly where the line between, say, bawdy jokes ends and harassing behavior begins is not always clear to all parties.

Bawdiness crosses the line, she says, when it is frequent or severe enough to create a hostile work environment. “One comment does not constitute a hostile environment, but a series of comments that creates an atmosphere where someone is unable to do their work does.”

While the interpretation of harassing behaviors continues to be an ongoing and shifting conversation at design irms, there are several resources available for detailed information about legal deinitions and harassment.

The websites of the EEOC (www.eeoc.gov),

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“It’s a calculus of, do I just pretend that didn’t happen and move on with my life, or do I fight it and prolong the whole experience?

It’s ex the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund (nwlc.org/ times-up-legal-defense-fund), and the Society for Human Resource Management (www. shrm.org) ofer further guidance for drafting sufficiently detailed sexual harassment policies.

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HIS SPRING, I contacted nearly 50 irms seeking information on their sexual harassment policies. The dozen that replied varied in size from PORT Urbanism, a sevenperson operation, to global companies like Perkins+Will and HOK. Of those, four were irms founded by women, and several had women in leadership roles, though not on par with representation by men. Every single one had an employee handbook with a section

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on sexual harassment, and several said they have recently revised their policies or are in the process of doing so.

Some of the smaller firms told me they have just a paragraph or two taken from language supplied by the Society for Human Resource Management, whereas the big irms described more elaborate and customized policies drafted by an attorney. One irm reported that it borrowed language from a local government entity that it works with, which requires its contractors to have sexual harassment policies that align with its own.

The core of any sexual harassment policy is a statement of zero tolerance, Stapleton says, plus clear direction on whom to talk to if you experience something that violates the policy—the more detail, the more efective in preventing harassment.

hausting to have to negotiate that every day.”

Stapleton says that best practices should include a list of examples of inappropriate behavior; provide multiple avenues for a victim to come forward, including the option of registering a complaint with a male or female representative of the company, an external third party, or anonymously; and include clear expectations of what will happen once a complaint is made regarding conidentiality, how investigations will be carried out and by whom, and what the potential ramiications are for both victim and perpetrator.

Multiple firms reported that they’ve outsourced some of the human resources (HR) responsibilities around sexual harassment, whether to provide a neutral outlet when

diicult situations arise or simply because they’re too small to have an in-house HR department. This may take the form of a “co-employment” relationship with an HR irm at one end of the spectrum or contracting with vendors that provide hotlines for reporting workplace misconduct.

New solutions are emerging, such as Callisto, an app based on the premise that women are more likely to come forward against a perpetrator in groups rather than alone. Enter an allegation into the app’s “matching escrow” feature and voilà: If someone else makes, or has already made, an allegation about the same person, all the victims are notiied and can be put in touch with one another. In its

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current incarnation, the app is designed for use by college students, though the company’s website says it will soon be available in a format designed for professional settings.

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HE WOMEN landscape architects I spoke with identified two main areas of work life where they and their colleagues have experienced harassment.

One is with supervisors and peers who engage in jokes and banter that they seem to think is goodnatured, but that women in the oice ind ofensive. Much more of a problem, I was told, is when women employees leave the oice to work with clients, other consultants, and on construction sites.

“A lot of women feel that the only way they can get work done during construction administration is to take all the BS from the people who are building the project,” Born says. “It’s a calculus of, do I just pretend that

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didn’t happen and move on with my life, or do I ight it and prolong the whole experience? It’s exhausting to have to negotiate that every day.”

Employers are obligated by federal law to provide a safe and harassment-free environment for all work-related activities, including travel, staf parties, dinners with clients, and ieldwork. An efective sexual harassment policy includes provisions for handling inappropriate behavior in any potential context, though follow-through becomes more complicated when the perpetrator is employed by another company or is a client. Avenues for recourse include registering a complaint with the EEOC (or appropriate state agency) or directly with the company in question.

Chip Impastato, ASLA, a principal with Studio Outside, a 40-person firm in Dallas, says he would not hesitate to ire a client or subcontractor who sexually harassed an employee. In the case of construction site harassment where he did not have the authority to ire, he says, “I would immediately call the site superintendent and say we have a major problem. I don’t want that person

near my people anymore, and you need to for supervisors. Maine requires them for reprimand him immediately; if not, we’re companies with 15 or more employees, which must be attended by everyone. going to escalate this.”

Not all sexual harassment trainings are created equal, however. The simplest and cheapest are online—you sit by yourself and point and click your way through. Jane Stapleton of the Prevention Innovations Research Center regards these as “checking-the-box” trainings— good for regulatory compliance, but little else.

“They might prevent a lawsuit, or reduce the damages someone is subject to in a lawsuit, but they do not change culture.” She advises a buyer-beware mentality for irms seeking to hire sexual harassment consultants. “The RAINING IS a signiicant aspect #MeToo movement has spawned a cottage of harassment prevention, and industry of people marketing things that are companies can hire consul- not necessarily evidence-based.” tants to conduct sexual harassment trainings. The larg- The center is a pioneer in developing “byer irms I spoke with provide stander” trainings, widely considered the trainings on a routine basis gold standard in the ield. These experiential for prevention’s sake, which is seminars bring supervisors and employees mandatory in three states. Cali- together in a room; harassment scenarios are fornia and Connecticut require discussed, along with strategies for anyone sexual harassment trainings for com- who witnesses suspect behavior to interpanies with 50 or more employees, but only vene. “Hey, knock it of!” is often an efective He’s also willing to admit that as a male irm owner, he likely has blind spots. “I feel like every woman here knows that we want them to come forward if there is a problem, and I’d like to think they believe us when we say that. But I don’t know. I’ve never been in their position.” He pauses for a moment. “Maybe one thing we could do better is to talk about the topic more freely so people feel comfortable saying something if a situation were to arise.”

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Online training sessions “might prevent a lawsuit, or reduce the damages someone is subject to in a lawsuit, but they do not

change culture.”

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leadership.” The best training money can buy won’t necessarily change the culture of a irm where sexism emanates from the top down, or where there is fear of reprisal. The elephant in the HR oice, she adds, is that sexual harassment policies, despite pretenses, are ultimately designed to protect owners from litigation. Which is why no one in the The idea is to keep at it around people who industry should be surprised to see more display the sort of insensitivity that could salacious newspaper stories, Rosado says. snowball into something more egregious, thus establishing a culture in which that Women who are harassed by their superviline is clear. The burden of doing something sors may think they have little recourse other about the problem then shifts from the vic- than resigning. In an efort to change that tim to the community. “It’s about engaging dynamic, the Beverly Willis Architecture the community to create the norms around Foundation has urged professional organiwhat is acceptable behavior,” Stapleton zations to take more of a leadership role in says. “And when what is acceptable establishing a zero-tolerance culture. It has is not adhered to, then the com- asked that industry associations such as the munity responds.”

AIA and ASLA not bestow awards on designers who have been found to engage in sexual VALYNN ROSADO at DLAND- misconduct, for instance. By making respectstudio says there’s one other ful treatment of employees a prerequisite crucial thing that can’t be for such recognition, the balance of power ignored in the sexual harass- begins to shift. ment conversation: “The harassment is often coming from BRIAN BARTH IS A FREELANCE JOURNALIST BASED IN TORONTO. intervention. But the classic, nonconfrontational bystander approach is distraction: “Hey Laura!” you might say to interrupt if you sense a colleague is uncomfortable with the way a client or supervisor is invading her personal space, for example. “Can I get some help with this account statement?”

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COPENHAGEN COOL

TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE GETS A FEET FRIENDLY MAKEOVER.

BY DANIEL ELSEA / PHOTOGRAPHY BY RASMUS HJORTSHØJ

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NØRREPORT

Curvaceous glass pavilions provide street-level entrances to Denmark’s busiest railway station belowground.

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ISRAELS PLADS

Open-air steps provide a popular lookout point over Israels Plads’s sports court.

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HE HOME of the Danish architect Jan Gehl, the most livable city in the world in the happiest country on Earth, Copenhagen is quite possibly the closest our increasingly hot and crowded planet can get to urbanist nirvana. In 1962, the city pedestrianized its commercial heart. By the 1980s, it had introduced the bike lane network that has inspired legions of cyclists from the streets of Portland, Oregon, to the readers of Monocle magazine.

The city is not resting, having recently completed two new public spaces that reclaim signiicant spaces in the city center from hard, overwrought infrastructure. There is Israels Plads, a typically European rectilinear square in size and shape, and Nørreport, a ribbon of public space that runs perpendicular to it and reaches deep into the urban fabric. Separate commissions, they are coincidental neighbors with a hinge of streetscape just about linking the two. In a sort of mash-up of Penn Station (but a nice one) with the Big Dig, Nørreport integrates entrances to Denmark’s busiest train station belowground, and aboveground, it provides what must be one of the largest urban bicycle parking lots in the world. Israels Plads, the irst to be inished, in 2014, camoulages an underground car park.

The designer of both is COBE, a Copenhagenbased design irm, little known outside the Scandi design groupie set. The firm won both commissions through competitions—Israels Plads in 2008 and Nørreport in 2009—giving it the

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accidental opportunity to paint a seemingly uniied patina across the two. The result is a striking new contemporary space that forms a bold counterpoint to an old city.

qualiied landscape architects). When it comes to landscape, they practice a very architectural landscape architecture. There is a certain hard edge to it that is hard to pinpoint, a je ne sais quoi.

Whatever it is, it seems to be something that “Historically, both places were very important translates well into Danish. public spaces 100 years ago, but were gradually ruined by heavy infrastructure for cars, buses, They’re not architects doing watered-down puband bike parking,” says Dan Stubbergaard, the lic spaces or landscape architects dabbling in founder and creative director of COBE. “We ba- sheds. They really do both—and the results can sically wanted to reconquer those two important be compelling. The irm’s current landscape comspaces back for the people.” missions include two new public spaces in their home city, a square named in honor of Karen COBE opened in 2005, and its staf members Blixen (the Danish aristocrat famously played consider themselves architects, public space de- by Meryl Streep in Out of Africa) and a new signers, and urban designers (14 of them are plaza that fronts Denmark’s Design Museum.

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ABOVE

Children enjoy playing on the steps.

OPPOSITE TOP LEFT

The sports court hardscape uses a cushy material called Nike Grind. Its speckles are among the only hints of color in the square’s pale palette.

OPPOSITE BOTTOM

Israels Plads overlooks Ørsteds Park, designed by the Danish landscape architect Henrik August Flindt.

COBE AND SWECO, TOP RIGHT

LEFT

Israels Plads conceals a large underground parking lot and contains a ring of trees that carries on the tree canopy from the neighboring Ørsteds Park.

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Last year, COBE won the competition to design Place Schuman, a new public space that will knit together all the main institutions of the European Union in Brussels.

ABOVE

Coincidental neighbors, Israels Plads and Nørreport are strikingly contemporary insertions into the historic fabric of central Copenhagen.

Some of the irm’s recent residential projects have balanced spicy contemporary forms with contextual sensitivity. Krøyers Plads (2016) has a dynamic, angular roofscape that feels at ease with its historic harborside location of brawny warehouses.

Within Copenhagen’s ambitious redo of its northern harbor—Nordhavn—the irm transformed a 17-story grain silo into apartments. Stark and monochrome, though in a high-def way, its angular and richly textured facade is a joy to Instagram.

Despite its name, Israels Plads is very much about Denmark. The area got its name in 1968 By evening, large to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the LED columns light up country’s rescue of its Jewish population during the busy Nørreport streetscape and anchor World War II. It is an inspiring story. In 1943, outdoor seating. as the horrors of the Holocaust began to gather, OPPOSITE

Denmark’s German occupiers ordered the arrest of the country’s Jewish population. Quietly, stoically, and stealthily, the resilient institutions of the Danish state and its people went into action and quickly spirited them out of the country—mostly by boat into neutral Sweden. The result is that much of Denmark’s Jewish population survived the Holocaust. It’s yet one more reason to be absolutely smitten with this perfect little country.

The square has had several lives. For generations, it was the home of Grønttorvet, Copenhagen’s lively vegetable market. As the 1960s rolled around, waves of people left the city center to new suburbs, and they started to commute in by car. And as in many cities around the world, the fashion of the day was to basically automobile-ize everything and the plaza became the site of a car park—a “massive and lifeless” place, as described by COBE. The parking lot in the 1970s was put underground, and the plaza was turned into sports courts with a smattering of veggie stands remaining.

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Copenhageners and tourists alike locked to the Torvehallerne, quickly changing the character of the area. With all the epicurean swish about, the surroundings started to look a bit tired, and the city of Copenhagen already had plans to inish the job with a competition to complete Israels Plads.

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At 12,500 square meters, the refurbished open space has long been among the largest squares in Copenhagen, but it feels remarkably intimate.

ABOVE

“We have generated [one of] the largest plaza[s] in Copenhagen, but have been able to scale it down,” Stubbergaard says. “It has become a real urban living room for everyone using the city as an extension of their private homes.”

COBE’s winning concept begins with two upward heaves in the northeast and southwest corners to give deinition to the square. They create multifunctional steps for sitting, spectating, whatever it may be. Not fenced in, and with some steep backsides, they’re just there. They’re simple, unadorned concrete with some steep slopes and not a single health and safety sign in sight—how refreshing. These nonchalant amphitheaters look out onto three curvilinear shapes that dominate the heart of the square. Sensuous, especially when seen from above, they evoke a Burle Marx plan, albeit in muted tones. One is a spherical entrance to the car park below; another is an oval skateboard ground. The largest of the three is a cylindrical multiuse sports ground that continues to serve the local school but is also open to all.

Sunken cycle parking lots are placed up to 50 centimeters below street level to create a clear hierarchy between spaces for walking and bicycle storage.

BELOW AND OPPOSITE

Train station below, cycle parking lot above.

Thousands of bicycles are parked at any given time in Nørreport.

COBE AND GOTTLIEB PALUDAN ARCHITECTS

Throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, the plaza was largely respectable cobblestone but nothing special. A neighboring school made use of the sports courts, and there was a bit of a regular trade in street food when the Scandinavian weather permitted.

In 2011, however, a new chapter began with the opening of Torvehallerne, a sleek, Miesian food market. The covered market, a gourmet temple, occupies the northern block fronting Israels Plads—or technically, it takes up the northern half of Israels Plads, depending on whom you ask.

The market is host to a number of bougie stalls, including hipster cofee joints and biodynamic wine shops with everything from tapas to duck conit sandwiches—a familiar typology in today’s lifestyle city. It’s Copenhagen’s answer to London’s Borough Market or Barcelona’s Santa Caterina, a itting accompaniment to the city’s newfound status as a foodie capital. (This is the home of Noma, arguably the world’s best restaurant, after all.)

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The sports ground, demarcated by an undulating stainless steel fence with spring suspended stainless wires, sits within a curved trapezoidal halo of recycled rubber material called Nike Grind. The material is soft, bouncy, and quite a joy to touch.

On the two visits I have had to the plaza—one in the cold of late winter and the other in the throes of early summer—children caught onto the tactility, bumping into it, falling down, rolling around, jumping. As you get closer to it, its charcoal color gives way to multicolored sprinkles and dots: Hi-i granite meets goth Play-Doh.

Plads’s southern side has become a vista point. Today it is a much-loved green space lined by genteel 19th-century buildings, but for many decades it had been a locale for things a bit less salubrious— a popular cruising joint. Rather than avoid the park, the new Israels Plads embraces it. No barriers exist between the two. The hardscape of the plaza simply ends and the new park’s greenery begins, and the placement of the few trees within Israels Plads carefully carries on the pattern of trees from Flindt’s park, sprinkled like green fairy ABOVE dust against the gray solidity of the plaza.

Train station pavilions

As an urban piece, the plaza provides an important transition point between the city and a neighboring park to the south, Ørsteds. Designed by the Danish landscape architect Henrik August Flindt in the late 1800s, the 16-acre park contains large trees and has a Beaux-Arts naturalism deined by a small recessed valley loor over which Israels

What is perhaps most striking about the place is its grayness. Cool, clean, and crisp, the square’s hardscape is so muted that, especially in the winter months, it ironically manages to overwhelm the space. It’s an Ando-esque foil to another space that has grabbed headlines recently in Copenhagen—Superkilen, the hot pink smorgas-

with green roofs.

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OPPOSITE

The flow of traic across the site informed the geometry and alignment of station entrance pavilions and cycle parking areas.

NØRREPORT MAY LOOK GROOVY, BUT IT’S DRIVEN BY HARD-HEADED FUNCTIONALITY.

COBE AND GOTTLIEB PALUDAN ARCHITECTS

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bord by the architects at BIG, the landscape ar- and disorganized place in an otherwise placid city. chitects at Topotek1, and the artists at Superlex. Its connections to the suburbs and centrality to the city’s main commercial districts grew over the This relentless grayness of the hardscape contin- years and, in a sort of all-too-familiar urban story, ues in neighboring Nørreport. Signiicantly more it became a hodgepodge that was succumbing to complex, it was a project that involved multiple a lot of wear and tear. A competition was held to clients—the city of Copenhagen, but also DSB rethink the hub both as a piece of infrastructure (Denmark’s state railway provider) and Banedan- and as a public space within the city. mark, the public operator of the country’s rail network. COBE collaborated with Gottlieb Paludan The design began with an in-depth study of how Architects, a commercial irm with a long heritage people low in and around Nørreport—where in Denmark, to deliver a thin, long wedge of more they stop, where they most often enter and move than 10,000 square meters of public space and through the space, which of the existing exits is an above-street interface into Nørreport Station, most popular, and so on. A new station experisaid to be the busiest transit hub in the country, ence at street level was composed by creating six which brings together national and international entrance pavilions. In plan, they have the same rail lines and two of Copenhagen’s subway lines. sinuous curves seen in Israels Plads, yet the pavilions come across as green islands—owing The station, which serves more than a quarter of a to their green roofs—set within a sea of city. million people each day, had long been a frenetic At street level, the pavilion’s curvilinear glass

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OPPOSITE

Subtle indentations in the ground space diferentiate spaces for people and bicycles.

envelopes ofer transparency, and a place that it. Transplanted into an art museum, it might was often feared at night now feels much lighter. become an Ai Weiwei installation. In plan, it is all very graphic and linear. One can imagine how The pavilions are set within a gray hardscape, elegant that illustrative master plan would have yet if you look closer you will see that this is all looked in Illustrator. essentially a giant bicycle parking lot. Thousands of bike parking spaces are arranged in the inill As a city’s answer to Penn Station, it’s pretty spaces among the pavilions. Instead of being sublime. With multimodal movements pulsatstored away, they are a beautiful and essential part ing through its veins, its delightful simplicity, its of the surrounding streetscape. Like lower beds in just-so-ness, is expected for this part of the world. a park, each cycling island is recessed 30 to 50 cen- The pavilions are just the right size, crowned timeters belowground, which provides a cleaner by a cool typeface, and each of those sunken line of sight across them at street level and creates cycle lower beds ofers a striking counterpoint a clear hierarchy between areas for cycle storage to them. There are zigs and zags, and there is and everything else. For a city so dependent on the monochrome gray stone everywhere. It’s cool. It bike, especially commuters who come into the city certainly looks progressive and feels contempocenter, where many leave a bike permanently, this rary. There is a rigor, a colorless discipline, but is an essential piece of infrastructure. It may look couldn’t it be just a bit friendlier? groovy, but it’s driven by hard-headed functionality.

“The design is generated by the low of people and bike movements, which is something you might describe as pragmatic parameters,” Stubbergaard observes. “But we have translated it into some exciting spaces and architecture.”

These are spaces that very rapidly became heavily used and now feel pretty weathered even though they just opened last year. Thousands of bikes can be found, morning, day, and night. It’s a vast scene of steel, tubes, and rubber—and a lot of

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

Project Credits ISRAELS PLADS LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT COBE, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK; SWECO, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK. ENGINEERS NIRAS, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK. CLIENT THE CITY OF COPENHAGEN, DENMARK. NØRREPORT LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT COBE, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK. ARCHITECT GOTTLIEB PALUDAN ARCHITECTS, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK. ENGINEERS SWECO, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK. LIGHTING BARTENBACH GMBH, ALDRANS, AUSTRIA. CLIENT BANEDANMARK, DANISH STATE RAILWAYS, AND THE CITY OF COPENHAGEN, DENMARK.

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THE DREAM SELLER AMID THE CONTRADICTIONS OF MEXICO CITY, MARIO SCHJETNAN REMAINS AN OPTIMIST.

BY JONATHAN LERNER/PHOTOGRAPHY BY ADAM WISEMAN

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O LEFT

About 30 people are on staf at Grupo de Diseño Urbano, where urbanistic repurposing of industrial sites is a specialty. Left to right: Rodrigo Barreto, Estefanía Reyes, and Isaac Mendoza.

NE BRIGHT DECEMBER DAY, The sump, whose function was re- Now Schjetnan pointed to where Mario Schjetnan, FASLA, was ushering a visitor around Mexico City’s historic Chapultepec Park, where his irm, Grupo de Diseño Urbano (GDU), has been enacting subtle renovations for nearly a decade and a half. He detoured, though, to show something that has not required the irm’s intervention. It was a concrete sump, perhaps ive meters square, three meters deep, and open on top.

It is the terminus of an aqueduct, completed in 1951, that brings water from 60 kilometers away through a tunnel under a mountain range. At the time, the city’s population had more than doubled in two decades, to three million thirsty souls. This new aqueduct must have seemed like deliverance. (Today, the population of the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico, comprising the city proper plus 41 contiguous municipalities, numbers more than 21 million.)

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ally just to hold water before it was piped into four enormous tanks buried nearby, was treated reverentially. Sheltered within a templeform building, the depression’s walls and loor were painted by Diego Rivera in a fantastical narrative called Water, Origin of Life. The inlet seems to pour through the hands of Tlaloc, the Aztec god of loods and droughts. Swirling around the loor and up the walls are life forms of increasing complexity. There are an ur-man and ur-woman, and depictions of everyday people using water (swimming, sipping, irrigating gardens), of workers jackhammering rock, and of giant pipes and valves.

When the sump was actually used, the view through water surely added a vitalizing shimmer, but water was destroying the mural. Eventually the low was rerouted and the painting restored.

Rivera had portrayed a gathering of two dozen men in modern dress, some in hard hats, some in suits; on a table before them is a sheaf of blueprints. “The engineers who built the aqueduct,” he said respectfully, or maybe proudly—though perhaps he meant less to convey love for engineers, per se, than sympathy for anyone who grapples with Mexico City’s water challenges. Through a long career, Schjetnan—who is not an engineer, but a landscape architect, architect, and urban planner —has been one of those.

Water is a perpetual problem here: There is both too much and too little. It lows from the surrounding mountains into the bowl-like valley but inds no natural outlet.

Originally it pooled into seasonal lakes; those disappeared over centuries of urbanization. The aqueduct

ABOVE

Left to right: Manuel Peniche, Jessica Navarrete, Macarena Candela, Carmen Martínez, and Ana Calleja work on a project.

system is expanded now but still inadequate. The digging of wells in the valley, it is predicted, will by 2020 have caused land to subside in some spots by nearly 20 meters.

Sewage and stormwater still have no easy way out. There are tunnels and pumps, but serious rains cause loods and overwhelm existing retention structures. Meanwhile, water infrastructure and management are fragmented among the municipalities. And both political culture and development planning are weak on comprehensive thinking—and on follow-through.

In one borough where water infrastructure is especially maxed out, GDU recently completed two signiicant projects. Parque Bicentenario, developed by the federal government, is a regional park and botanical garden. Tecnoparque is a private oice complex. Tecnoparque

was allowed no increase in water allocation from the site’s previous industrial use, and was forbidden to discharge any wastewater at all.

Schjetnan’s solution was twofold.

Wastewater is treated at the site and stored for use in pools, fountains, and irrigation there. Rainwater is collected in cisterns and then sent into perforated wells from which it percolates into the aquifer. When Schjetnan has judged architectural competitions, “always they win with a huge beautiful water feature.

Great!” he said. “They build it, and you go back two years later? Empty.

But this is a working system. The fountains are aeration systems. They have to work, otherwise the whole thing either loods or stagnates, or the water treatment plant is going to smell.” If Tecnoparque, which has private owners who are motivated to keep things functioning and tenants happy, could be called “water net

zero,” Parque Bicentenario would be “water net negative.” There, not only is rainwater injected underground, but sewage is actually drawn from the city’s system for treatment and reuse on site.

These solutions are site speciic and site scale. But Tecnoparque, with 14 hectares, and Bicentenario, with 55, are hardly small scale, when considered as rips in the urban fabric, which they had been. Tecnoparque, formerly a steel fabrication plant, and Bicentenario, once an oil reinery, are examples of a vision Schjetnan advocates for, the redevelopment of former industrial properties. He enumerates factors during the 1980s that led to the enforced closing of heavy industries in Mexico City: the explosion of a gas plant with deadly consequences for its surrounding informal neighborhood, a powerful earthquake that prompted

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ABOVE

Mario Schjetnan, FASLA, at Mexico City’s Chapultepec Park.

emigration and relocation of vulner- widely separated overhead catwalks. able facilities, and infamously bad— Stations on the eicient but sufoinally untenable—air pollution. catingly thronged metro system are far apart; it seems that anybody who Two-plus decades on, a number of can aford it opts to drive. Another large postindustrial properties re- challenge is that “there is still no main disused. The redevelopment integrative oicial plan” for inill on of some is in the works, but disjoint- these brownfield sites—the more edly. “Private developers are trying regrettable because many of them to connect large parcels with each are clustered in the same area. For other,” Schjetnan said. But the physi- example, just across a boulevard cal obstacles alone are daunting. and rail line from Tecnoparque— Typically, such sites are bounded by and from a university campus, a a rail corridor or by an impenetrable sports arena, a municipal park, and boulevard, or maybe both; paradoxi- a dense residential district—there cally for a city with vibrant street life, is a nearly 500-hectare moribund major arteries can be pedestrian no- industrial zone and a suburban line go zones, often crossable only on train station.

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Schjetnan laments the lack of an overarching approach to stormwater. “Even until today, they’re continuing to build huge tunnels to get rid of the water. It’s crazy,” he said.

Schemes like his of channeling it into the aquifer, for example, could be mandated, and be especially efective in projects “where you have large parcels, like a campus or a shopping center.” The lack of commitment to comprehensive planning leaves him exasperated. “The city, even with a so-called leftist government for the past 15 years, hasn’t done enough on the east side where there are 2.5 million people who are very poor.

It’s depressing.” A vast new airport

SCHJETNAN “HAS BEEN VERY EFFECTIVE IN BRINGING METABOLIC ISSUES INTO THE DIALOGUE OF THE URBAN PROJECT.” FELIPE CORREA

is being built, on a third of a roughly 1,600-hectare tract of former lake basin. “That’s the federal government.

They had a great opportunity to do an integral master plan, at a very large scale, with the surrounding areas,” he said. “We have proposed it several times to the authorities.

We’re working on the landscape of the new airport, but just at the level of a green roof, not even at the level of the infrastructure of new highways that are going to go there.” He added, “Again, it’s the old concept of engineering. It doesn’t relate to the environment. ‘I don’t want loods, so what do I do? I build a huge lagoon and I put the overlow into a pipe and the pipe goes out of the city.’”

Felipe Correa, a codirector of the Master of Landscape Architecture in Urban Design program at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, has researched and written extensively about Latin American cities.

Schjetnan “has been very efective in bringing metabolic issues into the dialogue of the urban project,” Correa said, “working on issues of landscape—not necessarily as a discipline, but as a condition—in a culture where design has primarily favored the object.” He added, “Proj-

ects like his are politically not easy GDU observed its 40th anniverto achieve in such a contested city.” sary last year. For ive years before founding the irm, Schjetnan was On a recent morning at Parque Bicen- the design director at the National tenario, which was completed in 2012 Workers’ Housing Fund Institute, and which he had not visited in more a federal government agency. He than a year, Schjetnan was pleased describes himself as an optimist— at the level of maintenance and the “in this profession either you have vigorous health of the plantings. The to be, or get out, because we sell storm- and wastewater systems were dreams”—but he has learned to be functioning properly. But he was dis- a realist. “When you do these huge mayed that interpretive signage in the projects, they never come up to 100 botanical garden had deteriorated to percent. If you hit 80, it’s a big sucunreadability. He also regretted that cess,” he said. “It is a political condielements of GDU’s plan had never tion that we are still a vertical politibeen realized. A proposed aquarium cal society. It’s not only money. It is was not built; a café never opened. Ed- lack of organization, of education, ucational programming was minimal. lack of public participation.”

With a metro station at its entrance, the park is accessible and well used. The distinguished Mexico City arAs he spoke, an aerobics class was tak- chitecture critic Louise Noelle looks ing place in a pavilion, and pickup vol- at Schjetnan’s contribution from leyball and soccer games were being two angles. “On one hand there are organized. A few weeks before, some all these fantastic parks and public half a million people had attended an spaces that people are enjoying, the annual children’s book fair there. “But normal inhabitants of this city, and it’s too large—it needs attractions so of many other cities in Mexico. And it’s not just a green area,” Schjetnan then there’s the way he has been said. “They built the lake, but they working in these places, and that haven’t implemented the boats. We is something regular people don’t planned a tram that would take you know,” she said. “It’s not only the from the entrance all around, and they landscaping part, but the more scididn’t implement that. Things like entiic part, how you move the water, that are what this park is still lacking.” how you clean the earth.”

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L ABOVE

A walkway extends through the garden, with its rain-collecting pavilions.

OW MOUNTAINS are visible in the middle distance, but Parque Bicentenario is in a part of the city that’s quite lat. And it’s likely that few visitors even notice the park’s subtle changes in grade. At the main entrance, across the street from a metro stop still called Reinería, there are just four shallow steps up to a broad promenade. As the walkway curves toward the heart of the park, it passes through sections of the botanical garden representing xeric scrubland, temperate wetland, and deciduous tropical forest. This section of the former oil reinery had

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been covered by a 40-centimeterthick concrete slab. To avoid the expense of demolishing it, the slab was left in place. The eight-hectare botanical garden, built over it, showcases the principal biomes of Mexico. Of course, these different plant communities required diferent soils and soil depths. “Every part of this garden is like a planter,” Schjetnan explained.

These planter-like terraces contain soil ranging from two to five meters deep, so the garden has a variety of levels. But vertical circulation is achieved entirely, and almost imperceptibly, with ramps.

Three of the biomes—tropical evergreen forest, coniferous cloud forest, and desert—are inside greenhouses, which GDU designed using a cubic module of 15 meters. They are simple, transparent structures with roofs like inverted pyramids to collect rainwater. The same basic design, and rainwater harvesting function, were used for a pair of buildings intended for a restaurant and gallery but now housing oices, and for a pavilion with masonry bleachers on two sides, which is used for informal performances and classes. A fountain in the entry

FRANCISCO GÓMEZ SOSA

PARQUE BICENTENARIO

TOP

Access to the rest of the park is through the botanical garden.

SERGIO MEDELLIN, TOP LEFT; GRUPO DE DISEÑO URBANO, INSET AND BOTTOM LEFT AND RIGHT

INSET

The garden represents Mexico’s principal biomes.

NATURA BOTANICAL GARDEN

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MASTER PLAN

NATURA GARDEN BIOME ZONING LEGEND B-01 Coniferous Forest B-02 Tropical Evergreen Forest B-03 Mesophyll Montane Forest B-04 Xeric Shrubland B-05 Oak Forest B-06 Temperate Wetland B-07 Deciduous Tropical Forest B-08 Desert ORCH Orchidarium

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PARQUE BICENTENARIO

ABOVE

The structures have inverted pyramid roofs to capture rainwater.

LEFT AND RIGHT

GRUPO DE DISEÑO URBANO. DRAWINGS AND SECTION; SERGIO MEDELLIN, PHOTO

Concept drawings for the botanical garden structures.

NATURA BOTANICAL GARDEN SECTION

B 01 CONIFEROUS FOREST

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B 02 EVERGREEN TROPICAL FOREST

B 05 OAK FOREST

B 06 CHINAMPA

CLOCKWISE, FROM BOTTOM LEFT

FRANCISCO GÓMEZ SOSA. TOP AND BOTTOM RIGHT; GRUPO DE DISEÑO URBANO, BOTTOM LEFT

Schjetnan directs work to install the aquifer recharge infrastructure; inside the orchidarium; a representation of Mexico City’s watery original condition.

plaza reiterates the inverted pyramid.

In addition to the biomes, the botanical garden includes a working replica chinampa—the “loating garden” typology that was an essential feature of lacustrine Tenochtitlán, the preColumbian Mexico City.

ORCHIDARIUM

An orchidarium was created by roofing over a 100-meter-long, sevenmeter-deep formerly open tank that held waste from processing petroleum. “It was a mess,” Schjetnan recalled. Visitors now stroll through it on a walkway elevated above a simulated forest loor of bromeliads and ferns, as if walking through the tree canopy. The orchids are on shelves, metal grids, or columnar cages suspended from the rafters.

Its great narrow length and semisubterranean position make the orchid house a dramatic space.

It was an unusual and didactic move to locate the botanical garden so that virtually every park visitor would pass through it—even if they were just headed to the great lawn for a picnic or to an event in the amphitheater.

Its gardens and greenhouses can be explored by anybody, on impulse.

And even those uninterested in botany and biomes must register, if only subliminally, that something intentional to do with the natural environment is going on around them.

B 07 XERIC SHRUBLAND

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I ABOVE

The pools provide aeration for the graywater treatment.

RIGHT

In a bustling city, the plazas are refreshingly tranquil spaces.

N DENSE, kaleidoscopic, polychrome Mexico City, Tecnoparque is a spatial and aesthetic anomaly. The tenants—mostly back-oice units of banks and tech companies, who have 12,000 employees on site—occupy six restrained, virtually identical buildings. The buildings are three stories high and 80 meters square. They are glassy at ground level, where deep overhangs create porticos along all four sides. Above, their facades are white-clad, with continuous ribbon windows. The buildings sit in a checkerboard grid. The spaces between them are 100 meters square. At the property’s perimeter, those voids are mostly parking. But the three central ones are pedestrian plazas. The buildings’ duplicative mass and horizontality set up a rhythm and a sense of containment. This arrangement might have been boring, but passing diagonally through the portals made

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FRANCISCO GÓMEZ SOSA

TECNOPARQUE

by each pair of buildings’ juxtaposed corners evokes a momentary compression and reveal. The quiet architecture frames and directs attention to the wide-open plazas. The plazas are identical in dimension, function, and program, but rich in their design.

FRANCISCO GÓMEZ SOSA, TOP RIGHT AND BOTTOM; GRUPO DE DISEÑO URBANO, TOP LEFT

N

Each plaza is focused on a pool. Each pool, at its edge, has a structure with a terrace. One pool is sinuously freeform, and its building, a café, is a curve with a canted roof on an oval pad. One pool is rectilinear but with staggered margins, and is crossed at an angle by a footbridge; its adjacent

TOP LEFT

An early concept drawing of the plazas.

TOP RIGHT

Each building has a landscaped atrium.

LEFT

Parking areas are lushly planted.

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building, also a café, is in plan a trio of overlapping rectangles. The third plaza’s pool is a long, neat rectangle.

The adjacent building, a smaller rectangle of similar proportions, is a multipurpose function room; this plaza’s café is across the water tucked into an intimate grove of orchid trees.

The pools are filled with recycled wastewater. Unseen beneath their concrete loors are the cisterns, in the same shapes, that hold rainwater. “We turned around a problem into an opportunity,” said Schjetnan.

ABOVE From scarcity came “the icon that Openness and a the plazas have—a lot of water.” The soaring sculpture lend drama to the first plaza axes that run between the buildings pedestrians enter. and demark the plazas are uniformly paved in a specially formulated dark RIGHT The plazas are identical concrete that incorporates pulverized volcanic stone and are striped in dimension but with rough-faced, contrastingly light distinct in design.

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PEDRO HIRIART, TOP; FRANCISCO GÓMEZ SOSA, BOTTOM

TECNOPARQUE

LEGEND E P C A

Buildings Plazas Commercial Reflecting pools

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marble. But in each of the plazas, the other hardscaping, the plantings, and the experiences of space are distinct.

GRUPO DE DISEÑO URBANO, TOP; FRANCISCO GÓMEZ SOSA, BOTTOM

Tecnoparque includes a small retail center including a day care, a bank branch, a gym, and a food hall that opens to a playground garden on a small publicly owned adjacent parcel.

The development’s mixed-use nature is challenged, though, by the need for security. The retail section is publicly accessible. Entry to the oice park itself is controlled, perhaps partly because of the country’s ongoing problems of narcoterrorism and crimes of opportunity—although Mexico City is safer than many locales—but also because of the sensitive work that goes on there. “It’s a nerve center,” Schjetnan remarked. “They control all of the plastic cards for Mexico and Central America.” This interface between open and secured areas

A E2

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is a recurring challenge in Mexican projects. Here GDU turned another problem into opportunity. Compression and reveal: The main pedestrian entry involves a walk down a long, narrow garden, through glass doors into a lobby, which serves as

a checkpoint, and out through its equally transparent far side into the irst of the big plazas. It’s unfortunate that not everyone can experience this encounter with design, but for the ofice workers it must be an energizing daily moment.

ABOVE

The campus is defined by modules 100 meters square.

LEFT

A grid of trees casts dappled shade over one plaza.

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M

ANY ASPECTS of this park’s creation are unprecedented in Mexico’s capital. Unprecedented, too, is the area immediately around it, a squeaky-clean edge city consisting almost entirely of architectural statement residential and office towers. Called Santa Fe—or New Santa Fe, to distinguish it from the adjacent working class district—its construction was prompted by an exodus from more centrally located posh neighborhoods badly afected by a 1985 earthquake. It’s the kind of place where every building sits on a parking-deck podium, and there are

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FRANCISCO GÓMEZ SOSA

LA MEXICANA

sidewalks but no street life. Until the park opened late last year, there was no civic space either.

FRANCISCO GÓMEZ SOSA

La Mexicana is built on the site of a decommissioned sand and gravel mine, in an area of steep ridges at the southwest margin of the city. An early master plan slated its 41 hectares for parkland, but as property prices soared, there was pressure to use it for housing instead; as many as 12,000 units were proposed. In an instance of public engagement that is unusual here, locals mobilized in opposition. The eventual result was an agreement to use 70 percent of the site for the park, and the remainder for new infrastructure and 1,600 housing units—plus an innovative accord by which the developers of the housing subsidize the construction of the park as well as a citizen-led trust that operates it.

ABOVE

Instead of gates, a gateway signals openness and welcome.

LEFT

Bioswales, a channel, and a pool with a fountain form part of the “humid axis.”

Owing perhaps to the insistence of entitled residents in the immediate neighborhood as well as to this funding source, the park is elaborately programmed—and splendidly realized. It has a land art-caliber skatepark. A playground is overlooked by the terrace of a chic boulangerie; there’s also a Starbucks, and a long curving portico that functions as a food court. An impressively wellfurnished dog park adjoins a Petco outpost and a veterinary clinic. Of course there are running and biking tracks, and a second phase will locate athletic ields on the roof of

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LA MEXICANA

ABOVE

Residential development of adjacent land will underwrite the park’s cost.

RIGHT

There are a 4.3kilometer bike path and a 3.5-kilometer running path.

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supports a hammock, and also have grassy circular depressions you can stroll down into so that the metropolis disappears, along with its background rumble; Schjetnan calls those “hidden gardens.”

At the main pedestrian entrance to the park—a short walk from a station on a regional rail line that’s nearing completion—Schjetnan conceived a “civic plaza.” It’s like a crossroad, where the main promenade through the park intersects a walkway connecting the already built high-rise area with the future residential development on the park’s opposite side. Schjetnan describes La Mexicana as having “both a human axis and a humid axis,” which twine together through the park’s length, the latter being a sequence of fountains, channels, bioswales, and pools. This park too is designed to collect and manage stormwater and use treated water for irrigation, although geology made injection wells unafordable because the aquifer here is 350 meters down through rock.

N

GRUPO DE DISEÑO URBANO, TOP; FRANCISCO GÓMEZ SOSA, BOTTOM

a new underground Costco store.

Such active functions are balanced by thoughtful opportunities for quiet use. Two high places with long views, for example, are scattered with shade structures, each of which

LEFT

Open space and civic space, for a high-rise edge city.

BELOW

A “hidden garden” depression in a hilltop gives visual and aural respite.

park.” Between the glamorous new towers and the poorer neighborhoods nearby, class differences can’t be ignored. At La Mexicana, interaction between people of all classes will also be unavoidable—a point Schjetnan made with a pleasurable grin.

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

FRANCISCO GÓMEZ SOSA

At the park’s two main entrances there are structures, painted shocking pink, that look like gates. They are gateways, not barriers, and are always open, as is the park itself.

A slogan was promulgated during the public planning process: “Un parque de todos,” or “Everybody’s

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BEARTOOTH PORTAL BY ENSAMBLE STUDIO, PHOTO BY IWAN BAAN

THE MAJOR SCALE AN UNLIKELY ART MAGNET IN SOUTHERN MONTANA UNITES LARGE SCALE SCULPTURE, SUSTAINABLE RANCHING, AND LIMITLESS HORIZONS.

BY JENNIFER REUT

P

EOPLE DON’T COME TO MONTANA

for the modern art. They come for the skiing and snowboarding, of course, and also the camping and hiking (both Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks have access points in Montana), and the ly-ishing and hunting. They might even come for an experience that falls under the nebulous category of “lifestyle”—some combination of outdoor recreation and socially sanctioned day drinking, but really they come for the landscape, because that is what makes all of the state’s pleasures and its economic growth possible.

TIPPET RISE

A vast landscape defined by rolling grasslands and stepped benches easily absorbs large sculptures such as Ensamble Studio’s Beartooth Portal.

Montana has dozens of named mountains and ranges (including my favorite, the Crazy Mountains) and nearly as many rivers lowing east or west on either side of the Continental Divide.

Planes of the river valleys open out into highly marketable horizon view corridors, punctuated by dispersed towns and a few cities, places to stop rather than places to stay on your way to the main show, Montana’s unfolding, highly variable, never-less-than-astonishing landscape.

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Though there are few trees because of the arid climate, Tippet Rise is adjacent to the Gallatin National Forest to the west.

BOTTOM

Oehme, van Sweden’s careful reveal of the Olivier Music Barn made excellent use of the undulating approach.

OPPOSITE

Views of the Beartooth Mountains frame Mark di Suvero’s Proverb in Box Canyon.

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LIZ STETSON, BOTTOM; ERIK PETERSEN, TOP AND OPPOSITE

LEFT

Into this scene, in 2016, arrived Tippet Rise Art Center, a music and art complex that hosts seasonal classical music performances in the intimately scaled, acoustically pristine Olivier Music Barn, set within a vast outdoor sculpture park that includes massive works by Mark di Suvero and Alexander Calder. At 10,260 acres, Tippet Rise dwarfs similar endeavors such as Storm King Art Center (500 acres) or Marfa, Texas (about 1,000 acres), but only permits 250 people on the site per day in its short summer season. In the two years it’s been open, Tippet has hosted about 5,000 people each season, most of them from Montana. Tickets for the season’s musical events sell out within minutes.

If you are driving to Tippet Rise—and you deinitely are, because that is the only way to get around in Montana other than on horseback— you’ll get a full complement of the state’s oferings. The main interstates follow the rivers, the

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TIPPET RISE ART CENTER ROAD AND TRAIL MAP

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BILLINGS (55 miles northeast)

BOZEMAN (70 miles northwest) Grove Creek Road

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TWO DISCS ALEXANDER CALDER

n DAYDREAMS PATRICK DOUGHERTY OLIVIER MUSIC BARN & VISITOR CENTER

SATELLITE #5: PIONEER STEPHEN TALASNIK BEARTOOTH PORTAL ENSAMBLE STUDIO

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INVERTED PORTAL ENSAMBLE STUDIO DOMO ENSAMBLE STUDIO FISHTAIL (6 miles east)

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Yellowstone and Stillwater if you are coming from Bozeman, and you’ll have a sublime view of the Beartooth Mountains for much of the drive.

Ranchlands to either side hint at the state’s interdependent and often incompatible economies of agriculture, ranching, resource extraction, and outdoor recreation. The scenery won’t, unless you look closely at who is living in the bright, newly built ranch homes, tip you to the fact that Montana is becoming a bit of a tech and inancial services hub, with expats from California and Washington State looding the state, drawn in part by the boomer retirement wave and the evolution of the work-anywhere economy.

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Depending on whom you talk to, this subtle demographic shift is either a consequence of or responsible for a number of rapid changes in the state over the past dozen years, including Bozeman’s skyrocketing growth, a housing crunch that is driving East Coast-worthy sprawl, and the wave of legacy ranch families selling of their land to developers and newcomers. And, depending on where you stand on that, it could also be seen as the reason a place like Tippet Rise Art Center can exist and lourish in a state more likely to subsidize its cow-calf pairs than its cultural centers. But that is a distant, even coastal, perspective. While Montana’s reputation for great literature is well

COURTESY OVS AND TIPPET RISE, © 2016 TIPPET RISE

miles

established, it has been less visible as a locus of ambitious art, particularly sculpture, which does thrive and evolve in the state’s open spaces and individualistic culture in places such as Butte, Willow Creek, and Lincoln.

LIZ STETSON

ABOVE

Left to right: Ricardo Sanz Soriano, Débora Mesa, and Antón García-Abril, of Ensamble Studio; Lisa Delplace, ASLA, OvS; Josh Hallengrogg, On Site Management; and Javier Cuesta, Ensamble Studio.

Cathy and Peter Halstead began assembling the irst of the seven ranches near the town of Fishtail that would become Tippet Rise Art Center in 2010.

Cathy is an artist, and Peter is a poet and musician, and they had a pretty good idea of the kind of landscape best suited for their plans. The Halsteads wanted to create a state-of-the-art music performance space embedded in a spectacular landscape, like Snape Maltings, Benjamin Britten’s venue set

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“ IT’S SO BIG AND SO EXPANSIVE… IT’S JUST LIKE THIS GREAT WIDE OPEN AND IT’S TOUGH, YET ALSO REALLY INTRICATE AND DETAILED.”

into a riverine landscape in Sufolk, England. To meet the acoustic and visual standards they had, it would have to be big and it would have to be relatively remote. After settling on south-central Montana, they purchased a little more than 10,000 acres over the course of several years, a consolidation of legacy ranches knit together into one place, to be called Tippet Rise.

In 2009, the Halsteads hired Arup to look at ideas for a concert hall on the site. Alban Bassuet, a multidisciplinary acoustical engineer then at Arup, worked with the Arup team on a feasibility study. Bassuet, who now runs his own practice, PresenceLab, spent two years working out every type of question before the shovels went into the ground. “We looked at all of the environmental conditions, weather conditions, [and] available resources on the site, which included all the

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geotech or geology considerations for making buildings or for extracting or making use of geothermal properties of the ground or water,” he says. Water was particularly important. With around 17 inches of precipitation annually, this part of Montana is extremely arid and dependent on underground springs and snowmelt to revivify rivers and maintain ecosystems. The study also had to consider how to get people on and of the site, which is about six miles from the closest town up a mountain road, conduct sustainability analyses for making the best use of resources, and, inally, how to accomplish all this with minimal intervention to the landscape.

“It was a very diicult situation where we really had to think very, very hard about where is the best place to build. Just answering that question took a really long time, and a long process,” Bassuet says.

JUNGSUB LEE, ASLA, PHOTOGRAPH; LIZ STETSON/OVS, SKETCHES

—PETE HINMON

JUNGSUB LEE, ASLA, PHOTOGRAPH; LIZ STETSON/OVS, SKETCHES

COTTONWOOD CONCEPT SKETCH

TOP

Sketches helped determine where the various elements could be placed on the small 10-acre site.

ABOVE

The Cottonwood site before development.

The Johnson ranch, one of the Halsteads’ purchases, had a conservation easement that stipulated that one 10-acre parcel out of 3,000 acres could be developed for agricultural or educational uses.

The Halsteads snapped that up for the site of their music building and other infrastructure. Bassuet brought in the Washington, D.C.-based landscape architecture irm Oehme, van Sweden (OvS) to look at a few potential sites within the 10-acre site for development. The work, which was collaborative, entailed siting the Olivier Music Barn, which was designed by Gunnstock Timber Frames, but also developing strategies for vehicle and pedestrian circulation—how to get people there and get them around to see the sculpture. Lisa Delplace, ASLA, is the CEO and a principal at OvS and was the lead landscape architect on the project.

“One of the interesting complexities of the site is that it’s visible from just about everywhere, and

so therefore being sensitive to the placement of the barn and the Tiara Acoustic Shell and other things is really important.” The inal location of what is now called the Cottonwood campus was chosen for its relatively protected situation near a stand of trees along a creek. With few trees to break the winds that rake across the grasslands, Delplace observed that ranch homesteads would have used similar strategies, tucking their buildings into the landscape where possible to take the best advantage of what little shelter was at hand.

Unfolding out from the central Cottonwood campus, which now includes a dining hall called Will’s Shed, artists’ residences, as well as the music barn and the Tiara Acoustic Shell, an outdoor performance venue, are the classic, topographically varied vistas of the mountain west. Low basins of grasslands stretch out, framed by lat-topped benches,

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COTTONWOOD SITE MAIN ENTRANCE 1 OLIVIER MUSIC BARN (MUSIC AND EVENT VENUE) 2 TIARA ACOUSTIC SHELL (OUTDOOR PERFORMANCE, LECTURE, AND CLASSROOM SPACE) 3 WILL’S SHED (DINING SPACE) 4 ARTISTS’ RESIDENCES 5 ENERGY BUILDING AND BERM 6 PHOTOVOLTAIC CANOPY 7 SOUTH PARKING 5

8 PRIMARY PATH (ACCESSIBLE PEDESTRIAN AND TRAM PATH) 4 9 RANCH FENCE (USED TO CONTAIN GRAZING SHEEP DURING SPRING SEASON)

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10 TWO DISCS (ALEXANDER CALDER) 6 11 DAYDREAMS (PATRICK DOUGHERTY) 3

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9

canyons, and hills that help locate the visitor within the disorienting prospect. Tucked in the landscape at strategic points are nine sculptures, some of which were site speciic, and others that were acquisitions of existing pieces from admired artists.

Pete Hinmon is the director of operations at Tippet Rise, and, with his wife Lindsey, who is the director of outreach and logistics, is the engine behind Tippet’s day-to-day success. Hinmon is from Colorado, a place generally thought to be fairly beautiful, but he is efusive about this part of Montana. “I mean, it’s mind blowing. It’s so big and so expansive. I’ve probably never been in an area with so few trees, you know? It’s just like this great wide open and it’s tough, yet also really intricate and detailed.”

OLIVIER MUSIC BARN AND AMPHITHEATER ORIENTATION

7

9

OVS

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“WHAT YOU THINK YOU SEE AND THINK IS ACCESSIBLE MAY TAKE YOU HOURS TO GET TO. UNDERSTANDING HOW PEOPLE MOVE THROUGH THE SITE WAS REALLY IMPORTANT.” —LISA DELPLACE, ASLA

Because trees are sparse at this elevation, owing in part to the lack of rainfall, understanding how to scale the design of all the elements for human engagement was a preoccupation of the design team. “What you think you see and think is accessible may take you hours to get to. Understanding how people needed to get to this site and move through the site was really important,” Delplace says. “Also, ire is a unique challenge. If people are driving themselves through, even a hot muffler could start a range ire.” In the end, they settled on electric vans to shuttle passengers around.

The circulation design was also inluenced by decisions about how many people to allow on the site each day, both for the experience and to reinforce the intention to be extremely light on the land. The clarity of the Halsteads’ vision for different scales of intimacy helped frame the way the design team approached the problem. “One of the questions that Lisa posed was, what would be a satisfying day? What would that look like? Do they

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LIZ STETSON/OVS, DRAWINGS; LIZ STETSON, PHOTO

Circulation around Tippet is deeply thought through and managed but designed to disappear into the experience. Nine miles of hiking trails, 13 miles of bike trails, and loops of pedestrianvehicle paths wind in a circuit through the artworks. Delplace says the question of how to move people around involved testing multiple methods of transport. Pedal-assisted bikes, fat-tire bikes, mountain bikes, golf carts, and vans were all evaluated. “There are some unique things to Montana that people may not be aware of that you also have to consider,” Delplace says. “That exposure is one of those big things, where you might be out hiking and not realize you’re being exposed to a lot of wind, and not have access to water.”

OLIVIER MUSIC BARN AND SOLAR CANOPY RIGHT

The geothermal heating and cooling system uses noiseless ducts to maintain the barn’s acoustic precision.

SOLAR THERMAL PANELS

SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAIC PANELS

SOLAR THERMAL STORAGE TANK

OLIVIER MUSIC BARN

BELOW

Before and after construction of the cistern that collects rainwater below the staf parking.

OPPOSITE

The banked Energy Building contains both mechanical systems and climate-controlled piano storage.

HEAT PUMPS IN BASEMENT

SOLAR CANOPY UNDERGROUND INSULATED PIPING

GROUND SOURCE HEAT PUMP WELL FIELD

~30 percent solar thermal ~70 percent solar photovoltaics 7,000 square feet total area Charging stations for electric vehicles

IMAGE PRODUCED BY ARUP NORTH AMERICA LTD., © 2014 TIPPET RISE, TOP; LIZ STETSON, PHOTOS

have to see any art? How much art should they see?” Pete Hinmon says. “There’s a vision, and I would say the vision is to allow a single piece of art, a single sculpture in an incredibly untouched landscape. That’s one of the major goals, and I think that’s what is unique about Tippet Rise. You can go and experience amazing sculpture by itself.

I mean, you don’t see that often.”

Arriving at Tippet Rise is perhaps one of the team’s most subtle accomplishments. The road from Fishtail or Absarokee turns to gravel quickly and is alternately snowy and muddy (spring) or dusty (summer), or somehow, all three at once.

As you ascend, passing scattered ranch houses and a sign that says “No Outlet,” which you are meant to disregard, small, subtle signage urges you forward, part of the wayinding and graphics that OvS designed for Tippet. Visitor vehicles are directed down a road behind a small rise and into one of two parking lots, a sequence that keeps vehicles well out of the sight lines at Cottonwood.

Standing by the music barn, visitors leaving their car and walking down the hill appear as small igures drifting down the hillside in twos and threes, shadowed by Alexander Calder’s Two Discs. It is the farthest thing you can imagine from hordes arriving on a bus and inundating a museum or other tourist attraction. Because the vehicle arrival and parking sequence is so highly

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OPPOSITE

Outdoor concerts at the Domo are challenged by sudden rainstorms and the sensitive tuning of the instruments.

DOMO BY ENSAMBLE STUDIO, PHOTO BY ERIK PETERSEN

designed, it minimizes the visual clutter, but also keeps cars well away from the rest of the site and primes visitors for an immersion in landscape at a diferent scale.

The parking also hides other things at Tippet Rise. A 20-by-65-foot concrete bunker called the Energy Building contains the center’s mechanicals, including the pumps and exchanges for the geothermal heating and cooling systems and the electrical distribution infrastructure from Tippet’s 8,000-square-foot bifacial solar array. It also doubles as climate-controlled storage for three of the Steinway concert pianos at Tippet. Most visitors have no idea it is there—it’s not on the tour, and the building proile, solar array, and vehicle parking are carefully banked in the landforms.

“We said, you know, by looking at the landscape and looking at the contours, we think we can ill over the top of this building, and then just literally plant over the top,” Delplace says. “You start to see the contours fade of as you come into the road. And now you can’t even tell there is a building there, because we just illed around the building, and then continued the contours in the natural rise and fall of the landscape.” Under the staf parking lot at the music barn, rainwater is collected in a 100,000-gallon cistern that hooks into the center’s graywater system.

Per the conservation easement, the developable land was just 10 acres, which left something like 10,250 acres of former ranchland to manage.

That job falls to Ben Wynthein, an Iowan who

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Science is alive and well on the ranch, and it isn’t hard to see why. There are 27,400 farms and ranches in Montana, and 65.8 percent of Montana’s land is in pasture and range. That totals $55.9 billion in farm and ranch assets, and some $1.6 billion coming from livestock production, according to the latest numbers from the Montana Governor’s Oice of Economic Development. In order to get a ranch to be proitable, the number of animal units (say, a cow and calf pair) on a piece of land has to be fairly high, which risks overgrazing, erosion, and soil and water contamination.

Sustainable ranching strategies have been around for a while, and though the focus is the environmental health of the land, they are also meant to sustain the culture and the way of life rooted in ranching. But it isn’t clear that the numbers work.

Tippet Rise its into a modern pattern that suggests that infusions of philanthropic capital, and

TOP

Ben Wynthein has brought the ranchlands at Tippet Rise back to ecological health with a combination of the latest technology and science and close daily observation.

OPPOSITE

Wynthein’s schematics and detailed notes on spring development have meant better dispersal of livestock across the land.

BEARTOOTH PORTAL BY ENSAMBLE STUDIO, PHOTO BY ERIK PETERSEN, © 2017 TIPPET RISE

had come to the area to rebuild fences after the Derby ire in late summer 2006, a conlagration that scorched some 200,000 acres before it was extinguished. “It probably burned 75 to 80 percent of what is now Tippet Rise, as well as lots of other homes and ranches,” Wynthein says. Fire is part of the ecosystem in Montana, a cycle of destruction and renewal that includes the grazing of ungulates, predators like grizzlies and wolves, small mammals such as prairie dogs, and a host of insects, to name a few human-managed elements. The recent reintroduction of bison and wolves notwithstanding, there is no restoring the grassland ecosystem to its precontact state. In the modern context, managing ire and water and restoring, or perhaps more accurately re-engineering, Tippet’s ranchlands was the vocation Wynthein took on when he was hired by the Halsteads in 2013.

to outcompete native grasses, Wynthein has been doing extensive soil testing and root stock measurements and carefully targeted weed management. He developed new grazing patterns for the cattle and sheep when the traditional approaches didn’t work as well as he liked.

SKETCH BY BENJAMIN WYNTHEIN, © 2018 TIPPET RISE

not proit from livestock and agriculture, is the only way the economics of landscape restoration can be sustainable. Keeping the land as a working ranch is likely a serious inancial commitment, but it is also probably the most environmentally ethical way to manage it.

Knitting the seven ranch holdings into a single entity has entailed more than taking down fences.

Water scarcity meant that extant springs were often overused by cattle and sheep, contaminating the water and the soil. Where those springs had become degraded, Wynthein installed barriers, irst mapping and then redistributing water access across the ranchlands with new solar-powered wells, about 30 so far by his count. Where overgrazing had allowed opportunistic invasive plants

Water is by far the most precious and scarce resource. What is collected from springs, rain, and snowmelt is sent into underground cisterns not just for animals but for iretruck access, a legacy of Wynthein’s experience with the Derby ire. He estimates that there are about 70,000 gallons of water spread out all across the whole ranch, with ire hydrants that he can tap into if he needed to.

“I’m thankful that someone bought this place who cares about that kind of thing and is willing to invest in the land, because it doesn’t take long to tie up a lot of money in water development. It’s not something you just do lippantly or haphazardly, because it isn’t cheap.”

Wynthein says that Tippet’s being an art center meant that some of the systems he devised had to be thought through from a design perspective as well. “Everything I do, a lot of it’s underground or I used the hills very carefully. So, when people are going up the roads, they may drive by a watering point they don’t even know exists.”

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COTTONWOOD SITE

EXISTING CREEK TREE CANOPY

PROPOSED TREES: POPULUS TREMULOIDES (QUAKING ASPEN)

POPULUS ANGUSTIFOLIA (NARROWLEAF COTTONWOOD) PLANT LIST A 55% PERENNIALS/ 45% GRASSES PLANT LIST B 50% PERENNIALS/ 50% GRASSES

Talking to the staf, you begin to understand how complex the systems are, and how the interrelation between the animal husbandry, the people, the ecology, the culture, and the environment offers a different vision of sustainability that goes beyond meeting rating system standards and benchmarks, although those are also taken seriously here. “The commitment to being of the grid and to sustainability was really paramount.

Even this idea that when people come for concerts

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PLANT LIST C 35% PERENNIALS/ 65% GRASSES

OVS, TOP; LIZ STETSON, BOTTOM

Plantings that OvS did around the Cottonwood site took cues from the seed mixes and grazing plans that Wynthein developed for the ranchlands. Originally Delplace had envisioned warm and cold season grasses and perennials that bloomed in the summer, but the larger ranchland concerns intervened, including the management of noxious leafy spurge, which the sheep enjoy but is toxic to cattle. “We were probably well into the design when the decision was made that we’re going to let the sheep graze there, and, in fact, they should graze there,” she says.

Lambs and ewes could be moved on and of the areas around the music barn if there were an event going on. OvS removed some of the cottonwood trees that were failing near the creek and replaced them, installing some nurse trees while the new cottonwoods came in. Working around the center’s performance schedule was as challenging as its weather for planting design. “The time that you want to be thinking about planting and adding new things is also during the season of when concerts are happening,” Delplace says.

PLANT LIST AREA A, PHASE 1 Trees and grass seed mix while weeds are eliminated

AREA B Equal parts flowering plants and grasses

TREES

PERENNIALS—50% OF TOTAL SEED MIX

Populus angustifolia (Narrowleaf cottonwood) Populus tremuloides (Quaking aspen)

Achillea millefolium (Common yarrow) Allium cernuum (Nodding onion) Arenaria capillaris (Slender mountain sandwort) Arnica sororia (Twin arnica) Cerastium arvense (Field chickweed) Clarkia pulchella (Pinkfairies) Erigeron compositus (Cutleaf daisy) Eriogonum umbellatum (Sulphur-flower buckwheat) Heterotheca villosa (Hairy false goldenaster) Liatris punctata (Dotted blazing star) Linum lewisii (Lewis flax) Penstemon lyallii (Lyall’s beardtongue) Phlox hoodii (Spiny phlox) Rudbeckia hirta (Black-eyed Susan) Solidago missouriensis (Missouri goldenrod)

GRASSES

Agropyron cristatum (Crested wheatgrass) Bouteloua curtipendula (Sideoats grama) Bouteloua gracilis (Blue grama) Elymus trachycaulus (Slender wheatgrass) Festuca idahoensis (Idaho fescue) Hesperostipa comata (Needle and thread) Koeleria macrantha (Prairie Junegrass) Nassella viridula (Green needlegrass) Pascopyrum smithii (Western wheatgrass) Poa secunda (Sandberg bluegrass) Pseudoroegneria spicata (Bluebunch wheatgrass) AREA A, PHASE 2 Greatest concentration and diversity of blooming forbs PERENNIALS—55% OF TOTAL SEED MIX

GRASSES—50% OF TOTAL SEED MIX

Achillea millefolium (Common yarrow) Antennaria rosea (Rosy pussytoes) Artemisia frigida (Prairie sagewort) Balsamorhiza sagittata (Arrowleaf balsamroot) Campanula rotundifolia (Bluebell bellflower) Cerastium arvense (Field chickweed) Chamerion angustifolium (Fireweed) Clarkia pulchella (Pinkfairies) Coreopsis tinctoria var. atkinsoniana (Atkinson’s tickseed) Dalea purpurea (Purple prairie clover) Erigeron compositus (Cutleaf daisy) Erigeron speciosus (Aspen fleabane) Gaillardia aristata (Blanketflower) Heterotheca villosa (Hairy false goldenaster) Liatris punctata (Dotted blazing star) Linum lewisii (Lewis flax) Lupinus sericeus (Silky lupine) Penstemon albertinus (Alberta beardtongue) Penstemon eriantherus (Fuzzytongue penstemon) Rudbeckia hirta (Black-eyed Susan) Solidago missouriensis (Missouri goldenrod) Symphyotrichum laeve var. laeve (Smooth blue aster)

Bouteloua curtipendula (Sideoats grama) Bouteloua gracilis (Blue grama) Festuca idahoensis (Idaho fescue) Hordeum jubatum (Foxtail barley) Koeleria macrantha (Prairie Junegrass) Pseudoroegneria spicata (Bluebunch wheatgrass)

GRASSES—45% OF TOTAL SEED MIX

Bouteloua gracilis (Blue grama) Festuca idahoensis (Idaho fescue) Hordeum jubatum (Foxtail barley) Koeleria macrantha (Prairie Junegrass) Leymus cinereus (Basin wildrye) Pseudoroegneria spicata (Bluebunch wheatgrass) OPPOSITE

Young quaking aspen staked around Will’s Shed, a newer building on the Cottonwood site.

N

AREA C Lower percentage of flowering species, predominantly grasses PERENNIALS —35% OF TOTAL SEED MIX

Achillea millefolium (Common yarrow) Allium cernuum (Nodding onion) Erigeron compositus (Cutleaf daisy) Heterotheca villosa (Hairy false goldenaster) Lewisia rediviva (Bitter root) Liatris punctata (Dotted blazing star) Linum lewisii (Lewis flax) Penstemon nitidus (Waxleaf penstemon) Phlox hoodii (Spiny phlox) Ratibida columnifera (Upright prairie coneflower) Rudbeckia hirta (Black-eyed Susan) Sisyrinchium montanum (Strict blue-eyed grass) Solidago missouriensis (Missouri goldenrod) GRASSES—65% OF TOTAL SEED MIX

Bouteloua curtipendula (Sideoats grama) Bouteloua gracilis (Blue grama) Festuca idahoensis (Idaho fescue) Hordeum jubatum (Foxtail barley) Koeleria macrantha (Prairie Junegrass) Pseudoroegneria spicata (Bluebunch wheatgrass)

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LEFT

Riders break for art on Tippet Rise’s 13 miles of bike trails.

in May and June, they’re not going to know that the ewes and lambs have been on the site. It’s all about being sustainable and allowing multiple things to happen on the site,” Delplace says. “It its pretty seamlessly, but it took a lot of efort to make it that way.”

INVERTED PORTAL BY ENSAMBLE STUDIO, PHOTO BY ERIK PETERSEN, © 2017 TIPPET RISE

Project Credits LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT OEHME, VAN SWEDEN, WASHINGTON, D.C. ARCHITECT, INTERIOR DESIGN, TIMBER FRAME DESIGN/ BUILD GUNNSTOCK TIMBER FRAMES, POWELL, WYOMING. CIVIL ENGINEER DOWL, BILLINGS, MONTANA. STRUCTURAL ENGINEER HICKS ENGINEERING, BOZEMAN, MONTANA. STRUCTURAL ENGINEER FOR PV CANOPY AND ENERGY BUILDING BCE (NOW DCI ENGINEERS), BOZEMAN, MONTANA. MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL/ PLUMBING ENGINEER MKK CONSULTING ENGINEERS, BILLINGS, MONTANA. TIMBER FRAME STRUCTURAL ENGINEER FIRE TOWER ENGINEERED TIMBER, PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND, AND KEWEENAW PENINSULA, MICHIGAN. ARCHITECT FOR ENERGY BUILDING AND PV CANOPY CTA ARCHITECTS ENGINEERS, BILLINGS, MONTANA. ENTRY POINT ARCHITECT/LEED CONSULTANT HIGH PLAINS ARCHITECTS, BILLINGS, MONTANA. ACOUSTIC ENGINEERING, LIGHTING, CONSULTING ARUP, NEW YORK CITY. IRRIGATION CONSULTANT LANDTECH DESIGN, INDIANAPOLIS. GENERAL CONTRACTOR JEFF ENGEL CONSTRUCTION, INC., BILLINGS, MONTANA; ON SITE MANAGEMENT, BOZEMAN, MONTANA. LANDSCAPE CONTRACTOR AND IRRIGATION INSTALLATION GREEN DESIGN, COLUMBUS, MONTANA.

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THE BACK

© EDDIE CHAU, 2018

RANDOM IMAGINATIONS: A COLLECTION OF ILLUSTRATED MUSINGS

BY EDDIE CHAU; NOVATO, CALIFORNIA: ORO EDITIONS, 2018; 216 PAGES, $19.95.

Eddie Chau thinks inside the boxes. His new book is a collection of tiny, freehand drawings he began as a landscape architecture student at the University of California, Berkeley. For 27 years, in a grid of hand-drawn squares in his sketchbook, Chau has drawn whatever objects occur to him—landforms, plants, buildings—entirely from memory. When he started, the technique helped him overcome creative blocks. These days, he keeps his sketchbook nearby to spark his fine art projects.

Chau’s book has no page numbers, few words, and was created with no set routine, he says. “There would be weeks, maybe months, where I didn’t draw anything, then other times where I drew two pages a day.” And though his sketches are random, some readers seek a narrative thread. One unexpected response, he says, is that “people look at the book with their children and imagine stories or try to guess with them what the images are about.”

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FISHER BODY PLANT 2, FLINT, MICHIGAN, 2016

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WHAT HAPPENED HERE A NEW BOOK RECOVERS FORGOTTEN PLACES OF TRAUMA AND PERSEVERANCE.

BY MAGGIE ZACKOWITZ/PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW LICHTENSTEIN

OPPOSITE

In January 1937, police stormed this General Motors plant’s gates in an unsuccessful attempt to break what would be a weeks-long strike by employees encamped within.

The workers’ eventual victory over GM helped establish the United Automobile Workers union, ushering in a new era of organized labor.

T

ime can scour history from landscapes. Terrible things happen in them. But we forget. Marked, Unmarked, and Remembered: A Geography of American Memory (West Virginia University Press, 2017) is an effort by brothers Andrew and Alex Lichtenstein to help us recall. Their book’s black-and-white photographs feature ordinary places in America where extraordinary events occurred. They remind us, too, that it is the history of poor and marginalized people that is often erased from these places.

“All of these sites,” writes Alex Lichtenstein, “provide the opportunity to relect on the way the past appears on both natural and human-made landscapes…and how the photographic image can display aspects of that past, scratching at the surface of the present to disclose the hidden history underneath.”

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TRAIL OF TEARS, CHARLESTON, TENNESSEE, 2012

ABOVE

Today suburban lawns unfurl where ousted Cherokees traveling the Trail of Tears were forced to camp during the harsh winter of 1838. Many died from exposure and starvation here.

OPPOSITE

On April 5, 2010, 29 coal miners working in the Upper Big Branch Mine were killed in an underground explosion. The mine’s owner, Massey Energy, had often been cited for safety violations. Though a formal memorial was built in nearby Whitesville, the now-closed entrance to the mine outside town serves as the real shrine to those who died.

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UPPER BIG BRANCH MINE MEMORIAL, WHITESVILLE, WEST VIRGINIA, 2015

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DEATH OF KAREN SILKWOOD, HIGHWAY 74, LOGAN COUNTY, OKLAHOMA, 2016

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MANZANAR WAR RELOCATION CENTER, INDEPENDENCE, CALIFORNIA, 2012

ABOVE

Between 1942 and 1945, the U.S. government imprisoned more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry in 10 isolated internment camps. Part of one such camp in California, Manzanar, has now been restored by the National Park Service as a memorial. Aiko Morimoto, 83, lived in a Utah internment camp as a girl.

When she visited a re-creation of the Manzanar barracks she noted, “It is not the same.”

OPPOSITE

Karen Silkwood was an employee at KerrMcGee’s Cimarron plutonium plant—and a whistleblower. On the night she was to deliver a folder of information about the plant’s safety violations to a journalist, she died in a mysterious one-car accident at this highway culvert.

No folder was ever found.

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WOUNDED KNEE MASSACRE, PINE RIDGE RESERVATION, SOUTH DAKOTA, 2011

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OPPOSITE

Lakota women watch a secret service agent watch them as U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder places a memorial wreath at the Wounded Knee Massacre site in 2011. Hundreds of participants in the Lakota Ghost Dance—a religious revival of the time—were slaughtered there by the 7th Cavalry Regiment in 1890. In 1973, Native American activists occupied the site for 71 days until violence ended that demonstration, too.

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018 / 147

THE BACK

/

BOOKS THE CALL OF THE SPRAWL INFINITE SUBURBIA EDITED BY ALAN M. BERGER AND JOEL KOTKIN WITH CELINA BALDERAS GUZMÁN; NEW YORK: PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS, 2017; 772 PAGES, $75.

REVIEWED BY GALE FULTON, ASLA

T

he suburbs appear to be here to stay. Infinite Suburbia aspires to lay the foundation for a “new theory on suburbia” that deals with the subject not as an extension to older core cities, but as part of a larger process of “complete urbanization” that requires new conceptual frameworks, new research methods and data sets, an expanded vocabulary, and new design strategies—no matter whether one’s interest is in slowing, stopping, steering, or improving these suburban landscapes.

Infinite Suburbia is a large, sprawling (sorry, couldn’t resist) book composed of 52 essays organized into ive sections. It’s an attempt to fully explain the suburban phenomenon as well as explore opportunities for the ways these landscapes might be designed diferently in order to capitalize on their latent potential. The distinct sections of the book—“The Drive for Upward Social Mobility,” “Polycentric Metropolitan Form,” “Metropolitan Economic Interrelationships,” “Harnessing Ecological Potential,” and “Scales of Governance”—are a necessary conceit of such a large compilation. They should not be understood as an attempt to delineate one aspect of suburbia from another. As the introduction states: “Suburbia is complex. Its production, persistence, and expansion can best be explained as a nonlinear set of interrelationships. We cannot talk about one aspect of suburbia without considering how it might afect many other social, economic, political, or ecological factors. Any study of…urbanization at large—is not bounded by any single discipline or argument.” This type of statement may seem painfully obvious, but upon reading the

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essays included in the book, I was reminded of how linearly— and simplistically—we (designers and planners included) think about the suburbs: Suburbs bad; dense, walkable cores good is sadly not far of the mark.

The essays are the work of 74 contributors who come from private practice, academia, and nonproit sectors representing disciplines of law, landscape architecture, urban design, social psychology, architecture, political science, history, urban studies, geography, and more. The vast majority of the authors are academics based in the United States, but contributors also hail from Australia, Europe, Mexico, South Africa, and India.

The essays’ content also ranges from general overviews of the now global suburban phenomenon (such as in Roger Keil’s essay aimed at expanding our understanding of the suburbs beyond the prototypical Anglo-Saxon model) to focused essays on suburbanization patterns and processes in China, India, South Africa, Angola, Russia, Brazil, Israel, Australia, Europe, and, of course, many about the United States.

The book is riddled with statistics likely to challenge the assumptions of those who rely on the conventional understanding of the suburbs as a space merely in support of an urban core: 69 percent of the U.S. population lives in the suburbs; 75 percent of American jobs are outside what is commonly considered the urban core; 70 percent of millennials said they’d prefer a suburban home if they could “aford it and maintain their lifestyle”; resident workers in newer suburbs have the

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shortest work trip travel times; by 2010, “more than half of all minorities lived in American suburbs.” It has also been clearly shown that the suburbs are not homogeneously wealthy— poverty is now higher in the suburbs than in central cities.

ABOVE

Aerial views such as this one of Durham, North Carolina, reveal the spatial and ecological heterogeneity of suburbs globally.

I have no doubt that many critics of the suburbs will condemn this book as a potentially irresponsible apologia for wasteful planning, but that sort of ideological thinking is exactly what the book most successfully challenges. It’s also why it’s such a timely resource for (especially) those involved in the design and planning of our metropolitan areas. Chapter after densely footnoted chapter presents compelling evidence about the suburbs. Much of it seems to run counter to the conventional wisdom. Christopher Sellers, in his chapter “Rediscovering the Nature of Suburbs,” refers to our “inherited notions,” such as that millennials are locking to cities for the long term, that the suburbs are primarily, if not wholly, a postwar American phenomenon, and that the suburbs continue to be racially, ecologically, and economically homogeneous. These are just a few of the pernicious beliefs that continue to impede a fuller, more nuanced understanding of the suburbs that is necessary to redirect the force of urbanization toward more socially, ecologically, and energetically productive ends.

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Multiple chapters in the book convincingly refute received wisdom about the suburbs. Robert Bruegmann’s “The Antisuburban Crusade” argues that “there has been a constant set of class-based biases and aesthetic assumptions that has clearly been the foundation on which much of the criticism of suburbia has rested.” A long-term suburbanite, D. J. Waldie, tells of his experience living in Lakewood, California, and of the misperceptions that are in part generated by representations of suburbs from an aerial perspective which “depend for their aesthetic efect on what’s missing from the image of suburbia: no internal scale of reference, no organizing line of the horizon, and no identiiable human igures.” Contrary to this abstraction, Waldie describes how home and place—two terms perhaps thought antithetical to suburban living—can, in fact, be achieved in the suburbs.

But the book is by no means simply uncritical suburban boosterism. Essays such as Chris Marcinkoski’s “Spain’s Speculative Urbanism” looks at how Spain (among other countries) deployed extremely wasteful, unsustainable processes of urbanization as a primary driver of economic growth. Leveraging a dramatic expansion in physical infrastructure—its total roadway length quintupled from 1993 to 2011—Spain radically expanded its total acreage of urbanized land. So much was expanded that “roughly one-third of all urbanized land in Spain was created between 1998 and 2008 alone.” Robert J. Mason and Lilya Nigmatullina, in “Dachascapes and Dystopias,” trace the post-Soviet-era shift in Moscow toward “American-style sprawl, massive highway congestion, growing inequality, and limited urban and regional planning controls.” As an alternative, the authors look to a tradition of building small houses in what were originally designated as collective orchards. Such

MATTHEW NIEDERHAUSER AND JOHN FITZGERALD

THE BACK

Climb + Slide

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dwellings were typically small, if not tiny, and had the additional advantages of protecting agricultural land and contributing to local food supplies. They consumed far less land area than comparable suburban developments in the United States. Such “dachascapes” might still provide urban planners in Russia or elsewhere with a new prototype for urban expansion that has already been tested and observed for its potential advantages and disadvantages.

TOP

Wetland loss in relation to increases in agriculture and urbanization might be partially mitigated through smarter suburban planning and design.

RIGHT

In Spain and elsewhere, speculative urbanization became the primary form of industrial production, leading to much supply with little demand.

Landscape architects are likely to be drawn to the book’s fourth chapter: “Harnessing Ecological Potential.”

Its essays focus more on the ecology and energetics of the suburbs by identifying both problems and potentials of existing suburban landscapes as well as new alternatives to be further explored. Susannah Hagan’s “Metabolic Suburbs, or the Virtue of Low Densities,” argues for a fresh look at the low-density landscapes of the suburbs in an attempt to challenge the conventional wisdom of “compact cities” as the

152 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

only sustainable model of urbanism. Signiicant though by no means easy opportunities do exist in suburban landscapes if new degrees of collective behavior among residents could be combined with smarter, more progressive approaches to planning technologically and ecologically informed spaces. Hagan believes that the suburbs could be reimagined or retroitted as places of “ornamented performance,” but believes that this shift may require a new role for the designer or planner “not as an arm of an arm of the state, but as a medium of public education and lay-professional collaboration.”

Other essays in this section argue for ecological infrastructures in the forms of metropolitan wetland systems and regional “wastebelts” that update traditional notions of greenbelts to better it with the driving forces of contemporary urbanization and their by-products.

CELINA BALDERAS GUZMÁN, TOP; CHRISTOPHER MARCINKOSKI, BOTTOM

THE BACK

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ABOVE

Reductive, singleuse zoning practices suggest a fixed, ideal use for urban land as opposed to an evolving strategy.

But it is perhaps in chapter 5, “Scales of Governance,” in which authors analyze the ways policy and regulation have informed both the appearance and performance of the suburbs, that landscape architects might ind the most to gain. Essays in this section include arguments for innovations in policy, planning, and regulation that are more appropriate to the unique qualities and shaping forces of the suburbs and other new forms of periurbanization. Richard Brifault argues that a “deining feature of American metropolitan areas is the lack of efective metropolitan governance.” As anyone who has been involved in large-scale planning eforts can likely attest, this fragmented, bureaucratic reality of the contemporary metropolis is a signiicant barrier to local innovation or large-scale eiciency. Combined with the aforementioned individualism that often accompanies private land ownership, this complexity makes real innovation toward a smarter suburb a daunting prospect. But essays such as Fadi Masoud’s “Coding Permanent Flexibility” ofer compelling new ways to engage the suburbs via design. Masoud argues that much of 20th-century suburban planning was inluenced by a so-called climax state in the ecological thinking of the time.

This led to a form of zoning that “projected a future use of every parcel of land” in a jurisdiction that was also the highest and best use of that land—its end state. Masoud suggests that new concepts in ecological thinking that include dynamism and

154 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

change could inform a new approach to “opportunistic” suburban experiments with “system-based codes” that include “probability and uncertainty as a parameter…may become enabling, contextual, and responsive.” One again imagines that designers could have an especially important role in such experiments, especially those who have embraced a way of working that is informed by parametric processes tied to the immense wealth of data that many municipalities now have available.

The suburbs are obviously not without their problems. But given the undeniable trends toward global suburbanization, it is imperative that designers and planners move past inherited notions and ideological positions and develop the tools and concepts that not only allow for a much needed contemporary understanding of this phenomenon, but also the practical strategies and tactics that allow them to more efectively engage it. They might then be in a position to steer and shape suburban landscapes in ways that are more energetically eicient, more socially equitable and satisfying, more ecologically diverse, and more aesthetically pleasing.

GALE FULTON, ASLA, LIVES IN THE SUBURBS OF KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE, AND IS DIRECTOR OF THE SCHOOL OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE, KNOXVILLE.

DAVID BURNS AND ELIZA OPRESCU

THE BACK

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BOOKS OF INTEREST

THE BOOK COVERS IMPACTS OF DESERT-DWELLING PEOPLE, INDIGENOUS AND NOT.

THE CEMETERIES OF NEW ORLEANS: A CULTURAL HISTORY

A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE MOJAVE DESERT

BY LAWRENCE R. WALKER AND FREDERICK H. LANDAU; TUCSON, ARIZONA: THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA PRESS, 2018; 341 PAGES, $29.95.

The word “desert” is sometimes used to describe an empty area— but Walker and Landau make clear that the Mojave Desert is full of life.

Wedged between the much larger Sonoran and Great Basin Deserts, the Mojave is home to droughtadapting plants that the authors classify as escapers, evaders, resisters, and endurers of arid conditions. The book also covers animal life and the impacts of desert-dwelling people, indigenous and not—the Mojave’s biggest city is Las Vegas.

156 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

BY PETER B. DEDEK; BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA: LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2017; 276 PAGES, $38.

THE URBAN TREE

BY DUNCAN GOODWIN; LONDON AND NEW YORK: ROUTLEDGE, 2017; 276 PAGES, $64.95.

There are two keys to success with urban trees, according to Goodwin: protecting the ones we have and putting the right new ones in the right places. This extensively illustrated book handles both aspects but really goes into depth on the latter, with chapters on topics including site assessment, planting and establishment, and an integrated approach to green infrastructure.

New Orleans’s famous aboveground “cities of the dead” come alive in this engaging book, which details history (the city’s burials were heavily inluenced by practices in France and Spain), public involvement (cemeteries often functioned as gathering places), and conditions today (sometimes shockingly bad, though preservation eforts persist). “In New Orleans, maintaining almost any building, structure, lawn, or garden is a challenging task,” Dedek notes.

“Cemeteries are no exception.”

158 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

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/ADVERTISER INDEX

ADVERTISING SALES 636 Eye Street NW Washington, DC 20001-3736 202-216-2335 202-478-2190 Fax advertising@asla.org PRODUCTION MANAGER Sarah Strelzik 202-216-2341 sstrelzik@asla.org

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PAGE # 71, 174 149 177 13, 170 159 72 182-183 179 3 175 177 158 C2-1, 176 32 174 25 55, 170 39 158 166 166 171 63, 171 177 161, 171 175 47, 171 177 178 31, 172 7, 171 160 74 151, 174 155, 177 27, 176 35, 174 159, 176 14, 172 65, 176 165 162 171 45, 175 49, 170 56, 170 59 33, 175 C4 21 23, 41 17, 174 162 174 73 172 173 167 11 166 57 2, 173 167 43, 175 173 163 164 160 9 170 37 172 53 29 172 69 167 61 161 153, 173 164, 176 177 10 166 173 44 173 19, 176 175 180 163, 170 172, C3 165 138 157

THE BACK

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ASSOCIATION/FOUNDATION ASLA Annual Meeting & EXPO

PARKS AND RECREATION 202-898-2444

72

STREET FURNISHINGS AND SITE AMENITIES

DOGIPOT

800-364-7681

166

ANOVA

888-535-5005 13, 170

ASLA EXPO Promotion

202-216-2326 182-183

Goric Marketing Group Inc.

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Canterbury Designs

323-936-7111

ASLA Online Learning

202-216-2444

179

GreenďŹ elds Outdoor Fitness

888-315-9037 35, 174

Columbia Cascade Company

800-547-1940 55, 170

Longwood Gardens

610-388-5439

73

Landscape Structures, Inc.

800-328-0035 17, 174

DeepStream Designs

305-857-0466

158

U.S. Green Building Council

202-552-1369

180

Livin the Dog Life

800-931-1462

171

BUSINESS SERVICES Rico Associates

174

PAVING/SURFACING/MASONRY STONE/METALS 508-842-4948

170

DRAINAGE AND EROSION

Acker-Stone Industries Inc.

800-258-2535 71, 174

Belgard Hardscapes

877-235-4273

175

32

Doty & Sons Concrete Products

800-233-3907

DuMor, Inc.

800-598-4018 63, 171

emuamericas, llc

800-726-0368

Equiparc

800-363-9264 47, 171

161, 171

Cell-Tek Geosynthetics, LLC

410-721-4844

174

Fermob USA

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Iron Age Designs

206-276-0925 49, 170

Envirospec, Inc.

716-689-8548

175

Forms+Surfaces

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7, 171

Ironsmith, Inc.

800-338-4766 56, 170

GAF - Streetbond

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IAP

510-534-4886

162

165

171

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Hanover Architectural Products, Inc.

717-637-0500

Infrared Dynamics

714-572-4050

Invisible Structures, Inc.

800-233-1510 45, 175

Kornegay Design

877-252-6323

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Kafka Granite

715-687-2423 33, 175

Landscape Forms

800-430-6205

23, 41

Julius Blum & Co. Inc.

800-526-6293

59

Versa-Lok Retaining Wall System

800-770-4525

163,

Keystone

800-747-8971

C4

Madrax

800-448-7931

172

170

Nitterhouse Masonry Products, LLC

717-267-4500

11

Petersen Concrete Leisure Products

800-832-7383

167

GREEN ROOFS/LIVING WALLS American Hydrotech, Inc.

800-877-6125

149

greenscreen

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IRRIGATION Plant It Right

Pine Hall Brick Co., Inc.

800-334-8689 43, 175

QCP

951-256-3245

9

SofSURFACES, Inc.

519-882-8799

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Salsbury Industries

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172

Soil Retention Products

760-966-6090

167

Sitecra

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Stepstone, Inc.

310-483-6979

61

Sitescapes, Inc.

402-421-9464

172

Superior Concrete Products

817-277-9255

166

Thomas Steele

800-448-7931

44

Tri-State Stone Co. for Carderock

301-365-2100

175

Victor Stanley, Inc.

301-855-8300 172, C3

800-388-8728

138

Wishbone Site Furnishings Ltd.

604-626-0476

157

720-990-3705

173

Wausau Tile

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STRUCTURES

Meteor Lighting

213-255-2060

173

Campania International, Inc.

Amish Country Gazebos

717-951-1064

177

Sterling Lighting

800-939-1849

161

Classic Recreation Systems, Inc.

800-697-2195

25

Sternberg Lighting

847-588-3400

153,

Dekorra Products

888-635-8585

Easi-Set Buildings

800-547-4045

177

173

Green Theory Design Inc.

604-475-7002 27, 176

Gothic Arch Greenhouses

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Greenform LLC

310-331-1665

Shade Systems, Inc.

800-609-6066

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866-733-8225 65, 176

LIGHTING

215-541-4627

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LUMBER/DECKING/EDGING Bison Innovative Products by UCP

C2-1,

166

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888-412-4766

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53

Structureworks Fabrication

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177

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800-343-6948

165

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800-334-4647

166

Planters Unlimited by Hooks & Lattice 760-707-5400

164

Permaloc Aluminum Edging

800-356-9660

2, 173

Planterworx

718-963-0564

160

WATER MANAGEMENT AND AMENITIES

Sure-Loc Aluminum Edging

800-787-3562

173

Stone Forest

505-982-7988

164,

Aquatix by Landscape Structures

Tiger Deck

503-625-1747

173

176

Fountain People, Inc.

512-392-1155

160

Tournesol Siteworks/Planter

800-542-2282 19, 176

Lee Supply Company

610-518-5499

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Most Dependable Fountains

800-552-6331

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Roman Fountains

877-794-1802

37

OUTDOOR FURNITURE

Technology

Country Casual Teak

240-813-1117

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Paloform

888-823-8883

57

Summer Classics

888-868-4267

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OUTDOOR KITCHENS Exterus Outdoor

800-367-7429

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PLANTS/SOILS/PLANTING MATERIALS Bartlett Tree Expert Company

877-227-8538

3

Bio-Plex Organics

800-441-3573

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Ernst Conservation Seeds

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Planted Earth Landscaping

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163

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EXPO Branding: Make Your Exhibit Part of Your Larger Brand Story Sell Yourself and Your Brand at the 2018 EXPO

By Russ Klettke

Does your brand logo have a color? Is there any imaginable reason why your EXPO booth in Philadelphia wouldn’t have that color included?

Color is part of how marketers in the landscape architecture industry make use of graphics to introduce, reinforce, and sometimes change a brand message in industry exhibitions. But it doesn’t begin or end there. Participation in the ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO should be a seamless part of an overall marketing and sales program. he EXPO might take place over a few short days in Philadelphia (October 19-22, 2018), but it’s going to be maximally productive if you consider it within the broader, multi-year continuum of your brand marketing program.

It can start with those colors. A well-designed booth will include your logo and might repeat its speciic Pantone colors, plus complementary colors to make it stand out.

But brands in the landscape architecture industry are about an awful lot more than color.

Product functionality – not only how it works,

but also how well it works – are critical features that vendors communicate as a consistent part of the brand. But don’t overlook your people who speciiers work with. his is something we heard from successful brand marketers who annually participate in ASLA EXPOs. “Our brand is based on quality products, and as a result our team has to consist of quality people,” says Emma Skalka, Honorary ASLA and vice president of sales and marketing for Victor Stanley, a site furnishings manufacturer and marketer. “I am especially proud of how well appreciated my colleagues are among the professionals. hey thrive on the friendships they have made in the profession and how much they enjoy learning more about this ield.”

In other words, the brand is embodied in the human interaction. It may sound nebulous, but it’s a very real and very consistent means by which the company holds a productive place in the landscape architecture community.

Brands are also about speciic product features.

Berliner Seilfabrik Play Equipment traces its history back to 1865 when the company produced cables for the elevator industry; that know-how is now applied to playground equipment. Safety and reliability are more than features: It’s the fundamental heart of the brand, yet challenging to communicate with a simple graphic.

So what does the company show at the ASLA EXPO? “Our staf emphasizes the quality of our rope,” says Christine Schewe, who heads up the inside sales and marketing function for the company. hey answer questions, share designs of past installations, and describe custom work.

But graphics still matter: “We keep consistency throughout our advertising and our exhibit space for easy recognition at the show,” says Schewe.

A little more challenging are brands for products that are largely unseen. Troy Leezy is a regional manager at Hunter Industries, which manufactures and markets irrigation products (as well as landscape lighting features). He explains how they get around this conundrum: “Our job is to ensure the beauty of healthy plant material,” he says. “We have to show

ASLA PHL2018

Annual Meeting and EXPO October 19-22 Philadelphia

#ASLA2018

how a beautiful landscape can be water eicient.” he exhibit features technical displays, but the irst impression is oversize photography of lush landscapes. “It’s similar to what you see in our advertising.”

Leezy, Schewe, and Skalka all use social media to some extent as part of that branding strategy – before, during, and ater the EXPO. “We use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to support a strategy of customer engagement,” says Leezy. Skalka’s marketing team at Victor Stanley ilters through images gathered by EXPO floor staf, then post what passes muster – all consistent with the brand look and feel, shared with social media followers who are not at the Meeting and EXPO. For Skalka, the human extension of the brand is their secret sauce: “My colleagues thrive on the friendships they have made in the profession,” she says, something she measures by design professionals’ “eagerness to visit my colleagues in our booth.”

Regardless of your brand’s color scheme, customer eagerness sounds like a pretty good branding success metric.

85% of exhibit managers routinely employ preshow marketing tactics.

Source: Exhibitor magazine

Too many screens in your booth?

“Interactive marketing” has been a buzzword for a generation, largely referring to how companies and customers connect online. But are tablets, large touchscreens and other gadgetry really the kind of interaction you should have at a trade show?

Exhibitor Magazine’s editor Travis Stanton suggests a little bit of caution on this. “Far too many exhibitors are focused on the wrong kind of interaction, using tables and touchscreens as surrogates for face-to-face contact,” he says, advising instead to observe booth staf interaction rates.

His advice is to train staf on how to engage with people on exhibit floors.

Interactive devices still have their place, but as a support, not a substitute for real conversations.

Image credit: EPNAC Photography ©2015, 2017

THE BACK

/

BACKSTORY

OH, AND CARS, TOO “What is a great street is all subjective, so we were very mindful of that,” Romero says. A series of benchmarks was developed to measure whether the interventions improved safety, enhanced the street character, or boosted the economy. “And most importantly, did we create a better sense of community during this process?”

Romero asks.

The irst 15 streets projects are all either fully installed or in process, adding up to more than $22 million in infrastructure improvements, Romero says. And these are intended to be just the start. In 2015, the city launched a competition for allocating funds, and has selected an additional seven projects, each initiated by a community group or nonproit working with its local council oice. One such project, on Cesar Chavez Avenue in the Boyle Heights neighborhood, created curb

BY NATE BERG extensions and pop-up parklets to ridor in each of L.A.’s 15 city council educate residents about road design districts, based on local needs and and safety. A second competition was suggestions. The program support- held the next year. ed a range of interventions, from wider sidewalks and bioswales to Romero says that irst competition mural painting and the installation received more than 30 submissions of solar-powered smart benches and and that there’s clearly a hunger for bus shelters with Wi-Fi hot spots more of these projects. The city has and ports to charge devices. A pedes- created a DIY Great Streets Manual trian scramble intersection was in- to show community members how stalled in the touristic heart of Holly- they can tap into city resources to wood. Curb extensions and median improve their streets, and another trees were installed on a South L.A. round of the competition is schedstreet that had seen fatal crashes. uled for later this summer.

A vehicle lane was converted into a bike lane on a corridor in the San NATE BERG IS A FREELANCE WRITER BASED IN LOS ANGELES. Fernando Valley.

A

fter Los Angeles’s mayor, Eric Garcetti, Honorary ASLA, took oice in 2013, his irst executive directive was a call to rethink the city’s single largest public asset: its streets. He’d led the successful conversion of an underused street segment into a pocket park when he was a city councilmember, and wanted the idea to spread citywide. His “Great Streets Initiative” called for renewed attention and funding to turn the city’s vast blacktop into spaces that “activate the public realm, provide economic revitalization, and support great neighborhoods.”

ABOVE

Los Angeles pedestrians in the “scramble” crossing at the busy intersection of Hollywood and Highland.

Translating that ideal onto the actual streets of Los Angeles required identifying what Barbara Romero, the deputy mayor for city services, calls “the backbones of our neighborhoods.” Projects were soon being initiated on a street or major cor-

184 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JUNE 2018

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