(Landscape architecture american societyol landscape the american societyol landscape (2011)

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SOCIAL CONNECTIONS

800.451.0410 I www.forms-surtaces.com

Designed with Your

Singapore are crawling with li fe ; and more

EDIT ED BY UNOA MCIN TYRE

64 SP ECIES

After several recent floods, a look at trees that

can stand wet feet; a gander at goo sebe rr i es, those fruit s of envy; and p la n t in g in e lu sive

s h ades of "bla ck "

BY CONSTANCE CASEY

78 INTERVIEW

Moving Cats Robert Inglis, a six-term former Republ ican

congressman from So u th Carolina, believes

cl im a te c han ge is real and ca u sed by h uma ns

N ow, in private life, he's try in g to show Amer i cans the absurdities ot their atta chmen t to fossil fuels and suggest free- m arket solutio ns

BY ARTHUR ALLEN

90 WATER

Take It Downh ill

A redeve l opm en t roje ct in Sea ttle i n clud es

p l an ni n g tor the c ity's largest green in frastructure project yet Better days are ahead tor Lake Union

BY USA OWENS VIANI

102 GOODS

On Fire

With colder wea t her coming, we've found several

well - desi gn ed ways to keep warm outd oo r s

BY USA SPECKHARDT

110 PARKS

Safer Pa rks After Dark Park managers rely on night lig ht i ng to protect people from crime and extend a park 's hou r s of use Dark -s ky advoca te s see the st ars washi ng away But new LED tech no l og ies are comi ng closer to making everyone hap pier

BY PETER HARNIK, ASLA; RYAN DONAHUE ;

AND JORDAN THALER

FEATURES

128 DAYS INN, DAYS OUT

Lango Hansen La ndscape Architecture

t urn s a parking lot i nto a cool new courtyard

as part of the upgradi ng of a dowdy old motel

i n Portland, Oregon

BY MAR K HINS H AW

134 NATURE CALLS

A complex renovation at Lo ngwo od Gardens

near Philadelphia creates mo r e than a dozen

new p ublic restrooms and two astonishing

green walls

BY NICOL E NEDER , ASSOCIA TE ASLA

140 SO INCUNED

Jim Schmitt, the ambitious mayor of Green

Bay, Wiscons in , was look i ng decades in to the

f uture when he comm iss ioned Stoss La ndsca pe

U r ba ni sm to remake t hree blocks o f ub l c

waterfront in to t he i ntr i guing, angular C i tyDeck

BY ADAM REGN ARVIDSON , FASLA

154 A POND WOULD BE PERFECT

Michael Vergason, FASLA, was q uite content to let

a farmstead i n Pennsylvania become sim ply mo re

of itself, which meant one major addit ion - and it

became the life of t he place

BY ANNE RAVER

WESTERN PRAGMATISM

Sti tches in Time and Place

T wo young des i gners j o i ned the main off i ce

of Sasaki Associates and launched a n u rban

researc h project that is resound i ng i n the ways the firm addresses the design of cit ies

An agenda for research at the nat ional level would

br i ng coherence a d a thor it y to the p ursui t of new k nowledge in landscape architecture

BY KURT D C ULBERTSON, F AS L A

USA@royalbotania.net 394 Broadway, New York NY 10013 1-2 2.812 9852 www.royalbotania.com/us

THE POWER OF LOGISTICS

SUPPORTS SUSTAINABILITY

EFFORTS BY CREATING EFFICIENCIES

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ON THE COVER

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Gr een Bay , Wiscons i n,

b y Stoss L andscape

Ur b anism, page 1 0

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IT'S HIP TO BE SQUARE

Apex Table Ensemble

Apex blends bold geometry, modern lines and eco-triendly materials Designed to seat

up to eigt people, the 48" square table and matc ing 40" benches offer ample room

for dining, socializing and easy wheelchair access, while FSC Pure Jatoba hrdwood and

powdrcoated aluminum make Apex an enduring fit for gathering spaces of all kinds

I

/ / /

Green

new •

outside fireplaces, firepits and now, the new wood burning pizza oven Al fresco has a whole new meaning

up to a downspout on my house My jurisdiction, the District

of Columbia, like some others, will give me a rain barrel or reimburse me up to $roo for one I buy myself It's part of the RiverSmart Homes program sponsored by the people at the District's Department of the Environment, who are trying to cut the city's storm runoff into creeks and rivers They're also encouraging property owners to plant trees and install perme-able paving systems and rain gardens This is all good news

WHY LEAVE THE DESIGN OF OUTDOOR

ARCHITECTS COULD OWN THAT WORK

The problem is, the rain barrels approved by the program, like

the ones I've seen for sale elsewhere, are all ugly A friend of mine who was taking part in the RiverSmart program saw the rain barrels and asked whether they were supposed to

be buried underground He's not a design guy, he said, but his wife does have taste, and there is no way she would allow one of those things anywhere near their house in plain sight

I thought, for free or for a rebate, how bad can they be? So 1 looked The nicest barrel, speaking generously here, tries to pass for a Go-gallon terra cotta flowerpot-without flowers

One of the real losers holds 275 gallons and looks like a cious package-it's a white tank with a steel cage around it

suspi-lf we expect people to use this stuff where they live, we need much better designs Here's a hint to get you started: A rain barrel is simple; it involves injection-molded plastic and not much more It doesn't even have to be a barrel

The design problem extends to a lot of manufactured things you see outside The kinds of park benches that most cities

can afford seem to come in about three varieties, two of them from the age of Dickens- wrought iron, if you're lucky, and wood slats The nearest lighting, signposts, and trash cans are likely from the same gene pool They make eve1y place

you go feel the same as every other place, but of course city governments are usually after the lowest qualified bids if they can buy anything at all

There are companies (yes, some are LAM advertisers) that hire great landscape architects to create intriguing new kinds of site furnishings, like the Maggie bench that Gustafson Guthrie Nichol designed for Landscape Forms But as often as not, it seems, the outdoor designs come from interior designers or product designers Two of the most heavily promoted lines of outdoor site furniture I've seen recently are designed by archi-tects, which is not surprising Otto Wagner, after all, was an ar-chitect and urban planner who created one of modern history's most memorable chairs And then there were Gerrit Rietveld, Marcel Breuer, Eero Saarinen, and the list of architects goes on Allison Arieff said something hilarious last year in her New

York Times blog about designers' having realized the need to

stop reinventing not the wheel, but the chair Indoors, that is

so true But outside I see no glut of original product designs,

despite their being easier than ever to fabricate through the

powers of rapid prototyping and computer-aided turing A plaza bench or light standard design has a lot of interesting problems to solve lt has to withstand water, ul-traviolet rays, freezing, thawing, graffiti, and bird droppings This is practically automotive design ls it a coin<.;dence that one of the cooler outdoor lamps for sale today is created by a

be designed badly, it can also be designed well

BRADFORD MCKEE

ED ITOR

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L A M I LETTERS

Thank you LAM and Kim Sorvig

for publicizing in glorious color

and great writing the critical role of

landscape architects in the planning

and design of our transportation

conidors The article's title, "3s,ooo

Transplants" (August), however, is

misleading, since the bulk of the most

important work was in the genuinely

context-sensitive design of the road's

alignment and grading that was led

by the project landscape architects

It was encouraging to read how all of

the design professionals developed a

truly collaborative relationship in

ar-riving at this most attractive solution

We old-timers are well aware of our

profession's legacy in roadway

plan-ning and design The so-mile-long

Going-to-the-Sun Road (1924-1932)

in Glacier National Park, Montana,

and the 469-mile-long Blue Ridge

Parkway (1935-1987) in Virginia and

North Carolina are but two prime

examples I, for one, had the great for

-tune to learn about "landform

grad-ing" from one of its early

masters-R A "Bill" Wilhelm, then the park

landscape architect in Great Smoky

Mountains National Park in the late

1950s l was one of the student

as-sistant landscape architects under

Bill's tutelage for three consecutive

summers Under his guidance, I was given the opportunity to do the de-

sign and grading plan for a couple of

the last few turnouts along the Blue Ridge Parkway near its entrance to the park One of my best memories

is of Bill standing nose to nose with the Bureau of Public Roads engineers along a road "P" line to argue suc-cessfully for an alignment change on behalf of the park's landscape

I hope that LAM and other

general-interest publications will feature

more of these kinds of examples so that the public will appreciate the truly broad scope of our profession

K EN T WATSON , F ASL A

MISSOULA, M ONTANA

CORRECTIONS

ln the October issue, the 2on

ASLA Professional Awards ar

-ticle listed the incorrect Design Workshop Inc office for three

award winners-Snake River treat, Galisteo Modern, and South Grand Boulevard "Great Streets Initiative." It should have been the Aspen, Colorado, office

Re-A book brief in the October issue

misstated the length oftime that

the author, Charlotte M Frieze,

F AS LA, worked for House&<: Gar

-den magazine It was nine years,

not 15 years

I found Kristian Wiles's letter to the editor in September's issue very troubling At first I couldn't

u derstand why you chose to publish a willfully narrow-minded

political harangue that assaults many of the professional prin-ciples of ASLA and the current practice oflandscape architecture

A rebuttal of Wiles's specific

as-sertions would require all of the pages of the magazine 1 simply

wish to state that the practice of

landscape architecture can and should transcend politics We possess a unique set f skills and

lmowledge that can be and is

be-ing used to help guide the ethical use and appreciation of the land and its resources Whether we

"believe" in global warming or

not, settling for the status quo is

simply negligent The politicization and monetization of global

-warming encourages its

escalat-ing ravages by dividing our efforts

Thank you for publishing that letter 1 now feel the urgency and necessity of AS LA's advocacy ef-forts, and the integral role 1 have

in forming a vibrant, healthy, and equitable American habitat

SARAH RICHAROSEN , ASSOCIATE ASLA

respective green versus gray proaches to stormwater infra-

ap-structure ("Green City, Gray City," September) The EPA's potential approval of the Philadelphia land-

scape as infrastructure strategy

can prove to be a major coup for

landscape archjtects It would be

fantastic if the metrics regarding not only the financial costs but also the environmental conse-quences of each approach could

be documented The construction

of a landscape at grade that questers carbon ruox:ide through

se-vegetation, measured against the transport and production factors

of excavated soil and the for

m-ing of concrete alone, must have

entirely oppositional footprints

I hope LAM follows up with the

results of the EPA's decision once

it's available, along with a

multi-year tracking of the differences between these nvo approaches

A US SA N OR T H, A L A

TORONTO , CANAOA

Please e-mail comments to LAM/etters

@asla.org or send via U.S mail to:

AM ERI C A N S O IETY

OF LANDSCAPE A RC HITECTS

63 6 EYE S TR EET NW WAS HIN G T O , OC 2 0 1- 373 6

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