Comments and news about Environmental Planning and Design. Intended for all audiences including students and alumni of the Rutgers major of Environmental Planning and Design.
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates received an ASLA 2008 Design Honor Award for their work at the Boston Children's Museum calling it "a great example of placemaking." It is clear that our group had more complex feelings about it. Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was the walk. Maybe it was the design. We'll try again in 3 years.
The big heavy milk bottle wasn't as easy to drop in as might first appear. Here's a comment from the ASLA awards announcement:
"Throughout the project, construction techniques were employed to address the need for durability on a constantly shifting site. Expanded polystyrene foam (Geofoam) was used as fill below the finished plaza to offset the weight of the new landscape and to prevent further settlement. Steel piles driven into the native bedrock were installed to support heavier elements like the marble boulders and the Milk Bottle. A waterproof liner system was developed to contain the roots of the willow trees while keeping the saline ground water from contaminating the planting soils."
Almost 19 percent of all landscape architects are self-employed—more than 2 times the proportion for all occupations.
49 States require landscape architects to be licensed.
New graduates can expect to face competition for jobs in the largest and most prestigious landscape architecture firms, but there should be good job opportunities overall as demand for landscape architecture services increases.
Fall 2009 Lecture Series Natalie Shivers, Associate University Architect for Planning, Princeton University The Princeton Campus Plan: Challenges, Successes, and Lessons of Implementation
An historic campus with a contemporary plan In 2005 the university considered adding to the campus, but was concerned what that would do to the historic campus As a teaching and research institution they wanted to be very careful about how they did this
Principles emphasis desire to maintain an intimate and walkable culture while staying on the north side of Lake Carnegie The design team included Beyer Blinder Belle and MVV
History: The old campus started around Nassau Hall which was the largest building in the colonies at the time Woodrow Wilson initiated a new era that led to the Beatrix Farrand spaces and spread of the core Post WWII led to peripheral buildings which were inconsistent and did not contribute to campus character
Throughout the 2.5 year process there were multiple public presentations and open houses
Even as the plan is being made, there was an ongoing building program with new buildings being plopped down (see the pictures of Gehry's Lewis Library) - The map of planned projects is called the Scary Map.
Case Study 1: Parking and Athletics areas Remember, Princeton has had athletics since (at least) the first ever intercollegiate football game The current version of the stadium is a Vinoly design (Dave's tip: Park in the TEN Architectos Award-winning deck and go to a Princeton hockey game for $10)
Case Study 2: Arts and Transit By the Wawa and McCarter Theater Is it both an opportunity and a threat? Say goodbye to the Wawa and a traffic circle? Make the area into a neighborhood
Student parking is easy to handle - there isn't much
Lessons learned include: * Maintain flexibility - budgets change, priorities shift * Develop an internal capacity to implement the plan * Engage the stakeholder searly and often - we thought we had done this * Involve decision-makers in development of the plan
The Town and Gown relationship, as expressed in the municipal master plan, includes concerns about edges and taxes and where the students live
A new change in attitude is that the interstitial spaces are as important as the projects
"He was the single most influential landscape architect of the postwar years," said Charles Birnbaum, president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation. "He redefined the profession's role in cities."
His projects are iconic - FDR Memorial, Forecourt Fountain, Sea Ranch, Freeway Park, and Ghirardelli Square only begin the list. His streetscapes and fountains may seem to stand out, but his books and teaching will have a lasting impact too.
As an added remembrance, ASLA's The Dirt has a link to a 30 minute podcast from a conversation between Birnbaum and Halrpin at ASLA 2007.
Fall 2009 Lecture Series Department of Landscape Architecture
Natalie Shivers, Associate University Architect for Planning, Princeton University
Wednesday, October 28, 3:55, 110 Cook Douglass Lecture Hall
The Princeton Campus Plan: Challenges, Successes, and Lessons of Implementation
The talk will focus on the Princeton Campus Plan, completed in 2008, one of the most comprehensive plans ever developed by Princeton University. The University's major planning challenge is to accommodate growth on the diminishing available land on campus in an integrated and holistic way that respects and reinforces Princeton's defining characteristics as a university and a community. Created by architects and planners Beyer Blinder Belle with landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh and other consultants, the plan views the campus as a web of interconnected systems and makes recommendations regarding policy, architecture, infrastructure, landscape, and the environment. The talk will also look at the plan one year later and evaluate how it has survived challenges of fiscal constraints, design changes, community concerns, and institutional practices.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Natalie Shivers is the Associate University Architect for Princeton University and managed the campus planning effort for Princeton, working closely with Beyer Blinder Belle and its consultants on the development of the campus plan. She is currently working on implementation of Princeton's campus plan through public approvals of various aspects of the plan, as well as the development of specific projects. Previously, Natalie was director of campus capital planning at the University of California-Los Angeles where she oversaw the development of strategic master plans and coordinated their implementation in the design and construction of new buildings and renovation projects on the historic 419-acre campus.
A graduate of Yale University, Shivers earned her master's degree in architecture from Princeton. She has worked in Los Angeles for several architectural firms and held positions at three entertainment corporations -- Paramount Pictures in Hollywood, the Turner Entertainment Group in Atlanta and 20th Century Fox in Los Angeles -- where she oversaw design, construction and rehabilitation projects at the studios. She also spent two years as an architect/project director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, DC.
Google has a new StreetMap vehicle that allows them to go beyond the street network and into the pedestrian realm. Their California bias has already led them to the Santa Monica Pier and LegoLand, but where do we want them to go in the East?
What's he that wishes so? My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin: If we are mark'd to die, we are enow To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour. God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost; It yearns me not if men my garments wear; Such outward things dwell not in my desires: But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive. No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England: God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour As one man more, methinks, would share from me For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more! Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, That he which hath no stomach to this fight, Let him depart; his passport shall be made And crowns for convoy put into his purse: We would not die in that man's company That fears his fellowship to die with us. This day is called the feast of Crispian: He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named, And rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:' Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars. And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.' Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, But he'll remember with advantages What feats he did that day: then shall our names. Familiar in his mouth as household words Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester, Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd. This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember'd; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
Laurie Olin talked some on Wednesday about the park blocks in Portland, so it was interesting to see this comparison of Portland's lauded blocks compared with the scale of those in other cities, including Barcelona. This was part of a interesting analysis on PlaNetizen by Douglas Pollard and Fanis Grammenos called Beloved and Abandoned: A Platting Named Portland. It sounds like they think size isn't as important as what you do with them. And their example of Ladd's Addition as a violation of the grid fails to highlight the great coffee/desert house in the middle.
Time is running out to visit one of America's coolest, secret museums: The Barnes Foundation. While I am admittedly more interested in the old space, Slate's Witold Rybczynski peeks at the plans to move this home-based collection to a new building on Philly's Museum row.
Background: After growing up in Alaska he worked for Rich Haag and, after some time in NYC and elsewhere, then moved to Philly and started Hanna/Olin while also teaching at UPenn.
MIT campus framework plan and Stata Center - recycled water and Pleistocene outwash - No idea what happened to the grasses - Lesson learned: don't hide the water
Portland Park Blocks - Park Block 5 - you can't compete with Harcourt Fountain - you have to make chamber music instead of orchestra - Paving can't be a big busy pattern - Can we make it so nice that they'll love it and take care of it? The blonde rock is beautiful, the concrete work is the most beautiful of any of their projects
UBC Gateway project in Vancouver
When you give the contractors a really interesting problem, they get really interested - NGA fountain
Two bits of interest from today's NY Times. First, a nice exploration about Sir Norman Foster's interest in desiging a relatively small building no the Bowery in NYC. Admittedly, the main body of the article presented an interesting way of using an elevator as an active space. But the thing that stood out was this great quote at the end:
“To be an architect, you have to be an optimist,” he said. “You have to be a realist, but you have to be an optimist.”
That's why he is Norman Foster. Laurie Olin is visiting tonight and I would be surprised if he felt very different at all. his work feels very optimistic while remaining quite practical and reasonable.
The second thing in the Times was a description of the ever familiar transportation corridors of North Jersey:
NORTH BERGEN, N.J. — In deepest urban New Jersey, just off the hellish Routes 1 and 9, past the Lincoln Tunnel Motel and the Hoboken cemetery, sits an unlikely place that might be thought of as opera heaven.
That relatively small acreage of land around the tunnels and bridges has become so integral to the image of New Jersey that you could almost leave out the adjectives and readers would still have flashbacks to the helix or Snake Hill. Who needs the Pine Barrens or the Highlands when we have the Pulaski Skyway?
DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES Presents a Fall 2009 seminar
DR. DAVID HILL DEPT. OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING RUTGERS UNIVERSITY
Presents a Seminar entitled: "ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND OBSERVATION NETWORKS: UNDERSTANDING LARGE-SCALE SYSTEMS THROUGH REAL-TIME OBSERVATIONS"
Friday, October 23, 2009 2:30p.m. - Room 223 Environmental & Natural Resource Sciences Bldg. 14 College Farm Road, New Brunswick, NJ Refreshments served at 2:15 am
Host: Dr. Uta Krogmann, 732-932-9800 X6207, Krogmann@envsci.rutgers.edu
Recent advances in earth-observing technologies have lowered the barrier to knowledge discovery by giving us the ability to observe phenomena at time and space scales that have previously been impossible to access. Sensor networks present potentially profound opportunities for improving our understanding and ability to manage large-scale environmental systems. This potential, however, is tempered by challenges associated with preparing the data for use in (near) real time, including performing quality control and integrating data from multiple sensors. This presentation will discuss the development of cyberinfrastructure tools that facilitate real-time customization of environmental sensor data streams, including integration of multi-agency data, fusion of multi-scale data, spatio-temporal aggregation, and quality control. To demonstrate how these tools will benefit real-time modeling of environmental systems, a case study will be presented that addresses the real-time prediction of combined sewer overflows in the Chicago Metropolitan area.
Sadly, after digging through disks and folders, I can't find many of the dozens and dozens of photos I have taken at this elegant design. Just steps off of America's front yard is this sculpture garden which provides one of the great spots for resting during an active day in DC. At its center is this massive, yet simple fountain. The garden uses a generous array of plant material to soften it while it sits between the large institutional buildings that contain it on three sides. And it uses classic forms and materials allowing the sculpture to take much of the credit here.
I already posted the announcement of our chair search. Here is an opportunity for applicants earlier in their academic careers.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
The Department of Landscape Architecture, Rutgers – The State University of New Jersey, invites applications for a 10-month, tenure track, Assistant Professor position, to begin September 1, 2010.
Qualifications: Candidates must have an LAAB accredited degree in landscape architecture and a terminal degree in landscape architecture or related a discipline. Candidates must document the following: 1. Excellent design skills as evidenced by a portfolio of work. 2. Evidence of, or potential for, peer reviewed scholarly work as evidenced by published works, grants, clearly articulated scholarly agenda, or critically reviewed built or visionary works. 3. Excellent verbal and graphic communication skills. 4. Ability to integrate computer applications and digital technology as planning, design and presentation tools in landscape architecture.
Preference will be given to candidates with demonstrated excellence in teaching, professional practice, professional licensure (or potential for licensing), a Ph.D. in Landscape Architecture or a related field. Preference will be given to candidates capable of developing and teaching courses in both graduate and undergraduate programs.
Position: The successful candidate will be responsible for teaching required and elective courses in the MLA program and the undergraduate Environmental Planning and Design curriculum, particularly in the Landscape Architecture option. Preference will be given to candidates whose scholarly activities complement the long-term direction of the Department and the mission-oriented research programs of the NJ Agricultural Experiment Station and are supportive and consistent with recently approved landscape architecture graduate program. Participation in multidisciplinary research programs to address relevant NJ problems and opportunities may be expected. Active engagement in service to the department, university and community is expected.
Department and Program: The Department of Landscape Architecture offers a fully accredited BS in LA and a recently approved MLA program. The Department is located in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, the land grant component of the university, which focuses on environmental, agricultural and life sciences programs. The Department is affiliated with the Environmental Planning & Design Curriculum that, in addition to Landscape Architecture, offers major courses of study in Environmental Planning, Geomatics, and Landscape Industry. The Department consists of nine full-time faculty, several part-time lecturers and approximately 100 undergraduate students. The faculty is highly committed to scholarship and teaching; it provides a supportive environment and has excellent rapport with students and alumni.
The Department’s location within the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences can create exceptional opportunities to work with scientists who are conducting research on issues such as brown-field remediation, bioremediation, restoration ecology, stormwater management. In addition, there are opportunities to collaborate with faculty from other schools within Rutgers University, such as the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, as well as the other academic institutions in this region.
The University’s location within the most densely populated state in the nation, the ease of accessibility to major urban centers (New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington D.C.), and the diversity of landscapes within the State provide an excellent environment for scholarship and teaching about land planning, urban design, environmental management issues as well as a broad range of cultural and historic landscapes.
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability, marital status or veteran status in any student program or activity administered by the University, or with regard to admission or employment.
Anticipated Review of Applicants: Review will begin on December 15, 2009 and continue until a suitable candidate is selected.
Contact: Professor Dean Cardasis, FASLA, Chair, Search Committee Department of Landscape Architecture Blake Hall, 93 Lipman Drive Rutgers – The State University of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901 – 8524 Phone: 732.932.9317 Fax: 732.932.1940
If you visit our department office in Blake Hall you can see the plaque honoring past winners of our Landscape Architecture Outstanding Alumni Award, but here is the complete list...
1981 Julius Gy Fabos 1982 Edgar B. Brannon 1983 Roger Wells 1984 H. Russell Hanna 1985 Thomas E. Wirth 1986 Steven R. Krog 1988 Paul T. Lettieri 1990 Roy J. Dunn 1994 Sheila Condon 1995 E. Timothy Marshall 1997 Samuel Melillo 1999 Leslie Peoples 2000 Stephen O’Connor 2001 Katy Weidel 2002 Steven Strom 2003 Thomas Donnelly 2004 Robert Sniekus 2005 Andrea Cochran 2006 Larry Porter 2007 Jack Carman 2008 Douglas Blonsky
Department of Landscape Architecture Lecture Series
Nancy Cohen, Artist Estuary and Other Landscape-inspired Sculptures
3:55 Wednesday, October 14 110 Cook Douglass Lecture Hall
Nancy Cohen will be showing images of her recent landscape-based work and discussing the development of her ideas and working methods. Cohen is a mixed-media artist who works in sculpture, installation and drawing. Recent large-scale projects have included a site-specific installation based on the Hudson River for the Katonah Museum of Art and a collaboration with marine biologists and environmentalists based on the Mullica River for the Noyes Museum of Art in Oceanville, NJ. In 2006, Cohen collaborated with Princeton University scientists and a garden designer on an outdoor sculpture for Quark Park in Princeton, NJ.
From a review by Dominique Nahas in Sculpture Magazine, September, 2008: Throughout her career, Nancy Cohen has experimented with materials and forms that underscore the relational possibilities between the appearance of transparency and its opposite, opaqueness. Her naturalist tendencies are abetted by an ethnographer's curiosity and a keen appreciation of cultural parallels and anomalies. All of her various works explore sensations provoked by liminality, that is, threshold states of mind conditioned by factors conducive to transition and transformation.
Cohen has been awarded a Pollack Krasner grant and several sculpture grantsnfrom the NJ State Council on the Arts. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the NJ State Museum, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum, Montclair Art Museum, & Yale University Art Museum among others. Recent exhibitions have included "Handwork" at Spanierman Modern Gallery in NYC and "Global Warning: Artists and Climate Change" at Wesleyan University. www.nancymcohen.com
Here are Holly's finalists from sketch-off 2009. Just entering was key. But if you didn't bring a sketchbook, you couldn't get yours posted.
Salt gave us this sketch of the Mother Church of Christian Science.
New student Erin tried to capture the difficult structures at Maritime Park. And a non-LA student, Taha, gave it the old college try: Steve tried to capture the curve of Olmsted's roads at World's End:
After our field trip, Holly picked out some sketches. These are all quick sketches, which I encouraged by never standing still for more than 2-3 seconds.
Some thumbnails from Brian: From Hany: And a 2-minute sketch from a new student, Evan: Let's keep walking!
Have you seen the Conservation Exchange? It is a new website that tries to link conservation projects from all around New Jersey with potential funders. For our studens, who are less likely donors at this point in their lives, it is a great resource to see the different approaches being taken by the conservation community to protect New Jersey's diverse array of ecological gems.
Travel + Leisure has published their list of the world's ugliest buildings. Clearly, this is not a canonical list but New Jersey takes some indirect hits with Princeton's Michael Graves and Princeton graduate C. Y. Lee both desiging buildings on the list. But then T+L sticks it to us with this quote:
“The ugliest buildings are the anonymous ones,” says Christopher Bonanos, who edits architecture criticism at New York magazine. “Even if an experimental, high-profile building doesn’t quite deliver, at least the architect is trying something. A boring building is a warehouse in the middle of New Jersey.”
“I still get called a landscaper – a huge pet peeve,” says Karen Twisler, a landscape architect at the Haddonfield, N.J.-based Remington & Vernick Engineers and the president of the New Jersey chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects. “They’ll ask, ‘what do I do with my grass?’”
PlaNetizen went all Web 2.0 and had readers vote on the top 100 urban thinkers. For each one they have a separate brief web page that gives a bio. While it is nice to see oldie but goodies like John Nolen, Vitruvius and Patrick Geddes still getting their props, it is certainly interesting to see how contemporaries like Prince Charles, Andres Duany, or Christopher B. Leinberger stack up. (the Brooks Institute is well represented) All in all, it says as much about the readers as it does the people on the list.
I was particularlyhapp to see that the readers were moderately International in the voting including some early German and Australian thinkers as well as a personal favorite, Ildefonso Cerdá Suñer.
Ellen Creveling, Conservation Science Coordinator The Nature Conservancy, New Jersey Chapter Conservation Planning at Scale: the Nature Conservancy's statewide approach for New Jersey
Why Plan? It seems obvious but is worth asking. LIimted resources force tagetted efforts and thoughtful strategies.
The primary goal of their ecosystem planning is to ID a system of conservation areas that contain multiple viable examples.
Much of the work is organized by an ecoregional approach They try to evaluate their targets by by finer and coarse filters
what are the large ecological community systems worth saving?
what are the key species that get left out?
The target set should be representative and provide redundancy
Target viability means that TNC needs to consider:
size
condition
landscape context
TNC started a statewide look by identifying road-bounded polygons Matrix and umbrella blocks - 10,000 acres and 75% or more natural - 4250 ac and 75% natural The went back and looked at polygons of a certain size and asked which had rare or notable species The looked at high quality watershed lands too
Still, there was a lot of prioritization left to do, but they got the list down to 12 areas around NJ
Highest ecological importance - broad systems and specific species
Immediate and multiple threats
Action could result in success
Since that plan was completed, other activities have contributed in other ways
Forest assessment
Freshwater streams assessment - not all streams are created equal
Dynamic forces like climate change colmplicate this process quickly too. It isn't all preservation. Restoration is in their toolbox, too.
Just a couple blocks from our Boston hotel is a little park named Ramler Park. As a small, privately-funded project on a sidestreet, it probably isn't something we would have noticed. But it got a lengthy feature in LAM a few years ago, so now we know. With all of that herbaceous material, it is probably a great bird spot in the mornings before we head out each day.
The weather for our Boston field trip looks clear and cool. (As you can see from a few of these photos, it was not quite as clear last time we visited.) So it should be great when we revisit this relatively new plaza in Boston so I can get better photos, but also so we can see it under better terms. The South Boston Maritime Park was designed by Halvorson Design Partnership and won a 2006 ASLA General Design Award of Honor. It includes a large open lawn panel and a seating area for dining.
Across the street is Ned's Park (or Eastport Park) which got featured in LAM twice in 2004 for its user-friendliness and popularity and questions about its disposability. This park is more of a sculpture park, crowded with interesting elements, but you can visit and decide for yourself if you think it has sufficient organization and structure to unite the pieces.
Director of SEBS General Honors Program and Professor of Landscape Architecture in Rutgers’ School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and Associate Director of the Grant F. Walton Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis. Dr. Tulloch can be reached at tulloch[at]crssa.rutgers.edu
Research online at:
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0692-9190
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lOLIQZ8AAAAJ&hl=en
https://crssa.rutgers.edu/projects/geohealth/
The blog currently allows open commenting on posts as a way of creating discussion and dialogue. Please keep comments clean, civil and relevant. Places and Spaces reserves the right to delete all comments, particularly those that are unverified, mean-spirited or undermining the pedagogic intent of the blog.
The big heavy milk bottle wasn't as easy to drop in as might first appear. Here's a comment from the ASLA awards announcement:
