Colloquium class notes

Elm Yellows

Climate Change Atlas


The Saranac Lake story

Dawes Arboretum and Dawn Redwood and John Kuser

Gravitropism

Bunya pine


Congress for New Urbanism


Washington Town Center (Mapped below)

View Places and Spaces Map in a larger map

Creating the Policy and Legal Framework for a Location–Enabled Society

Annual Spring CGA Conference: Creating the Policy and Legal Framework for a Location–Enabled Society

May 2 – 3, 2013

Location: 1730 Cambridge St. CGIS South Building, Tsai Auditorium, Room S010, Harvard University

It is free and open to the public.

For more information, please go to: http://gis.harvard.edu/conference

Geospatial People in Wisconsin

As part of a visit to Wisconsin's Geospatial Summit I am speaking on VGI, PPGIS, and data sharing.  Here are a few background papers that anyone can find online:

• Tulloch and Shapiro on Access and Participation
• Tulloch and Harvey on Data Sharing Practices
• Tulloch on PPGIS in First Monday

 For the scholars with academic access, a more longer list is available on scholar.google.com.

Homes turning into dunes

Mantoloking is going to use eminent domain to acquire some properties to turn back into dunes. Frankly, I am surprised we haven't seen more of these stories. There is a much greater public realization of how valuable dunes can be for an entire community, but we are still seeing more stories about owners refusing to let the Corps protect their property without an apparent regard for their neighbors and community.

Earth Day list

The commemorate Earth Day, Slate has posted a great list of "Seven Spectacular Places Saved by the Environmental Movement"

Earth Day photos

(Photo locations: Cannon Beach, OR; Cook Campus, NJ; Monterey Peninsula; Tuckerton, NJ; Little San Bernardino Mountains, CA?; Bedminster, NJ; Mt. St. Helens, WA; Monmouth Battlefield, NJ; Bedminster and Bedminster)

An unrelated recommendation

Late in the semester as the stress mounts, I will offer the unsolicited recommendation of the (now streaming) TV series Slings and Arrows. Mark McKinney leads a great ensemble cast mixing up some Shakespeare with a mix of drama and comedy, just the way the Bard would have liked it. Enjoy.

Alumni Reunion

RSVP requested.

Boston photos

Boston and Cambridge

LiveBlog: Sub-arctic landscapes

Janike Kampevold Larsen 
Beyond the Nation: Contemporary Challenges for Northern and Arctic Landscapes

Some sloppy notes from a great lecture today:

Current features includes glaciers, oil and gas industries, impassable mountain regions (until after WWII)
The landscapes were captures by Maximillian Carpelan and Johannes Flintoe

An abundance of minerals and metals (like aluminum) has led to an increased exposure to mining which is changing the landscapes of Northern Sweden




View Larger Map

Influences are shared beyond Norway:
Stourhead
Rockefeller State Park

Railing at the falls at Videseter shows how deep the notion of landscape at Stourhead really is

Nedre Oscarshaug
At Bergbotn, Senja, Code architecture's undulating cantilevered bridge

How do we learn how to see?

We also heard some quotes from Friends of the Pleistocene (FOP) Blog

Landskip and Landschaft as competing ideas
Everything is a story

(Our guest speaker never mentioned the Witch Monument in Vardø, but once I stumbled into it I had to link to it as well)

Contemporary Challenges for Northern and Arctic Landscapes

Janike Kampevold Larsen
Wednesday, April 17, 2013, 2013 @ 4:00 p.m.
Cook Douglass Lecture Hall - Rm 110  
Beyond the Nation: Contemporary Challenges for Northern and Arctic Landscapes

Janike Larsen, an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Urbanism and Landscape at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, will discuss her research on the landscapes in the sub arctic. Her talk will situate these landscapes in terms of mining, oil supply and energy supply, pollution and social development. The structuring theme will be geologic vs human agency in shaping the surface of the earth coupled with a reflection on how we experience and recognize form – on the desire to make thing resemble what we already now vs the ability to be overwhelmed.

Landscape Design Practicum at Duke Farms 

Date  & Time: Saturday, April 20th 3:30 to 5:00PM
Location: Farm Barn Orientation Center
1112 Dukes Parkway West, Hillsborough, New Jersey

Students from area colleges will present their ideas at this public event at Duke Farms. This will be a great opportunity for the public to get ideas for sustainable and ecologically friendly landscaping they can implement at home. It is also an opportunity for students to present their ideas in a public venue and before professional peer review. Professional landscape architects and landscape designers are invited to join the audience to ask thoughtful questions of the students and offer constructive critiques. Your attendance will be appreciated for its mentoring benefits and as a way to help "grow" the profession in these emerging designers.

GIS for the masses

Microsoft is adding spatial capabilities for Excel.

New building at Cook

Changes are coming to the Cook Campus. This week the Board of Governors gave final approval to start building the new Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health.  Watch the video.

Public Lecture Tonight: Kate Orff

Cekada Memorial Lecture

Douglass Student Center, Trayes Hall @ 6:30 PM

Parking is available at the Douglass Parking Deck (next to Lot 70) off Lipman Drive

Kate Orff –

Scape

Kate Orff is an assistant professor at Columbia University and founder of SCAPE, a landscape architecture studio in Manhattan. Her work weaves together sustainable development, design for biodiversity, and community-based change. Orff’s recent exhibition at MoMA, Oyster-tecture, imagined the future of the polluted Gowanus Canal as part of a ground-up community process and an ecologically revitalized New York harbor.

RIP: Paolo Soleri (1919-2013)

Visionary architect Paolo Soleri, responsible for Arizona's Cosanti and Arcosanti, has passed away.

 The NY Times obituary says that Soleri "showed a generation of younger architects an alternative to corporate modernism."

The LA Times describes the Italian born architect as still influencing recent projects:

Lately some hugely ambitious developments have echoed Soleri's call for an architecture that huddles densely in the desert, sharing resources, rather than spreading thinly across a vast area. One of them is the $22-billion Masdar City project on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, designed by architect Norman Foster as a hyper-efficient "cleantech cluster."

Daily Dose of Architecture has a touching obituary.


Here are some photos I took of Arcosanti a few years ago.

Jack Ahearn clearly teaches cooler classes than me. One of his is Landscape Architecture Study Tour which had includes student reports on Florence's Boboli Gardens. Worth a look. I also found this blog post on Boboli with nicely chosen photos, something different than the usual tourist photos. And this set of Boboli Gardens photos include the infamous dwarf and turtle.

Lisa Gimmy's disparate landscapes

Having just recently returned from California, I was struck by the recent feature in the NY Times on Califrnia landscape architect Lisa Gimmy. But I think I may have been most struck by this wonderful quote about her work:

“There is not a look,” she says. “My gardens are more about the site, plants and views, and about finding a design that is in sync with the architecture and that allows the clients to live the life they imagine for themselves.”

That sensitive response to site conditions is something that really sets apart much of the best landscape architecture from architecture. Take a look.

Ecology lecture

Ecology & Evolution Graduate Program Seminar

Dr. Bernd Blossey
Department of Natural Resources
Cornell University

 How deer, earthworms and invasive plants transform our neighborhoods, forests and protected areas

Thursday, April 11, 2013
4:00 p.m.
Alampi Room, Marine and Coastal Sciences

Majora Carter

Today's NY Times asks whether urban greening hero, Majora Carter, has betrayed her beloved Bronx. The problem is that her fame and success has made it hard for her to help in the same way and the article tries to capture the complexity, not just one side. But the comments really open up the broader issues. One of them asks whether this is "the TED effect" because her fame on TED Talks is directly behind her catapult into greater spheres of influence.

Pruning in the Park

Volunteer Now for Pruning in the Park, April 13th at Branch Brook Park Help preserve the vitality of a world famous cherry collection!! Date: April 13, 2013 Time: 8:30 AM to 11:30 AM. Free bagels and coffee from 8:00 AM. Location: Meet in Branch Brook Park, Newark, NJat the Abudato Center Parking Lot PLEASE RSVP THIS WEEK:Contact President Tim Delorm(tim.delorm@terranoble.net ), or call 609 393 7500 Volunteer for a "hands-on" Public Service morning. The cherry trees should still be in full bloom, so it will definitely be worth the trip!!!. Be on time for direction by Paul Cowie, Branch Brook Park Arborist. Paul will provide tips on pruning and safety precautions. Hand tools will be available, but bring pole saws and pole pruners, if you have them. If turn out is strong for this event, NJASLA hopes to continue public service efforts at Branch Brook Park. FYI: Take in the cherry blossoms, bike races, fun runs and other scheduled events for adults and children at the Branch Brook Park Cherry Blossom Festival, April 6 through April 20 (Essex County Branch Brook Park). Also, the North American Tree Climbing Competition will be held in the Southern Division on April 27 and 28. Top tree climbers from across the U.S. and Canada will be competing. All worth seeing.

Former Rutgers instructor (and now chair at Minnesota), Kristine Miller wrote about NYC's Jacob Javitz Plaza and its  controversies years ago in Designs on the Public.  At the time, Serra's Tilted Arc had been replaced by a Martha Schwartz plaza where Dr. Miller got in trouble for taking photos. Since then it has been replaced by a MVV landscape that Daily Dose of Architecture photographed and reports, "it looks like any day now it will be complete and this corner of Lower Manhattan may finally be free of controversy." Somehow I doubt it.