CELA wrap-up

This should probably be the last post on our trip to CELA 2007 at Penn State where we saw some good talks and great friends. Highlights included seeing some of our newer colleagues present their research and learning about the trends at LA programs nationwide. But particular standouts include a very techo-geeky discussion about 3D laser scanning of heritage buildings and sites and a discussion of ethics in participatory research and design. Tom Nieman presented a controversial paper on the work of planners in Nazi Germany, like Krebs and Geisler, and explored how Central Place Theory and an understanding of physical terrain influenced their misguided efforts to expand their motherland.

One of real highlights of the meeting was a panel celebrating the 25^th anniversary of the Landscape Journal. Presentations included Arnold Alanen and our own Darrel Morrison talking about their days as the first editors of the Journal. Ellen Deming spoke about the current challenges and opportunities facing the Journal as it attempts to remain relevant in a digital era. Someone pointed out that many researchers, if the Journal isn't digital then it doesn't exist.

A highlight of the session came as Jason Walker and Matt Powers presented some preliminary findings from a study of the content of the Journal over the last 25 years. Hope fully they will find a suitable outlet for a more detailed analysis than they were able to quickly present, but the findings were quite interesting. Walker and Powers found that 40% of LJ authors have their Ph.D. and nearly 75% of the published papers are written by single author. They also about a 1/3 of the authors as women but showed that in recent years it was closer to 2/3.

A personal note: One of the lowlights of the meeting was the constant confusion over University names. It seems to me like it shouldn't be that hard to tell the difference between Iowa State (which has an accredited and historic program) and Iowa (which does not). And introducing the speaker from a place like UNC when they are in fact from NC State should be especially easy to get right with notes. As an academic community with so few members, we should be able to keep this sort of thing straight.

State College turned out to be a fun town for a meeting with good food and nice exhibits. I really enjoyed their temporary exhibit on Ansel Adams and Edwin Land at the Palmer Museum of Art. I had no idea how much work Ansel Adams had done with Polaroids.

The Stuckeman Family Building

The CELA meeting was held at the reasonably new Stuckeman Family Building which houses Penn State's School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. The Overland Partners -designed building was LEED-certified as Gold and included a few interesting design features.


On a trip like this it takes 3 things to get good photos: good light, enough time, a camera. As these prove, I almost never had all 3 and often didn't have any of the 3. Better something than nothing.

CELA Presentations

This year Rutgers had 4 faculty and one recent departure presenting papers at CELA. I suspect that is a Rutgers record. The papers were:

• Allan Shearer, "US Military Landscapes: Balancing National Security and Environmental Security"
• Wolfram Hoefer, "Approaching Extreme Landscapes"
• Seiko Goto, "The First Japanese Garden in the Western World: The Garden in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition"
• Elizabeth Graff and David Tulloch, "Green Map Exercises as an Avenue for Problem-Based Learning in a Data Rich Environment"

Immersive Environments Lab

While visiting Penn State for CELA, we had the chance to take a tour of the Immersive Environments Lab led by Tim Murtha. The 3-d frog (above on the right) really seemed to come out of the screen. But the purpose of the lab isn't for giant frog skeletons. This is a place to test 3-d landscape models and animations. It is also used by design students for presentations and explorations of other digital media.





Here is Dr. Shearer wondering why I am not in 3-d.

Citation Rankings in Landscape Architecture

This morning I attended a great panel discussion on the Landscape Journal in celebration of its 25th anniversary. I'll write more about what was said, but here is something that wasn't discussed, the most cited papers from the Landscape Journal. I ran it through the semi-reliable Google Scholar (LJ isn't included in the major indexes) and came up with these as the most cited Landscape Journal papers of all time:

• Messy Ecosystems, Orderly Frames by Joan Nassauer, 1995 - 66 citations
• Perceptual Landscape Simulations: History and Prospect by Zube, Simcox and Law, 1987 - 47 citations
• A Framework for Theory Applicable to the Education of Landscape Architects (and Other Environmental Design Professionals by Carl Steinitz, 1990 - 41 citations
• An ecological aesthetic for forest landscape management by Paul Gobster, 1999 - 31 citations
• Prospects and refuges revisited by Jay Appleton, 1984 - 27 citations

So, that got me wondering how things stacked up in LAM, which probably isn't indexed as well. I was impressed with what did come up:

• The beholding eye: Ten versions of the same scene by DW Meinig, 1976 - 41 citations
• Hand drawn overlays: their history and prospective uses by C Steinitz, P Parker, L Jordan, 1976 - 29 citations
• Quality corridors for Wisconsin by Phil Lewis, 1964 - 20 citations
• Cellular worlds-models for dynamic conceptions of landscape by RM Itami, 1988 - 15

Its quite possible that one or two papers are really getting shorted by this, but the results mostly make sense.