Happy Birthday Jane Jacobs

Today would have been the 100th birthday of Jane Jacobs.

Libby Nelson has a great piece on Vox celebrating Jacob's upbeat attitude about cities:

"Her theory of how cities worked was based on how she saw people behave, rather than how architects hoped they would behave. (She didn't mince words, either: In 1958, she called these experts "egocentric children, playing with pretty blocks and shouting "See what I made!")"

And Saskia Sassen at The Guardian summed up her work saying that:

"She understood it is the weaving of multiple strands that makes the city so much more than the sum of its residents, or its grand buildings, or its corporate economy."

 And as you can guess from the image above, Google is celebrating her with today's cartoon/image.

Roy H. DeBoer

Roy H. DeBoer, FASLA, CLA # 00001
Professor Emeritus of Landscape Architecture

 May 7, 1933 - March 17, 2014

Feel free to post memories in the comments section.

Remembering Stu Appel

It is with sadness that we begin the week remembering one of the area's great landscape architects, Stuart David Appel, FASLA. Rutgers students were blessed to have him as a teacher and guest critic.

When he was nominated by the NJ ASLA  to become an ASLA Fellow, the summary of their statement was this:

"Stuart Appel was nominated by the New Jersey Chapter for his design contributions to the profession and his commitment to teaching and mentoring. The senior principal of Wells Appel, he has created a body of work that reflects a profound understanding of context, culture, and natural systems. Concentrated in the mid-Atlantic region, his work has earned scores of national and regional design awards. His commitment to scholarship and mentorship has remained a stalwart of his practice, evidenced through his teaching at Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Rutgers University. Appel earned his bachelor of environmental studies in 1978 and bachelor of landscape architecture in 1979 from the State University of New York–Syracuse and an MBA from LaSalle University in 1990."

Places and Spaces has written about Stu before. He offered us some great insight into work in Dubai and Qatar (not that our notes reflect on the quality of the lecture). And we recorded his answer when he was asked to name his 3 favorite examples of landscape architecture that he'd ever visited:

1) Piazza San Marco, Venice
2) Villa Montefiore in Tuscany
3) Yosemite Park

Most importantly he was loved and respected and just a great person to be around.

Vonnegut dead

Kurt Vonnegut has passed away.

One of the great talks I saw in college was by Kurt Vonnegut and he was still making the rounds in recent years. His writing was groundbreaking and still reads as fresh and fun. His official website seems to have gone into a fairly inert state. But Archive.org lets you review what was there last year.