Projects to watch

Curbed has named 10 Megadevelopments to keep an eye on. With one in Boston, one in DC, one in Philly and two in NYC, it will be easy for our students to watch them as they happen.

Boston photos

Boston and Cambridge

Sea level rise in Boston

The Atlantic explores the consequences of sea-level rise with some maps of the most impacted areas of Boston. A new report from the Boston Harbor Association provides details on properties that would be most severely impacted, but it appears to be much of the city as we know it now.

Boston: From Google's airborne perspective

Olmsted's World's End:

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Maritime Park and Ned's Park

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MVV's Children's Museum


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Peter Walker's Tanner Fuontain


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Public Garden and Boston Common


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Christopher Columbus Park


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Christian Science Plaza


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Boston: Cambridge Campuses

As Rutgers LA prepares for yet another Fall Field Trip, we are continuing to look at some interesting and intriguing places. Even if you can't join in on the trip, you should stop and see some of these notable landscapes sometime soon.

For many students a real highlight is a trip across the Charles to see the campuses at Harvard and MIT. Of course, we spend much of the time dodging questions comparing Rutgers campuses with these.

Boston: The Big Dig

As Rutgers LA prepares for yet another Fall Field Trip, we are continuing to look at some interesting and intriguing places. Even if you can't join in on the trip, you should stop and see some of these notable landscapes sometime soon.

Often called the most expensive highway project in US history, Boston's Big Dig created a serpentine swatch of greenness wrapping around downtown. Boston.com details the parcels that make up the project. Since my photos fail to capture the full array of spaces created, you might also want to check out this NY Times slideshow.

Like the High Line, the Big Dig has become an enduring landmark that is likely to be the subject of any number of graduate seminar papers and theses over the next decade. So it is good to see it now as background for future readings and revisits.

Boston: New England Holocaust Memorial

As Rutgers LA prepares for yet another Fall Field Trip, we are continuing to look at some interesting and intriguing places. Even if you can't join in on the trip, you should stop and see some of these notable landscapes sometime soon.

One very interesting place is the New England Holocaust Memorial. It is squeezed into a piece of land that is little more than a wide median between a very busy downtown street and the local spur for parking and deliveries. But somehow it makes you look past that and focus on the message.

It may have actually been even better in the rain than on a nice day.

Stantec internship

Here is a landscape architecture internship at Stantec's Boston office.

Its Duany vs. Harvard!

In the urban design smack-down of the decade, we see the new urbanists and the landscape urbanists gearing up for battle.  Who will win? 

Fall Field Trip Revisited

The 2009 Fall Field Trip to Boston was complicated by the filming of a movie at our motel. On the lighter side, we got to see Ben Affleck and Jon Hamm.

For a few hours an entire city block is transformed; it is a radical urban change.  Overnight the hotel gets a new sign and the abandoned fast food place gets repainted. When we work on places like this, it takes months to get a light standards changed and new sidewalks.

Spring Break Idea: Boston or DC

Can't take off for the week for a trip out West?  how about a long weekend in DC or Boston? 

I have posted enough on both that you can just follow my threads for fun things to do in DC or Boston.

On our last visit to MIT someone had mysteriously cleaned out Olin's rain garden. What would it look like now?

In DC you could go someplace familiar, like Dumbarton Oaks, to see it in a less familiar season. 





Or you could visit the new Capitol Visitor's Center.

There is so much to see there that you'll find something new even on your 10th or 20th visit as long as you are looking around.

Friday Photos: Dog tags

These photos are from the Dog Tag Memorial in the garden at the Old North Church. It is a memorial for fallen soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Friday Photos: Boston Children's Museum

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."