The Passing of Doc Hamilton

 We are sad to share the news that Dr. Bruce "Doc" Hamilton has passed away. He was a fixture on the faculty in the Rutgers Department of Landscape Architecture and the various permutations of Cook College. He was the Director of Rutgers Gardens, moving it towards a larger goal of serving the state as a university public garden while lovingly pruning, mowing, and planting as much he could possibly take on himself. He is remembered with the Hamilton Award, the university’s national horticulture recognition that bears his name.   

For years we had offices across the hall from one another and had countless of those end-of-the-day moments that ranged from touching to humorous. But the real treat was going on field trips with him, from Boston to Washington DC. Revisiting Dumbarton Oaks with him was a revelation and discovering newly built parks in Boston broadened my first look at them. 

Peter Wacker

When I first came to Rutgers, Peter Wacker was quick to welcome me. He and I had both attended LSU for graduate school and, despite having few mutual acquaintances there, we shared connections to remarkable places in the Louisiana landscapes. He was also an incredible advocate for New Jersey and schooled me an appreciation for the landscapes I was discovering here in his home state.

Before I knew it, I found myself on graduate committees with him where I got to watch him in action as an educator. These were some of my first experiences as a graduate faculty member and were incredibly formative. But I made the mistake of thinking he was just innocuous friendly faculty member. As I began to attend meetings in other corners of Rutgers and all across New Jersey, I discovered that he was an academic celebrity. Every one seemed to know him, counted on his expertise, read his writings, and wanted to be sure I knew him too. But which Professor Wacker were they telling me about? The geographer? The historian? The expert on NJ land use? The researcher? The teacher? There seemed to be many Peter Wackers all leaving an indelible mark on New Jersey.

Sadly, we lost Peter Wacker this week. I expect that there will be a few other detailed professional obituaries later. But a first obituary is posted for those who did not know him as well.

MIchael Sorkin

The obituaries of Michael Sorkin will struggle to capture all of his work: architect, theorist, urbanist, author, professor. I will be interested to see which projects they list as his most prominent. But I am still struck by his comments about the Oculus in his 2016 piece, The Cathedral at Ground Zero.

I really like the big beast as both object and space, and already feel sad about its imminent squishing between the two crappy towers that will flank it. If only it could just walk—or fly—away! Indeed, Calatrava had originally wanted its wings to flap, and I sympathize with his disappointment that this motility was value-engineered into stasis.

I hope his passing doesn't get lost in a tidal wave of sad news. He touched a lot of designers, planners and students and worked to make so many cities better.

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.

Terry Brown

Landscape architecture has lost one of its great educators, Terry Brown of Michigan. In a remembrance posted on the University's website by is former colleagues, it was mentioned that he worked at Architects Collaborative and was an alum of the University of Wisconsin.

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 Peter Rona

The integrative nature of my work inserts me into projects with a wide variety of scientists and other academics. After all, we need expertise on soils and cultural landscapes, hydrology and plant science. So many different parts of the university seem

Still, as a deep sea scientist, Peter Rona seems like he might be working in a space that I wouldn't interact with. But a casual conversation with him 10 years ago led to one of his students taking a geomatics class. His project mapping the depths of Hudson Canyon was great because it pushed me into new analysis questions while helping him see new aspects of his own research. Since then, Rona's Engineering Geophysics program has given me a chance to remain connected to this remarkably different perspective on space and landscapes.

Peter Rona was a remarkable scientist and I am still amazed to see the breadth of the work that made up his life work. Pretty amazing. Dr. Rona will be greatly missed on the Cook Campus.

On the passing of the Father of GIS

GISUser.com is reporting that Roger Tomlinson, the Father of GIS, has passed away. He is credited with giving us the name, GIS, for this world-changing technology. For this historic figure, his honors were many as shown in his lengthy UCGIS Fellows bio.

In an interview with Ben and Sue Niemann, you can find nice summary of an amazing career (part 1 and part 2). What did he say was the key to his success? "Serendipity!"  In 1961 he took plane ride where, simply by chance, his seatmate turned out to be the guy with whom he could innovate key steps forward. The amazing thing is how much he had to create from scratch and hom much computing work was undertaken with extraordinarily limited computing resources. He told the Niemanns:

“I had very little knowledge about actual computer capacity. In those days nobody in government did. The only computer programmers were in private companies and I needed to talk to these people, to ask if my ideas were possible. My input was system design; their input was knowledge about computers. It became a productive relationship, and it happened at the time when transistors were allowing computers to be information processors rather than only calculating engines. So there was a convergence of ideas, needs, skills, and technology that set the stage for the development of GIS.”

He went on with innovative coding, building hardware (including inventing a 48x48 drum scanner) and ultimately building an institution. In 1967 he made an amazing video showing the world the power of GIS. Data for Decision Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 is a must watch for serious GIS students.

Esri Canada posted a nice statement on Tomlinson. The GIS Lounge has an article as well.

The big papers haven't posted obituaries yet, but they will. When you think about the pervasive nature of GIS, there are few innovators whose work has touched more people than Tomlinson. Even those living without access to technology are having the landscapes around them cataloged, analyzed, and changed with Tomlinson's brainchild.

Thanks Roger.

James van Sweden

James van Sweden, the renowned landscape architect who used luscious plant materials to create  colorful and dynamic landscapes with his partner Wolfgang Oehme, passed away last Friday. The NY Times has a full obituary.

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.

Jane Holtz Kay

Architecture and planning has lost one of its most notable critics, Jane Holtz Kay. The NY Times published an obit a few weeks ago. The Nation has now offered a lengthy remembrance. 

Sad end of the year

Famous landscape architect, Wolfgang Oehme, has passed away.  His use of native and meadow plants may be his signature, but his career covered a lot of other ground.

A little more on Doc Reich

From the Advocate.

Bill Mitchell

Digital city pioneer Bill Mitchell has passed away.