Beatrix Farrand documentary

CORRECTION: On Wednesday at 7 join us for a visit from Karyl Evans as we learn about her documentary on Beatrix Farrand.

This is the first documentary ever produced about the life and gardens of Beatrix Farrand, the most successful female landscape architect in early 20th century America and one of the founders of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

This compelling film chronicles the life of Beatrix Farrand (1872-1959), the niece of Edith Wharton, who grew up in the privileged world of the East Coast elite and fought through the challenges of working in a male-dominated profession to design over 200 landscape commissions during her remarkable 50-year career.
The documentary takes viewers on an inspiring journey across the country as we explore her personal story and many of her most spectacular gardens, including Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.; the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at the New York Botanical Garden; Garland Farm in Bar Harbor, Maine; the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden in Bar Harbor, Maine; and her California gardens.

The narrative is recounted through interviews with Farrand scholar Diana Balmori, landscape historian Judith Tankard, and landscape architect Shavaun Towers. Current photographs and footage of more than 50 Farrand-related sites along with archival images from the Beatrix Farrand Archives at the University of California Berkeley are woven together to bring to life Beatrix Farrand’s extraordinary story, reminding us why her awe-inspiring work is still relevant to this day.

Karyl Evans is a six-time Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. Ms. Evans, owner of Karyl Evans Productions LLC in North Haven, Connecticut has produced more than 50 historical documentary projects over her 30 year career. Karyl is on the National Speakers List for the Garden Club of America and is a Fellow at Yale University.

To learn more about the work of Karyl Evans visit: KarylEvansProductions.com 

Martha Schwartz

In last night's Cekada Memorial Lecture, Martha Schwartz mentioned some notable projects worth looking at more if you don't know them yet.

The 1994 Village of Yorkville Park

The 




Manchester Exchange




Grand Canal Square in Dublin

Guest Lecture

CHRIS LAGUARDIA

LaGuardia Design Group

“Landscape Architecture in the Hamptons: the work and processes of The LaGuardia Design Group”

Christopher LaGuardia FASLA founded the LaGuardia Design Group in 1993 and has received numerous awards and accolades including the ASLA Award of Excellence in Residential Design, The ASLA Honor Award, and Several NYASLA Merit Awards.

The LaGuardia Design group works at designing Landscapes that are sustainable and sensitive to the highly varied natural and manmade landscapes that constitute the Hamptons resort community.

Additionally, LaGuardia has lectured on his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the ASLA National Conference, The New York Center for Architecture and the Parish Art Museum.

Please see our schedule for other lectures.

Newsweek interview with Martha Schwartz

Martha Schwartz is coming to town this month. Start preparing by reading her interview in Newsweek. Although it is relatively short, she squeezes in quite a bit:

"We  design places where people can interact and connect with each other. We plan so that people can live in a healthy, walkable environment and enjoy public spaces. We work in an integrative, collaborative and fluid process in order to design unique places that create memory, identity, and move the spirit."

 

Lecture: The Gardens of Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte

CONNIE WEBSTER
Professor Emerita, Rutgers University
"The Gardens of Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte"

Wednesday, February 22, 2017 | 4:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Cook/Douglass Lecture Hall, Room 110, Cook Campus

Panel on Post-industrial Public Landscapes

Rutgers University - Landscape Architecture Common Lecture
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
4:00 – 5:30 p.m.
Loree Building - Auditorium 022, Cook Campus (click for Rutgers Map)

As part of common lecture series, the folks from the Forest Service, NYC Parks and CUNY who have been part of the Freshkills Park and the folks from Rutgers and Montclair State University, who have worked on Liberty State Park will be available to talk from 2-4 before the presentation in Room 148, Blake Hall.

Parking for visitors will be in Lot 87 at Blake Hall. It’s just a short walk to the Loree Building – right along Red Oak Lane.

Sommerfrische lecture

Christian Lippman

Technische Universität Berlin

Sommerfrische

Dr. Christian Lippmann has a long standing research interest in ecotourism and the impact of touristic ideals on landscape planning. Besides his “day job” as owner and CEO of a Berlin consulting firm focusing on organizational development, he recently completed his Ph.D. at Technische Universität Berlin with the title: “Sommerfrische as a spatial symbol of bourgeois life style - the social construction of touristic rural space”.

Sommerfrische is a particular German tourism phenomenon dating back to the turn of the last century, describing (petite) bourgeois spending parts of the summer in the country. The presentation will focus on space and architectural structures which are commonly identified as "rural“ or "pastoral“ and which are considered touristic destinations. The outcome will be a deeper understanding of the cultural perception of such destinations and why they are considered beautiful and picturesque locations.

Shelterbelt landscapes

There was a time when the government paid people to plant trees. In response to the Dust Bowl, FDR created the Prairie States Forestry (Shelterbelt) Project, 1935-1942, which used the CCC and WPA to plant windrows and forests. This was an attempt to plant 220 million trees on private lands across the great plains. The map below shows the scale of the efforts. 

Today's Common Lecture by Sara Karle looks back at the project and traces its current remnants.

Implementing the idea was not as easy as it might have seemed. The science behind the ideas evolved with the project, establishing the idea but gradually improving the understanding of what should be planted and where. Congress designated $1,000,000 annually for labor and the rest was handled through cooperative agreements.

Of the first 6 million trees, 4 million were cottonwoods because they were seen as fast growing. This was disaster relief and needed to be quick.

The impact today is a series of unusually wide corridors of mature trees growing across the plains. Check out Scott Drickey's amazing aerial photographs.

Parks lecture

Nette Compton
Senior Director of Park Central and City Park Development
The Trust for Public Land

Common Ground: Parks as a driver for public process and community empowerment 

Parks play a critical role in the civic life of cities - places to reflect, play, relax, and interact with the community. A successful park is not only based on its size, location, and physical features; the life of a park is in its ability to be used flexibly by a wide range of people, conveying a sense of ownership and welcoming that endear a park it its neighbors. Landscape architects must consider how best to create these vibrant public spaces not only through the built form of a park, but in the process itself. Community engagement in the process of building a park is not just an opportunity to receive feedback on program and layout; it is an opportunity to instill interest and momentum around the value of the park, fostering a network of stewards and advocates long after the ribbon is cut. Presentation to include a collection of case studies demonstrating this process, and a discussion of how landscape architects can play a central role in leading this process.

February 3, 2016 4:00 – 5:30 p.m.
Cook/Douglass Lecture Hall, Room 110
Cook Campus

LightBlog: P.R.O.

Our guests from the Peterson Rich Office discussed their high-profile project, 9x18. THeir second example was the ArtSpace Fold project. Check them out.

LiveBlog: Steward Pickett: Evolving Theoretical Frameworks for Urban Ecological Science

Rough notes from the Common Lecture

Steward Pickett

Evolving Theoretical Frameworks for Urban Ecological Science: The Global and Regional Metacity

"City" - downtown, suburbs, commercial, industrial, etc.  but the city encompasses more than just those areas

Old City assumptions include - We have long assumed that city and country are distinct

more after the break

Common Lecture: Sungkyung Lee

Rutgers University Landscape Architecture Common Lecture

April 16, 2014 from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m.

Cook/Douglass Lecture Hall, Room 110, Cook Campus  (click for Rutgers Map)   

Sungkyung Lee, an assistant professor in the University of Georgia, College of Environment and Design, enjoys service-learning projects where students work on landscape design with community partners in need of resources and support. Her area of research is social sustainability in the built environment, place-oriented urban design, restorative benefits of nature, and healing garden design.

Daniel Winterbottom lecture

Rutgers University Landscape Architecture Common Lecture 

March 26, 2014 

4:00 – 5:15 p.m. 

Cook/Douglass Lecture Hall, Room 110, Cook Campus 

Daniel Winterbottom, RLA, FASLA, a landscape architect with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tufts University and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington. His firm, Winterbottom Design Inc., focuses their practice on healing/restorative gardens. His research interests include the landscape as a cultural expression, ecological urban design and the role of restorative/healing landscapes in the built environment. He has been published widely in Northwest Public Health, Places, the New York Times, Seattle Times, Seattle P.I., Landscape Architecture Magazine. He has authored “Wood in the Landscape” and has contributed to several books on sustainable design, community gardens, therapeutic landscapes and community service learning.

He has developed several programs including the participatory design design/build program in 1995 where with his students he works with communities to design and build projects that address the social and ecological concerns of the community. He has completed projects in Seattle, New York City, Bedford Hills New York, Mexico, Guatemala, Bosnia/Herzegovina and Croatia. In 2006 he developed the Healing Garden Certificate program at the University of Washington.

Anita Bakshi Liveblog

Anita Bakshi
Is green always good? Landscapes of division and silence
(Note: as a live blog on a politically contested territory, I want to apologize in advance for notes that misconstrue Dr. Bakshi's comments with provocative links and comments that are probably unintentional)

In early 20th Century Jerusalem, Charles Robert Ashbee proposed eliminating some of the historic structures to create more enhanced views and green space. In part, this plan was based on his hope to return the city to what he called “the most perfect, medieval enceinte in existence.”

The area has areas called Mewat land, seen as unclaimed. But even village lands are contested, since the land outside of a village wall is seen as essential by the Palestinian village but available or unused by Israel.

Another type of land in these areas is the Peace Forest which is examined more closely in a documentary film called The Village Under the Forest.

Proposals for national parks become contentious for a variety of reasons. One of the examples was the City of David property which can be linked with a larger network of similar lands.

Our sense of connection and movement through connected lands is very different in our region than it is in Israel and Palestine. As such, evaluations of proposals (like the proposed Mount of Olives National Park) have to be considered from different perspectives than just those with which we might approach the situation.

Even neighborhoods, like Walaja, become contested territory.

Landscape as heritage
Mostar Bridge in Bosnia and Herzegovina 
Yad Vashem

Lecture - Anita Bakshi

Rutgers University Landscape Architecture Common Lecture February 12, 2014 from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. Cook/Douglass Lecture Hall, Room 110, Cook Campus Dr. Anita Bakshi completed her PhD in Architecture at the University of Cambridge, and is currently working as a Researcher with the Conflict in Cities Research Programme. Her PhD research on Cyprus focused on urban memory in the divided capital of Nicoisa – exploring personal memories and imaginings
related to Nicosia’s walled city center and the Buffer Zone, an uninhabited no-man’s land, that 
divides it. She received her BA degree in architecture from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California at Berkeley. She has worked in architectural design firms in Berkeley, Chicago, and Istanbul as well as researched architectural heritage in Berlin and Cappadocia, Turkey. Current research interests include memory and history in divided cities, the design of memorial structures, the politicization of heritage, mapping and visual research methodologies for complex urban environments, and the overlap between urban spatial practices and issues of social and economic justice.

Public lecture on coastal habitat restoration

Wednesday, January 29 at 4pm

Cook/Douglass Lecture Hall, Room 110, Cook Campus     

Carl Alderson is a Marine Resource Specialist with the NOAA Restoration Center, located at the Sandy Hook JJ Howard Marine Science Lab in Highlands, NJ. Carl provides oversight of coastal habitat restoration projects through NOAA’s Damage Assessment Remedial and Restoration Program (DARRP) and Community-based Restoration Grants Program (CRP) in the mid-Atlantic region. He is a graduate of Rutgers University, and is a Licensed Landscape Architect in NJ. Before joining NOAA, Carl worked for the City of New York and led a decade long effort to restore tidal wetlands, marine bird and fish habitat as compensation for natural resources damages resulting from oil spills in NY Harbor. Carl is recognized as a national leader in restoration of coastal wetlands and bay habitats.

The rest of the schedule looks great too:

GIS Day Common Lecture Live Blog: Erika Svendson

Visualizing the Social: Understanding and Mapping Urban Environmental Stewardship
Erika Svendsen, Research Social Scientist
People and Their Environments: Social Science Supporting Natural Resource Management and Policy
NYC Urban Field Station, Northern Research Station, US Forest Service

Cultivating more places of places of social meaning - a little green or a lot
Different research types
...Intensive-Extensive + Social-Biophysical
  
Inspired by Prof. Bill Burch at Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
Human Ecosystem Framework (HEF)
Virtuous vs. Viscous Cycles - Disturbance can be useful

Stewards as first responders.- adaptive/polycentric
Gardeners as first responders - urban fiscal crisis 
...Strengthening social cohesion and fostering new forms of governance
Resilience cycles
Giuliani and community gardens

Book/blog: Greening in the Red Zone - this isn't just for wealthy urban enclaves


Joplin Tornado Memorial - USFS still has a forester there, helping the city recover - extending the recovery timeline - already planted over 5000 trees

Nature: As asset and a threat


Stewardship mapping
STEW-MAP Project
Online and mail-in survey
initial n=5861
final n=2517

NYC Oasis map  Mapping stewardship "turf" like it was gang turf

Network analysis identified the individuals/groups that served as nodes within the massive stewardship network in NYC- bridge, broker, and bi-modal governing



Timeless threads and places of Social Meaning
Jamaica Bay neighborhoods after Superstorm Sandy
zone mapping for each of the parks - a new social layer for NYC Parks
found lots of 'mad love' for parks
Example: Frank Charles Memorial Park
Example: Sea Song Memorial

Tree planting helps strengthen democracy

Stewardship is a restorative mechanism, it is a part of our social infrastructure



See also: Stewardship, learning, and memory in disaster resilience (paper)
See also: Integrating grey and green infrastructure to improve the health and well-being of urban populations
And myriad other papers

Harvard University on MVV

Harvard Magazine has published a cover story on Michael Van Valkenburgh. Since we are hearing about ecology at his Brooklyn Bridge Park tomorrow, it would be a good time to read it.

Van Valkenburgh’s resistive independence is described well by Alan [sic] Shearer, M.L.A. ’94, Ph.D. ’03, a professor at the University of Texas and former MVVA employee: “Others at the GSD in the 1980s and ’90s turned to varieties of art—abstract minimalism, pop art, and land art—as a way to infuse the profession with new ideas. In contrast, Michael’s thinking—about gardens, plants, ephemeral states in natural processes, and precedents of landscape architecture—was trying to reclaim the profession’s core.”

Live Blog: Ilonka Angalet on Airport Landscapes

Airport Landscapes
Ilonka Angalet (RULA '73) - RU LA Outstanding Alumni
2013 NY/NJ Port Authority

6 Airports:
JFK, Newark, and LaGuardia
Stewart, Atlantic City, Teterboro
   total acreage of 15,176 Acres

Lots of lawn, scrub, and pavement

Started with a 1960's court case that found the airport liable for bird strikes caused by water pools near the JFK Airport Chapel
By 1979 legislation required airports to develop plans to address the danger to public safety

Bird strikes has a surprisingly lengthy entry in Wikipedia

(Bonus link: Bird Strike Myths. Don't read this if you are about to fly.)

Different plants are more (or less) attractive to birds than others - FAA advisory circular tells them that they must not use plants that attract birds
If a neighbor (within 5 miles) attracts birds that are the cause of the flight, they are liable.

"Lawns should consist of select Tall Fescue seed cultivars that thrive on low nutrient, low water availability and that are a 90% endophyte enhanced variety."

Lawn areas should include trees like the English Oak and Hornbeam that produce fruit that do attract problem birds. Fruit seasonality is also an issue, since non-migratory roosting birds are often attracted to winter fruits.

Alternative practices include placing nursery containers around site.

The areas around airports have great potential for sustainable biomass production for a biomass power generation station on NYNJPA property.

The airports currently get compost from off site, but as much as 80% is not up to standards. An on-site composting process could contribute to a healthier landscape and allow the PA to monitor the quality closer.

Animal tracks


 
View Larger Map

Common Lecture: Ilonka Angalet

RULA Common Lecture – 3:55 pm          October 16, 2013

Cook/Douglass Lecture Hall, Room 110, Cook Campus     

Today at the Port Authority’s six airports, there are 1.3 million flights and 109 million passengers, annually.  The six airports have a combine total acreage of 15,176 Acres.  The NY/NJ Regional Airports are located on relatively flat, low, lying areas and former wetlands along our regions coastal shores and waterways.  The Airports are all located within the Atlantic flyway.  The Atlantic flyway is a major migration route for over 300 species of birds.

Ilonka Angalet, ASLA LEED BD+C, Rutgers - CAES ’73 and Landscape Architect for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will present: Landscape Architecture and Preventing Wildlife Hazards to Aviation- Rethinking airport land-cover paradigms.  The presentation will focus on how and why the landscapes at our regional airports are attractive to birds, the consequences of bird strikes, airport wildlife management and how airport landscapes have changed over the last 35 years.

If you need more information or directions, please reply or call 848-932-9311.