Good news for Barcelona

The City of Barcelona is banning Segways from the central portions of the city. They are considered part of the class of transportation that could be called "novelty urban transit". Like duck rides in Boston or beerbikes in Amsterdam, they ensure that tourists have a visible impact on the city they visit. In a cultural setting they are the equivalent of poor ecotourism.

Writing on The Atlantic CityLab Feargus O'Sullivan says, " It would surely be going too far to damn Segways as Satan’s chariots, but they still need to go. Barcelona’s waterfront should be an open-air living room for the city, not a place where the experience of the city is simulated for motorized, walkway-clogging tourist groups."

DeBoer Travel Prize reports

LA Spring Lecture Series presents Roy DeBoer Travel Prize winners reports

Wednesday, February 2 at 4:00 pm,

Cook/Douglas Lecture Hall;

3 College Farm Road

New Brunswick, NJ

Traveling is an essential experience for landscape architects. That is even more important for students of landscape architecture—learning creative design for livable places demands first hand studies of existing landscapes. The Roy DeBoer Travel Prize offers students of our depar tment the opportunity to travel and experience landscapes in the US and abroad. In this presentation the four 2010 prize winners will share their experiences and impressions:

Zena Zahalan, Paris

Erin Greenwood, Pacific Coast Highway

Jenna Gatto, Grand Canyon & La Bash

Alexandra Bolinder-Gibsand, Sweden

The presentations will be followed by a reception at Blake Hall.

Spring Break Idea: NY/NJ

So the other ideas were too far away?

If you aren't leaving New Jersey, then try out some nearby sites. You could try this short list of notable NJ landscapes which includes Pier A, Grounds for Sculpture, Van Vorst Park and the Appalachian Trail. Or you could try out our new Rutgers/NJASLA NJ LA Sites Database to explore some landscape sites - it includes NJASLA design award winners like the Smithville Floating Walkway and the Turtleback Zoo.

You could head into Philly and explore Fairmount Park and the Patrick Dougherty sculptures at Morris Arboretum or you could take a train to New York and see his masterpiece at Prospect Park.

Then again, you could just pick up a book.

Spring Break Idea: Portland

I know that the West Coast is a ways to go for Spring Break, but if you want to see something new you may need to travel.

I've been taking pictures of Portland since before the digital camera age.  It is a great city for public space and photography. 

While the light rail might first catch your eye, they also have award winning gutters and water treatment sites.

I've already posted some photos of Portland's famous Tanner Springs Park.

Jamison Square Park is already a popular and well known stop for design fans.






Halprin's parks are outstanding.

For those who like larger landscapes, Portland has several new urbanist or TOD communities including Orenco Station. 

Mt St Helens is just a couple hours away (and Mt Hood is closer).

And the trip to the beach is different than at Daytona.

Spring Break Ideas: Florida

Are you going to Florida for Spring Break this year? Why not do something useful while you are there?

Hargreaves has added to Miami's special spots to visit with his new South Pointe Park.

Elsewhere in the Miami area are a monorail, art deco, a Noguchi, Vizcaya, and a myriad of expensive fountains and plazas.



Up in the panhandle you could visit Seaside.





Or Disney's fantastical world of Celebration.





It even looks like chap tickets might still be available.

LiveBlog: Kat Kohler on The Netherlands

The LiveBlog is back! The common lecture is back and begins with Kat Kohler (seen to the left, sketching in Spain) speaking about The Netherlands.

Ms. Kohler is a recent winner of the DeBoer Travel Prize which supported a study trip she took last summer to the Netherlands. Her investigation endeavored to explore a myriad of ways that the Dutch have dealt with water as an environmental hazard. Needless to say, they are pretty concerned about sea level rise. An interesting example was the Oostershelde Storm Surge Barrier which protects during storms, but lets the tides flow otherwise.

If you are an LA student at Rutgers (with a 3.0 or better), you can apply to take your own study trip this summer. You'll need to write a proposal that impresses the reviewers with a serious question and approach to the investigation. Applications for DeBoer Travel Prize will be due the Monday after Spring Break. Details will be posted in Blake Hall.

Where would you go? Remember, you can't win if you don't apply.

Isolated environments

Sine our studio is looking at a tourist environment that might become increasingly isolated, it might be useful to look at other parallels in the tourism world:

• Dewees Island in South Carolina creates a pretty chic ecopreserve. All of the houses are new treehouses.
• Catalina Island is isolated and has bison, but also has large facilities and lots of visitors.
• Kentucky's Land Between the Lakes is really a product of the TVA, but now includes a National Recreation Area and bison.
  
• Florida's Sanibel Island and The Sanibel Plan were a product of Wallace McHarg Roberts and Todd and is considered a landmark in planning.

Some of this is clearly just your basic ecotourism stuff, but on some of these you can see how design really makes a difference.

South Boston Maritime Park and Ned's Park

The weather for our Boston field trip looks clear and cool. (As you can see from a few of these photos, it was not quite as clear last time we visited.) So it should be great when we revisit this relatively new plaza in Boston so I can get better photos, but also so we can see it under better terms. The South Boston Maritime Park was designed by Halvorson Design Partnership and won a 2006 ASLA General Design Award of Honor. It includes a large open lawn panel and a seating area for dining.





Across the street is Ned's Park (or Eastport Park) which got featured in LAM twice in 2004 for its user-friendliness and popularity and questions about its disposability. This park is more of a sculpture park, crowded with interesting elements, but you can visit and decide for yourself if you think it has sufficient organization and structure to unite the pieces.

Stata Center from above

The air photos of this place don't even look real.


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MIT has issues with it. What do other people think?

Capitol lawn statue of George Washington as Zeus

While preparing for our upcoming fall field trip to Boston, I was reminded of this classic photograph from the Library of Congress showing a school group studying statue of George Washington as Zeus that spent some time on the US Capitol lawn. The story goes that the topless founding father had already been booted out of the Rotunda for his inappropriate dress and onto the lawn before he got a home in the Smithsonian.

Of course, as we think ahead to the trip, I hope that our school group can dress as nattily as this one with sun hats and carefully ironed knickers.

LiveBlog: 1st lecture/Fall Field Trip

We're going to Boston!

October 9-11 will be the Fall Field Trip for Landscape Architecture students to visit Boston and Cambridge with some classmates and faculty. Boston is a notable place to learn about landscape architecture because of its rich history Olmsted projects (and Olmsted disciple projects) and Harvard and MIT grads working in the area, combing with an unusual landform and development pressures. From Jane Jacobs' essays about the North End to Olmsted's never-completed vision for World's End, we'll be connecting theory, design, practice, and personal experiences on the ground.

Starting Thursday morning, Pam Stewart will have a sign-up sheet in Blake Hall 113 for EP&D students. On Wednesday September 16th any remaining spaces will be made available to other SEBS students. All signed-up students will need to make a downpayment of $75 by September 24th.

Make sure you wear comfortable shoes!








Check out the Big Dig...


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So, as part of the new speaker series tradition of commentary, what do you want to see there? What should we skip?

End of summer photos III

The Petrified Forest and the historic Painted Desert Inn.

End of summer photos

First, some photos from the Grand Canyon.






The recommended reading for this site is Stephen Pyne's How the Canyon Became Grand which acknowledges social processes beyond the geology.

StreetView City Tours - Rome

The Pantheon
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Piazza Navona
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Another great public space is Piazza de Popolo

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The Tiber

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Vatican
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Trevi Fountain

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Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana

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Tivoli

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StreetView city tours - Barcelona

Google's StreetView has expanded to include many European cities, including London, Rome and Barcelona. It isn't quite good enough to let us teach our study abroad classes in our computer labs in New Jersey, but it is a nice way to get a first peek at these great cities. This week we'll take some virtual tours of cities. Wherever possible we have embedded the StreetView right into the blog post, so you can click on it move it around or "drive" up the street.

We'll start with Places and Spaces' favorite European city, Barcelona.

The famous pedestrian way, Las Ramblas, before the crowds descend upon it

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Casa Milà or La Pedrera

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Here is the Parc Diagonal

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Gehry's Fish

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Sagrada Familia

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Looking up at Montjuic

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Some of the spots you can see would be hard for real tourists to visit accidentally, like the Calatrava bridge at Bac de Roda

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Gaudi's chapel at Colonia Guell (which is nowhere near Parc Guell)

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Camp Nou

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La Segrera

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And no trip to Barcelona is complete without a stop at the beach

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What to see: California

A frequent reader asked what to see between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Unfortunately, I waited a bit late to post them so these are rushed. Some are old favorites and some are things I haven't yet visited.

No warranty is implied by these recommendations

Renzo Piano's California Academy of Sciences

M.H. de Young Memorial Museum by Pierre de Meuron and Jacques Herzog

Panhandle Bandshell

The Berkeley Campus

Muir Woods and the Mountain Theater on Mount Tamalpais

The Stanford campus

The 17-mile Drive has its own Wikipedia page

The Santa Cruz Boardwalk


Hearst Castle

Santa Barbara

The Getty


Santa Monica and Venice Beach



The Gamble House



LA's Union Station

A show at Walt Disney Concert Hall?

Urth Cafe (if Entourage hasn't ruined it)



If you are willing to overshoot LA and hist Orange County I would add

Noguchi's California Scenario in Costa Mesa



Whatever is finished at the Great Park of Orange County

Our readers are both tasteful and well traveled, what would you recommend?