Mundane Manhattan

While not exactly mundane, part of the fun of the Manhattan hike is seeing the places that are part of the daily life of Manhattanites.

Manhattan

The Manhattan hike started at Marble Hill (above) and finished at Battery Park at the Southern tip of Manhattan.  Some of what we saw was pretty unexpected or world famous.  Museums and giant roses and buildings by Wright, Gehry, Morphosis, CArlos Zapata Studio and SANAA.

 

Manhattan Hike 2011

Well, the Manhattan hike is over.  Highlights included:

The new Architecture School at CCNY

A raccoon carrying what appeared to be a baby (23mb)
A brief tour of the Hispanic Society museum
The New Museum
The Liz Christy Community Garden
The Ravine
Paley Park
Greenacre Park (sort of)
And a giant teddy bear

Photos will follow.

Here is the KMZ file.

Save GPS

Do you really want you next flight to be based on sight instead of GPS?  If not, you might want to check out the Coalition to Save Our GPS.  The good news is that this appears to primarily be a problem in the US (it is a problem being created by the FCC), so wars overseas and international flights should be unaffected.

Project for Public Spaces is redesigning Zion and Breen's design for Triangle Park in Lexington, KY.  The park was a notable icon for the city and for Zion and Breen over the last few decades, but the owners have decided it is due for an update.  The NJ firm, Zion and Breen, was well known for modernist landscape architecture and a pretty extensive knowledge of fountains.  The wall of fountains at Triangle Park required a massive pumping system and looked great when lit at night, which is part of why this park has been an Lexington Landmark and photographic icon for 30 years.  But Zion and Breen also designed the famous waterwall that we saw this weekend at Paley Park (see below).

SCOTUS Quote

"If a policeman must know the Constitution, why not a planner?"

- Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.

Cekada Memorial Lecture: Kristina Hill

LiveBlog: Jim Welsh

Jim Welsh
Thomas Balsley Associates

...We're Halfway There.  Livin' on a Prayer

Starts with a personal history inspired by The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

He encourages us to go back and check out their old award-winning projects too.  And then visit, since many of them are in New York City. 

The first project is the Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park in Tampa next to the Kiley Gardens.  Some elements are not for the reasons they seem, like a dog run which is about ensuring that there is a steady presence of eye on the park from sunrise on.  Custom designed site furnishings are a standard tool in their efforts to make a design experience unique.

Main Street Garden Park was one of the first new parks in downtown Dallas in several years. 

They also recently completed the Zen Garden at the Intercontinental Hotel in NYC.

Balsley partnered with Stantec to work on the Heritage Park at Yankee Stadium.  Partnerships like this are pretty important for making special projects work.

Hunter's Point South will be an extension of the Gantry Park project.

The Master Plan for Binghamton University builds on an existing campus that resembles an upsidedown brain in plan view.  Balsley offered design ideas for turning some of the underutilized spaces on campus into more student-friendly and greener spaces.

Ferry Point Park in the West Bronx is being redesigned to include a Jack Nicklaus golf course and turn a contaminated site into a meaningful green space for local residents.  Turning the waterfront into a quality space and integrating environmental features and native grasses.

And then we got into life lessons, but I'll spare Jim from having them on the Internet.

Common Lecture: Jim Welsh...We're Halfway There. Livin' on a Prayer

LA Spring Lecture Series presents Jim Welsh

Wednesday, April 13 at 4:00 pm,

110 Cook/Douglas Lecture Hall;

...We're Halfway There.  Livin' on a Prayer

Jim Welsh is a local guy turned senior associate at the internationally recognized and award winning firm of Thomas Balsley Associates.  He will present selected recent works of the firm and share some lessons about getting a job, advancement and life in general that he learned during the first 20 years of his career as a landscape architect.

Jim grew up in the shadows of Rutgers, playing as a kid in the display gardens and leading cross country practice runs for Saint Peters High School through the College Avenue, Busch and Cook campuses.  He graduated from Rutgers in 1991 but started his career in the landscape industry years prior by working at Bocchieri's Nursery and Landscape.

This helped to pay for his education at Middlesex County College and Rutgers.  After graduation, he his primary employment was at CUH2A in Princeton as a junior landscape architect.  While at CUH2A, he also did freelance work with Garden Associates Landscape Architecture and maintained his own residential design practice.  He was certified in NJ as a landscape architect in 1994. 

Jim moved on to become a senior landscape architect at El Taller Colaborativo in 1996 and became a partner in charge of landscape architects, civil and traffic engineers 2001.  He also taught in Rutgers Landscape Architecture Department during this time.  After 15 years of working in architecture/engineering firms, he decided to see first-hand how a landscape architecture firm operated.  He joined Thomas Balsley Associates as a senior associate in 1996.

Getting around Guangzhou

Stop thinking about Manhattan and start thinking about the new emerging cities of the planet.  These are the places where new planning and design ideas will really get put to the test.  While they are often a magnet for notable designs, they are also creating a massive set of problems for planners.  China's Guangzhou is one of the fastest growing cities in the world and is trying to deal with a level of congestion and a need for transit on a scale that most cities can't even imagine.  One of their solutions has been to develop a comprehensive transportation system centered on a Bus Rapid Transit system that is featured in a new video from StreetFilms.

Funny urban art

OakOak is into urban art with a sense of humor.

Climate Change talk

LESLEY-ANN DUPIGNY-GIROUX

Associate Professor

University of Vermont
VT State Climatologist

Identifying and addressing the challenges to promoting climate literacy among K-grey populations


Friday, April 8, 2011 - 3:00 PM
Lucy Stone Hall, B115 - Livingston Campus

A Stake in the Sand

How big is the debate over property rights?  Read A Stake in the Sand for a story of a tough fight from Florida last year.

Watch the grid of Manhattan appear

As the Manhattan grid turns 200 years old, The NY Times has created a cool online map that shows old maps overlaid on the current grid.  Check out the northern end to see how the river got moved.  That is also where we'll be starting our hike down Manhattan island on April 9th.

Witold Rybczynski

The AIANY is hosting Witold Rybczynski to talk about his latest book, Makeshift Metropolis, on Monday.

Maps for International Cartographic Association (ICA)

Seeking Map Submissions for International Map Exhibit, 25th International Cartographic

The U.S. National Committee of the International Cartographic Association (ICA) invites you to submit your current publications of maps, atlases, and other cartographic products to the Cartographic Exhibition at the 2011 International Cartographic Conference in France. The 25th International Cartographic Conference will convene in Paris the week of 3-8 July 2011.

The ICC Cartographic Exhibition is the premier international forum for displaying maps, atlases, and other cartographic products. It provides an excellent opportunity to feature the superior quality and diverse range of American cartography. Awards will be given by an international panel of judges to products exemplifying excellence in cartography. We encourage you to contribute to this exhibit.

Entry Forms (https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dGJCT2U5Vm1Ob1EyanRfdG01ckkzcmc6MA)must be submitted no later than March 31 to reserve space for your entry. A separate entry form should be submitted for each item. The information on these forms will be included in a printed catalog of exhibit items for conference participants.

What to enter:

U.S. Map Exhibit items must be received by April 15th, 2011.

Please provide:
two copies of any maps or panel displays
one copy of any table display (atlases, globes, etc.) or digital products

After completing the online Entry Form (https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dGJCT2U5Vm1Ob1EyanRfdG01ckkzcmc6MA), send exhibit items to the U.S. Map Exhibit coordinator at this address by April 15, 2011:

Stretching their legs

On Saturday the Landscape Architecture Club is taking a hike from the northern tip of Manhattan (Marble Hill) to the southern tip (Battery Park).   If you are strong enough and motivated you should contact Hany Hanafy.  It is a great chance to see a different side of the City.  Here are some samples from last year's hike:

Worth the bus ride

Civic Square Building, Room 113
33 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ
Thursday, March 3, 2011


2010- 11 BLOUSTEIN COLLOQUIUM SPEAKER SERIES
The Many Faces of Sustainability
by
Signe Nielsen
Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects,
Department of Urban Design and
Landscape Architecture, Pratt Institute

This presentation addresses the growing understanding that “sustainability” encompasses not just the environment but issues related to economic, social justice, human health and community stakeholder participation.

The topic will be discussed using the South Bronx as an exemplary master planning process that led to signicant federal, state and city funding for six first phase projects that are currently in design or construction.


Sponsored by RAPPS and the Graduate Student Association,
in collaboration with the Department of History, Rutgers University

Spring 2011 Environmental Planning Lecture

Landscape Conservation in the Northeast Megaregion
Robert Pirani
Vice President for Environmental Programs - Regional Plan Association
Executive Director - Governors Island Alliance

Wednesday, 04/6 at 4:00 pm
Cook/Douglas Lecture Hall
3 College Farm Road

A key challenge for the protection of water, habitat and other natural resources is placing these concerns into the broader policy framework of land use decision making and infrastructure investment.   Planners and conservation advocates are meeting this challenge by working across political jurisdictions to establish landscape conservation initiatives that protect watersheds, ecosystems and other landscape-scales processes.

This is especially true across the twelve mega-regions that are the locus of much of the nation's growth and development, where there are hundreds of locally driven initiatives that are bringing together local, state, and federal partners.   Regional Plan Association is helping landscape conservation initiatives succeed in implementing their goals in one of these: the 13 state northeast mega region.

Rob Pirani will present the initial findings from RPA's inventory of these landscape conservation initiatives.  A GIS assessment and interactive website (www.rpa.org/northeastlandscapes/) is being used to map and understand the spatial relationships between landscape conservation initiatives, important natural resources, and urban growth and infrastructure investment.

Robert Pirani is Regional Plan Association's Vice President for Environmental Programs and Executive Director of the Governors Island Alliance.  Mr. Pirani has authored or co-authored several of the Association's recent publications, including Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway: West Street Sustainable Stormwater Study; The Path Forward: Public Input on the Future of Gateway National Recreation Area; A Systems Approach to Water Resources; Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway: Concept Plans for Community Boards 1,2 and 6; On the Verge: Caring for New York City’s Emerging Waterfront Parks & Public Spaces;  Governors Island: Guidelines for Parks and Public Spaces; and The Economics of Transferring Development in the New Jersey Highlands.  Mr. Pirani holds a Master's Degree in Regional Planning from Cornell University and a Bachelor's Degree in Environmental Studies from Hampshire College.
_______________________________________________

30% chance of rain

but a 95% chance of 25 multiple choice questions and 25 true/false questions today.

Philadelphia is chaging its zoning code

After more than 50 years Philadelphia is changing it zoning code, according to The Architect's Newspaper. To be clear, this isn't a change in the map but the actual code and its categories. And the public participation is reported as significant with over 40 public meetings across a 3 year period.

April 1st edition of PlaNetizen

PlaNetizen was a fun April fools Day news roundup.

Starbucks changing the walk around the city

With their new Mobile Pour, Starbucks could revolutionize the urban pedestrian experience.

Aerotropolis

The idea of the aerotropolis has been batted around in planning circles for a while, but now it is a book.  And, to make things more fun the authors are hosting a teleforum on Friday April15th.

I am pretty sure that they don't consider this video set within an aerotropolis setting to reflect on their concepts, but it might get you thinking...



...Or not.

Celebrating National Landscape Architecture Month with 3 Landscapes

No joke, it is National Landscape Architecture Month. To celebrate, I thought we could take a break and look back at a few interesting answers from past years. For those that don't know the background on this, people used to play parlor games, today we frequently ask our visitors this question...
Q: What are the three greatest examples of landscape architecture that you have ever visited?

Harvard Professor and author John Stilgoe gave us these three

• Mt. Auburn Cemetery
• Blue Ridge Parkway
• The 1930s National Park Entrances

Award-winning landscape architect, Gary Hilderbrand

• Villa Lante
• Courances
• The City of Rome

You are welcome to ask whether it is fair to count the City of Rome as an example of landscape architecture.  But you are also welcome to ask why you think your answer to that is better than Gary Hildebrand's.

Designer of the Great Park of Orange County, Ken Smith offered these

• Vaux le Vicomte by Le Notre
• Daitokuji
  
• Worlitz

As you look back at both old and new lists, it is interesting to look back and see just how many people have listed Central Park in their list. While you are a tit, you could look through the Places and Spaces map for some of the 3 landscapes answers.

Suitability Analysis revisited

A little while ago I posted the old handwritten Suitability Analysis notes from when Steve Strom used these techniques in his studio. This four page set of Suitability Analysis notes is online now as a PDF (broken link fixed).  His description of weighted analysis lacks a graphic, so I created a digital version of both some of his graphics and a new Weight and Rate graphic that should help you work through it all as you look ahead to Monday's exam:To be clear, each grid shows the very same piece of land but being rated for a different issue (soils, slope, vegetation).  Presumably that is fairly objective.  But each individual criterion is then weighted based on relative importance.  In this case, Slope has rather subjectively been weighted as 5 times more important that Vegetation.  If you click on my graphic it will enlarge and be more readable.

Why is redistricting so contentious?

Wonder why the papers are giving such close coverage to the efforts to draw new legislative boundaries?  The Star-Ledger sums up the power of these processes in this simple line:
"Three times in the last decade more New Jerseyans in total voted for GOP candidates for the Legislature, but Democrats easily won the majority of the seat"
Maps are power.

Sounds a little like something from The Onion

The courts have weighed in and someone has to move that pile of dirt.

Scholarships in fields related to conservation

Three $2,000 Scholarships to be awarded in 2011

For the 32nd consecutive year, Freehold Soil Conservation District will award three $2,000 scholarships to students majoring in a conservation-related field in the summer of 2011. The Neal Munch, Mac Clark and Bill Schauer Scholarships are awarded annually to honor their years of dedicated and distinguished service to the Freehold District and to natural resource conservation.

All applicants must be:
· A New Jersey resident of Monmouth or Middlesex County

· Entering at least their junior year of college by the fall of 2011

· Majoring in a field related to conservation including, but not limited to: agriculture, environmental education, environmental science, environmental studies, forestry, geology, landscape design, resource management, soil science, etc.

Applications are available online at www.freeholdscd.org
by email request to info@freeholdscd.org, or by calling (732)683-8500.

Application deadline is April 15, 2011.

Advising season is in full swing

While I try to keep the blog focused mostly on intellectual issues, once in a while it seems smart to sneak in something practical.  As we kick off the spring advising season, I thought I should let you know where to find many of the forms you might need if you are a student here at Rutgers-SEBS including:

• Change Degree Date (Change of Class) Application (60k PDF)
• Change of Major or Request for Double Major Application (9k PDF)
• Change Option Only (Within Major) Application (9k PDF)
• Course Substitution Approval Form (70k PDF)
• Minor or Certificate Completion Form (59k PDF)
• Minor or Certificate Declaration Form (45k PDF)
• SEBS Transfer Course Evaluation Form (127k PDF) 

If you are my advisee, I will be keeping a sign-up sheet for appointments at ENR 133.

A totally different kind of lecture

Just down the road...

Sheila Bair Chairman of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
Some Lessons from the Financial Crisis. (Note: 4:30 p.m. in McCosh Hall 50)
Walter E. Edge Lecture

Being a good planner means understanding the different parts that make your community work, including finance.

Science quote

I see in science one of the greatest creations of the human mind....It is a step at which our explanatory myths become open to conscious and consistent criticism and at which we are challenged to invent new myths.

- Karl R. Popper, Objective Knowledge

Be happy

A positive attitude may not solve all of your problems but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

- Herm Albright (1876-1944)

This is why studios work

One must learn by doing the thing, for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try.

- Sophocles, 400 B. C.

A cool blog from our students

The students in our tectonics class have posted their work on a blog, Material Tectonics.

It has taken us years to get to this, so it is exciting to see the projects posted online (and outside the new LA offices in Blake).  Which project will be the one to get built?  Wait and see.

Did the earthquake mess up GPS?

Actually, just a little says Slate.

Designing the future

Friend of the blog, Allan Shearer, gets a big shout out from the NY Times' Dot Earth blog.

Another is that breakthroughs only come with a lot of effort and experimentation and, unavoidably, failure. Learning involves breaking. This means that a useful trait these days is the “courage to fear” — a phrase used in a recent discussion of tipping points by Allan Shearer, an architecture professor at the University of Texas, Austin, who studies how humans design the future as much as he designs structures.

Great mention in the blog of record.

Earthquake graphics

In February Good Magazine ran a great infographic (with Column Five Media) on where to expect the next earthquake. After Haiti they thought we might be due again in 15 years.

Lecture: Postindustrial landscapes in Germany

LA Spring Lecture Series presents Constanze Petrow

Wednesday, March 23 at 4:00 pm

Cook/Douglas Lecture Hall

Postindustrial landscapes in Germany: How Berlin, Hamburg, and Frankfurt developed their waterfront since 1990

The presentation compares three approaches of waterfront redevelopment in centrally located spaces in Berlin, Hamburg and Frankfurt/Main. Special interest is devoted to public open spaces and landscape design. We’ll have a look at Berlin’s Spree promenade, Hamburg’s HafenCity and Frankfurt’s Main promenade and Westhafen quarter. All sites became available in the course of deindustrialization – or, in the case of Berlin, after the Wall came down. As a result of differing urban development policies and image strategies they are part of, the places display distinct atmospheres and attract different kinds of people. The paper discusses the messages delivered by design and thus scrutinizes the political character of landscape architecture.

This talk is the kick-off event for the International Design Workshop Wednesday  3-23 to Saturday 3-26

Architecture students and faculty from the Technical University of Darmstadt (Germany) will visit the New York/New Jersey region and will join the Landscape Architecture senior design studio for a four day intensive workshop. The topic will be urban redevelopment and open space design for a section of the Newark Waterfront. 

Dr. Constanze A. Petrow is a licensed landscape architect. After studying landscape planning at the Technische Universität Berlin and working for landscape offices in Berlin she lectured and researched at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar from 2001 till 2009. In 2007 she was a visiting faculty at Washington Alexandria Architecture Center (Virginia Tech). She has been writing for landscape magazines since 2001. In 2009 she received her Doctorate from Leibniz-Universität Hannover with a thesis on the relationship between landscape architecture and the public, focusing on perceptions of the profession’s work by leading newspapers in Germany and Switzerland. Since 2009 she has been a post-doc researcher and member of the ‘Urban Research’ Centre of Research Excellence at the Technische Universität Darmstadt.

Balancing Environmental Remediation and Economic Issues in NJ

Professional Science Master's Program
Building New Jersey’s Innovation Ecosystem Lecture Series

Balancing Environmental Remediation and Economic Issues in NJ

Monday, March 21, 2011
6:00pm
CoRE Auditorium, Busch Campus


Mr. N. DeRose
Senior Principal, Langan Engineering & Environmental Services.

Mr. De Rose is a Senior Principal at Langan Engineering and Environmental Services who has over 30 years of environmental consulting experience specializing in Site Remediation and the Cleanup of Hazardous Waste Sites. His experience in New Jersey includes working since the inception of New Jersey’s Environmental Cleanup and Responsibility Act (ECRA) on cleanup projects driven by property transactions.

In 2008, Nick organized the Licensed Site Professional (LSP) Consultants Coalition in New Jersey in response to anticipated legislation to establish an independent LSP regulatory program for remediation cases in New Jersey. In this role, Mr. De Rose has led the efforts of the LSP Consultants Coalition in a comprehensive legal and technical review of SRRA and in ongoing meetings and discussions with key regulators and legislators. Mr. De Rose currently serves as President of the New Jersey Licensed Site Remediation Professional Association (LSRPA) which is recognized as one of the leading and most respected voices on regulatory and technical issues associated with SRRA and the newly established LSRP Program in New Jersey.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

To celebrate, we are thought we should look at Ireland's two Cultural icons on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list. Since I haven't been to either, I'll add them to my life list of places to go see.

First is Skellig Michael, a monastic complex on a pyramidal rocky island. It's rocky paths and ruins look like settings from any number of movies, making me wonder if it has influenced those as well.

(Photo by GDR from the Wiki Commons)

The second is the Archaeological Ensemble of the Bend of the Boyne which is a series of prehistoric sites which combine to form "Europe's largest and most important concentration of prehistoric megalithic art."  The sites have a variety of henges and tombs, feature solar alignments, and predate the pyramids.

(Photo by Rodrigo y Pamela from Wikicommons)

Food Environment mapping

As part of a talk I am giving today, here are some links to recent work on mapping the food environment:

The Food Trust Report on Supermarkets in NJ

Physical Activity Chart Book for Trenton

Food Environment Chart Book for Newark

The full CSHP list of Chart Books

Make some picks

Even though Rutgers didn't quite make the field of 68, Places and Spaces readers are invited to join in the 13th annual "FoD - Friends of Dave" NCAA picks group on ESPN's Tournament Challenge.  If you want to get all sciency about it, Nate Silver applies his know-how to picking.

The free throws are called "free" for a reason. Photo Credit: D. Tulloch

Comparison photos from Japan

The NYTimes has some stunning before and after images from Japan.

Too much GPS?

Now that GPS underlies 6-7% of GDP in Europe, things are great, right?  The BBC says it is a problem.

NYMRO Summer Internships

Non-design non-planning internships in the NY Metro area for students interested in community work.

Getting high

Are we over-reliant on social media?

Well, of course the answer is yes.

(Twitter break)

But I mean as a tool for giving community groups a voice?  A group had citizens mark properties in New Orleans that they wished were being used better.  But they didn't do it on Google Maps or using GPS.

(Facebook break)

They used name tag stickers.  But, instead of saying My Name Is... the stickers said I Wish This Was...

(Check Linked-In)

The stickers are low-tech, easily accessible technique that has a totally different kind of impact and reach than online approaches.  But in some parts of NOLA it might be considered vandalism, too.  Tell us what you think.

LiveBlog: Sustainable in a Material World

Meg Calkins, Ball State

Editor of the forthcoming Sustainable Sites Handbook to be published in October 2011 by John Wiley and Sons.  Author of Materials for Sustainable Sites (described by L+U as a "must read")was published in October 2008.

For an aluminum rail in Indianapolis she breaks down all of the environmental impacts of that rail.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) concluded that ecosystem resources are critical to support life on earth.  And that society has caused irreversible damages.

More than 90% of the materials that goes into the average US product is waste before it reaches the users.  80% is molecular waste that goes into the air or water, etc.  But if you consider closed materials and resource loops, "true waste does not exist".  Good green design recognizes that and makes use of it as a guiding principle.

The first case study is the High Line. The heavy reliance on cement is a good starting point.  We can often reduce it.  Sometimes we can use substitutes like fly ash, slag, and natural pozzolans like calcined shale.  Another concern are the woods used.  If they were rainforest materials they are not renewed as well as others.  Certified wood would be better - this can include accounting for the chain of custody.  Plastic lumber is a much harder sell, but if you use it make sure you avoid PVCs.  For materials like stainless steel and aluminum, we should be considering the level of embodied energy.

If we are going to make progress on this front, we need to make a minor or less radical shift on projects like this.

But we need a major shift in materials that we need to seek out as well.

The 2nd case study is at the Queens Botanical Garden.  One innovation was rammed earth structures, which can be used anywhere.  It is high-labor, low-cost and low-impact.  Don't confuse it with Compressed Earth block (CEB).  The radical shift in materials is needed to "close the loop".

Alternate materials can include gabions with concrete or stone rubble from on-site. Stabilized soil pavement requires binders, whether they are plant-based (agave, pine resin, seed oils), and polymer binders can help us stop using so much paving.  Natural barriers can replace fencing. 

Ecobalancing - life-cycle flow of resources that balances inputs and outputs to support vital whole systems.

Finally an example was provided using an interdisciplinary student project from outside Muncie.  One included a 5ac demonstration site for a family, because 5ac is the footprint of a single family.  The designs also included selective harvesting of a forest on site, permaculture areas, strawbale construction (currently not legal in the US) and AlgaeWheel technology.  Even an incremental shift in construction methods will require proving the reliability of these techniques and showing people the benefits.

Water meeting at Penn

In the Terrain of Water

Symposium at PENNDESIGN: April 1 – 2, 2011

Conversations and presentations will be organized around three themes:

design ACTIVISM / ADVOCACY in the Terrain of Water
design STRUCTURE / INFRASTRUCTURE in the Terrain of Water
design IMAGING / IMAGINING in the Terrain of Water

The symposium will be structured around a series of dialogues, exhibits, workshops and talks, enlisting contemporary thinkers who are willing to go beyond addressing water simply as a design opportunity or an environmental challenge. Participants will come from across disciplines and the globe – joined in their intentions to re-imagine our relationship with water, challenge current visualizations, and
probe projects and design thinking that constitute water, its visible and invisible presences, in fresh ways.

Information and registration: http://www.design.upenn.edu/calendar/terrain-water

Contact: terrain@design.upenn.edu

24th Annual NJDEP Mapping Contest

If you aren't pursuing the DeBoer Travel Prize you could spend your free time during spring break cleaning up an old map for the NJ DEP Mapping Contest.  This year's contest is on April 28th, 2011.

Making Spring Break useful

Make your Spring Break count by spending a day learning about energy and weatherizing a building through the PIRG Energy Service Corps.

Wednesday lecture: Sustainable in a Material World

Meg Calkins

Sustainable in a Material World

Wednesday, March 9th at 4:00 pm,Cook/Douglas Lecture Hall
3 College Farm Road, New Brunswick, NJ

Meg Calkins, ASLA, LEED AP is the Editor of the forthcoming Sustainable Sites Handbook to be published in October 2011 by John Wiley & Sons. Her other book Materials for Sustainable Sites was published in October 2008. She is a frequent Contributing Editor to Landscape Architecture magazine. She is a co-founder of SITES and member of the Technical Working Group. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Ball State University.

Assigned Reading

While I am assigning this for all of our readers, it will be assigned as a class requirement in 372:231 EnvPlan today. It is the notes on Development Suitability by Steve Strom.

Berry Quote

"We are destroying our country - I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so."

- Wendell Berry

Jobs in Bristol, CT

Assistant Planner and Intern

CCRPA (Bristol, CT)

The Central Connecticut Regional Planning Agency (CCRPA) is seeking qualified applicants for the positions of Assistant Planner and Intern.  Applications are due by noon ET on April 8, 2011. Job descriptions and
application forms and instructions can be found at http://ccrpa.org/employment.htm.

Berry Quote

"A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members - among them the need to need one another. The answer to the present alignment of political power with wealth is the restoration of the identity of community and economy."

- Wendell Berry

A great discovery solves a great problem, but there is a grain of discovery in the solution of any problem.

- George Polya, How to Solve It

Planning Board Meetings

New Brunswick is scheduled to have a planning board meeting on March 8th at 7:30 pm in the Council Chambers, at New Brunswick City Hall, 78 Bayard Street, New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Berry Quote

"There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places."

- Wendell Berry

GIS jobs

Civil Solutions has some entry level opportunities down in South Jersey.

Berry Quote

"We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it."

- Wendell Berry

What is a suburb?

I remember an exercise a few years ago where we tried to find a formula for defining which municipalities in New Jersey were suburban.  None of efforts ever treated Jersey City as suburban.  But Joel Kotkin appears to be treating places like Jersey City as suburbs in his latest analysis of sprawl.

Should our designs make us sweat?

 Active design is trying to integrate subliminal exercise into designs by creating spaces that encourage taking more active paths than passive ones.  Are we fighting obesity or saving energy?  Are we encouraging physicality or creating barriers to free movement?

Here is one effort to make stairs more fun that escalator:

EnvPlan Word Cloud

I made a quick word cloud of the online class notes and questions leading up to Exam 1 in 231 EnvPlan. Please note that it doesn't include hardly any Chapter 4 words because it is biased by what is online.

Drink up

The cover story on USA Today basically says that we need to drink our own sewage. Crisis averted!

Native species are special

Here is a great column about how the native species, Chamaecyparis thyoides, has key qualities that give the Atlantic white cedar swamps of the Pinelands their great character.  Note that she also uses the term "endemic" to describe them.

Berry Quote

“The earth is what we all have in common.”

- Wendell Berry

3 Landscapes: Tim Baird

Parc Clichy B'atignolles - New park in Paris with galvanized steel channels
Prospect Park
Crissy Field

LiveBlog: Tim Baird

Teaching Design Education in the 21st Century
C. Timothy Baird, Penn State University

An LSU graduate - Geaux Tigers!

Change is hard.  Leroys and vertical curves are no longer part of most technology sequences.

He begins with the origins of the abstract concept of the contour.  Building on his experiences at Hargreaves, he has a strong interest in building clay models and has integrated that into the sequence instead of stacked contours.

One of the new classes is Materiality.  Hard materials.  Trying to simplify the way to look at things, makes the start easier.  Part of the class is research-driven, just like some design practices.  For a while there weren't many landscape architects looking for new materials.  But the proliferation of catalogs, an increase in new building techniques and even the Internet, have combined to give designers access to far more material choices that seemed imaginable.  But it also places a new level of responsibility on designers to understand these new materials before they use them.  Photocatalytic concrete and translucent concrete are examples of changing materials.

Systems Workshops are another part of the new sequence.  The class takes a trip to NYC where they visit  Material ConneXion.  Eventually they move on to drawings, which force a clearer cognition and representation of how the materials come together.  They go out and learn a little bit about welding at the art shop (just enough to understand how hard it is). 

Materials Operations - Cut it, bend it, perforate it, join it, shape it.  They use an aluminum shop that allows them some special opportunities for exploring technology.  But while the new tools, like water jet cutters, are cool they aren't a substitute for learning how to use a hammer.

Ultimately the students get out on construction sites to see the work being done.  It makes concrete pours and geotextiles seem much less abstract.  Visiting a site under construction with Ken Smith is just icing.  The students learn from that and then explore the design of new seating walls which ultimately get built.

Application - if you learn about grading in 2nd year and then don't make a grading plan until 4th year, is it a disservice?   If you can intergrate the ideas into a design competition does it help test them out?
Vanalen Institute's Urban Voids Design Competition

Wendell Berry honored at the White House

Earlier today President Obama awarded National Humanities Medals or National Arts Medals to writers Harper Lee, Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth; artist Mark di Suvero; actress Meryl Streep; and musicians Sonny Rollins and Quincy Jones.

Congrats to all of them. But only one of them taught me in college. So for the next few days we'll celebrate with Wendell Berry quotes. Enjoy.

Exam detail

Not that it really matters, but the first exam for EnvPlan will have 33 T/F questions, and 36 multiple choice.

Bald eagles live

A nesting pair of bald eagles have settled in again on the Duke Estate just a few miles upstream from campus. What are they doing right now? Look here and see:


Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

Research quote

Inquiry is the creation of knowledge or understanding; it is the reaching out of a human being beyond himself to a perception of what he may be or could be, or what the world could be or ought to be.

- C. West Churchman, The Design of Inquiring Systems

By request, repeat test tips

TEST TIP: Can you read hydrographs? Topo maps? A soils survey?
TEST TIP: When you get tired of reading and studying, consider surfing through the RotDs.  Play with the online soils.  Look at the topo maps.
TEST TIP: Revisit that whole Soil Texture thing
TEST TIP: Memorize the first four steps in Steiner’s Ecological Planning Model
TEST TIP: Look at a USGS topo map and see how much you can read off it.
TEST TIP: For each physical landscape characteristic ask:
1) What can Env. Planners do about it?
2) Where can they get the facts on it?
    
Study on...

Salamander crossing

Tonight might be a night for watching salamanders (and frogs) migrate near campus in East Brunswick.  The Friends of the East Brunswick Environmental Commission keep a salamander blog that says today's rains and warm weather could spark a move, and they've already found at least one spotted salamander. They'll close Beekman Road and let pedestrians come peek with flashlights.  If there is lightning, you should skip it.


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What have we learned about habitat that might keep them from needing to close a road? What's the basic problem here?

Thinking about wildlife

Highland Park's Tim Marshall, at ETM Associates, has been helping prepare designs for Mercer Meadows.  The Star-Ledger included one of their images of a blind for watching wildlife, which is part of a growing trend of landscape architects designing for ecological purposes.  For example, MVV's recent award-winning design for a wildlife overpass.

Leopold quote

"No matter how intently one studies the hundred little dramas of the woods and meadows, one can never learn all the salient facts about any one of them."

— Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac