Landscape Architecture

PARK(ing) Day 2009 is This Friday!

This Friday impromptu public parks will be springing up around the world for PARK(ing) Day 2009! Created by San Francisco art collective REBAR, this one-day celebration of public space encourages people in cities around the globe to transform metered parking spots into temporary public parks. From pavement-faring pirate ships to mobile meadows we’ve seen some incredible projects in the past, and we can’t wait to hit the streets again this September 18th. Anyone can participate, so if you’d like to set up your own park head on over to Parkingday.org to get the scoop.

+ PARK(ing) Day 2009

+ PARK(ing) Day 2008

+ REBAR

West Loop Park Infuses Chicago With Green Urban Space

by Olivia Chen, 08/31/09

As the construction process for Hudson Yards drags on in New York, we’re glad to see green urban design is alive and well in Chicago. The windy city is no stranger to sustainable building, and this urban park, located on the fringe of the city’s downtown, will certainly give Chicago even more green cred. Perkins + Will, the architects behind the design, developed the park to create more open space for the city, but the greenway also proves to be a pedestrian-friendly gateway that connects the existing downtown to any future development across the Kennedy Expressway.

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Making Public Places: Forum on Placemaking in Cities

by Olivia Chen, 08/01/09

On Monday, July 13, 2009, Diana Balmori and her NYC-based landscape and urban design firm hosted a forum that was part-academic discussion, part-social media experiment. The forum, called Making Public Places, was hosted in the Meatpacking District (MPD) while it streamed live online via Twitter and Ustream. The design firm was joined by 40 landscape architecture and urban design students from the Netherlands. Photos and tweets were updated throughout the event and yours truly was there to see it in action and provide you with highlights. But for more in-depth information, you can check out Balmori Associates‘ recently launched blog focused on public places.

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Manhattan Apartment Meets Garden Escape

by Bridgette Meinhold, 10/03/08

Two years ago, Matt Blesso, a real estate developer, bought a 3,100 sq ft apartment in lower Manhattan. He dreamed of an apartment with beautiful rooftop gardens, and wanted to be surrounded by nature even in the heart of the city. Not having much of a green thumb as a real estate mogul, he turned his apartment over to two Yale professors. The duo was comprised of Joel Sanders, the architect, and Diana Balmori, the landscape architect, who teach a course together called Interface, all about uniting architecture and landscape design.

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ICELANDIC DESIGN: In the details

I went to Iceland looking for fabulous design, and I found it just not in the places I expected. Although I couldn’t find any museums or galleries devoted to contemporary Icelandic design, it seemed like good design surrounded me everywhere I went: in the smallest details of every drinking fountain I encountered to numerous houses and public buildings around Reykjavik.

ICELANDIC ECO VILLAGE

If you’ve been to Iceland, you’ve probably done the famous “Golden Circle” tour, which hits all of Iceland’s main tourist attractions in a couple hours drive through the southwest part of the country. However, a man-made attraction that most tourists miss is the nearby Solheimer eco-village. Located just 1/2 hour away from Geysir and Gulfloss, and half an hour away from Hveragerdi, Solheimer lies within the Golden Circle, on the road back to Reykjavik. This tiny village deserves more attention than it gets, as it is one of the oldest thriving eco-villages in the world, and is a model community for green-minded individuals. It also features some interesting architecture.

THE ABANDONED BUILDING

Bruni/Babarit, the French odd couple of site-specific earth art, are currently exhibiting their most recent tour de force in Fert?-Bernard, France. Gilles Bruni and Marc Babarit are artistic partners with a unique motivation and a stunning execution. The current exhibition, entitled The Abandoned Building, challenges the viewer to adopt a new perspective on the seeming meaninglessness of abandoned spaces.
The artists lay out two primary aspects of the work: architecture and ecology. The building itself is full of empty space and surrounded by fallow land; its historical function has faded. But the architecture takes on new meaning as vegetation is ushered in by neglect.

LAWN COUCH

How much oxygen did your furniture produce today? Wouldn’t you rather be sitting outside in the back yard, than indoors on your couch? Now you too can have the best of both worlds, and sculpt lawn furniture from the lawn itself, with this excellent ReadyMade guide to growing a sod-couch.

I came across this useful how-to guide in a ReadyMade back issue. I figured with the advent of hot summer weather it was a good time to bring this back around. …

BIOPAVER

When I wrote about Biopaver, yesterday, I couldn’t give any details about the project, because I couldn’t find any information about it on the internet. Thanks to the prompt arrival of Metropolis in my mailbox yesterday, I now gots the dish:

Biopaver, Joseph Hagerman’s winning design for Metropolis’ Next Generation Contest, is a system of interlocking concrete paving blocks that promote drainage and combats waterborne pollutants. The paving stone’s precast core …