ISSUE 10 FALL | WINTER 2019
FIELDBOOK
BOSTON SOCIETY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS
The Massachusetts and Maine Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects
ON THE COVER/ BSLA “Boston City Hall Plaza has long been Boston’s place to gather, celebrate and make residents’ voices heard” -- Isabel Zempel, ASLA
ON THE COVER The People’s Plaza: the Global Climate Strike at Boston City Hall Plaza, September 20, 2019. Photograph by Kara Slocum.
BSLA Fieldbook. Issue 10. Theme: Public Forum. Including the 2018 + 2019 BSLA Design Awards.
With this issue, BLSA is pleased to announce the first Editorial Advisory Board. The 2019 BSLA Fieldbook Editorial Advisory Board Tom Benjamin Matthew Cunningham, ASLA Aisha Densmore-Bey Michael Grove, ASLA Nicole Holmes Jessalyn Jarest, ASLA Jennifer Lee Keeter, ASLA Kate Kennen, ASLA Robert Marzilli Patricia McGirr, ASLA Wayne Mezitt Liza Meyer, ASLA Barbara Nazarewicz, ASLA Christina Sohn, ASLA Tim Tensen The BSLA ExComm Fieldbook Committee Michael Radner, ASLA Jeanne Lukenda, ASLA Rebecca McKevitz, Associate ASLA Ricardo Austrich, ASLA Rachel Loeffler, ASLA Guest Editors, “Public Forum” Jennifer Lee Keeter, ASLA Christina Sohn, ASLA Managing Editor Gretchen Rabinkin, Affiliate ASLA; AIA The Editorial Board aims to reflect the diversity of our chapter in every way. If you’re interested in participating on the Editorial Board, or have comments, questions, or suggestions about Fieldbook, we want to hear from you. Please be in touch! Email gretchen@bslanow.org.
Boston Society of Landscape Architects Fieldbook
Fieldbook is published by the Boston Society of Landscape Architects (BSLA). Articles do not necessarily reflect the view or position of the BSLA Executive Committee (ExComm) or BSLA members. Permission to advertise does not constitute endorsement of the company or of the advertiser’s products or services. No part of this publication may be reproduced in print or electronically without the express written permission of BSLA.
CONTACT Boston Society of Landscape Architects PO Box 962047 Boston, MA 02196 www.bslanow.org email chapteroffice@bslanow.org twitter @BSLAOffice instagram @BSLAOffice facebook @BSLAnow
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/ PARTNER SPONSORS
Boston Society of Landscape Architects thanks our partner sponsors. The annual support of these companies helps make possible the member benefits, programs, and initiatives of BSLA. The generosity is truly appreciated.
Thank you. GOLD SPONSOR
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LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT/ BSLA
They say good things happen to those who wait, and what we are sharing with you today is very good indeed. Within these pages are the fruits of labor of the many dedicated people and firms that represent our profession. While I am grateful for the opportunity to lead such an amazingly dedicated, smart, and gifted group of design professionals, the effect of having to fill the large void left by the untimely passing of our past president, Chris Moyles, FASLA, caused a pause in the production of this much-anticipated publication. Thankfully, we’re back and bigger than ever, introducing editorial changes that aim to showcase Landscape Architecture’s broad relevance and impact in today’s challenging world. In addition to covering the design excellence of our industry as recognized through the BSLA Design Award winners of 2018 and 2019, this Fieldbook is the first to showcase the contributions and curation of guest editors. In this and future editions, these stories will embrace a variety of changing topics that aim to call attention to relevant design, environmental, and social issues that inform the practice of landscape architecture at the beginning of the 21st century, such as this issue’s topic: “public forum.” The BSLA Fieldbook also offers an important opportunity for our valued industry colleagues, contractors, suppliers, vendors, and firms to showcase their goods and services to an audience of peers and professionals. And, just as importantly, Fieldbook serves as the calling card to a greater audience of collaborators, including architects, engineers, planners, designers, municipalities, students and the greater public, illustrating the awesome work landscape architects undertake to make this very fragile world a better, more beautiful, sustainable and resilient place. The 2018-2019 BSLA Design Award winners featured within these pages exemplify the vitality and innovative designs that make this an exciting time to be a landscape architect. The awarded work features projects at every scale, from a large-scale regional plan that responsibly addresses global cultural and environmental issues, a plan for coastal resilience in the face of sea level rise, and the potential impacts of autonomous vehicles to the intimate garden sanctuary. Moreover, what gives us great pleasure is the diversity and creativity that lies at the center of such work. Take pride in the work landscape architects do to make our world a better, more beautiful, and sustainable place. This is our time!
Ricardo Austrich, ASLA President Boston Society of Landscape Architects Fieldbook
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/ 2018-2019: “PUBLIC FORUM”
Points of Entry
Conversations “PUBLIC FORUM” and...
1 ON THE COVER
VIEWS EQUITABLE ENGAGEMENT 24 MORE 10 MANY A conversation with Tiffany Cogell PERSPECTIVES FROM THE REGION “Landscape + Public Forum” A photo essay on the theme
THE PRESIDENT 3 FROM Ricardo Austrich ASLA
THE EDITORS 7 FROM Jennifer Lee Keeter ASLA Christina Sohn ASLA
8 CONTRIBUTORS
+ PLAY 12 WORK A BRIEF SNAPSHOT OF DAYS Catherine Callahan, Jessalyn Jarest ASLA, Joe Kubik ASLA, Emily Scarfe
FROM THE FIELD 18 LESSONS EMBRACING PLACEMAKING LAYERED ENGAGEMENT IN SALEM Megan Tomkins
HEALTH and 30 MEASURING WELLNESS
A conversation wtih Sara Jensen Carr and Elizabeth Randall ASLA
AS CIVIC ACTIVISM 34 DESIGN A conservation with Caitlin Aceto ASLA, Nick Aceto ASLA, and Addy Smith-Reiman
New Voices 42 #NOFILTER SOCIAL MEDIA, PUBLIC FORUM, + LANDSCAPE? Emily Scarfe
VOICES 44 YOUTH The editors hear from children of landscape architecture.
NOTEBOOK 54 AEarlyPARENT’S morning humor by Joe James, ALSA
Boston Common, Boston, Massachusetts, during the Women’s March, January 21, 2017 Photo: Gretchen Rabinkin
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The Chaper
Design Awards
THE TRUSTEE 46 FROM Jeanne Lukenda ASLA
62 2018 DESIGN AWARDS 158 INDEX TO ADVERTISERS
48 BSLA LEADERSHIP 2018 ASLA FELLOWS 49 Doug Jones, FASLA Edward Marshall, FASLA Chris Moyles, FASLA James Wescoat, FASLA
2019 ASLA FELLOWS Michael Boucher, FASLA Cheri Ruane, FASLA
64 HONOR AWARDS 72 MERIT AWARDS 105 2019 DESIGN AWARDS
2018 ASLA DESIGN MEDAL MIKYOUNG KIM, FASLA
2019 ASLA DESIGN MEDAL
106 HONOR AWARDS
Doug Reed, FASLA
110 MERIT AWARDS
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Boston Common, Boston, Massachusetts, during the Women’s March, January 21, 2017 Image courtesy Friends of the Public Garden
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LETTER FROM THE GUEST EDITORS/ BSLA
When we heard the topic would be “landscape as public forum” our minds immediately went to the Women’s March, the Climate Strike, and those recent instances in which the existence of a public realm has enabled civic engagement and given a voice to many who otherwise lack a platform. That relationship between landscape and citizen touches on why Jennifer pursued the profession in the first place. Coming from an architecture background, she found landscapes to be a democratizing force; whether they fostered health and wellness through the design of public spaces, or they reconnected private individuals to an environment we all ultimately share. “Voice,” though, and “platform” are words that belong to a much larger narrative in our profession, one that is both idealistic and tricky. We should be proud of and excited by the ways in which our work can improve lives, shape public discourse, and address the most pressing challenges of our day. Yet there are ways in which we too consistently fall short of our high ideals. Within the profession and without we have not fully engaged with or enabled a set of voices as diverse as those who are ultimately affected by our work. To Christina, innovation in landscape partly begins with redefining the voices and visions we value. Although design is visual, it is also keenly sensed and felt. It hits in a deeply personal way. Design can be political or for a privileged few, but it can also welcome, include, and sustain. The ways in which our profession is looking inward is a form of innovation as well. By questioning ourselves and our method of work, in realizing points of strength but also areas for growth, we can achieve a degree of focus and clarity for our future. In doing this together, and in starting a conversation here in this issue, we hope to foster feelings of community and belonging and hope. “Public Forum” felt like a great opportunity to reach out for content and contributors that showcase the diverse, prismatic character of the BSLA community. We have gathered your work, thoughts, and images; your conversations, life stories, and unique perspectives (and even a comic strip!) hoping that you will enjoy this small exploration of the meaning of public forum.
Jennifer Lee Keeter, ASLA
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Christina Sohn, ASLA
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/ CONTRIBUTORS
Megan Tomkins Placemaking in Salem (p18)
Tiffany Cogell Conversation: More Eqitable Engagement (p24)
Megan Tomkins is a principal at CBA Landscape Architects LLC in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she focuses on the design of urban public parks and playgrounds, with an emphasis on community-guided design and placemaking on projects throughout the City of Boston and surrounding communities. She recently sat on the Cambridge Urban Forest Master Plan Task Force, and has developed an advanced knowledge of Northeastern US native plants, horticulture, wetlands, and invasive plants. She is a graduate of Cornell University.
Tiffany Cogell is a community organizer committed to the holistic wellness of under-resourced communities. She has worked with a number of neighborhood and city-based organizations, including The Boston Project Ministries, The Healthy Community Champions (BPHC), Fairmount Indigo Network and Fairmount Greenway. She is a co-founder of the Cross Cultural Collective, a coalition of black artists pushing to amplify African diasporic arts and its creators. As a social design consultant for Design4Equity, she designs programs to help businesses embed diversity and inclusion into their organizational structure and culture. Her study of interior design at MassBay Community College awakened her passion for to advocate for racial inclusion and economic equity through design, art, housing and public spaces. She’s the Associate Project Manager at Aamodt/Plumb Architects & Construction, and a mother of four.
Nick Aceto, ASLA and Caitlin Aceto, ASLA Conversation: Design As Civic Activism (p34)
Addy Smith-Reiman
Caitlin Aceto, ASLA and Nick Aceto, ASLA are the founders of Aceto Landscape Architecture + Urban Design in Portland, Maine. Caitlin’s passion for design, art and sustainability began in Chicago and followed her to Colorado, and now Maine. Caitlin is an active participant in the Portland design community where she is a member of the Architalx board, a participant on the Portland Society for Architecture Advocacy Committee and a member of the Maine ASLA Leadership Team. Nick is a licensed landscape architect and urbanist to the core, born and raised in Maine where rich coastal New England heritage meets unfettered wilderness. Nick’s approach to design stems from his handson construction experience coupled with a deep passion for design. Caitlin and Nick both graduated with landscape architecture degrees from Colorado State University.
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Voices of Public Forum
Addy Smith-Reiman engages people with projects that celebrate local identity, shared histories and future use. For the past 15 years she has integrated research, design, civic engagement, and long-term stewardship planning in public and non-profit sector settings from northern Vermont to Boston to Pittsburgh to Maine. She holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and masters’ degrees in regional planning and landscape architecture from Cornell University. She’s currently the executive director of the Portland Society for Architecture, a non-profit organization that promotes the progress and economic development of Greater Portland by encouraging innovation and vision in design and planning.
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Sara Jensen Carr Conversation: Measuring Wellness and Health (p30)
Elizabeth Randall, ASLA
Sara Jensen Carr is an assistant professor in architecture, urbanism, and landscape at Northeastern University. Her teaching and research focuses on the connections between landscape, human health, urban ecology, and design. Her current book in progress, The Topography of Wellness: Health and the American Urban Landscape, examines landscape responses to six historical urban epidemics and the implication for current and future practice. It will be published by University of Virginia Press in 2020. Sara holds a Master of Architecture from Tulane University, and a Master of Landscape Architecture and PhD in Environmental Planning from University of California Berkeley, where she was the co-founding editor of the ASLA award-winning GROUND UP Journal. She is a licensed architect.
Elizabeth Randall, an Associate Principal at Reed Hilderbrand, has been involved in design direction and management of projects related to the expression of hydrological and ecological conditions at a range of scales. She has most recently been the project manager for Reed Hilderbrand’s five-year engagement at Pier 4 waterfront park and plaza in Boston and a master plan for a 53-acre urban waterside district in Tampa, Florida. Elizabeth earned a Master of Landscape Architecture, with distinction, from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and holds a bachelor’s degree in art history from Yale. She has taught in the department of Landscape Architecture at the GSD and has served as a guest critic at Northeastern University School of Architecture and the Boston Architectural College.
Fieldbook Guest Editors Jennifer Lee Keeter, ASLA Jennifer Lee Keeter is an associate at Reed Hilderbrand LLC in Cambridge, Massachusetts where she manages a mix of residential and institutional projects. She also pursues her passion for dance as a teaching artist at her local studio. Prior work includes Duke University’s Crown Commons and West Quad in Durham, NC. Jennifer has recently started developing her filmmaking skills in order to express the richness of time and movement in landscapes as an integral part of design. She holds a MLA from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Christina Sohn, ASLA Christina Sohn is an associate at Reed Hilderbrand in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her professional work includes Scenic Hudson’s Long Dock Park North Shore in Beacon, New York and the Yale Science Building courtyard in New Haven, Connecticut. Christina is interested in the way landscapes tie into community health and well-being, initiating conversations within the practice about the future focuses of the field, and our collective means and methods of work. Christina earned an MLA from the University of Texas at Austin.
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BSLA invited our community of landscape architects, students, and emerging professionals to share photographs that relate to the theme of public forum.
The call was open: submissions could be a favorite landscape, a recent project, or commentary on our moment in time. This is a selection of those thoughts and images.
ABOVE: Memorial Drive, Cambridge during Sunday road closure. ABOVE RIGHT: Sunday Painters in front of Motif #1, Rockport, Masschusetts. Both photos by Elena Saporta, ASLA. LEFT: “I was struck by the transformative power of a simple blue construction screen enveloping Faneuil Hall – one of the oldest “public forums” in the country.” Photo by Jess Wilson. BELOW LEFT + RIGHT: Tactical plaza in Phillips Square, Chinatown, Boston. Design by Kyle Zick Landscape Architecture, Inc., photos by Anthony Crisafulli Photography.
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POINTS OF ENTRY/ BSLA
TOP ROW: Summer 2019: wheelbarrows as adaroidack chairs. Movable seating activates interstitial neighoborhood spaces in the Fenway Victory Gardens, Boston; the Minton Stable Community Garden, Jamaica Plain; and Harvard Square on PARK(ing) day. Design and photos by Rob Barella ASLA.
RIGHT: Harvard Square Kiosk & Plaza design open house, a community discussion about different ways the plaza might be used. BELOW: Bread and Puppet Theater on Cambridge Common, August 2019. Planning and landscape by Halvorson Design, photos by Jo Oltman.
ABOVE “As urban systems and landscapes become more complex and our population more diverse, designers must find innovative ways to make the design process - not just the design product - more accessible.” Photo by Jess Wilson.
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WORK + PLAY
Lives in landscape architecture
CATHERINE CALLAHAN What do you think are the most pressing issues the field of landscape architecture needs to address?
Climate change, climate change, climate change. Biodiversity/ habitat loss. We need to both adapt and respond to climate change and, perhaps more importantly, take steps to mitigate current and future impacts. We are so well situated as a profession to study the issues and work collaboratively to find solutions. What does a day in your life look like?
Ha! Always different, which I love. It’s rare that I have a full day in the office - often I have site visits, client meetings or other events. I find design works best in smaller, repeated, iterative sessions. What books have you read recently?
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
Representing different ages, geographies, and practices, practitioners from across the region were asked to respond, in their own words and from their own personal perspectives, to intentionally open-ended inquiries about topics both serious and silly, offering glimpses into the life of a landscape architect.
What is your favorite thing to do when you aren’t at work?
I am an abstract painter and make time to paint almost daily. What is your favorite public landscape?
Baxter State Park in Millinocket Maine. It’s the northern terminus of the Appalachian trail and consists of 209,00 acres of untrammeled wilderness. It was established with a gift of land from Governor Percival Baxter with a mission of staying “forever wild”. Visitor capacity is limited and there is no running water, electricity or paved roads. It’s really special to have such a large tract of land where the wilderness has precedence over humans wants. What is the most rewarding experience you’ve had engaging with a public landscape?
We designed a children’s garden for a local library with a focus on creating flexible spaces that can be used for quiet reading or for open-ended play. It includes a pollinator garden and a low wall that divides the space to create distinct areas. The wall has a mural of a pixelated wildflower garden. On the ground plane, the letters of the alphabet are carved into randomly placed bluestone pavers so kids can create active letter games by running around and standing on the pavers. I’ve even seen middle school boys play!
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POINTS OF ENTRY/ BSLA JESSALYN JAREST, ASLA
JOE KUBIK, ASLA
What originally drew you to landscape architecture?
What do you think are the most pressing issues the field of landscape architecture needs to address?
I took a class in my first year of college called Environmental Design Analysis. In taking that course, I realized there was a profession out there that combined art and science, my two favorite subjects from high school. Of course, I was young and it took me a while to get back to Landscape Architecture and I ended up with a MLA, not a BLA. What is your favorite thing to do when you aren’t at work?
What do you mean? I’m always at work. (Just kidding… you can leave that part out) Seriously though… My favorite thing to do when I’m not at work is to spend time in my community. We live in North Cambridge and I love going to the local pool, the parks, or a little league game where kiddos and parents from all over the city hang out and play. We have fun being together and supporting each other even though we all come from different backgrounds. What is the most recent public landscape you’ve visited?
Our family went to Acadia National Park again this summer. We hiked, went to ranger talks, and learned a lot about the park. There were so many people from all over the United States and abroad enjoying the landscape. It was inspiring to hear people from other countries talking about how they came all this way to come to the US National Parks. We need to ensure that the parks are protected for generations to come. How do you strive for work-life balance?
Work-life balance is really hard with a two-career family and kids. I have definitely taken on more of the life balance in our home (which doesn’t mean I work less). Since our household is a dual landscape architecture house, we are always planning trips around landscape. One funny theme that keeps reoccurring in our house is, whenever my husband and I start talking … the kiddos groan and ask us to stop talking about landscape and houses. Apparently, that’s ALL we talk about. That said, they know a lot about trees and architecture.
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It might not be sexy to talk about, but in a word, maintenance. It is impossible to tackle larger, more pressing issues when the very projects that provide the framework upon which communities operate fall to ruin. While various municipalities are slowly developing a patchwork of mechanisms to attempt to fund long term maintenance after projects are “complete,” as a profession we collectively should be heading these discussions and ensure our projects are manageable and sustainable over their entire lifespan. What originally drew you to landscape architecture?
The love all things plants and plant-related allowed me to make connections between ecology, art, and stewardship early on. I was lucky enough to get a job in high school working as a gardener for the Trustees of Reservations. It was through the lens of that organization that I was able to get a sense of all the varied niches the field had to offer. What did you eat for breakfast?
I don’t remember, but it probably had caffeine. What is your favorite thing to do when you aren’t at work?
Grow stuff, garden, repeat. Getting your hands dirty every once in a while is very, very underrated. What is your favorite public landscape?
Those I get to use on a regular(ish) basis with my family, like Waitts Mountain Park in Malden. It takes advantage of a massive granite outcrop overlooking the city and neighboring Fells Reservation. This re-emphasizes the importance of neighborhood parks, the role they serve, while at the same time proving a space doesn’t need to be super designed to work well for the communities it serves. How do you strive for work-life balance?
Balance?!!! Lies!!!!! You just run back and forth on the life seesaw and do your best to keep either end from touching the ground. Occasionally you manage, but usually you over compensate and one end hits ground and you go flying off into the dirt and land face first… HARD. So just remember, life balance = face full of dirt..
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EMILY SCARFE What originally drew you to landscape architecture?
I was originally drawn to landscape architecture because my dad was a geologist. From him I developed an early appreciation of natural landforms. I think we might be the only family that went on a vacation to Hawaii and didn’t go to the beach! Instead, we spent our time visiting the active volcanoes on the Big Island and listening to my dad wax poetic about the geologic processes that were creating the lava flow. I came to practice landscape architecture via a master of architecture program. At the time, architecture theory seemed really disconnected from the landscape and as an architecture student, I always wanted to engage the site beyond the building envelope. As a result, I eventually switched to landscape architecture. I think the dialogue between architecture and landscape architecture has vastly improved since I was in school, perhaps in large part because of growing concerns relative to climate change, and I’m eager to see how that conversation will continue to evolve in the future. What books have you read recently?
The Overstory by Richard Powers. A riveting novel about trees, which is a sentence I never thought I would be able to write! I’ve also read What You Have Heard is True by Carolyn Forche, a poet’s memoir of the start of the civil war in El Salvador. What is the most recent public landscape you’ve visited?
Gasworks Park by Richard Haag. As a kid, I used to visit this park when I visited my grandparents in Seattle. I can remember when it was still possible to climb up and down the structures, but sadly, they have now been closed to the public for safety reasons. It’s a really striking site, with the juxtaposition of the stark former industrial landscape with Lake Union and, on a rare sunny day, Mt. Rainer beyond. Haag was truly a visionary landscape architect, who foresaw the opportunity to re-purpose former industrial landscapes into public places long before anyone else did.
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Getting your hands dirty every once in a while is very, very underrated... Remember, life balance = face full of dirt. - Joe Kubik Catherine Callahan is a landscape architect and painter who finds inspiration in the interplay between fine arts and design. With a BA and MEd from McGill University and MLA from Cornell, in 2011 she co-founded Callahan + LeBleu Landscape Architects in South Portland, Maine. The practice includes residential and commercial design with a focus on supporting local ecosystems, building habitat and protecting water quality at all scales. Jessalyn L. Jarest, ASLA, founded Jessalyn Jarest Landscape Architecture in 2010, after over a decade of practice and teaching in the Boston area. She holds a MLA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Bachelors of Science in Environmental Planning and Design from Rutgers University. In addition to her own practice, Jessalyn is a founding principal of COLLAB – a collaborating laboratory of five independent, women-owned landscape architecture practices working on projects throughout the Northeast. Growing up in New England, Joe Kubik, ASLA, was heavily influenced by the ecology of the area. Whether looking for signs of spring as skunk cabbage pokes through the spring snow, or picking wild blueberries while hiking in the White Mountains, he has always felt a strong connection to the flora of the region. Joe holds a BSLA from Cornell University and an MLA from the University of Pennsylvania, and is a designer at Lemon Brooke in Concord, Massachusetts. Emily Scarfe is an associate with the Gregory Lombardi Design Institutional Studio in Cambridge, MA. Originally from northern Alberta, she has an MArch and an MLA froshe holds a Bachelor of Arts in film from Bard College and both a Master of Landscape Architecture and a Master of Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin.
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PLACEMAKING & PUBLIC FORUM
BUILDING LAYERED ENGAGMENT IN SALEM MEGAN TOMKINS How can a design process catalyze a community? In early 2017, CBA Landscape Architects was hired by the City of Salem, Massachusetts to design a new park on an empty rectangular waterfront lot at 289 Derby Street. The broad goal was to create a flexible space to accommodate events, while also gaining strong community buy in for the design. Our experience with public design helped us win this project, but the Salem Department of Planning and Community Development had a unique proposition: would CBA be interested in collaborating with a local consultant who had worked with the City before? This was our introduction to Studioful Design, a Salem based participatory design/architecture studio.
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Working collaboratively with the City and Studioful, our team established an accelerated schedule of five on-site community placemaking events that took place on the empty lot (the site for the park), scheduled weekly on consecutive Wednesday evenings to create momentum. The series served to spark interest, stimulate dialogue, ignite imagination, demonstrate new uses, and collect feedback. This partnership shifted how I approach community design events. Studioful proved to be a key liaison with local groups; their deep knowledge of the community proved invaluable in catching the interest of a wide variety of stakeholders. Finding or trying to create these connections can often be an obstacle for a designer who is not already embedded in the local community.
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LESSONS FROM THE FIELD/ BSLA
TACTIC ONE The team set an active theme for each event, with the events ultimately focusing on dance, meeting, play, eating, and, finally, a wrap up party. The kickoff “Dance & Design” event included a modern dance performance, a local Scottish Dance group, and a drum circle for all to join in. Even Mayor Kim Driscoll danced. One of the things that became apparent to me was the high level of energy required to facilitate an event series like this – as landscape architects, we’re usually designers, not party planners! We included hands on activities to elicit written and graphic feedback, like the familiar stickering plans and precedent image boards, but also worksheets – like the Placemaking Placemat at the “Eat and Imagine” event -- that could be handed in when completed for food ticket. The events
were in the evening, and the food was provided by a restaurant across Derby Street; this was a huge hit. TACTIC TWO In addition to the five public events, the project maintained a constant passive presence on site. The team posted chalkboards at the public sidewalk edge to collect data from those who weren’t at the events. The chalkboards were photographed periodically and then wiped clean to make way for more feedback. The project team also maintained a bulletin board on site that was updated after every meeting with progress updates. On site elements can allow those who can’t or don’t want to attend the weekly events to be involved. TACTIC THREE The project had a social media presence
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and its own hashtag, #289Derby, as one more way interested citizens could follow along and share their ideas, on their own time. The goal of including different types of outreach was to create layers of feedback to enforce an iterative design process. Each round of design was based on the combined feedback from the previous round. This layering process also produced strong documentation of the process, which backed up design decisions. The final event, “Party on the Water,” was a grand success. The definitive design plan was well received. + ONE MORE Over the next year, CBA moved the design through bidding and construction. The new waterfront park at 289 Derby Street was completed in
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the spring of 2019 – and the engagement process continued! During the summer of 2019, the City sought suggestions and public vote to name the new park. The decision was made to honor Charlotte Forten, the first female African American graduate of Salem State University. The dedication ceremony and celebration held in September 2019 incorporated speeches, songs, poetry, a dance performance, food, drink, and a band.
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At the dedication I recognized many familiar faces from the placemaking events, and there were many new faces as well. The park functioned just as intended – an inclusive gathering and event space. I look forward to seeing the many inventive and creative ways that neighbors, residents, and the City of Salem use the park in the future -- a new city space truly of, by, and for the public.
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PREVIOUS SPREAD Drum circle at the first on-site placemaking event for the new park at 289 Derby. OPPOSITE PAGE TOP, Scottish dance at the first on-site placemaking event, and BOTTOM, bulletin boards at the 289 Derby Street sidewalk. After each event, the bulletin boards were updated with progress photos. THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Stand up paddleboarders visit the wrapup party for the 289 Derby placemaking process; An event participant shows off her completed Placemaking Placemat at the Eat & Imagine event; Participants review the definitive design plans at the wrap up party; Party after dark and view of a speech at the Charlotte Forten Park Opening, September 2019. PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS Charlotte Forten Park opening party photos by CBA Landscape Architects. All other photographs by Creative Northshore.
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THREE
CONVERSATIONS to expand, unpack, and explore the intersections of landscape + ‘public forum’ noun
: a place that has a long-standing tradition of being used for, is historically associated with, or has been dedicated by government act to the free exercise of the right to speech and public debate and assembly legal definition LEFT
Pulaski Park, Northampton, Massachusetts on September 20, 2019 during the Climate Strike Photo by Steven Moga See more on Pulaski Park in the 2018 BSLA Design Awards.
A public forum, also called an open forum, is open to all expression that is protected under the First Amendment. Streets, parks, and sidewalks are considered open to public discourse by tradition and are designated as traditional public forums. CREDIT: Merriam-Webster www.merriam-webster.com
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TIFFANY COGELL in conversation with JENNIFER LEE KEETER, ASLA about “Public Forum” and
MORE EQUITABLE ENGAGEMENT
“I learned how to advocate for racial equity through the experiences of my children.” -- Tiffany Cogell social designer and planner, activist, woman of color, mom.
Editor’s Note: Tiffany Cogell was a panelist at the 2019 BSLA Conference, part of “Spatial Multiplicity: Weaving Complex and Diverse Narratives in the Public Realm.” Drawing on Tiffany’s experiences as a designer, parent, and activist, one late summer afternoon I sat down with Tiffany to discuss themes from that session, including meaningful engagement and cultivating community representatives as consultants, adjusting design processes to create more equitable – and successful – design. Tiffany: I’m a designer and parent and community organizer. I never think “I have to focus on one thing,” because for me it’s like only feeding your kids applesauce. Kids need a wellbalanced diet in order to be nutritionally sound. I think that activism makes me feel, ultimately, like I’m helping myself deal with a lot of internal struggles, while also helping make things better for my children and the other black and brown children in this neighborhood and all the other marginalized neighborhoods in this city. We’re all everybody’s parent in this neighborhood. And we’re all community organizers, if you think about what we do on a regular basis. We have residents who call 3-1-1 when they see a problem with infrastructure. We have neighbors who know how to get permits to close the street so that murals can be retouched. We have a neighborhood garden and there’s a lot of skill and expertise that has come from gardening. Folks know what chemicals not to use, what natural ingredients keep the insects from biting plants, and which ones work on what plant. We are learning things like chemistry through trial and error. We also learn how to lay sod and how to how to mix cement when the city doesn’t come out and fill in the dang hole where the street sign used to be because everyone keeps on twisting their ankle there. We’re all doing some form of advocacy because that is just normal life for us. Jennifer: In my experience landscape architects take it for granted that the client on a residential project will have valuable lived experience and knowledge of their property. As you said at the BSLA conference, communities have that, too -- that lived experience and expertise. That needs to be acknowledged. Tiffany: It shows respect. It shows that the intention for coming into someone’s neighborhood to facilitate improvements is based in neighborhood need. So hold a community meeting. And hold it when folks are home, and in a way that is inviting and makes it comfortable for people to show up
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Jennifer: You mentioned it’s got to have daycare; if it’s held at mealtimes, it’s got to have a meal. Tiffany: Exactly. Jennifer: This also gets at the limitations of community meetings – as design teams, we’re asking people to give us the one comment they can squeeze into the few minutes of Q&A. The next step, according to you, is finding a group of people that landscape architects might pay as consultants to work more closely with the project team. Tiffany: Yes. Give them a scope of work and write a proposal for their input. And give this to them ahead of time so that they can mentally prepare, write notes, and not walk into something blindly; so that they can get into the right mind frame to be an asset. Jennifer: As I was preparing for our conversation today, one of my colleagues asked me “what happens if there are multiple opinions or disagreements within the neighborhood?” Reflecting on that, I think: if landscape architects are paying community representatives as consultants, we are giving them the respect and the trust that we give to every professional whom we work with. What happens if a soil consultant and a civil engineer don’t agree? We bring everyone to the table and we figure it out.
Tristan and Talia envisioning improved infrastructure and neighborhood connections along the Emerald Necklace and the Fairmount Greenway at a charrette at ABX in Boston, 2016.
Tiffany: And ultimately what’s most beneficial will reign supreme. Maybe it’s a compromise… Jennifer: But how can we ask someone to compromise if we’re not respecting them in the first place? Tiffany: Exactly. Whether the project is in someone’s neighborhood or even downtown, we need to reach out to marginalized communities and ask what it’s going to take to get them to feel comfortable or welcome. Otherwise, how is our action different than colonization or anything else that has been put upon marginalized peoples? We don’t know what is off-putting culturally speaking or religiously speaking.
The Boston Project Ministry youth transformed this parkfacing wall into a beautiful mural and loving daily reminder. It works in all seasons.
For example, there is a growing Muslim Community in my neighborhood. I think about how I dress and what’s okay for me, but what about how they dress and what’s okay for them? We know that for some of those sisters, their dress can make them hot because they’re wearing more. As design teams, are we providing shady places? Are we promoting a certain kind of dress code? The goal is to redefine what we consider success. If a project is Boston Society of Landscape Architects Fieldbook
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ever completed without outreach and feedback from residents, how do we know if it’s successful? It’s not. There must be a shift in how we quantify success. Jennifer: This gets to what you have said about who defines the measures of success -- it should be the community -because designers or developers can’t come in at a high-level and say “this community will be successful when it looks like this and has x, y, z amenities.” This is the importance of getting community representatives to the table from the very beginning. Tiffany: Yes, and as designers, we can’t be married to what we initially thought was good. Once data is shared, once input is given, we must be open enough and respectful enough to say “wow, maybe we need to go back and rethink things.” It doesn’t need to be difficult. The initial contact with the community may be very informal. Jennifer: Just go walk the neighborhood with them. Tiffany: There you go. My neighbors and I have held many a walking tour for many elected officials who say, “I never knew that people use your neighborhood as a cut through from Talbot Ave to Washington and I never knew how dangerous it was.” Jennifer: A landscape architect would never start designing a residential project… Tiffany: …without talking to the client! And without walking through it with them! That homeowner can inform you. It’s the same thing. So reach out to the executive director of the local nonprofit or the neighborhood watch person. Maybe you’ll find out the community meets every other month on a Tuesday, which would be the best time to go and talk about what you’re doing, get feedback, and find folks who want to participate. How easy is that? But you don’t know unless you reach out and make these connections.
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neighborhood) -- post a timeline for what’s happening on our community board. That way residents can bring it up during community meetings to remind folks and keep them engaged. This is all commonsense stuff. It’s not hard. Jennifer: Let’s also talk about outcomes. Not only deliverables to give to the client, but also what are deliverables that we can give back to the community? Something that is quantified and tangible. Not just good feelings. Tiffany: The thinking phase and the designing phase is when landscape architects could devise a pitch to the developer/ owner -- that’s when it should be defined what needs to happen for the project to be a value add to the community, AND why it’s going to benefit the client. The project will serve its purpose. Money won’t be wasted. It’s going to be sustainable. Yes, we’re going to give you most of your deliverables, or yes, we’re going to reach the outcome that you want. And we also will benefit the community this project is going to live in. Jennifer: When we spoke earlier, you pointed out that benefiting the owner and benefiting the community aren’t mutually exclusive. The owner/developer will have community leaders who are already mobilized and feel invested in the project, who will feel stewardship and ownership as well. Tiffany: Correct. If it doesn’t feel like it’s theirs, then there may be vandalism or people not using it properly or at all -- and really, this is a consideration no matter what neighborhood a project goes into. Projects – especially public landscape projects -- need that sense of ownership and stewardship to be sustainable and lasting. Jennifer: I remember you saying at the conference that owners and developers should stay engaged with that group over time, because that will help produce, if not numbers, real action: “we have only spent X dollars on maintenance because the community picks up their trash, their kids are playing on the playground respectfully, everybody wants this to stay nice.”
Jennifer: Also, design teams need to have a plan for how that outreach and engagement continues throughout the project. It’s not, as you said, a checkbox. It’s not “we reached out to the community.” There has to be time allowed for checking back in later, asking “have things changed?”
Tiffany: Look at Elmhurst Park as an example. This is my park. This is where my children play, where everyone’s children here play. This used to be a vacant lot where people dumped needles, trash, junk, and the neighborhood got together because a small child got very badly hurt. Neighbors said, “enough is enough.” That’s why this park is here.
Tiffany: And a timeline – that would be great. Say, for instance, something was going on in Elmhurst Park (in my
Jennifer: There are benefits from maintenance, there are benefits from safety. If a community feels invested and feels
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safe and secure … I don’t want to say property values go up because oh my God gentrification… Tiffany: Yes, but the value add to the neighborhood is a significant benefit and that’s important. Jennifer: And there’s an incentive for the people who already live there to stay because they are taking care of the space. Tiffany: It’s a grounding. It’s another benefit to my living here -- an asset to me and my family. Outcomes are very tricky. We are all monetarily driven, regardless of activism or advocacy. I can’t feed my kids, I can’t pay my car note, and I can’t put gas in my car to get to work to make money without money. As design professionals we can’t stray too far from that reality, but how do we change our priorities to include resident needs? Designers and developers have to make the decision that they’re committed to community wellness. That’s where it starts.
Residents exercise at Elmhurst Park -- a 2016 site for Boston Parks Summer Fitness Series.
Jennifer: You’ve spoken about budgeting for community engagement as part of initial project proposals, and if offices are really committed to pursuing equity and engagement, they need to have budget line items for that. I’m not going to pretend that small firms can necessarily carry that, but large or mid-sized design firms allocate a certain amount of the annual budget for employee training, community building… Tiffany: Yes. As landscape architects, do you really feel that success requires community input, feedback, and critique? If so, it doesn’t just appear. It must be intentional, and it must be a non-negotiable line item. And if the developer is not willing to give x amount of dollars, what have we as an industry allocated in our budgets to make sure that we’re honoring our neighbors and other communities that may not have a voice?
Family Fun Nights, organized by The Boston Project Ministries and Talbot Norfolk Triangle Resident Steering Committee.
But this means fundamentally changing everything. It’s changing the process, it’s changing the way we quantify success, it’s changing the way we move in our industry - when is a design final? When do we start thinking of a design? Before community engagement or after? I think what it boils down to is providing knowledge and giving voice to people that don’t have a voice. Not because they can’t speak up for themselves, but because they don’t have the opportunity. Everyone that experiences whatever landscape we create should leave that place inspired in some way. We are in an industry where we’re supposed to be benefiting the lives of people. If we don’t ask, how do we know?
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You are my neighbor. This is our Talbot Norfolk Triangle neighborhood -- residents and volunteers.
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Sara Carr, landscape architect and architect, faculty at Northeastern University, author of the forthcoming The Topography of Wellness: Health and the American Urban Landscape (University of Virginia Press, 2020). Elizabeth Randall, ASLA, associate principal, Reed Hilderbrand, and leader of the Water Street Tampa District project, among others.
SARA JENSEN CARR and ELIZABETH RANDALL, ASLA in conversation with JENNIFER LEE KEETER, ASLA about “Public Forum” and
Editor’s Note: When I asked Sara Carr if she would talk with me about her scholarship and her upcoming book as a lens through which to explore themes of landscape, public health and public forum, it happened that she had been meaning to reach out to my Reed Hilderbrand colleague Elizabeth Randall on the subject. In the spirit of public forum, I invited Elizabeth to join the conversation.
MEASURING WELLNESS and HEALTH
Jennifer: The two of you already connected on the topic of designing for health and wellness as it related to Elizabeth’s work on the Tampa Wellness District. How did that come about, and how did each of you develop an interest in wellness more generally? Sara: We had a thirty second conversation. [Elizabeth and Sara laugh] Elizabeth: I went to Sara’s presentation at the ASLA National conference -- two years ago, right? Sara: Yes, it would have been two years ago because I was just coming off maternity leave.
Illustration from Compendium Anatomicum, John Case, 1695.
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Elizabeth: Right, 2017. The topic was interesting to me -- your part of the presentation in particular -- because we were starting the work in Tampa. I was intrigued with how you were thinking about the same kinds of qualities and standards that the WELL Community guidelines were trying to achieve. One of the main reasons Reed Hilderbrand took the Tampa project was because the developer made a commitment to trying to be the first certified WELL Community. We were intrigued at the opportunity to both shape what a WELL Community would look like and to test the criteria. But I think the real draw was this question: how do you design for wellness in a place that gets so hot? In a place that has real flooding and water issues? In a place that has vulnerable populations?
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Akin to LEED or SITES, the WELL Community Standard® is a performance-based system for measuring, certifying, and monitoring features of the built environment that impact human health and wellbeing, through air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort, and mind. www.wellcertified.com/certification/community/
Sara: I knew of the WELL Community Standards, but I didn’t know how they applied to landscape. That was my way of coming into this interest. I was practicing architecture in New Orleans, doing health care facilities, and even though I was an architect my firm wanted me to design a rehabilitation garden on the roof of one of the hospitals. I realized we had all this information about every other room in the hospital -- there’s so much evidence-based research about hospital facilities -but basically nothing about outdoor space. Then Hurricane Katrina hit. I was evacuated for six weeks. I came back because a lot of our hospitals needed rehabilitation right away. I was back in the city earlier than a lot of other people, and there was nothing to do, so I just walked. I was thinking about how much the landscape had changed, how that was affecting me, how it was affecting people, and how it was affecting access around the city. While I was still evacuated, I’d thought, “well, maybe I’m homeless, maybe I’ll go back to grad school.” I had been interested in landscape architecture for a while, but this experience solidified the decision. I ended up getting my MLA and PhD with a very specific focus on how these standards could apply to landscape and the connections between public realm and landscape. In the American healthcare system, the public realm is the one thing that’s accessible to everybody, so how can we make it better and more humane? Jennifer: As both of you started to dig into the subject, were you surprised by what you learned? Or were the standards and data intuitive? Elizabeth: We did critique each of the WELL Standards based what impact it seemed it would have. The categories included air, which is about pollution; drinking water quality; nourishment (access to healthy food has to be built into the design); light; fitness; temperature; sound; materials (meaning
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no exposure to hazardous substances); access to mental health care, substance abuse and addiction services; access to green spaces [laughter]; health impact assessments; policies that address the social determinants of health; health promotion programming; policies that foster social cohesion; community identity... there’s a bunch of stuff. However, it was surprising and interesting that the WELL Community guidelines were not initially oriented toward urban environments. The standards were somewhat suburban, so we had to make some adjustments to make the standards relevant for the master plan. Sara: I think what’s so fascinating about this subject is that it is for the large part intuitive. I was reading a book from the early 1900’s that was written by a physician named John Rauch about the need for public parks in Chicago, and although his evidence was more anecdotal than empirical, he discussed in detail the effect of trees and parks on easing respiratory disease and mental illness. Now we actually have a lot of empirical evidence to back it up. There’s some fascinating work being done by Jenny Roe at the University of Virginia where they’re putting EEG helmets on elderly people and walking them through public spaces and through parks, then looking at their stress and attention levels. That’s probably some of the most robust research on landscape feedback loops that we have. There are also people tracking stress by measuring levels of cortisol in saliva. They walk people through a space and then take samples to measure the amount of cortisol. And there’s a lot of literature on what’s called Attention Restoration Theory showing that the reason green space is so beneficial is because you can be immersed and interested enough in a green space that you don’t have to think about it actively. When you do things like cross a street, you have a lot of decisions, so even this little bit of rest helps. It is intuitive. Everybody has a story about how their school or
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their home or the landscape where they grew up affected their health. But for some reason it’s still an “Aha!” moment for a lot of people when you talk about the specific effects. That’s why I’ve been trying to coalesce the research in one place; to show the pattern that’s starting to come together. These things don’t get solidified unless they’re in policy though, and implementation can be altered by personal behavior. For example, in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset neighborhood, which has a large Chinese population, the City has been trying to expand its urban forest. But according to Feng Shui beliefs, trees immediately outside the door disrupt energy flow. The City was trying to plant trees and then found out that residents had uprooted them. Jennifer: That makes me wonder about unintended side effects, or what you might not have realized would be contentious. Intuitively we believe everybody should have green space, but some people say, “no, that is the wrong place for the green space,” because of emotional, religious, or deeply personal reasons. What are the forces preventing a broader and more equitable application of design principles for health and wellness? Elizabeth: How these things play out in terms of equity and universal wellness is more nuanced. The WELL Standards set guidelines on bike racks, on the way you direct and layout the lights, on the way you design the sidewalk so it’s legible and there’s a lot of shade. But then if you have new buildings and a higher-end retail environment, will that feel welcoming to everybody? How do you design landscapes that invite people and make everyone feel welcome here? That’s a fundamental question that we’re all grappling with right now.
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Sara: I’ve been trying to sort through this in the process of writing the book, and we should be aware that it’s backfired in the past. There’s a growing area of literature that talks about “just green enough” and landscapes of gentrification, and the High Line, in New York City, is always the first project cited. The High Line is objectively great design. It’s an injection of landscape into what was very hardscaped before, it has cooling effects, and it has physical activity. But the rents in the buildings around the High Line shot up. So there are questions being asked: is it the size of the intervention? Is it the design? There are papers and publications that are asking “what is just green enough so that it doesn’t trigger gentrification?” When it comes to health, though, doesn’t every community deserve the best? “Just healthy enough” doesn’t seem ethical, right? The triangle between landscape, improvements in health, and gentrification -- and the context in the United States where wellness is very commodified -- is something I write about. Wellness is seen as a responsibility of the individual and as something one can consume. This has been a consistent narrative since the Industrial Revolution. That puts a lot of responsibility on the individual, and there are also a lot of skeptics who question the desire or ability of certain groups of individuals to adopt practices that improve their wellness. Designers only have power up to a point; landscape architects are part of a larger system. If one talks about the social ecological model of health, which looks like nested circles, policy is above design and the built environment. Policy and economic structures are going to dictate what the built environment ultimately is. Then downstream of design and the built environment are social cohesion and the individual.
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IMAGE: Plant palatte diagram by Sara Jensen Carr, created for a research study that addressed health in New Orleans through greenway design.
(Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System), which is a behavioral survey that simply asks people “how many minutes do you walk a day? How would you rate your mental health?” But the survey takes time and may not be objectively accurate. Health is intensely personal.
Look at food desert studies: food deserts are a very real issue and I do believe that you should have access to healthy foods, but in terms of changing behavior -- that takes a lot more. It’s years and years to find the metrics of it and it takes ground level programs. It’s not just putting it there. This is what I learned from my time working in a public health school. Designers must be aware that we’re working in a larger system. Jennifer: What are the successful strategies, then, or what could we be doing to better integrate health and wellness into public work? Elizabeth: It does come back to policy, right? Our office is doing a project on the state of urban trees here in Cambridge. Cambridge has a pretty good amount of canopy, but it’s in decline, and it’s being affected by a lot of things: climate change, construction, age, etc. One of the interesting things to me about the project is that the Conservation Law Foundation is helping to advise on policy. So there are people on the team who are measuring all sorts of metrics, but then at the same time we’re getting policy advice. That’s a little different than policy related directly to health, but it obviously impacts health, which makes me wonder if we, as landscape architects, should reach out more often to policy and legal advisors to inform design and planning? Sara: It’s a timescale issue as well. The timeline of development does not coalesce well with the time it takes to measure health improvements. If you’re doing a public health study the most robust measure is to do a longitudinal study, which would take 10 to 12 years. Also, it has its drawbacks, but one of the best health measures we have is self-reporting. There is the BRFSS
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Elizabeth: That’s true. [Laughing] I just looked at my watch, at the activity circle, which I check way more than I should. It’s like a game. I wonder if there’s a way to do something that triggers a whole group of people or a government organization, like a big thing up on the wall that says, “our community walked this much today.” Sara: There was a mayor of Oklahoma City who set a goal for the city to lose a million pounds. It was a citywide initiative, during which the City was also doing things like putting in more parks and health clinics. It’s all about a multi-pronged approach. Elizabeth: What have you found in terms of the efficacy of broadcasting metrics? Is communicating the benefits beneficial? Sara: I think so. I come from the standpoint that not enough people realize the built environment’s effect on them. They know intuitively, but they haven’t made the connection. Landscape architecture is also in a period now where we’re trying to explain our value to the big, sticky issues of our time: public health and climate change. I think these metrics always help when you’re communicating to the public. It’s all about knowing our place, but also knowing our value. We alone are not going to do it, but luckily as designers one skill we have is bringing together lots of different groups of people and thinking expansively and holistically. Elizabeth: Which does seem like something that landscape architects are particularly well suited to do because we do so much of that in other realms of collaboration. Why not health? Sara: Right!
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CAITLIN ACETO, ASLA, NICK ACETO, ASLA, and ADDY SMITH-REIMAN in conversation with CHRISTINA SOHN, ASLA, about “Public Forum” and
DESIGN as CIVIC ACTIVISM
Editor’s Note: I sat with Addy Smith-Reiman of the Portland Society for Architecture (PSA), and Nick and Cailtin Aceto of Aceto Landscape Architects + Urbanists in Portland, Maine. We discussed advocacy, the conversation-changing efforts of the PSA, and the goals of the PSA’s recent Complete City design competition. Building on the competition’s underpinning philosophy, the Acetos’ approach expanded notions of who has a voice, and who can create and define space. Christina: Addy, would you mind introducing yourself, explaining the Portland Society for Architecture, what it does and where it’s going? Addy: I’m the executive director of PSA, which is a nonprofit started in 2006 as a society of architects who wanted a Portland-based group to network and share ideas. Christina: How did PSA develop its voice in advocacy? Addy: Around 2008 or2009 members of PSA became very active with the support of contemporary design in a historic neighborhood. A colleague had proposed a modern, glass house that challenged the existing wood vernacular. Architects rallied to promote evolution and innovation in design excellence. They were successful, and the home was built. This ignited advocacy activities of the PSA. A few years later, the same group (plus additional volunteers) took that energy and put it into advocacy around sea level rise and climate change. They hosted the Rising Tides Symposium in 2009, then a Sea Level Rise Plan with the city, and eventually a grant-funded Waterfront Visioning effort in 2014 that catalyzed the city to change thinking about its waterfront. Christina: What was the impetus for the Complete Cities competition?
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Addy: In 2016 PSA hosted a series of design charrettes in partnership with the Portland Chamber of Commerce, the University of Southern Maine Muskie School of Public Service, and Creative Portland (a nonprofit arts agency) to think about growth and change in the city. It was meant to be inclusive, but it was a closed-door session for only a select group of invitees. They took the products of the charrettes and then presented them to the public. Fifty percent of it was well received and fifty percent was seen as didactic and not inclusive of multiple voices missing from the room. The concept of “public realm” was challenged -- who is your public? As a result, the PSA board decided to embark on a mapping project called “the Complete City” through which we distributed 5,000 blank maps of Portland. Comments were collected on what people liked or what they didn’t, what they wanted changed and what they wanted to stay the same. We collected about 400 maps and sat on them for about a year, and then opened the idea up as a city-wide design ideas competition. The goal has been to catalyze voices in the design community to really think about how to shape our region.
2019 competition announcement by the Portland Society for Architecture
Every year we’ll have another competition on topics that have bubbled up, but we’ll be more finite in our ask. This year the prompt was just to imagine the Complete City based on the maps. Christina: Nick and Caitlin, what was your angle in this concept? Nick: Our concept really sought to focus on people first, the “cast of characters” who make up the urban ballet. At the time, Portland was embroiled in an ongoing debate about the relocation of an emergency homeless shelter, and the process became highly politicized. Various committees would recommend sites for the emergency shelter, a public
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announcement would be released saying, this is the site in such-and-such neighborhood, and then the neighborhood would react. The process pitted neighborhoods against one another. It occurred to our team that there are pressing issues in the city that we could address within this competition platform. We have a given site, in the geographic center of one of Portland’s more well-to-do neighborhoods… what if we proposed a neighborhood-scale shelter on to the site? What does that look like? At a neighborhood scale shelter, you’re talking maybe 30 beds versus the much larger proposals of 200-plus beds that had garnered so much controversy. We thought this competition was a place to test a scattered site model, which was interesting to us.
60 homeless individuals shared their experiences...
Caitlin: We called it a “community” model and imagined it as a prototypical concept that could be applied to various districts within Portland. Nick: We thought it would provoke a conversation. And I think it did. The whole idea was premised on how we might rethink this highly stigmatized use -- an emergency homeless shelter – and how might we integrate it into an urban fabric with mixed uses that can be somewhat compatible. What does compatible land use look like? Using Jane Jacobs’ idea of the “urban ballet,” our team constructed a scenario around a group of people, a “cast of characters” with differing needs and lifestyles, and then tracked their choreographed movements over an urban stage, our chosen site. The proposal intends to illustrate how the urban form might support varied, mixed uses which could add value to the urban fabric and help to destigmatize the homeless population by integrating them into a core community.
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Caitlin: And then, we found out - Oh, yay, we won! Our proposal was one of the winners of this competition. We love making art as well, so we decided to take the competition prize money and use it to create an installation for this year’s PARK(ing) day [September 20, 2019]. We decided to parlay our PARK(ing) Day design to highlight the issue of homelessness. ...while one played the guitair for the crowd.
Our team spoke with a woman who is currently homeless. She was excited about this idea and said she would reach out to others. She spoke with 60 other homeless people! She transferred their stories on cardboard because that’s a material that’s associated with the homeless population. The stories were hung up within the PARK(ing) Day structure. When you enter the installation, it feels like a tight, intimate space and you’re surrounded by these words as you take in the content. Then you look up, and the structure is open to the sky, symbolic of being without a roof over your head. PARK(ing) Day really was fun. We had a gentleman who was previously homeless playing the guitar, so we had music… Nick: Even though we made this structure as welcoming as possible -- we had music, and we had good food, a good spread -- it was interesting to watch people react from the sidewalk. They were very leery of stopping for too long. Some people observed from a distance. But then others would come right in and look and bring their kids. Christina: What did you take from that?
Views of the PARK(ing) Day instatllion, September 20, 2019, Portland, Maine.
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Caitlin: Our office is located three stories above, so we were lucky: we got to look down and watch how people interacted with it. I think part of the hesitation was the content on the inside, and the dimension – it was only 6 x 9 ft., so the small size of the space may have made people wary of entering. But also the stories.
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If you glimpsed inside and read the stories, you saw things like, “I was arrested for carrying Narcan because both my parents were heroin addicts when I was 16 years old,” or “I’m 75 years old and I’ve been homeless for three years.” So from the sidewalk you get a glimpse of these stories and you think: “Whoa, this is going to be heavy content inside. I don’t know if I should enter this space.” Nick: Right, and I think (and maybe I’m going out on a limb here) that it spoke to the culture here in Northern New England. As a native New Englander, I think we want to keep those issues at a distance, we’re afraid to engage with them, it hits a little too close to home. It feels like it could happen to any of us. Maybe to some people, it has happened to them, or they’ve seen it in their own family, and they are a little bit afraid to recognize it. Addy: I think also in speaking to Northern New England communities that are really impacted with the opioid crisis, including rural areas as well as larger cities like Manchester, New Hampshire or Burlington Vermont, there’s a struggle with the related dynamics of large homeless populations inhabiting public parks We have very well-intentioned park advocates that don’t know what to do. There’s a reactionary desire to remove homeless people from parks so other people can enjoy them and then there are other park advocates who are saying this is a public space. There’s so much tension around a population that is using public space this is making people very uncomfortable on one hand, and on the other, where else is this population going to go….
.Views of the installation on PARK(ing) Day, September 20, 2019
Christina: You were describing the city’s homeless center process as frustrating in many ways. What about it was limiting? Addy: Not unlike other places, there are different silos within the city, and they’re not always moving at the same pace. And
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that leads to tension and a lack of awareness in the public process. From the building development, to historic districts, to parks and open spaces, there is no cohesive process and that makes it difficult to trust, and more difficult to push design or planning boundaries in a constructive and public way. Christina: Is there a way to flip it? What would make a successful process in your mind? Addy: Well, so, of course here I’ll give a plug for PSA and its potential. We’re certainly not there yet, but in just engaging with every type of public and in encouraging people to ask big questions and inviting the city to us and to open our events to a broader audience is our goal. In every municipality, there already is a “public forum” during the comment period of city council or planning board public meetings, when every citizen gets their three minutes. But this is spectacle. Portland is faced with urban, sophisticated problems and needs more time to have open conversations and play with potential solutions. Where do you identify the ability to make impact before it’s semi-cooked? It really is about design education without being didactic and elitist. In the past, I think that the design community here has been perceived as either extremely elitist or just a mouthpiece to a developer. That’s dangerous, particularly with landscape architecture, because that’s not at all what the foundation is. I think creating other kinds of public forums – like competitions -- to talk about public space and process is absolutely vital. Where that goes will ebb and flow depending on the needs. Competitions are a great tool to start. That’s our job – PSA’s job - in sharing processes, language and opportunity for public input in engaging fun and creative ways. If it puts pressure on the very processes that happen at
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the city level without being too adversarial, that may be a great thing for all. Nick: From a policy level, we need to promote the profession to policy makers as THE most important profession involved in addressing both climate change and social and economic equality in the built environment. As practitioners, we find ourselves applying equal energy to both excellence in experiential design, like traditional landscape architectural design, as well as learning to better speak the language of our colleagues in engineering, architecture, ecology, planning, and economics. Our work is critically important, especially if we can create a set of metrics that quantify our value more clearly to clients and policy makers. We may not always – perhaps rarely – get the opportunity to design places exactly as we have envisioned them. Many landscape architects work within tight constraints. But what we find particularly interesting in our own practice is not so much seeking out the few very highly “enlightened” clients, but slowly, incrementally shifting paradigms in those everyday projects. We think that this how we can best make positive change. Perhaps it is as simple as making the case for fewer parking spaces, and sometimes it is developing a project narrative to help unify the team and client around a common set of goals and objectives. Landscape architects can be both a great steward of the environment and public interest as well as strong advocate of our clients’ goals. Maine and Northern New England are particularly rooted in a sense of tradition. This comes through in the way business is conducted, and in the way public space is conceived and managed. In Portland, public space and public transportation are, by and large, still considered the realm of the destitute and indigent if not properly beautified or armored. As landscape architects, we are making the case that public space is most viable if it is comfortable, useful, and occupied.
Visit Complete City: Imagined on exhibition at the University of New England in Maine Art Gallery on the Portland Campus, 716 Stevens Avenue, through January 31, 2020.
More at www.portlandarchitects.org
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#nofilter EMILY SCARFE Social media as public forum? Social media has created novel ways to use and experience landscapes. The hashtag presents fresh and occasionally puzzling ideas about how humans filter, experience, and share public places that we, as landscape architects, may not have considered.
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What about those places that, due to social media exposure, have become too well-loved? In lists of the “mostInstagram-able” places in the world, natural landscapes are near the top. This spring, people flocked to the California desert to take photos of the rare wildflower “super bloom” and nearly destroyed the fragile eco-system in the process.
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Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Antelope Canyon have an incredibly popular online presence, but these sites are now under siege. A hashtag inviting people to #exploreourearth shows an endangered panda. Should we be applauding the exploration of sensitive habitats?
Perhaps this exposure will increase the likelihood that the habitat becomes protected. Awareness of sites’ fragility can catalyze action and propel conservation efforts. Will exposure help increase environmental action? Increasingly our lives are lived online, and as humans we will continue to
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struggle to achieve balance between our digital and physical terrain. Landscape architects, with our knowledge of both natural and cultural systems and how those influence and form space and place, are uniquely positioned to facilitate navigating a balance between digital and physical realms.
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Young Voices We wanted to expand our forum and hear from kids, too: what is it like having landscape architects as parents, and what are their takes on parks, plants, and being outside?
How would you describe what your mom or dad do for work?
Have you ever seen one of your mom or dad’s projects?
What is your favorite spot or favorite thing to do outside?
CH (8 years old): She goes to work and types on her computer and she does pier projects and she has meetings
CH (8): We walked around looking at art.
MN (8): Play games.
QN (12 years old): Design plants BK (15 year olds): He meets with people, talks to people, designs landscapes and goes to his client’s places and helps with that stuff.
BK (15): Went to see Franklin Park and we walked around. It was the kite fair so there were a lot of kites we had to watch out for, but it was fun. What do your parents do when they’re outside? NH (10): Doing garden work or taking out the garbage. QN (12): Birding with me.
NH (10): Larch Park. I like swinging at the park and going super fast and trying to touch the trees. I like climbing the trees at the playground. And Mad River Glen, where I like to ski. KN (14): Go to a pool or beach. KK (16): Go on hikes with my family and dog. BK (15): I like parks with trees where you can relax and draw the scenery.
KK (16): My parents walk around in the outdoors and they just kind of take it all in.
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What’s the coolest bug, bird, or other animal you’ve seen outside? MN (8): Blue jay or eagle because I don’t usually get to see eagles. Blue jay because it’s my favorite bird. NH (10): Large-mouth bass. I liked how big and ferocious it was. QN (12 yrs): Great black hawk – only seen once in the United States.
If you could invent a new plant, what would it be? Would it have any special powers? CH (8): Yes, it would produce electricity and would compost the earth like earthworms do. MN (8): Cotton candy plant. NH (10): My plant would be pretty big and it would be mint green or teal and it would have lots of flowers and be hypoallergenic so it wouldn’t produce pollen allergies and the leaves would be able to heal and would be very pretty for bouquets. QN (12): A plant that produces A LOT of oxygen.
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Why do you think parks are important? MN (8): Makes kids feel happy. NH (10): I like to use my imagination in parks. There’s always an accessible way to use your imagination. KN (14): Protect areas for animals.
IMAGE CREDITS, ABOVE High school students doing homework in the weeping willow tree at the Cambridge Public Library. Photo by Elena Saporta, ASLA OPPOSITE PAGE Ilustration by the editors. Inspired by cotton candy.
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/ LETTER FROM THE TRUSTEE
We are well-served when we pause to reconsider things, large and small, in
our lives; this issue of Fieldbook, with its theme of “Public Forum”, can be one of those moments. Consider the tradition of our sidewalks, streets, parks, and open spaces serving as open-to-the-public forums for public discourse protected under the First Amendment. Contemplate the impacts on the promotion of public participation. Challenge the boundaries, real or not. Let’s begin with ourselves, the BSLA and ASLA membership, and be reminded of what our professional organization stands for and aims toward.
MISSION Advance landscape architecture through advocacy, communication, education, and fellowship. VISION
Healthy, beautiful, and resilient places for all.
VALUES
Excellence. Committed to learning, constant improvement, and achieving the best outcomes for members in all endeavors. Integrity. Honest, ethical, and forthright in all dealings Diversity. Committed to fostering equity and inclusion within our profession, membership, and leadership, striving to mirror the communities we serve. Leadership. Setting direction on matters of critical importance. Stewardship. Committed to environmentally and socially conscious principles and practices across all aspects of the profession.
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CULTURE
Collaborative. Marked by leadership, staff, committee, professional practice networks, and chapter cooperation and coordination in the service of ASLA’s and the profession’s goals. Inclusive. Committed to welcoming and serving all people and communities, and treating them fairly and equitably. Member-Focused. Guided by member needs and interests, and dedicated to meeting them. Accountable. Dedicated to the efficient, effective, and prudent use of Society resources for the betterment of landscape architecture and the common good. Volunteer-Supported. Devoted to the encouragement of volunteerism, and benefiting from the expertise and creativity of members who give their time and energies to advance the Society and the profession.
600+ and 15,000+ strong respectively, BSLA and ASLA are your forum; and individually and collectively, quietly and loudly, supporting and leading, we are the public forum for landscape architecture. Offer what you can; take what you need. As my second term as your ASLA Trustee ends at the 2019 ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture, I look forward to my continued service to you in a new capacity. I’m honored to have been elected by my fellow national Trustees to the ASLA Executive Committee, and will begin my role as Vice President, Public Relations and Communications. My sincere thanks to each of you for your continued support.
Jeanne Lukenda, ASLA Trustee
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/ THE CHAPTER
The Boston Society of Landscape Architects was the first local chapter
of the American Society of Landscape Architects and today includes nearly 700 landscape architects, students, and emerging professionals from Portland to Provincetown, the Berkshires to Bar Harbor to Boston.
RECOGNIZING 2018+2019 BSLA Leadership ELECTED OFFICERS
COMMITTEE LEADERS
ASLA LIAISONS
PRESIDENT Ricardo Austrich ASLA
EMERGING PROFESSIONALS William Baumgardner, Assoc. ASLA Meredith Juliana, Assoc. ASLA Gabriella Rodriguez-Berrios, Assoc. ASLA Yao Xia Harry Dodson, FASLA
HISTORIC AMERICAN LANDSCAPE SURVEY Marion Pressley, FASLA
PRESIDENT-ELECT Kaki Martin, ASLA (starting 2019) PAST PRESIDENT Cheri Ruane, ASLA TREASURER Jef Fasser, ASLA TRUSTEE Jeanne Lukenda, ASLA (through 2019) Cheri Ruane, ASLA (starting 2019) MEMBERS AT LARGE Tim Nickerson, ASLA (through 2019) Diana Fernandez, ASLA (through 2020) Michael Radner, ASLA (through 2021) Carolina Carvajal, ASLA (starting 2019)
APPOINTED SECTION CHAIRS WESTERN MASS Rachel Loeffler, ASLA Nate Burgess, ASLA MAINE www.maineasla.org Lisa Cowan, ASLA Michelle Grover, ASLA
FELLOWS NOMINATIONS Harry Dodson, FASLA
PUBLIC AWARENESS Michael Radner, ASLA
LOCAL LIAISONS
ELECTIONS Jeanne Lukenda, ASLA
CITY OF BOSTON LANDMARKS COMMISSION John Amadeo, ASLA David Berarducci, ASLA
ADVOCACY Rachel Loeffler, ASLA (Massachusetts) Mark Johnson, ASLA (Maine)
CITY OF BOSTON EDWARD INGERSOLL BROWNE FUND Tim Nickerson, ASLA
PATH CHAIRS
EMERALD NECKLACE CONSERVANCY Elena Saporta, ASLA
RECOGNITION Joe Wahler, ASLA including AWARDS Joe Strayer, ASLA DESIGN CHALLENGE Dan Delongchamp, ASLA PUBLIC OUTREACH Michael Radner, ASLA MEMBER RELATIONS Rebecca McKevitz, Associate ASLA
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CHAPTER OFFICE Gretchen Rabinkin, Affiliate ASLA
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CONGRATULATIONS 2018 + 2019 ASLA FELLOWS Every year, the American Society of Landscape Architects elevates a select few members to the ASLA Council of Fellows. Boston is proud to have four members invested in 2018 and two in 2019. Please join BSLA in congratulating these members of our Chapter for this outstanding honor:
Doug Jones in Works 2018
Edward Marshall in Works 2018
Cheri Ruane in Leadership 2019
Michael Boucher in Works 2019
Chris Moyles in Works 2018
James Wescoat in Knowledge 2018
CONGRATULATIONS 2018 + 2019 ASLA DESIGN MEDALISTS Every year, ASLA recognizes one indivudal landscape architect who has produced a body of exceptional design work at a sustained level for aperiod of at least ten years. One medal is awarded annually, nationally. Please join BSLA in congratulating these members of our Chapter for this extraorinary achievement.
Mikyoung Kim 2019
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Doug Reed 2019
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/ THE CHAPTER: MAINE SECTION
#ThisIs LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE Support design excellence in Maine.
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/ BSLA
MaineASLA is:
MaineASLA initiatives:
An active Section of the Boston Society of Landscape Architects
Projects, education and events for MaineASLA & partner organizations such as the Portland Society of Architects, Maine Landscape & Nursery Association of Landscape Architects
Focused on promotion of and advocacy for the profession in Maine Seeking kindred practitioners, seasoned and emerging alike, to advance landscape architecture initiatives throughout the state
Sponsorship of events such as Architalx, Portland Museum of Art film series, & Coastal Maine Botanical Garden seminars
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We are looking at getting our professional licensure status in line with the other 48 states that have a landscape architecture practice act. Support design excellence in Maine! Contact contact@msla.org and get involved. We need you!
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THANK YOU The BSLA thanks the dozens of individual members, landscape architecture firms, and industry colleagues who have supported this Fieldbook. Your intellect and passion shape these pages, and your financial support allows them to be printed. The editorial team strives to honor and celebrate your work.
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Hancock Associates is a leading provider of land surveying, civil engineering and wetland science services in MA, NH, CT and RI. Offices are located in Boston, Chelmsford, Danvers, Marlborough, Newburyport and Princeton, MA. For information, call (978) 777-3050 or visit www.HancockAssociates.com. Radner Design Associates provides landscape architecture, site planning and design services to create elegant, costeffective solutions in commercial, institutional, residential and public settings.. 945 Concord Street, Suite 100 Framingham, MA 01701 (508) 736-6144 www.radnerdesign.com Contact: Michael Radner mradner@radnerdesign.com
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Highpoint Engineering Inc. provides full service Land Planning, Permit Expediting, Civil Engineering, and Consulting Services. 45 Dan Road, Suite 140 Canton, MA (781) 770.0970 highpointeng.com Contact: Michael Fabbiano mfabbiano@highpointeng.com Shadley Associates provides landscape architecture, site planning and urban design services to help clients realize their goals for creating exceptional spaces. 1730 Massachusetts Ave. Lexington, MA 02420 (781) 652-8809 www.shadleyassociates.com Contact: Pamela Shadley pshadley@shadleyassociates.com
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FROM A PARENT’S NOTEBOOK EXPLAINING THOSE PRE-DAWN DEPARTURES JOE JAMES,
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While landscape architect Joe James was managing construction administration for Reed Hilderbrand’s renovation of The Blue Garden in Newport, Rhode Island, he often left home before his children woke up. These are the notes he left for them.
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MICHAEL S. COFFIN LANDSCAPE CONSTRUCTION
michaelscoffin.com
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DESIGN AWARDS Boston Society of Landscape Architects seeks to recognize excellence in the diverse practices of landscape architecture. Awarded projects reflect the careful stewardship, wise planning, and artful design of our cultural and natural environment. Projects should merit recognition in one or more of the following areas: • Exemplary social, cultural, educational, or environmental significance • Outstanding quality, craftsmanship, creativity, or artistry • Unique and innovative technologies, techniques, or concepts • Advancement of the public’s awareness and perception of the field of landscape architecture
The program is open to submittals of work by landscape architecture practitioners and design offices based within the BSLA chapter area (Massachusetts and Maine), and to projects sited within the BSLA chapter area, whether or not the design offices are located in the chapter area states. Individuals, firms, project owners, public agencies, organizations, or other entities may be the formal submitting entity as long as the project’s creative team includes a graduate of an accredited landscape architecture program or a registered landscape architect. Projects are recognized in one of six categories:
Analysis and Planning Communication Design Landmark Research Student
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Merit Recognizes significant professional accomplishment. Multiple Merit Awards may be given in each category.
2018
An al ysis an d Pl an n in g Seaside State Park Master Plan Sasaki Associates Swimming in the Charles Stantec
Award Winners
Com mun ication Central Park Ground, Inc.
Honor
Design Berkshire Residence Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design
This is the highest award in each category, recognizing superior professional accomplishment. Multiple Honor awards may be given in each category.
Crotty Hall Stephen Stimson Associates
A n aly s is and Planning
Duke West Campus Student Life Precinct Reed Hilderbrand
Denver Airport Strategis Development Plan Sasaki Associates Hoosic River Revitalization - The North Branch Sasaki Associates Tower Hill Botanic Garden Master Plan Stephen Stimson Associates Des ign Pulaski Park Stephen Stimson Associates
2018 Jury
Jurors Lisa Giersbach, ASLA Cortney Kirk, ASLA Naomi Cottrell, ASLA Soren DeNiord Keith LeBlanc, FASLA Cheri Ruane, ASLA Kate Kennen, ASLA Barbara Nazarewicz, ASLA Sean Sanger, ASLA Moderators Joseph Strayer, ASLA Andrew Arbaugh, ASLA Scribe Jessalyn Jarest, ASLA Olivia Fragale, ASLA
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Eda U. Gerstacker Grove Stoss Landscape Urbanism Fisher Hill Reservoir Park Klopfer Martin Design Group The Innovation and Design Building CRJA - IBI Group John W. Oliver Design Building Stephen Stimson Associates Partners HealthCare Administrative Campus OJB Landscape Architecture Roemer Plaza Suffolk University Klopfer Martin Design Group Woodside Retreat Richardson & Associates S tuden t Futurama: (de)constructing the adaptive city Christin Hu Zheng Cong Jiacheng Liu Play with Power Xiwei Shen
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Analysis and Planning
Sasaki Associates Denver Airport Strategic Development Plan Denver, Colorado Denver International Airport (DEN) aspires to build a world-class airport city of diverse commercial uses on its 16,000 acres of non-aviation property. For this project, the airport’s real estate division is collaborating with a diverse, interdisciplinary design team to create a Strategic Development Plan that establishes a comprehensive long-range planning framework, development strategy, and guiding principles to realize this vision. Vital to the DEN Real Estate experience is the airport’s rich landscape context. Recognizing the importance and interconnectedness of cultural and ecological systems across Colorado’s Front Range, the landscape of DEN plays a critical role in supporting the health and resilience of the greater ecoregion. Designed and curated to be aesthetically pleasing with a strong regional identity, this landscape also contributes many ecosystem services including carbon sequestration, groundwater recharge, pollinator habitat, and serving as a seed bank for native grasses and wildflowers.
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Analysis and Planning
Sasaki Associates Hoosic River Revitalizat ion - The North Branch North Adams, Massachusetts The existing concrete flood chutes and levees of North Adams, Massachusetts have effectively contained the Hoosic River for over 60 years, but at a significant ecological cost. Building upon nearly a decade of work to revitalize and reconnect the community to the waters flowing through it, the concept design for the North Branch Hoosic River explores initial opportunities and challenges for the re-naturalization of this highly impacted urban river. Inspired by the geology of the surrounding Hoosac Valley, the design proposes sculpted revetments and a unique textured channel bottom. Providing stability to the riverbanks these new forms would utilize stone and concrete to reinterpret the grain and flow of the natural marble chutes found nearby at Natural Bridge State Park. The resulting design will create a continuous landscape experience that would improve the community, connect habitat, and provide increased flood protection while enhancing the overall aesthetic of the naturalization project.
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Analysis and Planning
Stephen Stimson Associates Tower Hill Botanic Garden Master Plan Boylston, Massachusetts Tower Hill Botanic Garden is home to the Worcester County Horticultural Society (WCHS), the third oldest continuously operating horticultural society in the country. The design team led garden staff, members, and community stakeholders through a series of workshops to develop a vision to shape Tower Hill into a distinctly local, world-class contemporary public garden. The design team and WCHS identified five goals to guide the Master Plan: 1. Establish Identity 2. Create Connectivity 3. Enhance Sustainability 4. Balance Economic Growth 5. Increase Audience Diversity Through an iterative process, the team developed concept plans emphasizing themes based on characteristics of the site: Botanic Beauty, Agrarian Gardens, Cultivated Wild, and Sustainability. Features from each concept plan informed the final design. Proposed features include expanded event spaces, seasonal display gardens, gardens highlighting the Farm-to-Table movement and permaculture, and a cascading rill garden. Structures include a new restaurant, visitor center, library, and glass houses. A trail system and tram service, pollinator garden, pinetum, children’s Ramble, and sculpture garden will be integrated into the site’s wilder periphery. The Master Plan will be implemented over the next 30 years in six phases, each of a similar cost and with a specific objective to focus donor investment.
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Design
Stephen Stimson Associates Pulaski Park Northampton, Massachusetts Re-envisioning Pulaski Park is a restoration of the only remaining green space in downtown Northampton, Massachusetts. At 2.5 acres, the park is small but mighty. After renovations in the 1970s paved much of the site, the Park had entered a state of disrepair and benign neglect. The Landscape Architect collaborated with the City Engineer to acquire funding through numerous grants and engaged in a year-long public forum design process for community input. The result is a landscape that is an honest representation of the City of Northampton’s diversity, industrial heritage, and social and environmental values. The concept for the new design was to reconnect the heart of the City to its buried ecological and cultural history. This was done through the creation of new landscape spaces, restored ecologies, and major pedestrian connections that have a City-wide impact. Local materials, industrial detailing and a familiar plant palette resonate with Northampton’s cultural and ecological heritage. It is well-used and well-loved by all ages and has truly become the People’s Park.
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Analysis an d Planning
Sasaki Associates Seaside State Park Master Plan Waterford, Connect icut In 2014, the State of Connecticut announced that the 32-acre former Seaside State Sanatorium will become the first shoreline park established in over 50 years. The site’s master plan creates a model for environmental stewardship, coastal resiliency, community engagement, and historic preservation. Activity will be carefully balanced with ecological and sea level rise infrastructure. Architecture will complement the dynamic, interactive shoreline, emphasizing sound environmental outcomes. Ecological restoration of the site’s wetlands, streams, and land will support wildlife habitats and protect identified rare and endangered species. Visitors can engage with natural systems in the park through walking on the pollinator-powered paths, diving amongst the eelgrass beds, fishing off the stone jetties, and boating along Niantic Bay. The multilayered approach will balance habitat creation, water conservation, energy consumption, waste reduction, and Green Lodging Certification. Seaside, the nation’s first heliotropic healing center, is poised to be a place of sunoriented rejuvenation once again.
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Analysis and Planning
Stantec Swimming in the Charles Boston, Massachusetts In 2015 the Charles River Conservancy (CRC) approached Stantec to provide a full planning and analysis study that would explore the feasibility of constructing a permanent swimming facility in the Charles River at North Point Park. Stantec jumped at this unprecedented opportunity to reintroducing urban swimming into Boston, while providing the public with a unique recreational facility. The multidisciplinary firm assembled a volunteer team to provide a 74-page analysis document that created waves among area news sources, stirred public conversation, and generated both public and legislative support. The CRC’s crowdfunding campaign used the study’s content to raise $25,600 between 290 backers—securing funds for the further development of the Swim Park. This landscape architect-led study captures the visionary nature of our profession, proves the influence we have in changing our urban environments, and shows impactful results that benefit the community and our landscape. With the future completion of the Charles River Swim Park, Redsox fans may be the only ones still singing “I love that dirty water.”
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Communication
Ground, Inc. Central Park Boston, Massachusetts Central Park was an 80-foot long, 14-foot wide temporary installation at ABX/Greenbuild 2017 intended to educate and communicate with the conference attendees about the field of landscape architecture. The sculptural forest was constructed with four modules of 2 x 4 x 16-foot lumber. To complete the park ambiance, there was a lawn of soft artificial turf, tensile structure leaf canopy, custom concrete petal benches, buckets of apples, movable furniture, and a cell phone charging bike station. At the end of the conference, all material was returned to their donors or, in the case of the lumber, donated to Habitat for Humanity. The activities within Central Park were multifaceted, designed to benefit both landscape architects and the visitors from allied professions. It was a place to hang out, spend time with friends, and make new ones while advocating for the profession. Many of the conference attendees knew very little about the field of landscape architecture – the "park” helped attendees realize the possibilities and importance of landscape architecture in our quickly-developing built environment. This pavilion created a hub for emerging professionals and experienced practitioners from a cross-section of the design and construction fields to come together.
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PHOTO CREDITS CHUCK CHOI PHOTOGRAPHY
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PHOTO CREDITS CHUCK CHOI PHOTOGRAPHY
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Matthew Cunningham Landscape Berkshire Residence Great Barrington, Massachusetts A spectacular dream home nestles thoughtfully into a heavily wooded, east facing slope in the Berkshires. The year-round retreat provides endless opportunities for an active, urban family to connect with nature and to absorb mesmerizing, multi-seasonal panoramic views. Three primary goals drove design efforts: 1. 2. 3.
Successfully navigate strict scenic and water quality protection requirements; Blur lines between indoor and outdoor spaces; and Authentically blend new modern architectural forms with the rugged mountain setting.
An unwavering palette of indigenous plants were used to revegetate and stabilize new landforms. The new planting colonies prevent soil erosion and safeguard water quality within the sensitive watershed. Salvaged slabs of rugged granite curbing become an artistic and durable new hardscape vernacular, as exquisite masonry improvements form terraces that complement the site’s contemporary structures.
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Stephen Stimson Associates Crotty Hall Amherst, Massachusetts Crotty Hall is located at the western edge of the UMass campus, adjacent to a wetland that flanks a series of parking lots. The water from this wetland runs into Tan Brook and is then quickly culverted under the campus until it emerges in the iconic College Pond. Thus, the water from this site has a direct impact on the most visible and symbolic water body on campus. The landscape designed for Crotty Hall -- the campus’s first Net-Zero building -- cleans and infiltrates stormwater, making it one of the greenest buildings on campus. The landscape had a number of constraining factors including a steep grade change, very little open space and a limited budget. Crotty Hall sets a new standard of sustainability for UMass. The project improves the health of the adjacent wetland and Campus Pond by capturing, filtering and infiltrating runoff from the roof. It also provides a valuable demonstration of the beauty and functionality of stormwater gardens, which are designed to work in concert with architecture to improve the environment.
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PHOTO CREDIT GARRETT STONE
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PHOTO CREDITS JAMES EWING
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Reed Hilderband Duke West Campus Student life Precinct Durham, North Carolina This project creates a vibrant student life district from a previously disparate and underdeveloped collection of spaces and program nodes. Work was executed as five individual projects with eight different architects between 2007 and 2017, requiring the landscape architect be sensitive and versatile. Renewal of Duke’s iconic Olmsted Brothersdesigned West Quad necessitated acting with care and consideration, while the transformation of an underutilized courtyard and heavily trafficked service area into an animated campus hub entailed innovation and creativity. While the timing and funding of each implementation project has been driven by specific institutional priorities, they all realize the larger ambition to shape a sustainable, connected, and activated student precinct that celebrates the history of the campus while engaging a progressive view of student life and academic diversity. With a single landscape architect guiding these diverse projects, a coherent fabric bridging old and new, residential and academic, indoor and outdoor, and intimate and ceremonial has been created at the heart of Duke’s campus
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Stoss Landscape Urbanism Eda U. Gerstacker Grove Ann Arbor, Michigan The Eda U. Gerstacker Grove is the renovation of an underutilized quad at the heart of the University of Michigan’s North Campus. The Grove knits the campus community together, encourages casual social interactions, offers respite from the research of the nearby laboratories and studios, and creates a new destination and event space. The Grove is designed with lawns and hillocks, clusters of flowering trees, lush stormwater gardens, and meandering pathways. The paths converge at a central plaza that can host large-scale activities such as music and arts performances, and the adjacent event lawn can accommodate a large event tent. Dozens of new trees and over 250 new trees combine to make for what will be one of the most verdant, ecologically diverse, and sustainable open spaces on campus. Benches of concrete and steel ribs provide a variety of seating locations and configurations (and social opportunities), from the active spaces where paths meet at the central plaza to quieter ‘nooks’ where paths widen to create more intimate spaces. Infiltration gardens collect all rainwater that falls on the site; over 100 acrylic ‘reeds lights’ flicker in response to rainwater entering the gardens, creating magical moments in the most dreary weather.
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PHOTO CREDITS DIANA CHEREN
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Klopfer Martin Deign Group Fisher Hill Reservoir Park Boston, Massachusetts Fisher Hill Reservoir Park in Brookline, Massachusetts captured an important opportunity to transform an abandoned piece of public infrastructure into a public park for passive and active recreation. The distinctive landforms and architecture of this former Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) facility were retained and integrated into a park serving new functions of spectator seating and shelter. Elements such as a wall and topographic marker indicating the highwater mark, allow visitors to experience ‘plunging’ into the former watersheet of the full reservoir, and granite pavers with a carved map of the state-wide water supply system, of which the reservoir is a part, help contextualize this place in the state and neighborhood, and illustrate how our water resources are still delivered. The fully accessible path network allows universal access to the various artful play elements, prospect points, and diverse native, woodland and meadow plantings that give the park scale, seasonal interest, and ensure a rich botanical future.
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PHOTO CREDIT CHRISTIAN PHILLIPS PHOTOGRAPHY
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CRJA - IBI Group The Innovat ion and Design Building Boston, Massachusetts The Innovation and Design Building project repositions the existing Boston Design Center and proximate underutilized warehouse space into a clearly defined and vibrant urban workspace community in the rising Seaport District of Boston. The CRJA-IBI Group design team joined common site vernacular with thoughtful reorganization of vehicular and pedestrian movement to achieve the goal of merging a unique industrial landscape with hospitable and vibrant gathering spaces. CRJA-IBI Group’s design punctuates the building entrances with street side “parklettes”, providing clear and direct entrance as well as exterior opportunities for seating, dining, and gathering. Four core materials were selected to use in these spaces: granite, concrete, wood, and Cor-Ten steel. Form and function is defined by the spatial variations resulting from accessible movement and gathering. Each space and entry is punctuated by a vertical shipping crate providing an exclamation point, clearly announcing the aligned entrance by color and number. Each entrance plinth provides a porous pocket for plant root establishment while resolving grade change between the street, a fixed rail line elevation, and the elevated entrances. The new streetscape and family of entry islands have aided in the clarity of place and the prompt re-habitation of this satellite seaport community.
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PHOTO CREDITS CHUCK CHOI PHOTOG-
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Stephen Stimson Associates John W. Oliver Des ign Building Amherst, Massachusetts The Design Building at the University of Massachusetts is the new home of the Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, and Building and Construction Technology Departments. After years of consideration, bringing these four disciplines together under one roof was a historic move that provides unprecedented opportunities for integrated learning about the built environment at UMass. In recent decades, the site had become an expansive parking lot and contributed to the siltation of the campus pond. The same landscape was the actual location of the Landscape Architecture Department’s test plots in the early 1900’s. The need to restore a functioning ecosystem and the expression of horticultural experimentation were paramount to the design process. The project is a true collaboration between architecture and landscape. With exposed timber frame building construction, regionally inspired gardens, green infrastructure, and an experimental green roof, the project establishes a new ecological and creative standard for campus design.
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OJB Landscape Architecture Partners HealthCare Administrat ive Campus Somerville, Massachusetts Partners HealthCare's administrative campus is a new approach to corporate campus design. This 9-acre brownfield site has been seamlessly integrated into its urban context and transformed into an environmentally sustainable anchor of a 45-acre mixed-use development. The campus serves over 4,500 employees, but its open spaces are designed for shared public use. OJB made this unique arrangement possible by developing a range of formal to informal spaces that establish an atmosphere of work and play by conveying intended use. Formal courtyards on architectural grids facilitate clear indoor-outdoor connections while winding paths and groves of trees transport guests to a natural realm, all within the same campus. Sustainability and resiliency were also at the forefront of the landscape’s design priorities to mitigate sea level rise, onshore winds, and nearby noise pollution. By using a combination of geometric and organic forms, native/adaptive plants, and local, sustainable building materials, OJB has designed an extraordinary contemporary campus environment within its New England context.
PHOTO CREDITS KYLE J CALDWELL
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Klopfer Martin Design Group Roemer Plaza Suffolk University Boston, Massachusetts This project transformed an underutilized 1960s era open space into a multifunctional university plaza, one that provides flexible circulation and much needed campus gathering spaces within a tight urban fabric. When Suffolk University purchased the Metropolitan District Commission’s (MDC) property on Boston’s historic Beacon Hill, their proposed new building presented the design team an opportunity to re-envision the adjacent rundown plaza. Identifying the need for a campus identity and connectivity through this space, the design approach addressed the topographical and structural constraints of the site. With the plaza sited above an existing structure, the design features an amphitheater of stairs and seating that reconnects the existing upper and lower plaza levels to facilitate stronger circulation and provide a seating/stage relationship that allows Suffolk University to hold outdoor campus events. Pockets for plantings were carefully coordinated to work with the existing structural loads. The plaza commemorates the MDC by acknowledging the wonderful parks, parkways, beaches, and conservation areas it created on a dramatic granite plinth. PHOTO CREDIT CHRISTIAN PHILLIPS PHOTOGRAPHY
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PHOTO CREDIT CHRISTIAN PHILLIPS PHOTOGRAPHY
PHOTO CREDIT JARED STEINMARK
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Richardson & Associates Woodside Retreat Camden, Maine At its core, Woodside is a retreat. A place apart, where family comes together and creates memories. From its inception, the design intended to make meaningful connections between family and place by celebrating the simplicity, beauty, and power of the woodland within which the project is located. The 10 acre property includes three distinct buildings, myriad outdoor spaces, an extensive trail network, and supporting infrastructure. The team included architects, engineers, builders, environmental specialists, contractors, craftsman, and the client in a process extending over four years. Early and frequent cooperation with the architect was instrumental in achieving a sense of reciprocity between the building, site, and landscape. Close involvement in siting the buildings led to important landscape spaces and functions being defined. The design intent was simple: to protect, maintain and build upon the qualities of this unique landscape while providing respite, solitude, and peace for the family and their guests.
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Christin Hu Zheng Cong Jiacheng Liu Futurama: (de)Construct ing the Adapt ive City Boston, Massachusetts Landscape has always been an indicator of past and present, but what if it was, instead, an indicator of the future? Prompted by rising sea levels and the variability of the tides, Futurama: (de)constructing the adaptive city proposes a flexible, plural, yet repeatable strategy towards redeveloping urban waterfronts by revealing landscape’s performance as a surreal time machine. Through our unique investigations and design processes, we propose that, rather than of addition, new work along the watery edges of the city should be of subtraction. Futurama is an experiential, programmatic landscape that consists of cumulative, small scale “de-developments” which could be carried about by local community groups over long spans of time as sea level continues to rise. It suggests that cities should be learning from and opening itself up to water as a fluid, equalizing, and diversifying force rather than trying to fill it in or push it out.
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Xiwei Shen Play with Power Fort Worth, Texas This site is proposed to be a large public park along the shores of the Trinity River in Fort Worth. The project will promote a relationship between the river and people and provide a great park system highlighting the story of green power generation techniques. Currently, fragmented green spaces will be connected into one large cultural and ecological system. The design will focus on 3 themes that are Conversion, Restoration and Connection. Based on that, individual goals are to convert the abandoned wastewater plant, power line corridor and landfills into new vibrant, and engaging green spaces. Part of the sustainable design will be to make the site more educational regarding power generation through play opportunities. The project includes smart algae farms and solar panel installation on the existing landfills. The new algae farm will collect algae to meet the power needs of the park. The leachate from landfills will be a source for growing bioluminescent algae at this farm. This will be used to illuminate key walkways in the park and enhance play opportunities throughout.
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Recognizes significant professional accomplishment. Multiple Merit Awards may be given in each category.
Merit A na lys is a nd P la nning Chengdu Panda Reserve Sasaki Associates Florence Griswold Museum | The Artists’ Trail STIMSON Gulf State Park Master Plan Sasaki Associates Moakley Park Vision Plan Stoss Landscape Urbanism
2019
Award Winners Honor
Montauk Hamlet Master Plan Dodson & Flinker Des ign Boston College Historic Campus Core STIMSON Central Square East Boston Klopfer Martin Design Group Cider Ridge Farm STIMSON Collaborative Learning and Innovation Center Ground, Inc. Fowler Clark Epstein Urban Farm Regenerative Design Group
This is the highest award in each category, recognizing superior professional accomplishment. Multiple Honor awards may be given in each category. Analysis and Planning A 21st Century Research District for ASU Sasaki Associates Kabul Citywide Framework Sasaki Associates
Harvard Yard Child Care Center G2 Collaborative Hoyt Sullivan Playground Klopfer Martin Design Group One Greenway Crosby | Schlessinger | Smallridge Pond’s Edge Estate Dan Gordon Landscape Architects Rockport Residence STIMSON Tontine Crescent Ground, Inc. Williams College North Campus Restoration STIMSON Res ea rch
2019 Jury
Jurors Ricardo Austrich, ASLA Simon Beer, ASLA Bryan Chou, ASLA Eden Dutcher, ASLA Michael Fiorillo Rachel Loeffler, ASLA Luisa Oliveira, ASLA Michael Wasser, ASLA Renee Loth Moderators Joseph Strayer, ASLA Scribe
Ngoc Doan, ASLA Olivia Fragale, ASLA Boston Society of Landscape Architects Fieldbook
Shifting Gears: Design for Autonomous Vehicles Sasaki Associates S t u d e nt Across Racial and Infrastructural Boundaries Harvard Graduate School of Design Qiaoqi Dai and Chengzhang Zhang Aggregated Inundation Harvard Graduate School of Design Alexandra DiStefano, Sophie Elias, & Jonathon Koewler Airport Archipelago Harvard Graduate School of Design Jonathan Kuhr, Koby Moreno, Haoyu Zhao & Sijia Zhong Bloom! A Dynamic Landscape Biological System Harvard Graduate School of Design Xiwei Shen, Jiawen Chen, and Chengzhe Zhang The Forehead of Arlington National Cemetery Harvard Graduate School of Design Xiwei Shen Oasis + Productive Settlement Harvard Graduate School of Design Chengzhe Zhang
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Analysis and Planning
Sasaki Associates A 21st Century Research District for ASU Mesa, Arizona
The ASU Polytechnic Research District fosters the generation of creative ideas and innovative solutions to the challenges faced in the 21st Century. It is a place to research, construct, and test new ideas and products—encouraging interaction and collaboration between industry and academia. Located on a site with significant heritage for the Hohokam, an ancient Native American culture, and for the Gila River Indians, the master plan process led to the development of a collaborative design idea that established a desert arboretum, using non-invasive planting and stormwater management strategies, above archaeologically sensitive areas. The vision is supported by a robust network of pedestrian oriented integrated research clusters which connect back to the existing campus. Ultimately, the proposed plan establishes ASU as a steward of the land, setting an example for the community in terms of sustainability, sensitivity to native landscapes and cultural identity, while also creating a strong sense of place.
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Sasaki Associates Kabul Citywide Framework Kabul, Afghanistan For thousands of years Afghanistan has served as the crossroads of the world. Today, its capital city is itself at a crossroads. Kabul is one of the fastest growing urban regions in the world and is expected to grow to 2 million people by 2030. The Kabul Urban Development Framework is a strategic document that guides government investments in infrastructure, social capital, and conservation to accommodate this growth sustainably. The overarching goal of the framework is to enable the city’s planners to think holistically about housing, mobility, infrastructure, social capital, and ecology. Recognizing the importance of the region’s natural system, the vision incorporates a landscape approach. Landscape planning strategies are adapted to a context where the majority of existing and new development is informal, governing capacities are nascent, access to public spaces or amenities is highly unequal, and the success of traditional conservation models depend upon parallel socioeconomic development efforts.
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Analysis and Planning
Sasaki Associates Chengdu Panda Reserve Chengdu, Sichuan, China The giant panda is an icon of Chinese culture and a symbol for wildlife conservation around the world. Since its founding in 1987, the Chengdu Panda Reserve has expanded to include multiple satellite facilities throughout Sichuan Province. Its research, educational, and public outreach programs have contributed to a significant increase in both captive and wild populations. This success and popularity with the public, however, have put a strain on current facilities. By 2020, over 18 million people are expected to visit the Chengdu Panda Reserve each year. To accommodate this projected growth, the plan for the expansion of the Reserve seeks to guide growth in a more intentional manner. This expansion will create a more immersive experience, educate visitors about the habitat of the giant panda, promote broader conservation efforts, and offer significantly improved conditions for giant pandas and their companion species currently in captivity at the Reserve.
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Analysis an d Planning
STIMSON Floren ce Griswold Museum | The Art ists’ Trail Old Lyme, Connect icut The Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, CT is the home of American Impressionism. The concept of The Artists’ Trail and the ensuing Landscape Master Plan evokes the spirit of the historic agricultural site, integrated with a site-specific approach to restoration ecology in order to restore some of the indigenous, but lost wild landscapes along the edges of the property. Informed by the Museum's expansive collection of historic artwork, new landscape experiences will be choreographed along The Artists’ Trail, providing visitors with a more authentic sense of the Lyme Art Colony as a way to interpret the site’s cultural and environmental history. Overall, the project demonstrates a confidence and commitment to prioritizing the role of landscape in the Museum experience.
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Sasaki Associates Gulf State Park Master Plan Gulf Shores, Alabama The BP Oil Spill devastated Gulf communities that were already reeling from Hurricane Ivan. The Gulf State Park Master Plan provides a roadmap for the 6,150 acre state park that goes beyond recovery—taking advantage of oil spill recovery funding to strengthen the park’s resilience capacity. Gulf State Park receives over 2 million annual visitors to its 6,150 acres of diverse natural beauty. The master plan expands environmental education, overnight accommodations, and outdoor recreation. The plan aims to change the way the nation views Alabama by showing it can be a model for coastal resilience and sustainable tourism. The $145M first phase of the project is wrapping up; completed projects include: • 50 acres of dune restoration • 350-room Lodge at Gulf State Park • Interpretive Center seeking Living Building Challenge full certification • 15 miles of new trails
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Analysis an d Planning
Stoss Landscape Urbanism Moakle y Park Vision Plan Boston, Massachusetts The Moakley Park Vision Plan transforms Boston’s largest harborfront park into a 21st century sports and community park while integrating innovative solutions for climate adaptation— providing a world-class destination for the community, the city and the region. This comprehensive plan addresses three key goals in an exciting yet highly sustainable solution. Firstly, it modernizes existing athletic facilities, layering in new programs and flexibility to attract a greater diversity of visitors, all while adding robust planting to make the park more ecologically varied. Secondly, the plan includes smart resiliency methods that protect the park, the neighborhood and the city from climate change and sea level rise. Lastly, the plan considers how to create equitable access to Boston’s harbor and build a diverse and active community. The Moakley Park Vision Plan is a model for Boston and similar cities to expand conventional park models to become multi-functional and expansive while addressing climate change needs.
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Dodson & Flinker Montauk Hamlet Master Plan East Hampton, New York The Long Island resort town of East Hampton has long been challenged by extraordinary seasonal swings in population, traffic and economic activity. Our landscape architects and planners led a multi-disciplinary team to develop physical plans and economic strategies for the commercial centers of East Hampton’s five hamlets. In the beachfront hamlet of Montauk, this included a bold strategy for dealing with the impacts of climate change and sea level rise by shifting the center of downtown Montauk gradually uphill over the next hundred years. One of the most innovative approaches is the adoption of a transfer of development rights bylaw that will incentivize moving existing mid-20th century hotels back from the beach, in order to allow for shoreline retreat and the return of the oceanfront to a more natural dune landscape. This masterplan for Montauk situates climate resilience as a foundational element of the hamlet’s economic future.
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STIMSON Boston College His toric Campus Core Chestnut Hill, Mas sachusetts In 1913, McGinnis and Walsh developed Boston College’s first master plan, inspired by the form of a cathedral— a framework that would tie the campus to BC’s history and identity as a Jesuit institution. The master plan did not foresee the effect that automobiles would have on the campus: by 1929, the campus center was ringed by a road, and the terraced garden designed to overlook Chestnut Hill Reservoir had become a parking lot. Development over the next century further deteriorated the original vision of the campus. Over the last decade, STIMSON and BC developed the Core Campus Plan consisting of three interlocking quads and a series of perimeter gardens. A once-sprawling network of paths was consolidated into a spine that serves the 9,000 students passing through campus daily. Vehicles were removed and impermeable paving was reduced, ensuring that the historic landscape framework of Boston College is maintained and celebrated.
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PHOTO CREDITS CHRISTIAN PHILLIPS PHOTOGRAPHY
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Klopfer Martin Design Group Central Square Eas t Boston East Boston, Massachusetts Central Square has been the heart of East Boston’s commercial district since 1833. In the early 1900’s, the Olmsted Brothers created an elliptical park that emerged in the center of a field of pavement which accommodated horse drawn carriages and street cars. In redesigning Central Square for today, KMDG successfully balanced the historic context with the current needs of the community and sustainability goals to protect nearby Boston Harbor. By drastically reducing roadway pavement, the park’s area was increased by 57% and impervious surfaces were decreased by over 31,000 square feet. The enlarged park now has a piazza to support the East Boston Farmer’s Market on the west side, and to the east a tree-lined promenade better connects residential Eagle Hill with the community’s transportation hub at Maverick Square. The Olmsted Brothers ellipse was preserved and celebrated with a granite wall that can be used for seating or informal play. PHOTO CREDITS CHRISTIAN PHILLIPS PHOTOGRAPHY
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STIMSON Cider Ridge Farm Wilton, Connect icut Cider Ridge Farm is located on the outskirts of the colonial town of Wilton, Connecticut. The farm encompasses sixteen acres of preserved meadows and a historic working orchard. An eighteenth-century agricultural lane with fieldstone walls runs along the ridgeline of the property, creating a purposeful divide between the site for a new homestead and the existing agrarian landscape. Two phases of work defined this project. The first, a new home for a young family on the south side of the property; the second, the comprehensive restoration of a nineteenth-century homestead on the northeast corner of the site. STIMSON worked closely with the owners to create a multi-generational homestead that expresses the contemporary needs of a modern family while preserving the integrity of the historic farm. The juxtaposition of old and new, rustic and modern, became a guiding language for the materials, planting and overall landscape expression of the project.
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Ground, Inc. Collaborat ive Lear ning and Innovat ion Center Medford, Massachusetts With a mission of innovation, collaboration and sustainability, the Collaborative Learning and Innovation Center at Tufts University combines academic departments and learning labs to inspire new models of education. Correspondingly, the landscape was designed to feature sustainable strategies and to provide a variety of outdoor social spaces. Formerly an asphalt parking lot, the landscape renovation was designed to provide a range of activities, from seating to informal outdoor classrooms while demonstrating best management practices. A tiered rain garden collects run off from the roof showcasing the filtering and movement of the water; thus highlighting the natural systems to create a learning landscape. The planting uses a mix of native and adapted species with natural competition in mind. Permeable brick pavers were also used throughout the design. For additional seating, sculptural seatwalls and leaf shaped benches offer areas where students can gather, while giving a unified character to the overall design.
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PHOTO CREDITS CHUCK CHOI
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Regenerative Design Group Fowler Clark Epstein Urban Farm Boston, Massachusetts The Fowler Clark Epstein Urban Farm responds to the environmental and social needs of today, while reviving the story of a historic Boston farmstead. Project goals were ambitious: transform a neglected lot in Mattapan into a beautiful, resilient, accessible, and agriculturally productive landscape. Our design directive was that all landscape features must provide social, ecological, and agricultural yields. This required a highly integrated farmscape that could drive innovations in urban farming while being an aesthetic and economic asset. Today, a place that once signaled neglect now teems with purpose. A dedicated staff grows food and trains farmers. Rain gardens and stormwater paths infiltrate and treat over 670,000 gallons of stormwater annually. Perennials that supply forage for native pollinators bring life, color, and function to the site. The farm is a place to gather, share food, learn, and continue the story of a historic landscape with renewed vigor.
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PHOTO CREDIT PETER VANDERWARKER
PHOTO CREDIT PETER VANDERWARKER
PHOTO CREDIT SILK ROAD
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G2 Collaborative Harvard Yard Child Care Center Cambridge, Massachusetts Located on the Harvard Campus, The Harvard Yard Child Care Center playground design aims to inspire curiosity, creativity, and joy for the generations of children learning and playing here. The long rectangular space was parceled into a sequence of captivating play experiences. Integrating playful topography, vertical climbing elements, and a variety of ground surfaces and natural play elements, the design encourages children to explore and engage with the landscape. Moving away from the traditional playground kit, the design embeds play elements and opportunities - including active, fantasy, creative and constructive play within the landscape itself. Anchored in current theories of play pedagogy, the HYCC playscape delivers age-appropriate challenge in a stimulating multi-sensory environment, offering children an engaging arena for open-ended free play. A study was designed by the landscape architects to reveal and measure the play opportunities in the space before and after the playground redesign. Through spatial behavior mapping and coding, the design team was able to inform their initial design and test the results post construction. The new design expanded the extent of usable/used space in the playground, and many of the custom features offered their desired play value (running, climbing, scrambling) but also served as social spaces.
PHOTO CREDITS RAJ DAS
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Klopfer Martin Design Group Hoyt Sullivan Playground Somerville, Massachusetts In 2015, the Hoyt Sullivan playground was identified by the City of Somerville to receive extensive renovations. Working with the city, community, and a modest budget, KMDG delivered a concept that reimagines adventure play in a modern way. The project successfully preserves much of the tree canopy, including a majestic beech that anchors the site, while still offering a completely transformed space. The design recreates the slope that had been previously flattened, helping to better align the park to the neighborhood’s drumlin and maximizing play and adventure opportunities for a small site. A fully-accessible adventure path weaves through the park and accentuates the topography while simultaneously connecting program elements and distinguishing the mandatory age-appropriate clustering for play equipment. The plan also seizes on the site’s proximity to the MBTA Fitchburg Line by punching through a steel fence with a cantilevered overlook that heightens a child’s experience of passing MBTA trains.
PHOTO CREDITS CHRISTIAN PHILLIPS PHOTOGRAPHY
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Crosby | Schlessinger | Smallridge One Greenway Boston, Massachusetts Located at the eastern edge of Boston’s historic Chinatown, the site of One Greenway once stood as a reminder of the detrimental impact of the Central Artery on the fabric of the neighborhood, an empty parcel where a series of thriving businesses and residences had been demolished to make way for construction of the highway. The redevelopment of the site was the result of an ambitious effort to bring community open space and affordable and mixedincome housing to a marginalized neighborhood facing the effects of rapid gentrification.
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The site design responds to the vision of reconnecting Chinatown to the larger urban fabric while providing a rare and much-needed open space for residents. One Greenway is exemplary of a design process that generates value for an underserved community, acknowledging the voices of citizens in the creative process. Overcoming challenging site conditions and budgetary constraints, the design celebrates the desire of residents to have a landscape for the senses that allows multilayered experiences and routes of movement, while reconnecting and restoring a portion of the neighborhood that was once lost.
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PHOTO CREDIT GREG PREMRU
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Dan Gordon Landscape Architects Pond’s Edge Estate Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts Situated in a historic neighborhood and abutting more than 100 acres of conservation land, this property featured a man-made pond in steep decline from years of eutrophication, precipitated by excess nutrients and stormwater pollutants. After careful analysis of the existing hydrologic conditions, a comprehensive strategy was developed to address the condition of the pond. Three wetland zones were defined and implemented: a wet meadow, a biofiltration marsh, and an open water pond. The watershed on site was redesigned to pass through each zone prior to entering the pond, increasing nutrient uptake, reducing pollutants, and improving water quality. The value provided by the design of this landscape is multifaceted. Not only does the design successfully incorporate residential amenities in keeping with the character of the historic neighborhood, it transforms an ecosystem once in decline into a sustainable wetland system that will continue to thrive and evolve for years to come.
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PHOTO CREDIT GREG PREMRU
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STIMSON Rockport Residence Rockport, Massachusetts Overlooking Sandy Bay in Rockport, MA, this renovation of an existing home provides privacy, low-maintenance gardens and shared outdoor spaces to serve the family and their guests during the summer. Though the site is small, the landscape program was ambitious, including a spa, outdoor dining, fire pit, volleyball court, and outdoor showers. Stone walls provide elegant connections between site elements, creating a cohesive sequence of garden spaces. Due to the coastal bank resource zone, grading and drainage required special sensitivity. Stormwater is collected and diverted via runnels and released into the native planting beds. Bars of native planting along the top of the sea wall hold and infiltrates water, overflowing through the seawall via scuppers. This project combines elegant spatial design, materials, craftsmanship, and plantings to create a unique residential environment. The design responds to sensitive coastal considerations and local character, while integrating diverse amenities for the family’s enjoyment.
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Ground, Inc. Tont ine Crescent Tact ical Plaza Boston, Massachusetts The Tontine Crescent Tactical Plaza is in Boston’s Downtown Crossing. The project was initially conceived as part of the city’s “Go Boston 2030” plan, which seeks to reclaim excess roadway for pedestrian use. Located on Franklin Street, the tactical plaza reimagines the 18th century design by Charles Bulfinch. Tontine Crescent is a temporary plaza that, if successful, will be transformed into a permanent plaza for the city The temporary design tests the roadway geometry for a new permanent park that is bordered by a bike lane on one side and reduces traffic to one lane. A row of tall planters helps to create privacy and an oasis for people to escape from the bustle of the city. The plaza has been painted with a checker pattern overlaid with graphic tree canopy symbols. Within, orange colored umbrellas with moveable tables and chairs give visitors a place to gather and relax.
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STIMSON Williams College North Campus Restorat ion Williamstown, Massachusetts As the leading liberal arts college in the country, Williams College is boldly integrating a visible environmental ethic into the fabric of their historic campus. In 2015, the old Sawyer Library was demolished, resulting in the opportunity to create the first substantial green space in over a century. Envisioned as a progressive 21st century quadrangle, the project re-establishes a historic relationship between the campus and its mountain context. The transformation of Chapin Hall Drive into a pedestrian way and the long overdue restoration of Frosh Quad were also undertaken. The North Campus Restoration presents a revelatory approach to campus master planning, the innovative management of campus stormwater, and the creation of social spaces immersed in regionally specific ecologies. Overall, the project demonstrates how wildness can contribute to place-making, identity and the overall health of a campus community.
PHOTO CREDIT NGOC DOAN
PHOTO CREDIT NGOC DOAN
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PHOTO CREDIT NGOC MINH
PHOTO CREDIT NGOC MINH
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Research
Sasaki Associates Shift ing Gears: Design for Autonomous Vehicles Boston, Massachusetts The day when the last cars with steering wheels are consigned to the scrapyard may still be decades away, but it is increasingly clear that autonomous vehicles will soon become a significant part of our urban mobility networks. While there has been extensive research on the technical, legal, and ethical aspects of autonomous vehicles, efforts to develop policies and prototypes for the built environment are still nascent. Shifting Gears seeks to engage and empower landscape architects, urban planners, and city leaders by providing a design vision, grounded in a toolkit of policies, building typologies, and design guidelines. An interdisciplinary team explored how AVs could transform a diverse urban neighborhood, benefiting residents of many ages, cultures, and incomes. Informed by conversations with city leaders, community organizations, residents, and local businesses, the team developed strategies to create greener, safer streets anchored by a network of mobility hubs and community spaces.
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Student BSLA Harvard Graduate School of Design
Qiaoqi Dai and Chengzhang Zhang
Across Racial and Infrastructural Boundaries Miami, Florida Overtown, also known as color town, once a vibrant black community near downtown Miami, has witnessed high poverty rates, vacancy, and land speculation due to segregation by racial and infrastructural boundaries. This project proposes an integrated park, which embodies an urban strategy focusing on breaking boundaries and bringing investment while avoiding gentrification. The project site is located at the convergence of highway I-395 and the east edge of Overtown. This overlap has historically been the color line as well as a freight railway. A new investment of a park on the site, proposed by FDOT as part of I-395 Highway extension, is unfortunately oriented to tourists, not residents. Our proposal reorients this investment to a continuous public park, More than 600 affordable housing units will be oriented toward the park, fostering a productive landscape and promoting cultural education which will help revitalize the community.
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Harvard Graduate School of Design
Alexandra DiStefano, Sophie Elias, and Jonathon Koewler
Aggregated Inundat ion Boston, Massachusetts This project envisions a land trust to enable a dignified retreat for coastal communities facing inundation in the coming decades. Our case study focuses on The Town of Winthrop, a community north of Boston. The land trust offers economic security by collectivizing parcels at a range of vulnerability levels and establishing a shared riskvalue across the community. Residential communities have little opportunity for collective action to protect themselves, paralyzing the physical transformation of the coast and forcing individuals to choose between abandonment or defense of property at high personal and financial risk. The proposed land trust seeks to collectivize inundated land and protect communities financially and physically as they retreat with dignity.
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Harvard Graduate School of Design Jonathan Kuhr, Koby Moreno, Haoyu Zhao, and Sijia Zhong
Airport Archipelago Boston, Massachusetts Airport Archipelago explores the potential of a future decommissioned Logan Airport and by proxy other large urban industrial sites that might fall into obsolescence by means of growth, technological advancement, or climate change. It proposes an atypical development not solely driven by real estate market Instead ithousing offers integrated More thanpressures. 600 affordable and innovative economic, infrastructural, units will be oriented towardecological, the park,and recreational systemsathat respond tolandscape the uncertainties fostering productive and of environmental changecultural and provide greater which direct benefits promoting education will to adjacent communities. help revitalize the community. Here physical islands are formed to manifest a metaphorical collection of landscapes that propose new models of labor and a closed energy/waste metabolic loop. The islands allow the site to accept more water and contribute to the Harbor Island wave attenuation that protects the city. Simultaneously they produce a local economy of food production, transportation, and logistics, while also increasing urban biodiversity, remediating polluted soils and water, and offering a series of sublime recreational experiences.
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Harvard Graduate School of Design Xiwei Shen, Jiawen Chen, and Chengzhe Zhang
Bloom! A Dynamic Landscape Biological Sys tem Fort Worth, Texas This project aspires to explore how problematic levels of algae (specifically Bioluminescent Algae, Blue Green Algae and Diatoms Algae) in waterways might be addressed through innovative landscape design strategies that move beyond reductive engineered solutions to productive spatial agents within urban environments. Healthy water bodies generally contain many kinds of algae that balance the ecological system, however, in certain conditions the balance can be disturbed by external environmental activities and weather events causing toxic algae blooms. The most common algal bloom types are the Green Tide and the Red Tide. These phenomena have the potential to be converted to improve Eco-system health and act as design drivers in a sustainable landscape. This study will focus on three case study types: the redundant industrial infrastructure (Site 01), the Gateway Park next to the redundant industrial infrastructure (Site 02) and the urban infrastructure close to I-30 Hwy (Site 03) on the site of Fort Worth, Texas, as a prototype for considering how this approach might be deployed nationally.
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Harvard Graduate School of Design Xiwei Shen
The Forehead of Arlington Nat ional Cemetery Washington D.C. Over 400,000 people are buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Currently, there are 25-30 funerals Monday through Friday and an average of eight on Saturdays. In spite of the beauty of the landscape, the chaos of traffic flow negatively impacts the visitor arrival experience. We seek to improve the cemetery landscape both inside and outside the gates. The proposed design aims at solving three main issues: Q1: How does the proposed design reorganize the traffic and pedestrian system? Q2: How does the proposed design improve the arrival experience? Q3: How does the proposed design provide a beautiful event space for private funerals?? The solution framework for this design uses space decomposition as the priority to compact and create new space for more burial plots. The proposed design sets up 4 toolkits as basic solution elements and combines them in a way that responds to the needs of each question.
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Harvard Graduate School of Design Chengzhe Zhang
Oasis + Product ive Settlement Al-Ula, Saudi Arabia The oasis of Al-Ula is a humanmade landscape, maintained by the implementation of a water resource management system, both technically and socially. The oasis is cultivated thanks to the irrigation by qanats and wells; its creation and maintenance imply a constant human presence and workload. The Oasis can be defined by the association of human activity and cultivated crops in a desert area. Anticipating large-scale tourist growth in the year 2030, and in response to the issue of diminishing underground water resource as a visible consequence of existing unsustainable development and agriculture practices, our project proposes an alternative development model that addresses the water resources and energy strategy for the oasis of Al-Ula. Oasis+ aspires to integrate the space of production and social interaction, creating an environment where agriculture, settlement, and energy production become entwined and experienced as a new landscape urban form. The project proposes to bring seawater from the Red Sea, about 180 km away, to provide cooling and, by desalination, fresh water for domestic use and irrigation; combing four novel technologies: Algae Farm, Greenhouse Farm, CSP Solar Farm, and Salt Farm to create a sustainable production cycle.
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More than 600 affordable housing units will be oriented toward the park, fostering a productive landscape and promoting cultural education which will help revitalize the community.
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connects, convenes, and celebrates landscape architects and the greater design community, as we strive to advance the profession of landscape architecture, and support the creation of extraordinary environments throughout the region and the world. BSLA thrives thanks to the ongoing energy and commitment of our members throughout Massachusetts and Maine. And BSLA thrives thanks to the generosity of sponsors, who underwrite our activities.
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Issue 10
FALL | WINTER 2019