Isaiah Langston Landscape Architecture Portfolio

ISAIAH LANGSTON

LANDSCAPE DESIGN PORTFOLIO

The Neural Woods

THE NEURAL WOODS

Location: Benson, Omaha, NE

Type: Urban Redesign

Year: 2023

Serving as a singular piece of a larger urban redesign, the Neural Woods is an education-centered district within the neighborhood of Benson. As a vision for what Benson could look like in the year 2043, the design utilizes a number of spatial and social strategies to achieve distinct social justice initiatives for the future. The district and redesign as a whole creates a more inclusive and accessible condition while protecting the personality and diversity of the existing community.

The overall redesign houses three districts: the Green Fabric (left), the Neural Woods (middle), and the Community Gateway (right). These three districts all serve distinct purposes, and they each address their own specific social justice issues. However, through underlying strategies and a comprehensive overall urban framework, they work together to accomplish the entirety of the vision.

*Graphic created by Caitlin Elser

Serving as the heart of the urban redesign is the Neural Woods. Centralized within the urban fabric, this district houses a prominent urban forest. The inclusion of this urban forest provides numerous ecological, physiological, and economic benefits. The forest provides habitat for native species, creates an urban cooling effect, and contributes to overall resident well-being. The goal of the design is to break down barriers to knowledge while maintaining and conserving the urban forest.

The creation of an elevated network establishes connections between infrastructural elements in the area. Overlaid on top of the forest, the pathway network strategically eliminates as few trees as possible. Serving as the anchor of this network is the library, creating an inclusive learning environment by boosting the accessibility of the opportunities afforded by the library.

“Tree houses” along the walkway serve as flexible education space.

The agriculture building allows visitors to learn all about urban farming.

The semi-outdoor public gym encourages engaging physical education.

Outdoor classrooms provide experiential learning opportunity.

Symphony Square

SYMPHONY SQUARE

Location: Lincoln, NE

Type: Plaza Design

Year: 2023

This re-imagining of P street plaza in downtown Lincoln is themed around music, specifically musical performance. Symphony Square is centered and designed around the central performance area near the existing “Ascent” sculpture. Everything in the design works to reinforce this area. The central performance area features a permanent outdoor piano, which allows for spontaneous musical performance. The plaza is designed for the street artists of Lincoln, allowing these performers an outdoor space to showcase their talents to the public. This is a free-to-use space, however, meaning everyday people can also perform. When the music begins, it draws people to the space and brings the area to life.

Utilizing the existing sculpture was an important aspect of the design. Designing elements around the art piece and allowing it to cut through parts of the design further anchored it as a key feature of the space.

Providing a sense of comfort, the dense tree canopy planting not only reduced outside noise pollution in the plaza, but created an intimate and harmonious feeling within the space.

In continuation of the design process, design development was the next step. Through the development of the initial conceptual design, the space itself shifted drastically while holding similar themes and goals. This specific set, which included six unique sheets, was produced through hand drafting. The set showcased a much deeper look at detailing, placement, alignment, and overall cohesion within the space.

The final step in this design progression was the development of construction document level CAD drawings. Showcased here is the materials plan, which provides the most comprehensive look at the final design and design intent. Further iterating off of the hand drafted set, this final design of the site took a more comprehensive approach and filled in the gaps left behind by the design development stage.

Shifting the focus from separate areas all serving a common goal, this design ties all of the elements together to create a cohesive design strategy and framework. This framework, in turn, allowed a much more in-depth look at details, detail systems, and design implementation.

This final CAD set included eight unique sheets. Shown here are the site layout plan, grading plan, landscape understory plan, and details. Construction documentation allowed for specific detailing within the design, such as plant and material selection, exact dimensioning, and underground detail system study.

Chief Headquarters

CHIEF HEADQUARTERS

Location: Grand Island, NE

Type: Commercial Design

Year: 2024

Chief Industries is a manufacturing company based out of Grand Island, NE. With this new headquarters, they were looking to create both a functional and attractive outdoor space for employees and visitors alike to take advantage of. Featuring outdoor work spaces, a halfmile walking loop around the property, designated hammock space, and an open sodded lawn area, the design sees a multitude of functions come together to form the client’s ideal space.

*All drawings developed under Olsson Studio, in conjucntion with Olsson-employed landscape architects and engineers as well as Holland Basham Architects

Various construction details were needed to communicate desired construction outcomes. These details included namely walls and pavements types. Both free-standing and retaining walls were used to add variety within the grading and landscape.

The client desired a somewhat simplistic prairie feeling to the landscape, which the planting design reflects. With large swaths of ornamental grasses and areas of native grass seeding along the walking trail, the design is able to capture a strong prairie atmosphere. The planting design extends well beyond the building, with extensive parking lot landscaping and seating nodes along the walking path. Using a selective planting palette full of various natives, the landscape aims to be subtle and elegant, complimenting the architecture and not overshadowing it

Feng Shui Park

FENG SHUI PARK

Location: Qingdao, China

Type: Large Scale Park Design

Year: 2023

Feng Shui Park is located right on the coast of Qingdao. The concept of this design was to create a park that achieved balance through contrast. To showcase that, the park utilizes both active and passive programming, natural landscapes and artificial hardscapes, and an overall sense of balance with opposing elements.

Diverse planting schemes encourage biodiversity, as well as create distinct areas within the park.

The park utilizes a thorough network of pathways and pedestrian circulation.

Dense Forest

Sparse Forest

Ornamental Meadow/Prairie Lawn

Primary Circulation

Secondary Circulation

Tertiary Circulation

This design node takes a closer look at one of the passive spaces in the western area of park. Built around an existing pond, this area provides a more relaxed feeling and encourages slow-paced movement and observation. Features of the area include smaller ecological ponds, an observation deck, shade structures, a dock, and a koi pond.

This node zooms into the sports recreation area, the most active space in the park. This recreation zone is equipped with tennis, volleyball, and basketball courts as well as a soccer field. Being a part of the active side of the park, the zone serves the neighboring residential development as well. Along with these active elements are plenty of opportunities for spectators with amphitheater seats and shade structures which allow observation of the ongoing activity in the area.

Leisure: evoking a “clearing in the woods” feeling, this area provides a relaxing sanctuary within the park with a strong connection to the surrounding nature.

Play: Utilizing the vast open space along the coast, the outdoor sports-centered section of the park provides access to a multitude of physical activities and promotes the health and well-being of all visitors.

Through the utilization of surrounding topography, amphitheater seating compliments and serves the activity-driven side of the park.

Green Gap Park

GREEN GAP PARK

Location: Carter Lake, Iowa

Type: Small Scale Park Design

Year: 2022

Green Gap Park is located in direct vicinity to the Carter Lake Community Center. The design of this space highlights and displays the connection and disparity between two different approaches to park design: the naturalistic and the artificial. The park is split into two distinct spaces, these being the garden space and the program space. The park is designed around the idea of linking the two spaces and bridging the gap between these two different worlds, hence the name Green Gap Park. The proposal houses numerous programs such as open lawn spaces for flexible usage, a community orchard, a misting sculpture, a unique pavilion sculpture, and dog parks.

Shade

Orchard

Ornamental

Primary

Secondary

Tertiary

The park utilizes an organized overstory planting scheme. Gathering areas of various scales provide flexible public space.

Ground planting highlights different spatial uses.

Shrubs

Prairie Meadow Lawn

Entry Point

Primary

Secondary

Tertiary

Circulation paths further showcase the contrast of the two systems.

Providing flexible space for the community center was key in the design. The central lawn and pavilion both provide ample open space which can be programmed for a variety of uses, while the tree line provides shade and buffering from the neighboring school.

The split approach allowed for extreme contrast between the two opposing sections of the park. The dense planting and varied topography

Riverrun Park

RIVERRUN PARK

Location: N/A

Type: Small Scale Park Design

Year: 2022

Riverrun Park was an exercise in spacemaking without site context or strict guidelines. Utilizing and borrowing from a variety of case studies dealing with landform, enclosure, canopy, and ground plane, this site was created. With a goal to create an artistic site using a distinct formal landscape language and an abstract site shape, Riverrun Park aimed to provide a leisurely riverside retreat. With dense canopy planting buffering the site and steep topography changes, the site strove to create a beautiful and unique landscape scene.

The process started with the creation of the site landform, using a laser-cut model. This landform looked at topographical changes in the landscape, along with establishing the formal language of the landscape.

The next step was to transform this landform into an artscape, effectively turning the site from a topographical landmass into an aesthetic landscape. Beautifying the space included vegetation study, detail design such as paving, and site feature placement.

At a later time, coming back to this site allowed for a thorough grading exercise. The waterfront provided ample opportunity for drainage of the site.

As such, all of the drainage is oriented towards the water areas. The main slope is toward the northern canal with a slight cross slope toward the waterfront. The site also includes a major hill area on the east side, which houses an overlook area. The southern side of the hill includes four levels of terracing which are accomplished with retaining walls. There are two paths to access the overlook: one set of stairs with four flights, and an extensive ADA accessible ramp. Both of these include ample railing to ensure safety and ADA compliance.

The site contains steep topographical changes, highlighted in the sectional profiles.