Month: April 2017

Favorite Places Unfamiliar to Others, Part 2

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Storm King / image: Kevin O’Mara via Flickr

For those looking ahead to spring and summer travel, Professional Practice Network (PPN) members’ responses to the question what is your favorite place that may not be familiar to others? might give you a few new spots to explore this year. In the previous post recapping the results of the 2015 PPN survey, we reviewed the most popular responses and international locations mentioned. This time, we’re focusing on places across the United States, from parks and gardens to wilderness areas and mountain passes. Take a look and see if you’ve been to any of these lesser-known spots, and which ones you’ll need to add to your list of places to go.

Northeast

Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site – Cornish, New Hampshire

The courtyard at the Boston Public Library – Boston, Massachusetts

Halcyon Lake in Mount Auburn Cemetery – Cambridge, Massachusetts

“The Robert Treat Paine Estate, an amazing shingle style home in Waltham with landscape designed by Olmsted.” – Waltham, Massachusetts

Lake Waban – Wellesley, Massachusetts

Truro and Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Storm King Art Center – New Windsor, New York

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#iAdvocate: Be an Advocate for Transportation

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ASLA 2011 Professional General Design Award of Excellence. Portland Mall Revitalization, ZGF Architects LLP / image: ZGF Architects LLP

The future of federal transportation and transit funding has many of us concerned as we hear how legislative priorities are taking shape in the Capitol. With this uncertainty, the need for landscape architects to advocate for less-costly, green infrastructure solutions and stable transportation funding that serves community needs is greater than ever before. In this post, and in tandem with Advocacy Day this week, we’re focusing on ASLA’s advocacy efforts and encouraging our members to bring their voices to the transportation priorities conversation.

ASLA’s 2017 Advocacy Agenda is taking shape. On March 9, ASLA released their top U.S. infrastructure recommendations: Landscape Architects Leading Community Infrastructure Design and Development. The report makes recommendations for supporting active transportation programs, expanding and increasing funding for the TIGER program, and investing in transit and transit-oriented development.

On March 17, ASLA released their statement on President Trump’s proposed budget and called out the dramatic cuts to many of the federal programs and resources that strengthen our nation’s infrastructure and economic development. ASLA will continue to work with legislators as the budget process unfolds and will carry forward a strong advocacy agenda.

How can you as a member advocate for transportation funding and sound infrastructure solutions? If you haven’t already, be sure to sign up for the ASLA iAdvocate Network so that you can support the Society’s efforts to impact public policy at national, state and local levels. Once you sign up, email alerts are delivered to your inbox on issues important to landscape architecture that are being debated by lawmakers. With a few clicks, you can send a message to your Senators and Representative and make your voice a part of ASLA’s advocacy efforts.

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Pop Up Park Buffalo: Changing the Idea of Play

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image: Pop Up Park Buffalo

Changing the Idea of Play Through Personal Empowerment that is Fun & Risky

Pop Up Park Buffalo is a grassroots organization committed to providing community-based “free-play” opportunities for kids in Buffalo and Western New York. In recent decades, opportunities for free-play have been greatly reduced due to parental fears, overscheduling of children, and a general feeling that children should not be on their own. Yet, evidence suggests that free-play is the very best life-lesson tool, and is vital to the growth and development of children into healthy and productive adults.

Being a teacher, an environmental activist, landscape architects, and a planner, we, as founders of Pop Up Buffalo, were specifically interested in creating an experience that fostered the next generation of inventors, philosophers, and designers. As parents, we were also interested in the personal empowerment of risky play and how we could create a free-play experience that parents and communities could be equally empowered in providing. In 2012, we came together to “change the state of play for just one day” and after a very successful event our concept of “Community Based Free-Play” was created. Our one-day experiment was so successful we were urged to continue, and in 2013 we went on to host five more Pop Up Park events in Buffalo and by 2015 we were under the umbrella of The Wellness Institute of Greater Buffalo & WNY, Inc., a non-profit incubator organization.

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Environmental Justice PPN Student Representatives at LABash

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Environmental Justice PPN Student Representative Kari Spiegelhalter speaks with a landscape architecture student at LABash / image: Kari Spiegelhalter and Patricia Noto

ASLA’s Environmental Justice Professional Practice Network (PPN) has taken on board two student representatives to help them reach out to students of landscape architecture about design for environmental justice. The PPN seeks to provide a forum to help landscape architects pursue the goal of designing spaces that promote the fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens regardless of race, income, or other marginal status.

After establishing the PPN in 2015, founding co-chairs Kathleen King, Associate ASLA, and Julie Stevens, ASLA, wanted to educate current students of landscape architecture about environmental justice so they enter the profession with an understanding of how their designs increase or diminish environmental justices. They hope to empower future generations of landscape architects with the understanding to design safe, accessible, and healthy places for all. To do so, they established an Environmental Justice PPN Student Representative position to reach out to students of landscape architecture.

According to PPN Co-Chair Kathleen King, “There has been a great deal of interest in the student community for the EJ PPN and Julie and I wanted to find a way to connect with students. Students today will be in practice tomorrow—we think it’s important that they are engaged with these issues and understand the potential impact landscape architects can have on creating equitable communities. Kari and Patricia have demonstrated a passion for this topic and we’re thrilled that they will be spreading the word about the new PPN.”

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Call for Proposals: Student and Emerging Professional Spotlight

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Calling All Student and Associate ASLA Members

ASLA is excited to announce the Online Learning Student & Emerging Professional SPOTLIGHT mini-series, giving YOU the opportunity to work with a Professional Practice Network (PPN) mentor in creating a presentation for ASLA’s Online Learning series. Do you have eye-opening research to share with the profession, or an inclination to do a little design exploration over the summer? Here’s your chance!

The Call for Proposals is now open and will close on Thursday, May 25.

To submit a proposal:

  1. Review the SPOTLIGHT mini-series Call for Proposals form.
  2. Review the PPNs listed below that will be serving as hosts and mentors. Which PPN does your topic or research best fit?
    Campus Planning & Design
    Children’s Outdoor Environments
    Ecology & Restoration
    Sustainable Design & Development
    Transportation
    Water Conservation
    Women in Landscape Architecture
  3. Once you have your description, outline, and objectives finalized, complete the Call for Proposals form by May 25.
  4. Selected participants will be notified in June. At this time, you will be introduced to your PPN mentor.
  5. Collaborate with your mentor! Presentations will take place in August.

We look forward to seeing your research, technical analysis, large-scale ideas, or whatever else you may bring to the table to share with your fellow landscape architects!

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Favorite Places Unfamiliar to Others, Part 1

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Hamilton Cove Preserve, Lubec, Maine / image: VW Beetle via Flickr

Spring temperatures and sunshine have arrived (or are coming soon, depending on where you are), and many can’t wait to enjoy the outdoors again or head out on a spring break trip. Professional Practice Network (PPN) members’ responses to the question what is your favorite place that may not be familiar to others? might give you a few new places to explore.

Given that we were looking for less well-known places, there were very few answers that appeared more than once. Here are the handful of locations that appeared twice:

Charleston, South Carolina and Charleston’s Waterfront Park
JC Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, North Carolina
The Bold Coast, Maine
North Germany, on the Baltic Sea (Schleswig-Holstein) – “Everyone goes to South Germany but the North is very beautiful.”

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Share Your SITES Highlights

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At the Hudson’s Edge: Beacon’s Long Dock a Resilient Riverfront Park, Beacon, NY, Reed Hilderbrand LLC, 2015 Professional ASLA Award of Excellence, General Design Category / image: James Ewing Photography

ASLA needs your help! Do you have helpful hints or good examples to highlight sections and/or specific topics within the SITES® Rating System? You do?…Great! We’ve created a form for you to share up to three examples that the Sustainable Design and Development Professional Practice Network (SDD PPN) and ASLA can highlight on the SDD PPN webpage and the ASLA SITES webpage.

Click on the link below to view an example, fill out the form, and find out how to get involved:

SITES Highlights Survey

Please complete the form by Friday, April 14. For questions, please email sites@asla.org.

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Landscape Architecture’s Best Unknown Firms

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The Restoration of Giant Forest, Sequoia National Park, CA, National Park Service, 2007 Professional ASLA Honor Award, General Design Category / image: National Park Service

In a previous post, we reviewed the landscape architects and firms that Professional Practice Network (PPN) members admire most, and the list was clearly dominated by familiar names—the key figures of the field since the nineteenth century, from Frederick Law Olmsted to the most celebrated firms working today. The next question we asked members sought to highlight names that may be less familiar: the greatest unknown landscape architect or firm.

Several PPN members gave very self-assured answers along the lines of: “Me, LOL!” Others highlighted a few of the many smaller, local firms that do excellent work but often “don’t have time or money for award submittals so they don’t get recognition on that level.” Some members identified general categories of practice that often go under-recognized, such as “the nameless public realm landscape architect” and the educators and mentors who shape and encourage up-and-coming landscape architects: “The greatest unknown (or unheralded) landscape architect is the one who reaches out and has a positive impact upon educating the next generation.”

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