Landscape Architecture in the News

Jim Klein, ASLA
Lardner–Klein Landscape Architects
Development Studied Around Flight 93 Site
Pittsburgh Post Gazette (Pittsburgh, PA)
More than 125 people attended a meeting with Somerset County commissioners to hear about the county's plans to help shape development that is expected to occur on the roads leading to a national memorial to United Flight 93. In August 2006, the county hired a landscape architect to conduct a study of the main roads and the adjacent land leading to the crash site and how that land might be developed to suit the anticipated visitors to the as-yet unbuilt memorial to United Flight 93…. Jim Klein, a principal with Lardner–Klein Landscape Architects, showed computer-generated projections of development that may occur, including restaurants, motels, and some retail shops.

Lawrence Halprin, FASLA
Beth Meyer, FASLA
ONARCHITECTURE—Fountainblue: Who'll Revive Our Mall Fountains?
The Hook (Charlottesville, VA)
Can you place the four interactive water fountains on the Downtown Mall? Don't feel bad if you can't place them all…. According to several local architects, that's not what renowned landscape architect Lawrence Halprin had in mind when he designed the Downtown Mall in the 1970s. Indeed, Halprin—now 90 and living in San Francisco—is famous for the integration of interactive fountains in his public space projects, most notably his Auditorium Forecourt Fountain in Portland, Oregon, a complex of falls and water shoots that invites people in to splash around…. Although Halprin couldn't be reached before press time, UVA landscape architecture professor Beth Meyer agrees that his original idea for the fountains has been derailed. 

Becky Folgert, Student ASLA
ASLA
Folgert Selected as 2007 Wisconsin Honey Queen
Wisconsin Ag Connection (Marshfield, WI) 
A Helenville, Wisconsin, woman will be creating a lot of buzz about the state's honey industry during the coming year. Becky Folgert has been selected as the 2007 Wisconsin Honey Queen during the state honey association's annual convention.… Folgert, who is currently a senior at the University of Wisconsin–Madison majoring in landscape architecture, will spend the next year promoting the beekeeping industry around the state by speaking at fairs, festivals, and farmers markets.… She is active in the Association of Women in Agriculture, Saddle and Sirloin Club, National Agri-marketing Association, Horticulture Society, and the American Society of Landscape Architects.

University of Arizona landscape architecture students
Chris Rose, Student ASLA 
Christy Fisher, Student ASLA
Lauri Macmillan Johnson, ASLA
UA Students Help Design Capitol Plaza
Arizona Daily Star 
Next to the stately copper dome of Arizona's capitol lies a plaza filled with pretty much nothing. A state representative spearheading an effort to bring a vibrant change to the concrete and grass area between the capitol and Senate and House buildings has enlisted University of Arizona landscape architecture students to design a military memorial for the space…. Chris Rose said the emptiness of the space and the incongruity between the hulking Senate and House buildings and historic capitol were the first challenges to overcome. "We all had a lot of thoughts, primarily that it's just not friendly. It's not a place where people can be and enjoy it," he said…. Christy Fisher's design focused on the center of the plaza, with a granite inlay turning from an abstraction of the Grand Canyon into an abstraction of the sun, complete with a timeline…. Rose and Fisher used the Google Earth program to get aerial views and pored over historical photographs and architectural documents in preparing for the design phase, said Lauri Macmillan Johnson, an associate professor of landscape architecture who led the 12-student class.

Lila Fendrick, ASLA
Artistic Splendor in the Grass
Washington Times (Washington, D.C.)
Gardening for many people is a singular art form. Other people make art the focus of their garden. Combining the two can be a challenge, according to local landscape designers and architects called upon to balance sculpture's fixed forms with a garden's seasonal permutations… "Outdoor sculpture adds another level of interest to a garden, so it is not just garden plants or paving," says Lila Fendrick, owner of Lila Fendrick Landscape Architecture in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Lucas Griffith, ASLA
Farmers' Markets Nurture a Need for Open Space
San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco)
In the mythology of the American Dream, it's the privacy of our sanctuaries that defines, comforts, and nourishes us…. So in November, when I met Lucas Griffith, a graduate student in landscape architecture at UC Berkeley, as he was conducting a survey to find out why people go to the farmers' market, I was intrigued. As part of his master's thesis on Alemany Farmers' Market, he was asking farmers and patrons to play a game to redesign the market to better suit the community's needs.

Charles Anderson, FASLA
Landscape Grounded in Northwest Natural History
Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce (Seattle)
It started for our office in 2001, after architects Weiss/Manfredi won an international design competition for the Olympic Sculpture Park. Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi recognized the complexity of the context of the site and quickly adopted it into the overall design. The application of the landscape narrative to the site is just one of the ways the landscape architect collaborated with the architect and the other design team members through the design development phases of the project. Charles Anderson, FASLA, has been a practicing landscape architect for more than 20 years. Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture has offices in Seattle and Napa, California.

Charles Anderson, FASLA
New Seattle Park Sparkles Over Bay; Museum Wing Disappoints
Bloomberg
The Seattle Art Museum's new Olympic Sculpture Park, which opens this weekend, hugs the northern edge of downtown. It looks west to a wide panorama of Elliott Bay, with its ferry and freighter bustle, and beyond to the Olympic Mountains (after which the park is named). One subsidiary path leads into a grove of quaking aspen, the work of landscape architect Charles Anderson. Come warm weather, its rustling leaves will obscure traffic noise and glint like sequins in the breeze.

Raymond Jungles, FASLA
Our Own Music Box: What Counts is on the Inside of Frank Gehry's ...
The Miami Herald (Miami)
Frank Gehry's proposed New World Symphony building currently bears the slightly awkward and somewhat inelegant appellation New World Symphony Campus Expansion, a working title that thankfully won't be around forever. It could be called the ''music box,'' for that is what the design most resembles...The 107,000-square-foot, $150 million building is part of a larger venture that includes a $20 million, 2.8-acre park and a $15 million, 608-car garage with retail shops running along both sides, both of which are also being designed by the L.A. firm of Gehry Partners (the park in conjunction with Miami landscape architect Raymond Jungles) but will be paid for by the city of Miami Beach.

Peter Walker & Partners
New Waldorf-Astoria® Hotel to Join the Beverly Hilton as Part of a ...
Hotelinteractive.com
Oasis West Realty LLC, the owner of the Beverly Hilton, and Hilton Hotels Corporation announced today the first new west coast Waldorf-Astoria® hotel as part of the $500 million long-term plan to revitalize the nine-acre hotel property at the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards in Beverly Hills…. Working with landscape architects Peter Walker & Partners, the plan will replace the urban concrete nature of the property with gardens and open space as well as implement a cohesive street and landscape design to transform Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards and Merv Griffin Way.

A. Gail Boorman, ASLA
Communities to Have Say About Street Design
Naples Daily News (Naples, FL) 
Street design—à la carte. That’s what residents in the Bayshore and Gateway Triangle communities soon could be able to do, thanks to a new design workbook for the area…. A six-month study by A. Gail Boorman and Associates, the landscape architect firm hired for the project, created new residential design guidelines for the communities. These include various choices of decorative light posts, metal benches, and trees to revamp streets in the designated area. “It’s designed to be a tool to empower neighborhoods to improve their streets,” said Gail Boorman, president of A. Gail Boorman and Associates.

Washington Chapter, ASLA
Firm Finder
Planning a Garden Tour
Seattle Times (Seattle)
Q: I am one of the many in Madison Valley who experienced flooding during the December storms. Within minutes, the deluge surrounded the house and buried my garden under almost five feet of water. Thankfully, the inside of the house was spared…. The local office of the Washington chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects suggests that such a severe problem may well require the expertise of a civil engineer. Or check out ASLA's referral service to help you track down local landscape architects that specialize. One of the categories is "stormwater"; see www.asla.org and click on "firm finder."

Mary Palmer Dargan, ASLA
Hugh Dargan
ASLA [DOES THIS GO WITH DARGAN’S NAME?]
LRMA to present ‘A Garden Lecture’
Laurel Leader Call (Laurel, MS)
The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art will present “A Garden Lecture” by Mary Palmer Dargan February 2 at 10:30 am. The lecture will be held in LRMA’s American Gallery and will be followed by a book signing of Dargan’s book Timeless Landscape Design: The Four-Part Master Plan in the museum shop…. The Dargans have received the National Award of Merit from the American Society of Landscape Architects and were named in 1992 by Southern Accents as two of the South’s leading landscape architects.

Mary Palmer Dargan, ASLA
Events Bellingrath Plans Winter Wednesdays
The Sun Herald (Biloxi, MS)
January 31, 10:30 am–noon: Timeless Landscape Design, by Mary Palmer Dargan, ASLA, Dargan Landscape Architects, Atlanta--Explore the depth of visual art in landscape design with the author of this new book. Cost: $10 for members, $20 for nonmembers; registration required.

Jay Womack, ASLA
Elmhurst College Receives $116,000 Grant From DuPage County to ...
Earthtimes.org 
Elmhurst College has been awarded a $116,000 grant from the DuPage County Stormwater Management division to partially fund its innovative strategies for managing and monitoring water as part of a $23 million campus redevelopment project…. "Instead of building conventional detention, we will incorporate a series of BMPs in and around the site to decentralize the rain that falls and return it into the ground where it eventually becomes a resource for Salt Creek," said Jay Womack, ASLA, Wight's director of sustainable design.

ASLA
Natural History Museum Sets Workshop on Protecting Against Wildfires
San Diego Business Journal (San Diego)
An area museum has created a wildfire seminar in an effort to train professionals who work in and around San Diego County’s undeveloped wildlands. The San Diego Natural History Museum and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, plus local fire departments and businesses, are hosting five seminars this spring for those in residential and commercial real estate, as well as landscaping and related services within wildfire-prone areas…. The program was developed with the help of the American Institute of Architects, American Society of Landscape Architects, American Planning Association, California Department of Real Estate, and related industry groups.

LSU Landscape Architecture Department
There’s a Lot to Arcadia, Director Says
The Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA)
“This is the best play I’ve ever worked on,” said director Keith Dixon. “It’s a fun piece. It’s different and it’s exciting. It’s probably my favorite play.” Part of the story deals with landscape architecture, Dixon added. “It is kind of the idea of change, from classical to romantic thought,” he said. Kevin Risk and others in the LSU Landscape Architecture Department have spoken to the cast about the science and art involved, and they have also set up a landscape architecture display in the theater lobby.

Penn State’s Landscape Architecture Program
Brian Orland, FASLA
Penn State Undergraduate Landscape Architecture Program Ranked ...
State College News (State College, PA)
Penn State's undergraduate program in landscape architecture has been ranked first in the nation, tied with Louisiana State University, according to the 2007 DesignIntelligence Survey of Leading Landscape Architecture Programs. Penn State's program, celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2006–2007, was ranked fourth in both 2005 and 2006 in the annual survey, the only one in the country to focus exclusively on the design professions…. "The continuing dedication of our faculty to teaching takes the program from strength to strength—and it is gratifying to see that reflected by those who hire our students," said Brian Orland, head of the Department of Landscape Architecture.

ASLA
NLAM
Pat Caughey, FASLA
April 2007 is National Landscape Architecture Month
Earthtimes.org
The American Society of Landscape Architects has proclaimed April 2007 as National Landscape Architecture Month. ASLA chapters across the country will celebrate with public outreach activities to help individuals "Discover Careers in Landscape Architecture," the theme for this year…. "National Landscape Architecture Month provides a great opportunity for ASLA members to introduce landscape architecture to students in their communities," said ASLA President Pat Caughey, FASLA.