The Dirt left the 2006 ASLA Annual Meeting & EXPO and 43rd IFLA World Congress thoroughly impressed with Kongjian Yu, International ASLA, an innovative and frankly brave landscape architect who sticks to his vision of a truly sustainable and authentic China, no matter whom he offends, what project it costs him, or which government official's feathers get ruffled. If you're not familiar with Yu yet, you're really missing something. Check out his award-winning projects from 2005 and 2006, then read/listen to his interview with LAND Online from the Annual Meeting and check out video highlights of his plenary session at the Annual Meeting.

Need more? You can read a transcript and see slides of his entire session presentation at landscapecn.cm.

Ken Smith, ASLA, sat down for a LAND Online podcast during the annual meeting, and as you can imagine, a lot of the talk centered around Smith's work on the Orange County Great Park. Smith says he has a team in place--including Mia Lehrer, ASLA, environmental artist Mary Miss, ecologist Steven Handel, and architect Enrique Norten--that has "the breadth to deal with something of this scale." He added that he has formed a "joint venture" with Gafcon to manage construction of the park. According to Smith, his Studio West now houses a dozen workers from Gafcon, three people from Lehrer's studio, two representing Handel, and three people "off and on" who work for Miss. Smith reports that the team has completed the preliminary master plan (link via The LA Times), which will go on display in Irvine, California, tomorrow, and the project is moving at an accelerated pace. Smith said that pieces of the park went into design and construction documents even before the master plan was completed. Because of this accelerated pace, Smith said he is setting up individual design studios within Studio West to handle different aspects of the project, including grading, design features, planting design, and hardscapes and pavement.

Smith also discussed 55 Water Street and his 11 Tears memorial during the podcast. Click here to listen to the full audio of the podcast.

The EXPO Hall at the ASLA Annual Meeting and 43rd IFLA World Congress saw heavy traffic this year from meeting attendees checking out what was a fairly green EXPO floor, reflecting the theme of this year's meeting. To highlight sustainable products, Dean Hill, ASLA, host of Do it Yourself Network's Grounds for Improvement, designed a residential landscape in the convention hall using green products from vendors. In an interview with LAND Online on the display, Hill noted that the idea was to create a residential landscape that incorporated green products using materials that might be meant for commercial applications but are still available to consumers. For instance, Hill incorporated safety tiles made of recycled rubber from No Fault Sport Group in the landscape and even planted green roof sedum from Xero Flor America in a raised bed--a modernist take on sustainability.  "Just because you can't buy these things in a big box store, doesn't mean consumers don't have access to them," Hill noted. Boral Bricks, whose permeable pavers were used in the project, was a sponsor of the project, as was Google SketchUp, which has had a major presence as a show sponsor and on the EXPO floor demonstrating its new Pro 3D software.

Click here for the full audio of the Dean Hill podcast.

Check Tuesday’s LAND Online for more highlights from the EXPO Floor.

Following her Plenary Session address to the 2006 ASLA Annual Meting and 43rd IFLA World Congress, Catherine Mosbach, International ASLA, sat down with LAND Online for a wide-ranging podcast covering everything from the effects of globalization on landscape architecture, to her work on the Louvre extension in Lens, France, to her thoughts on American and European attitudes toward open space and streetscapes. Mosbach noted that the Louvre competition was a particularly interesting experience for her, because many of the competing teams including those with some big-name architects--she singles out Steven Holl in particular--didn't take full advantage of the opportunity to make the park an integral part of the plan. For many competing teams, she said, the attitude was "oh, you have the trees, the trees are park, it is not necessary to do more." The winning design, which Mosbach completed with a Japanese architecture firm SANAA, places the museum in the center of the park rather than behind the building. She says she had an immediate connection with SANAA, and the partnership yielded a project that combines architecture and landscape architecture on a "very sensitive level." Finally, she says, the design is all about the art housed in the museum and creating an atmosphere where museum goers can achieve a sense of tranquility by leaving the city and passing through the park before entering the building.

Click here for the full audio of the Catherine Mosbach podcast.

Mary Ann Lasch, FASLA, of Gensler, is a security design expert who has worked a lot with the General Services Administration attempting to craft guidelines for government buildings that create a safe environment for occupants, while creating a sense of openness for the public at large. We had a chance to talk with Lasch about the current state of security design--particularly in Washington, DC, and New York City--and what she sees for the future. Essentially, she sees things improving on the security design front as cities, and in particular, the federal government, become more keen on security design issues. She also notes that designing for the worst-case scenario no longer seems to be the default setting when it comes to perimeter security. Rather, developers are actually performing risk assessments and cost benefit analyses prior to throwing up bollards. Now there's some novel thinking.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Mary Ann Lasch, FASLA.

Now that we're back,  have caught our breath a little, and are trying to get all our knowledge out on the Web, we'd like to know what you thought of the meeting. Did you go to any great sessions? See any good products at the EXPO? How did you like Minneapolis? Leave your comments, questions, and suggestions in the "comments" section of this entry to let us know what you think. Just remember, keep it civil--Big Brother Dirt is always watching.

Astute (and obsessive) readers of The Dirt will note that we were able to sneak in a few entries on the 2006 ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO and 43rd IFLA World Congress while we were on site (as they say in the Convention biz), but we weren't able to get out an alert. For the rest of you, check below for some of the initial highlights as they happened. We'll have more tomorrow, and our colleagues over at LAND Online will have a complete wrap-up of the meeting in their October 17 issue.

And for those of you who think they've seen this stuff already--check out video highlights of presentations by Jean Michel Cousteau and Kongjian Yu, International ASLA.

Click here to listen to the 2006 ASLA Annual Meeting/43rd IFLA World Congress Podcast featuring Jean Michel Cousteau.

Click here to view highlights of Cousteau's general session presentation.

In an engaging opening general session that ranged from gut-wrenching sadness to unabashed optimism, Jean Michel Cousteau, oceanographer and president of the Ocean Futures Society, presented the extreme challenges faced by the ocean's ecosystem due to mismanagement of both water and land resources. Through striking visuals, Cousteau demonstrated that deforestation and an increasingly wasteful culture are "choking the world's coral reefs to death." The world explorer presented video footage of his travels, showing the deadly effects of beach detritus on shore birds and seals who ingest everything from cigarette lighters to shoes that wash up on remote beaches from around the world. He also demonstrated the devastating effects stormwater runoff has on fragile coastal regions where deforestation has occurred. However, he pointed to several examples of positive change, including the Chicago City Hall green roof, which he said was a natural system "just like a coral reef, and just like a jungle canopy in the Amazon." Cousteau also demonstrated his own personal powers of persuasion, noting that his documentary "Ocean Adventures" had convinced the Bush Administration to create the Northwestern Hawaiian National Preserve.

In an interview with LAND Online following the session, Cousteau commented on his success with the Bush Administration, saying he was "surprised" by the move, but had "hoped to be surprised." He added that he has learned confrontation with government officials is not productive when working for conservation and said the environment doesn't have to be politicized. As proof, Cousteau pointed out that the National Park Service, EPA, and the Clean Water Act were all signed into law by Republican presidents.

Click here to listen to the 2006 ASLA Annual Meeting/43rd IFLA World Congress Podcast featuring Kongjian Yu, International ASLA.

Click here to view highlights of Yu's presentation.

In a presentation during this afternoon's ASLA/IFLA General Session, and during an exclusive interview with LAND Online, Kongjian Yu, International ASLA, said China must turn away from what is often perceived as traditional forms of landscape in the country--most notably show gardens and large monument plazas--as well as Westernized visions of urbanization, and discover its own relationship with the land in order to restore the country's environment, and manage its explosive growth in a sustainable way. In both his presentation and the interview, Yu bemoaned the trend in China to level culturally significant landscapes and cities and replace them with what he called "monuments" and inappropriate pieces of western architecture. He was particularly critical of Herzog & de Meuron's Beijing National Stadium, commonly known as "the bird's nest," for its excessive use of steel, saying the structure uses far more steel than a typical stadium. However, Yu noted that aspirations of city mayors in China--who largely control development in the country--were often to blame for Western excesses there. According to Yu, projects, and in particular landscape architecture projects, that do not mimic what decision makers view as Western techniques, or do not make a grand statement, are most often not chosen during bidding and competitions.

Yu encouraged Western landscape architects who believe in producing sustainable work to educate Chinese decision makers on the need for a new vernacular in the country, as he has struggled to do. He added that American landscape architects in particular, should be upfront about the mistakes the U.S. has made with regards to sprawl, noting that the Chinese too often have an idealized view of Western planning.

So says McGraw-Hill Construction President Norbert Young, FAIA. In a wide-ranging address titled "The Global Construction Market Outlook," Young said that the overall construction industry must embrace sustainable practices and do so quickly for the health of the environment and the economy. "The future will see green building as the standard," he told attendees of the ASLA Annual Meeting & EXPO and 43rd IFLA World Congress today, adding that a shift away from carbon-based fossil fuels "has to happen," before quipping, "and I'm a Republican." While noting that the construction industry continues to debate the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED standards, Young said builders and designers should embrace the system as a way to measure the environmental impact of construction. Buildings, Young predicted, "will move from being consumers of energy to being producers of energy. It will happen, and it must happen." He applauded landscape architects and outdoor product manufacturers for being ahead of the curve on this change, saying that site-related materials and site construction are highly green when compared with other building materials and construction.

Young also punched holes in the theory that China will become the dominant market for construction in the future, saying the United States holds that title and will for a long time to come. According to population research cited by Young, China's gross domestic product will not match U.S. GDP until 3035 (and will still fall well below U.S. per capita GDP), at which time, China's population control policies will "come home to roost," and the country's population will begin to decline and age.