Our landscape architect friends in New Zealand this week released the winners of their 2008 awards. 47 projects from around the country won in categories such as urban design, residential design, and environmental planning. The big winner was the Isthmus Group for their design of the Kumototo waterfront plaza on Customhouse Quay in Wellington. There are lots of great images of projects on the NZILA site here, though details on the projects themselves are a little lacking.

Just a reminder that next week the ASLA 2008 Professional Award winners will be announced in LAND Online.

Eric Wieland, ASLA, is also known as Capt. Wieland of the National Guard, and serves as a company commander in the eastern sector of Kosovo with NATO's 16,000 strong Kosovo Forces (KFOR). Newsweek recently interviewed Wieland and others engaged in peacekeeping in the uneasy Eastern European state. In "Kosovo: That Other NATO Mission" Wieland discusses the difference between serving in Kosovo versus Afghanistan and more. There's nothing about bringing new landscape architecture ideas to either war-torn country, but it's still very much a good read. With Thanksgiving just recently past and the holidays fast approaching, The Dirt salutes all the men and women serving in the Armed Forces around the world.

From Dwell magazine's recently relaunched blog, here's an idea for urban farming. An Israeli company Knafo Klimor Architects has created a plan for "agro-housing," placing large greenhouses inside high-rise buildings.

From the company's website:

"Advantages of this innovative building typology:

• Produces food for tenants and the surrounding community.
• Produces organic and healthy food that is disease and fertilizer free
• Creates an abundance of crops for self-consumption and sale for the neighbors.
• Requires no special skill set for greenhouse operation
• Allows for flexibility and independence for the greenhouse working hours.
• Creates extra income and new jobs for the inhabitants in the building.
• Creates a sense of community and softens the crisis of migration to cities.
• Preserves rural traditions and social order.
• Creates sustainable housing conditions and reduces air and soil pollution.
• Improves the building’s microclimate and reduction of its energy usage (cooling and heating) 
• Uses water from the existing high water table and recycles grey water for gardening."

It looks like an interesting idea, but The Dirt wonders how such a building would actually fit into an urban setting. What happens to the crops and plants inside when a taller building is constructed next door? More images and a .pdf explaining the project can be found here.

Sad news from the Kiwis today; Charlie Challenger, the father of New Zealand landscape architecture, passed away September 21 at his home. He was 84.

Challenger, originally from the UK, established New Zealand's first landscape architecture program in 1969. He went on to teach the first generation of LAs in the country, and helped to found the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects (NZILA).

Scoop, a New Zealand online new publication, recalls that

Landscape architecture was not understood in New Zealand and most often perceived as a fancy form of gardening. Charlie recalls that the first graduates had to be “apostles who had to sell themselves to people who were suspicious of them.”

Click here to read the whole article, and here [pdf link] to download the August 2007 issue of the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) newsletter featuring an article on Challenger (which starts on page 6).

News this week that Vladimir Djurovic, International ASLA, and his firm have been awarded one of the nine Aga Khan Awards for Architecture for their Samir Kassir Square project in Beirut. According to the Aga Khan Development Network, the square is "a restrained and serene urban public space that skilfully handles the conditions and infrastructure of its location in a city that has undergone rapid redevelopment." Click here to watch a video about the project. Djurovic Landscape Architecture was also awarded Residential Design Award of Excellence from ASLA this year for the Elie Saab Residence.

Djurovic was interviewed by The Daily Star this week--click through to read his thoughts on site design and client relations.

The BBC reports on researchers studying satellite imagery of the Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia. The researchers now believe that the urban area around Angkor may have been much larger than previously thought, possibly as large as modern-day Los Angeles. Using NASA images along with ground surveys and airborne photography, the researchers have found that "Angkor was extensive enough, and the agricultural exploitation intensive enough, to have created a number of very serious environmental problems," according to Damian Evans of the University of Sydney. Evans and the other authors of the study believe that deforestation, overpopulation, and bad water management may have contributed to the Angkor civilization's collapse in the 14th century.

With all the discussions about national infrastructure after the Minneapolis bridge disaster, it's a bit chilling to read that the study found breaches and ad hoc repairs on the large and complex Angkor irrigation system, "suggesting that the system became unmanageable over time."

Late yesterday afternoon came the word that the team headed by ASLA Fellow Michael Van Valkenburgh's firm has won the Toronto Lower Don Lands Design Competition. The Dirt covered the finalists back in February. More information and a large .pdf file on the winning "Port Lands Estuary" design is available on the Don Lands site. Christopher Hume from the Toronto Star also has a good article on the new design here.

The Toronto Star (which is quickly becoming a must-read for The Dirt) has coverage this morning of the announcement of the winning design team for the revitalization of Toronto's Nathan Phillips Square. And the winners are...

• Plant Architect Inc., Toronto, with Shore Tilbe Irwin & Partners (architect, Toronto); Peter Lindsay Schaudt Landscape Architecture, Inc. (landscape architect, Chicago); Adrian Blackwell (design collaborator, Toronto); Blackwell Bowick Partnership Limited (structural engineer, Toronto); and Crossey Engineering Ltd. (mechanical and electrical engineers, Toronto

The design of the square also makes strides toward sustainability. From the article:

[Andrew Frontini, a member of the winning team]  said he hopes the environmental sensitivity of the design will be "a banner to the city of Toronto and a statement that says: `We are a city that supports sustainability.'"

The Dirt looks forward to the groundbreaking ceremony--though it will have to wait until the city can come up with an additional $26 mil to pay for the project! Here's hoping the fabled money truck pulls up to city hall soon.

News from Scotland today that all new residential buildings of 1,000 square meters, 10 units, or 0.5 hectares of land in size will have to adhere to new green building guidelines starting in May. Along with pledges to produce at least 10 percent of the building's energy needs on site and use recyclable materials, the new guidelines include the following objectives more pertinent to LAs:

• reusing existing buildings and brownfield land wherever possible
• providing good pedestrian, cycle, and public transport access
• consulting with the local community to draw up "public realm" benefits
• providing water-saving devices and adequate rainwater drainage on roofs and car parking spaces
• providing recycling bins compost facilities on site

What, no green roofs?

News this week from the Toronto Star; five four [update below] landscape architecture teams have been selected as finalists for Toronto's Lower Don Lands redevelopment project. The Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation's website describes the Don River project as an attempt "to produce a bold and compelling concept for the Lower Don Lands that makes the river a central feature of the urban landscape providing the new waterfront development and new linkages to the rest of the city." Click here [note: pdf link] to download the project site's "Opportunities and Constraints" aerial map.

The following teams are short-listed:

• Atelier GIROT/Office of Landscape Morphology/ReK Productions
• Hargreaves Associates/Polshek Partnership/ENVision - The Hough Group/Dillon Consulting
• STOSS INC./Brown + Storey Architects/ZAS Architects
• Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates/Behnisch Architects/Greenberg Consultants/ Great Eastern Ecology
• Weiss/Manfredi & du Toit Allsopp Hillier

The Dirt continues to be amazed at Toronto's headlong push into urban renewal across the metropolitan area.

Hat tip to our friends at ArchNewsNow.

Update 1 02/15/07: Reader Terrence noticed that the Toronto Waterfront website and press release has been edited removing the Hargreaves/Polshek/ENVision/Dillon team with no explanation. A quick scan of each of the team members' websites lends me no clues. I'll keep searching.

Update 2 02/16/07: According to the VP of Communications at TWRC, the fifth team (of which Hargreaves Associates and ENVision-The Hough Group were a part) withdrew from the competition after they were awarded two other new projects.