LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 / 99 do this where we work? They’ve made strides to answer that question by developing a rural resilience framework to share what they’ve learned. “We really feel like landscape architects can deal with the complexity that climate-based work requires,” Fox says, “and we don’t want to own this information or the discoveries that we make in terms of this kind of hazard-related work.” Meanwhile, they’re plugging away in Pollocksville. At the “weed garden,” Klondike inspected how well the plants were settling in as the mayor shielded his eyes from the sun. “Are you going to apply for some more money?” Bender asked. It seemed like innocent banter, a conversation starter. But Klondike answered seriously. “I think I might.” IRINA ZHOROV IS AN AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST AND THE AUTHOR OF LOST BELIEVERS, A NOVEL. F2-CoastalDynamics FIN.indd 99 4/3/24
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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 / 103 PYRO FUTURES The Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art Davis, California Through June 16 www.pyrofutures.com The wildfires transforming California raise questions about the role of stewardship in shaping and preparing for a hotter future. Curators Emily Schlickman, ASLA, and Brett Milligan, both professors of landscape architecture and environmental design at the University of California, Davis, devised Pyro Futures to include three extended scenarios from their recent book, Design by Fire: Resistance, Co-Creation and Retreat in the Pyrocene. The exhibition invites viewers to consider the complex web of choices required for each “future” and to take responsibility for the decisions at hand. Here, a map of California shows wildfire severity zones and invites visitors to press pins to show where they have lived. HUNG Q. PHAM PHOTOGRAPHY, COURTESY THE JAN SHREM AND MARIA MANETTI SHREM MUSEUM OF ART THE BACK Back-Divider FIN.indd 103 4/3/24
104 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 MARSH COWS NEAR VENICE Plaquemines Parish, 2022
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 / 105 INDETERMINATE I N 1948, A FILM ABOUT a young Cajun boy and his pet raccoon navigating an idyllic existence, mostly by boat, was made and set in the bayous of South Louisiana. The plot revolves around the boy’s family, who allows an oil company to drill in the inlet that runs behind their home. As the story progresses, the company completes its operation and the friendly drillers depart, leaving behind an untouched, pristine environment and a newly wealthy family. Louisiana Story was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing in a Motion Picture Story in 1948, and in 1994 it was added to the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”¹ The film portrays the petrochemical industry in symbiotic harmony with people and with the environment, ultimately implying that oil’s machinery is a benign force—a message with a pernicious agenda considering that the project was funded by the Standard Oil Company to promote its drilling ventures in Louisiana’s waterways. It is one of many works reminding us that landscape representation is not neutral. It is both an inherently subjective and affective medium— connecting with and influencing our relationships, associations, and attitudes toward particular places. As in the film, cameras are often employed to construct a broader narrative beyond the frame, portraying land as a part of the human story. To talk about land and how we view it is to talk about how we view ourselves and each other. In Louisiana, the exploitation of land—its resources and its people—is connected to larger legacies of how we see space and how that act of looking has long been leveraged as a propagandistic tool. A RECKONING WITH THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF SOUTHERN LOUISIANA IS THE SUBJECT OF A NEW BOOK. Virginia Hanusik is among the small group of artists for whom the cultural landscape of climate change is a rich, if troubling, creative ground. Her new book, Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2024), includes her fecund blackand-white photographs accompanied by essays from a variety of writers— including Kate Orff, FASLA, and Billy Fleming—that respond to the region’s collision of environmental and cultural disturbance. In the book’s introduction, excerpted here and accompanied by a selection of photographs, Hanusik draws a stark line between the way the southern Louisiana landscape is perceived, named, and valued and the devastating footprint of infrastructure and the energy industry. TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY VIRGINIA HANUSIK Back-IQL_FIN.indd 105 4/3/24
106 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 SHELL BILLBOARD Highway 90, Des Allemands, 2023 This book brings together a collection of my photographs that showcase the architecture and infrastructure of South Louisiana. It is uninterested in offering a superior way of seeing, but rather seeks to visualize and illustrate our relationships with coastal landscapes and the liminal spaces between land and water. These images are presented in tandem with written narratives that together unfold the spatial and spiritual qualities of moving through the world at a time of ecological collapse. With my work, I am interested in parsing the complexity of living with a changing climate while advocating for the value of a place that is often seen by the rest of the country as a sacrificial climate buffer zone. The environmental parameters we are forced to reckon with today emphasize how living along the water will look increasingly different in the coming decades—especially as invisible infrastructures like flood insurance continue to alter the landscape. By focusing on the architecture, landscape, and infrastructure of South Louisiana, my images illuminate how we’ve altered the land through shortsighted technical measures and have thus chosen to protect certain communities over others. Massive feats of human engineering such as the multibillion-dollar Lake Borgne Storm Surge Barrier, nicknamed the “Great Wall of Louisiana,” are pictured alongside more patchwork, individualized approaches to climate change adaptation in communities outside of the levee protection system. My pictures challenge the concept of “resilience” as it has been used to describe communities who are left to pick up the pieces from a system that has often failed to protect them. I’ve approached photographing these structures as a way to understand and analyze human nature: how ideas around ownership, community, and identity are manifested across the built environment. The idea and practice of controlling water has been and continues to be a critical part of Louisiana’s modern history. Who has controlled it and what purpose it serves reflect greater ideas about the perceived value of property and of people. As stronger hurricanes, rising sea levels, and the fossil fuel industry threaten the existence of the coast as we know it, how will our physical, mental, and emotional connections to these landscapes be maintained? Can the architecture of these places promote ways of living and building that are more attuned to the nurturing of coastal ecosystems—both environmentally and culturally? And as we emerge into the environmental unknown, how might we visualize, narrate, and imagine different stories with South Louisiana? T HE LOUISIANA WETLANDS [have been] placed into a broader history of describing and devaluing land deemed unfit for a specific use. Tracing the various incarnations of the term wasteland, architecture and art historian Vittoria Di Palma in her book Wasteland: A History established the term’s importance in the construction of some of the most fundamental values we associate with landscape. These biases have had tangible effects on the environment outside of their depiction and commodification. Describing geographies that have come to be characterized as “anti-picturesque,” like swamps that have traditionally drawn fear and contempt, she emphasizes that “the concept of wasteland has—with both positive and negative consequences—enabled the formulation of a landscape ideal, influenced our management of natural resources, colored our attitudes toward newly discovered territories, and directed our attitudes toward pollution and waste.”2 AS PHOTOGRAPHY BECAME MORE POPULAR, IT CHALLENGED PAINTING AS THE “CORRECT” MEDIUM FOR COMMUNICATING “TRUTH.” Back-IQL_FIN.indd 106 4/3/24
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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 / 109 Swamps have a place in the historical collection of landscapes considered wastelands. In one of the most popular books ever printed, The Pilgrim’s Progress: From This World to That Which Is to Come, the main character traverses an allegorical landscape to seek salvation.3 In this work of theological fiction, first published in 1678, the swamp is presented as the Slough of Despond, a landscape at its most contaminated and polluted “where the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run.”4 As it relates to the work of influential landscape artists such as Gilpin, Di Palma writes: “To an eye trained to evaluate landscape according to criteria of the picturesque, the Fens—or any marsh—offended by offering nothing to see.”5 She also says, “A marsh, swamp, bog, or fen is neither earth nor water, solid nor liquid, and in its imprecision, its unsettling resistance to categorization, it harbors a particular charge.”6 Despite—and perhaps because of—these biases, swamps, especially in Louisiana, also have a long history of providing refuge for those targeted by the violence of settler colonialism. For decades, formerly enslaved people found community with Native Americans and Maroon communities. Together, they learned to survive and adapt to the 30,000 acres of southeastern wetlands adjacent to Lake Borgne known as the Louisiana Central Wetlands. 7 L ANDSCAPE representation’s relationship to the management of land in the United States…transformed as early photographers also became consumed with the documentation of nature. In fact, as photography became more popular in the late 19th century, it challenged painting as the “correct” medium for communicating “truth”—particularly as it relates to beauty, value, and opportunity. Photographic surveys created marketing collateral for what would later be used in the campaign for westward expansion. As American art historian Barbara Novak argues, the “artist-photographer” became “the provider of authentic evidence,” as, unlike painting, the photograph appeared to be untouched by human subjectivity. Novak’s depiction of artist-photographers makes a distinction between this new medium and the traditional artistic methods of representing landscape.8 Rather than being valued as a form of fine art, photography was originally used for documentary practices, a concept in and of itself that presents ethical questions relating to the photographer and the subject. The relationship between visual material and boundary setting grew as Americans moved westward and the need to claim the land and delineate ownership over its function increased. Photography practices at this time came to deeply impact the organization and management of terrain in the U.S. as a settler colonial state. The photographs Carleton Watkins made of California, for instance, influenced the federal protection of Yosemite Valley in the 1860s and were used in a later survey done by geologist Clarence King to define the boundaries of the park, which created a line between what was and was not to be protected.9 His expansive photograph Yosemite Valley (1865) and other works made several years earlier coincided with the beginnings of the Civil War and contrasted with the landscapes of devastation in the South that were circulating in newspapers. Watkins’s images tied the West to Northern cultural traditions through imagery focused on the beauty and spectacle of nature. MISSISSIPPI RIVER GULF OUTLET Shell Beach, 2023 Back-IQL_FIN.indd 109 4/3/24
110 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 FRUIT STAND AND REFINERY Route 23 near Ironton, Plaquemines Parish, 2021 The direct connection between photography and land preservation continued well into the 20th century with, in particular, the work of Ansel Adams in Kings Canyon and George Masa in the Great Smoky Mountains. These images not only redefined what spaces were designated as beautiful, but also reconsidered what—and who—was worthy of safeguarding based on aesthetics and cultural values. To view these works now also requires an understanding of the exclusionary practices our valued park system was founded on and continues to perpetuate. The histories they tell and visualize create the assumption that these lands were “empty” or “untouched” prior to their designation as national parks, despite centuries of Indigenous habitation. Together, they rewrite the history of occupation of the land as part of our country’s nation-building project—one in which these same parks remained segregated up until 1964. At the same time that these representations of landscapes like Yosemite and other national parks perpetuated the American ideals of natural beauty, spaces that did not incorporate the same physical attributes and aesthetics were and continued to be underrepresented in the canon of American art. D ESPITE THE LOUISIANA WETLANDS not receiving recognition at the scale of our natural parks, it remains one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world. And its lack of representation in the American art canon has not precluded it as a site of interest and management by the United States. On the contrary, it has become a site of extreme opportunity, extraction, and exploitation, and various forms of visual intervention, like the mapping of infrastructure and natural resources, have played a large role in facilitating these actions. Investigating these concerns requires sifting through the many layers of Louisiana’s current environmental crisis, an emergency that is not just ecological but social in nature. While this project does not aim to provide an exhaustive history of this crisis, I want to meditate on several key infrastructural interventions that have attempted to constrain the presence and flow of water in South Louisiana. S INCE THE 1930S, approximately 2,000 square miles of the state’s coast have sunk into the Gulf of Mexico, a figure that is well represented in maps and diagrams meant to convey the magnitude of what has already been lost and to project what we will continue to lose. The desire to understand “disaster” at this scale has encouraged a form of visualization that seeks to make legible the complexity of changing landscapes in a compact form. An image-based culture fortifies a singular narrative and resists nuance or the encouragement of meaningful, open-ended discourse. A quick image search for “Louisiana land loss” will produce countless maps of various colors and scales that impose a singular and essentializing way of seeing if taken at face value. Reading a single image of disaster as a depiction of climate change dismisses the evidence of communities, of life, of people who still make a home in these places and have always lived on and with the water. As I am writing this, one of the largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals in North America is being built in Plaquemines Parish. It is directly adjacent to a coastal restoration project that diverts the course of the Mississippi River in order to build new land with its sediment. A map of the state’s Coastal Master Plan does not mention information on the new energy terminals IN MANY WAYS, A COAST CANNOT BE MAPPED. Back-IQL_FIN.indd 110 4/3/24
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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 / 113 such as this one and others being built across the coast whose carbon outputs diminish, if not completely negate, the impact of any attempts at the restoration or preservation of what still remains of Louisiana’s coast. Like painting and photography, mapping processes and policies have inherent biases built into them. And also like photography’s documentary role, maps are not just representations, but also instruments for categorizing, delineating, and exploiting territory.¹⁰ In many ways, a coast cannot be mapped; it naturally resists the easy form of delineation this representation technique imposes. As cartographer Mark Monmonier shows us, coasts pose physical challenges for mapping, as “the coastline is raised and lowered twice daily by tides and occasionally realigned by storms, which famously shorten the shelf life of nautical charts, on which its representation demands careful measurement and prudent compromise.”¹¹ They also pose a conceptual challenge: “Because the sea provides food, transportation, and recreation, the shoreline is at once a boundary, an attraction, a source of livelihood, and a hazard.” It possesses a unique geography—it is a site of exchange of people, things, practices, beliefs—where multiple truths exist at once. HOUSEBOAT NEAR ROUTE 55 Lake Maurepas, 2021 ENDNOTES 1. “25 Films Added to National Registry,” New York Times, November 15, 1994, https://www.nytimes. com/1994/11/15/movies/25-films-added-to-nationalregistry.html. 2. Vittoria Di Palma, Wasteland: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 11. 3. Robert McCrum, “The 100 best novels: No 1— The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (1678),” Guardian, September 23, 2013, https://www. theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/23/100-best-novelspilgrims-progress. 4. John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come: Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream Wherein Is Discovered, the Manner of His Setting Out, His Dangerous Journey, and Safe Arrival at the Desired Country [1678], 2nd ed., rev. ed., ed. James Blanton Wharey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), 15. 5. Di Palma, Wasteland, 125. 6. Di Palma, Wasteland, 95. 7. Diane Jones Allen, “Living Freedom Through the Maroon Landscape,” Places Journal, September 2022, https://doi.org/10.22269/220922. 8. Novak further states that “Photography first entered the western terrains when the powerful esthetic system that had sustained the vision of nature was at its apogee in the mid 1860s. Through the seventies and eighties, while that system was collapsing, the photographers roamed the western territories with remarkable results; their work sometimes triumphantly sustained the conventions of the picturesque, at other times escaped them, as extraordinary data pushed into their pictures with pragmatic authority. So a major function of the artist was taken over by the photographer—the provider of authentic evidence. Armed with the machine, their work stamped with its imprimatur, the artist-photographers confirmed the existence of the fantastic and of themselves as the agents of its transfer. The truth of the photographic image was one of its most durable conventions and that truth was accepted as an article of faith by the photographers themselves and by their public.” Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 153. 9. Jarrod Hore, Visions of Nature: How Landscape Photography Shaped Settler Colonialism (Oakland: University of California Press, 2022), 42. 10. See Carolyn Kousky, et al., A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation: Uniting Design, Economics, and Policy (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2021), 58; and Hore, Visions of Nature, 41. 11. Mark Monmonier, Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 1. Back-IQL_FIN.indd 113 4/3/24
114 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 THE BACK / BOOKS Despite ample evidence that the climate crisis affects our daily lives, tackling it can be daunting and, for some, might even seem entirely implausible. It necessarily demands a fundamental shift in our collective approach to how we live with each other and within our environments. And yet, we require strategies to navigate and envision the changes that are on the horizon. In her new book, Speculative Futures: Design Approaches to Navigate Change, Foster Resilience, and Co-Create the Cities We Need, Johanna Hoffman advocates for using speculative futures—“high-resolution visions of potential realities”—to challenge the status quo and, in turn, “creatively envision alternative realities” for the future. Hoffman, an urbanist and the director of planning at Design for Adaptation, acknowledges how difficult it is to imagine living in a world that is profoundly different from the familiar, but she makes clear that in the face of the climate crisis, there is no viable path forward other than to put into place practices and actions that are healthy for the Earth and the people who live on it. She argues that “speculative futures empower us to push beyond the confines we place on our imaginations and build the resilient cities we need.” Achieving these goals requires imagination, which, according to Hoffman, lives in the “gap between fantasy and reality.” Using speculative futures as a methodological and representational approach for the design of the planet narrows the fantasy–reality gap and makes the impossible seem plausible. In this way, Speculative Futures is a critically important read not only for more clearly articulating the need for climate adaptability but also in helping people see how they themselves fit into these new visions, especially when those visions require radically shifting how they live. Hoffman implores the readers to explore the possibility of a future that “cultivates both optimism and personal agency.” But this book is not a how-to guide leading to prescribed solutions. Instead, it is a provocation that asks us to think about the future of climate adaptation as rooted in community engagement and innovative visioning. The book’s eight chapters demonstrate opportunities for resilient climate futures through the notion of speculative futures. Each chapter identifies an approach or method that employs REALITY CHECK SPECULATIVE FUTURES: DESIGN APPROACHES TO NAVIGATE CHANGE, FOSTER RESILIENCE, AND CO-CREATE THE CITIES WE NEED BY JOHANNA HOFFMAN; BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA: NORTH ATLANTIC BOOKS, 2022; 224 PAGES, $19.95. REVIEWED BY DANIKA COOPER EDITED BY MIMI ZEIGER Back-Books FIN.indd 114 4/3/24
In Kansas City, StormPave clay pavers make green space accessible and keep two rivers clean StormPave™ hardscape by Meg Babani, Taliaferro & Browne. Photography: HNTB. ansas City created a sustainable green infrastructure project in the city’s Historic West Bottoms district – the floodplains of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers. The landscape architect’s mission was to minimize urban runoff while allowing public access to the green space. • 3.4 acres of water permeable paving for events and parking • Captures stormwater where it falls and lightens the load on the city’s sewer system • Colors include dark gray, light gray, and red pavers in aesthetic patterns • Parking stalls demarcated with permanent paver colors World’s largest supplier of clay pavers. K BRICK IS GREEN www.PineHallBrick.com ™ 4/1/24
116 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 speculation toward community-oriented climate adaptation: imaginative and collective visioning, play-based scenario building, sensorial experiential design, long-term thinking, shared climate narratives, and action-based planning. Hoffman outlines an expansive set of tools for communicating and generating change by drawing from real-world cases and examples in the spatial design disciplines as well as from the fields of art, literature, and film, all of which employ a range of conceptual frameworks: Afrofuturism, Indigenous worldmaking, and feminist visioning. Hoffman’s critique of how current planning and design practices use speculation threads through the texts. She notes that architecture, landscape, and planning firms often rely on proposals that can be guaranteed rather than ones of imaginative possibility largely because “a future that resembles what already exists is an easier future to sell.” Pushing back on such logic, she argues that these approaches tend to reproduce the status quo rather than generate proposals that are innovative enough to tackle the complexity and intensity required for climate adaptation. For Hoffman, who sees futures as inherently unpredictable and in flux, the climate crisis makes predictability a false hope—instead, she advocates for speculative proposals with an imaginative focus that are built on social engagement and ecological resilience. She provokes readers to visualize new and potential worlds that do not shy away from the socioenvironmental complexities produced by the climate crisis and all the consequences that environmental degradation continues to exacerbate. To that end, the socioenvironmental devastation produced by extractive economies such as fracking, deforestation, mining, and large-scale agriculture has had a disproportionate impact on Indigenous, Black, and Brown communities, and therefore, the climate crisis cannot be addressed without simultaneously tackling systemic racism and injustices. Indigenous peoples account for 5 percent of the global population but protect 80 percent of all biodiversity; as such, it is imperative that climate policy and strategies include the incredibly successful practices of environmental stewardship and care exhibited by Indigenous peoples, past and present. With this context in mind, speculation can be a means to ensure that climate action includes decolonization and that Indigenous science and knowledge are central in the development of climate policy and adaptation strategies. Indeed, the climate crisis is a direct result of the legacies of colonialism, settler colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. In each of these political economies, the Earth is exploited and extracted for its natural resources in service of the accumulation of political and economic power. In one of her many examples, Hoffman demonstrates the power of speculative Indigenous thinking with the Anishinaabe filmmaker Lisa Jackson’s Biidaaban: First Light, an interactive virtual space that shows the city of Toronto transformed by climate change, but which is still thriving through Indigenous-led practices. The project provokes viewers to ask whether the future should include expanded assumptions about the environment and our role within it. THE BACK /BOOKS COURTESY JOHANNA HOFFMAN ABOVE Johanna Hoffman’s 2016 installation immerses viewers in a 2200 San Francisco affected by sea-level rise. Back-Books FIN.indd 116 4/3/24
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118 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 Hoffman presents the concept of “worldbuilding” as a powerful tool for developing socioecological resilience that allows for short-term needs to be met in the context of long-term change and defines it as envisioning coherent and detailed worlds. She stresses that worldbuilding is an important means to create strong collaboration between disciplines, backgrounds, and beliefs. “[Worldbuilding] articulates spaces with strong rules, histories, climatic contexts, and social dynamics…for multiple participants to share and link their stories.” In building worlds, Hoffman advocates incorporating play and sensory-based speculations into proposals that can both develop personal links with future possibilities and help us to envision (and construct) the worlds we want to inhabit. As a method for exploration, play evokes curiosity and allows for multiple iterations within the planning process. Participants are free to make new “connection and cooperation between factions previously at odds.” In this way, play can cultivate trust by focusing on possibility rather than on current tensions. In the case of climate adaptability, imaginary worlds can be especially important in shifting the emotional responses people have to climate adaptation strategies. “Employing elements of play in urban planning cultivates powerful shifts in how people invest in the process,” writes Hoffman. She illustrates her point with an example by the artist Jorge Mañes Rubio. His 2014 design fiction project, the Republic of Columbusplein, reinterpreted a West Amsterdam public square into a micronation in service of the hyperlocal community. Rubio used graphics, flags, and participatory activities (like Columbusplein’s Olympic Games) to allow the neighborhood’s immigrant population to determine their futures—residents decided what kind of nations they wanted to be by using storytelling and play-based skills. When human stories and experiences are prioritized, people are more likely to find a personal connection to the development of collective futures. Proposals that support co-creation enable more collaboration and equity, Hoffman asserts. She reminds us that equity and justice must be at the center of all THE BACK /BOOKS LISA JACKSON, NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA (2018), TOP RIGHT; KARL BAUMANN, BOTTOM LEFT RIGHT The virtual reality artwork Biidaaban: First Light by First Nation artist Lisa Jackson envisions a future Toronto where people commute by canoe. BELOW Afrofuturist Sankofa City by Karl Baumann challenges urban planning to question the systemic racism embedded in the built environment. Back-Books FIN.indd 118 4/1/24
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120 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 MEMBERS OF THE COLUMBUSPLEIN SPACE PROGRAM, TOP LEFT; J. M. RUBIO (2014), INSET THE BACK /BOOKS ABOVE AND INSET The Republic of Columbusplein uses participatory workshops and play to engage residents in future thinking. climate proposals because different communities experience the climate crisis in different ways, and yet, policy, strategy development, and planning proposals are largely developed to prioritize the values associated with whiteness. To develop climate adaptation design proposals that center inclusivity as a primary priority requires fundamentally reconsidering how participation is encouraged in the process. Hoffman argues that rethinking requires reorienting the role of designers; she writes that “rather than acting as the ‘experts’ in the room, professional designers and planners can use speculative tools to welcome residents as co-designers.” Hoffman cautions that when climate stories are rooted only in dystopic views that show disaster and suffering as unavoidable and inescapable, people tend to lose hope that they can meaningfully effect any positive change. She writes that proactive adaptation requires “starting from a position of optimism and possibility” such that communities know that taking collective action is worthwhile and feasible. Hoffman offers Afrofuturism as an antidote to disaster narratives and adaptation strategies that suggest “the present and future are places where Black, Indigenous, and other peoples of color don’t belong.” Instead, Afrofuturism challenges these notions by articulating “an endless array of futures where Black people thrive.” In this way, learning from Afrofuturism as a deeply speculative, projective movement can offer an alternative take on what the climate adaptation planning processes can be by more explicitly foregrounding and projecting Black, Indigenous, and Brown “identity, culture, and representation into the future.” “Social resilience is our first and most critical tool for negotiating disruption and change,” writes Hoffman. It helps communities to adapt to challenges and build collective trust for withstanding unpredictability. She highlights Hyphen-Labs’ NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism Salon as an example. This Afrofuturist project foregrounds the needs and safety of Black women by reinterpreting conventional beauty products—there is sunscreen to protect Black women during their travels through the multiverse and earrings embedded with cameras for enhanced visibility and protection. In the final chapter, “Vision into Action,” Hoffman argues that to prime ourselves for a new, possible future, visions must be translated into actionable practices in which community desires are in harmony with political and economic prerogatives. She writes, “If we can stretch our concepts of not just design but also imagination, if we can take the needs, desires, and cares of those beyond ourselves more intimately into account, we might be able to build paths forward from where we are now to more resilient, equitable space.” Hoffman is right that visions are directly tied to what actions can be taken, which values guide those actions, who determines those values, and who benefits. But without directly Back-Books FIN.indd 120 4/1/24
Oakland Museum of California - view looking east at rooftop sculpture garden. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, HALS CA-20-8. 2024 HALS CHALLENGE COMPETITION SUBMISSION DEADLINE: JULY 31, 2024 AWARDS PRESENTED: OCTOBER 6-9, 2024 AT THE ASLA CONFERENCE ON LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE IN WASHINGTON, DC Join ASLA, the National Park Service, and the Library of Congress in documenting America’s significant landscapes! The Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) is a national program that documents historic landscapes through the creation of drawings, photographs, and historical reports. The HALS Challenge competition invites landscape architects and others to document significant sites in their communities. Entries are archived in the HALS Collection at the Library of Congress and cash prizes are awarded to the winning entries. To learn more about the competition and access resources to help you document landscapes for the collection, please visit www.nps.gov/subjects/heritagedocumentation/hals-challenge.htm To learn more about HALS visit asla.org/hals HALS_Challenge_Ads_2024_LAM_Round2.indd 1 2/21/2024 2:142/2LAMmay24_121.indd 1 LAMmay24_121.indd 1
122 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 KARL BAUMANN (2017) THE BACK /BOOKS addressing the climate crisis’s deep connections to structural legacies of colonialism and capitalism, visions for radical change, regardless of how innovative the strategies are or how involved communities are, will always fall short in successfully preventing certain communities from facing disproportionate environmental and social harm. Speculation is absolutely critical in tackling the climate crisis because it allows, as Hoffman has so saliently noted, for our futures to not be limited by the status quo or what seems possible in this very moment. Instead, radical rethinking takes center stage, unconstrained by the processes and practices that have been normalized by our current systems. It remains to be seen, however, how these visions will be meaningfully implemented into practice. This is by no means an insignificant task. Landscape architecture’s most urgent challenge is to redefine the discipline as a leader not only in physically altering our environments for socioecological resilience, but also in helping to draw attention to how climate adaptation is not a politically neutral process. Designers and planners must work in tandem with decolonization efforts to create a world that is predicated on a wholly different set of assumptions for the relationships between humans and their environments. While Hoffman does imply that decolonization might be a part of addressing the global climate crisis, she does not explicitly outline a set of design and planning tools, metrics, or benchmarks. The book, as a result, functions best as a critical provocation. Indeed, it is imperative that designers and planners imagine how their practices can move beyond conventional and normative tools to incorporate other disciplinary approaches and alternative theories, but provocation has limits. For climate adaptation to be actionable, designers and community members need implementable, action-oriented tools that can be employed at a range of scales and contexts. Speculative Futures isn’t a tool kit, nor was it intended to be. Still, reimagining the intersections of climate adaptation, planning and design practices, and decolonization isn’t simply a task on the horizon; it must be actionable right now. DANIKA COOPER IS AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. ABOVE Testing for toxicity in a still from Sankofa City. SPECULATION IS ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL IN TACKLING THE CLIMATE CRISIS. IT ALLOWS FOR OUR FUTURES TO NOT BE LIMITED BY THE STATUS QUO. Back-Books FIN.indd 122 4/3/24
Jun 5–8 Join us in Washington, D.C. at the premier AEC industry event to explore what it means to design a better world now, together. AIA Conference on Architecture & Design 2024 Two Rivers Public Charter School, Washington, D.C. Architect: Studio Twenty Seven Architecture Photo credit: Hoachlander Davis Photography LAMmay24_123.indd 1 4/1/24
OUTDOOR ENVIRONMENTS FOR PEOPLE: CONSIDERING HUMAN FACTORS IN LANDSCAPE DESIGN BY PATSY EUBANKS OWENS, JAYOUNG KOO, AND YIWEI HUANG; LONDON AND NEW YORK: ROUTLEDGE, 2024; 290 PAGES, $44.99. True to its title, Outdoor Environments for People takes a human-centric approach and merges the work of psychologists and sociologists with landscape architecture and design. With a nod to the broad influence of William Whyte’s Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, the goal of the educators Patsy Eubanks Owens, ASLA; Jayoung Koo; and Yiwei Huang, ASLA; is not to suggest a solely anthropocentric built environment, but to address ways of designing that are inclusive and respond to differences in culture, age, and gender. Each chapter includes examples, diagrams, and exercises. LANDSCAPES OF RETREAT BY ROSETTA S. ELKIN; BERLIN: K. VERLAG, 2022; 328 PAGES, $40. Centered around case studies of five far-flung places in the midst of adapting to climate change, Landscapes of Retreat blends fieldwork with lyrical narrative. Rosetta Elkin, ASLA, the academic director of landscape architecture at Pratt Institute, focuses on areas where the relationship between humans and their environs are unsettled. She sees retreat not as defeat or ceding ground, but as the beginning of repair. Elkin’s research in Japan, Chile, Alaska, Nepal, and Quebec is richly illustrated with drawings and photographs. The book is also accompanied by a free digital publication at landscapesofretreat.com. BOOKS OF INTEREST D FOR DAUGHTER BY ELINA BIRKEHAG; LEIPZIG, GERMANY: SPECTOR BOOKS, 2023; 304 PAGES, $40. The artist Elina Birkehag grew up in a village in the rural county of Dalarna, Sweden. The nearby forest is thick with old-growth Scotch pines. Birkehag’s collection of photographs documents these trees and the messages carved into their trunks. What looks like scrawled graffiti is the markings of female shepherds who, beginning in the 17th century and continuing into the 20th, would inscribe coded messages to each other as they led the cattle to pasture. D for Daughter deciphers these glyphs, mapping each of the trees—most near mires and bogs—and capturing a lost interface between women and landscape. DISPATCHES FROM FIELDWORK AT THE EDGES OF HUMAN SETTLEMENT. THE BACK /BOOKS 124 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 Back-Books FIN.indd 124 4/3/24
Garden Dialogues To learn more: tclf.org/gardendialogues Garden Dialogues provide exclusive access for small groups to visit some of today’s most exceptional gardens. The 2024 Season features all new destinations coast-to-coast where the owners and their landscape architects explore the creative process, the give and take, and the collaboration that yields a successful design. Learn the secrets to creating great gardens – part of TCLF’s 2024 Season of Events. Register Now. Space is Limited. What are the secrets to great gardens? Presenting Sponsors Jay Heritage Center, Rye, NY, Designed by Nelson Bryd Woltz, Photo by Barrett Doherty (Top) San Antonio Residence, TX, Designed by Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, Inc., Photo by John Troy (Bottom) Educational Partner The Cultural Landscape Foundation presents ® LAMmay24_125.indd 1 4/1/24
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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 / 131 Most Dependable Fountains, Inc.™ and so much more! Most Dependable Fountains, Inc.™ 901-867-0039 www.mostdependable.com Most Dependable Fountains, Inc.™ 901-867-0039 www.mostdependable.com Most Dependable Fountains, Inc.™ and so much more! The ASLA Fund is the 501(c)(3) charitable foundation of the American Society of Landscape Architects, supported by the tax-deductible ASLA members contributions and other individuals and organizations, and committed to the careful stewardship and artful design of our cultural and natural environment. Women of Color Licensure Advancement Program Dedicated to supporting women of color in their journey toward landscape architecture licensure by providing essential resources. Support this impactful program today at aslafund.org! "I applied to the ASLA Women of Color Licensure Advancement Program because I knew it would provide much needed exam guidance and a supportive community of like-minded women sharing the same aspirations." Kendra Hyson 2023 participant "The WCLAP program has lifted a huge financial burden off of my shoulders. The cost of study materials, licensure records, and test registration was an intimidating hurdle to overcome. The most valuable part of the program is the cohort of phenomenal women to lean on!" Jessica Colvin 2022 participant
132 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 THE BACK /ADVERTISER INDEX ADVERTISING SALES 636 Eye Street NW Washington, DC 20001-3736 202-216-2363 202-478-2190 Fax [email protected] [email protected] SENIOR PRODUCTION MANAGER Laura L. Iverson 202-216-2341 [email protected] [email protected] ADVERTISER WEBSITE PHONE PAGE # AIA Conference on Architecture conferenceonarchitecture.com 972-536-6449 123 APE Studio c/o Richter Spielgeräte apeoriginal.com 212-213-6694 27, 139 ASLA Annual Meeting & EXPO aslameeting.com 202-898-2444 119 ASLA EXPO Promotion advertise.asla.org/expo 202-216-2326 142-143 ASLA Fund asla.org/donate.aspx 202-216-2366 131 Bartlett Tree Experts bartlett.com 877-227-8538 57 BCI Burke Co. Inc. bciburke.com 920-921-9220 39, 139 Beam Clay/Partac Peat Corporation partac.com 800-247-2326 141 Berliner berliner-playequipment.com 864-627-1092 47, 136 BOK Modern bokmodern.com 415-749-6500 126 Briggs Nursery briggsnursery.com 360-482-6187 25 Campania International, Inc. campaniainternational.com 215-541-4627 C2-1, 135 Cell-Tek Geosynthetics, LLC celltekdirect.com 410-721-4844 140 Columbia Cascade Company timberform.com 800-547-1940 135, 137, 139, C4 DeepStream Designs deepstreamdesigns.com 305-857-0466 129 Doty & Sons Concrete Products dotyconcrete.com 800-233-3907 137 DuMor, Inc. dumor.com 800-598-4018 7, 141 emuamericas, llc emuamericas.com 800-726-0368 51, 141 Endicott Clay Products endicott.com 402-729-3315 37 Ernst Conservation Seeds ernstseed.com 800-873-3321 138 Form and Fiber formandfiber.com 888-314-8852 127, 138 Forms+Surfaces forms-surfaces.com 800-451-0410 9, 136 Goldenteak/The Wood Carver goldenteak.com 978-689-4041 137 Gothic Arch Greenhouses gothicarchgreenhouses.com 251-471-5238 128 Green Theory Design, Inc. greentheorydesign.com 604-475-7002 45, 135 Gyms For Dogs - Natural Dog Park Products gymsfordogs.com 800-931-1462 138 HADDONSTONE haddonstone.com 866-733-8225 41 Hanover Architectural Products, Inc. hanoverpavers.com 717-637-0500 43 ID Sculpture idsculpture.com 970-641-1747 33 Infrared Dynamics infradyne.com 714-572-4050 131 Iron Age Designs ironagegates.com 206-276-0925 6, 136 Ironsmith, Inc. ironsmith.biz 800-338-4766 60, 140 Kafka Granite LLC kafkagranite.com 715-316-2792 59, 140 Kingsley Bate, Ltd. kingsleybate.com 703-361-7000 11, 139 Landscape Forms landscapeforms.com 800-430-6205 13 Landscape Structures, Inc. playlsi.com 888-438-6574 21, 139 Madrax madrax.com 800-448-7931 10 Maglin Site Furniture, Inc. maglin.com 800-716-5506 2-3, 61 mmcité street furniture mmcite.com 704-576-2224 29 Most Dependable Fountains mostdependable.com 800-552-6331 131 National Park Service - HALS Challenge nps.gov/history/hdp/hals 202-208-3818 121 Nitterhouse Masonry Products, LLC nitterhouse.com 717-267-4500 102 Old Town Fiberglass oldtownfiberglass.com 714-633-3732 141 Paloform paloform.com 888-823-8883 35 Permaloc Aluminum Edging permaloc.com 800-356-9660 101, 141 Petersen Concrete Leisure Products petersenmfg.com 800-832-7383 130 Pine Hall Brick Co., Inc. americaspremierpaver.com 800-334-8689 115, 141 Playcraft Systems playcraftsystems.com 800-333-8519 18 Proven Winners® ColorChoice® provenwinners.com 800-633-8859 31 Riverside Plastics, Inc. riverside-plastics.com 800-493-4945 141 Salsbury Industries mailboxes.com 800-624-5269 129 Shade Systems, Inc. shadesystemsinc.com 800-609-6066 17 Shelter Outdoor shelteroutdoor.com 855-768-4450 141 Sitecraft site-craft.com 800-221-1448 100 Sitescapes, Inc. sitescapesonline.com 402-421-9464 136 Soil Retention Products soilretention.com 760-966-6090 130 Solus Décor, Inc. solusdecor.com 877-255-3146 127 South Coast Wholesale southcoastwholesale.com 888-326-7256 140 Star Roses and Plants starrosesandplants.com 800-457-1859 49 Stepstone, Inc. stepstone.com 800-572-9029 126 Stop Spot LLC stopspot.com 303-733-3385 128, 140 Sure-Loc Aluminum Edging surelocedging.com 800-787-3562 140 Techo-Bloc Corp. techo-bloc.com 877-832-4625 15, 139 The Belden Brick Co. beldenbrick.com 330-456-0031 53, 135 The Cultural Landscape Foundation tclf.org 202-483-0553 125 Thomas Steele thomas-steele.com 800-448-7931 140 Tournesol Siteworks tournesolsiteworks.com 800-542-2282 23, 140 Tulane School of Architecture tulane.edu 504-865-5389 62 Uline uline.com 800-295-5571 130 Unilock, Ltd. unilock.com 416-646-3452 117 U.S. Green Building Council usgbc.org 202-552-1369 134 Victor Stanley, LLC victorstanley.com 301-855-8300 137, C3 DisplayandBGIndex_52024.indd 132 DisplayandBGIndex_52024.indd 132
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 / 133 ASSOCIATION/FOUNDATION AIA Conference on Architecture 972-536-6449 123 ASLA Annual Meeting & EXPO 202-898-2444 119 ASLA EXPO Promotion 202-216-2326 142-143 ASLA Fund 202-216-2366 131 National Park Service - HALS Challenge 202-208-3818 121 The Cultural Landscape Foundation 202-483-0553 125 U.S. Green Building Council 202-552-1369 134 BUSINESS SERVICES Uline 800-295-5571 130 CONSTRUCTION/MAINTENANCE Bartlett Tree Experts 877-227-8538 57 DRAINAGE AND EROSION Cell-Tek Geosynthetics, LLC 410-721-4844 140 Iron Age Designs 206-276-0925 6, 136 Ironsmith, Inc. 800-338-4766 60, 140 EDUCATION Tulane School of Architecture 504-865-5389 62 FENCES/GATES/WALLS BOK Modern 415-749-6500 126 LUMBER/DECKING/EDGING Permaloc Aluminum Edging 800-356-9660 101, 141 Sure-Loc Aluminum Edging 800-787-3562 140 OUTDOOR FIRE AND WATER FEATURES Most Dependable Fountains 800-552-6331 131 Paloform 888-823-8883 35 Solus Décor, Inc. 877-255-3146 127 OUTDOOR FURNITURE emuamericas, llc 800-726-0368 51, 141 Goldenteak/The Wood Carver 978-689-4041 137 Kingsley Bate, Ltd. 703-361-7000 11, 139 PARKS AND RECREATION APE Studio c/o Richter Spielgeräte 212-213-6694 27, 139 BCI Burke Co. Inc. 920-921-9220 39, 139 Beam Clay/Partac Peat Corporation 800-247-2326 141 Berliner 864-627-1092 47, 136 Columbia Cascade Company 800-547-1940 139 Gyms For Dogs - 800-931-1462 138 Natural Dog Park Products ID Sculpture 970-641-1747 33 Landscape Structures, Inc. 888-438-6574 21, 139 Playcraft Systems 800-333-8519 18 PAVING/SURFACING/MASONRY STONE/METALS Endicott Clay Products 402-729-3315 37 Hanover Architectural Products, Inc. 717-637-0500 43 Kafka Granite LLC 715-316-2792 59, 140 Nitterhouse Masonry Products, LLC 717-267-4500 102 Pine Hall Brick Co., Inc. 800-334-8689 115, 141 Soil Retention Products 760-966-6090 130 Stepstone, Inc. 800-572-9029 126 Techo-Bloc Corp. 877-832-4625 15, 139 The Belden Brick Co. 330-456-0031 53, 135 Unilock, Ltd. 416-646-3452 117 PLANTERS/SCULPTURES/GARDEN ACCESSORIES Campania International, Inc. 215-541-4627 C2-1, 135 DeepStream Designs 305-857-0466 129 Form and Fiber 888-314-8852 127, 138 Green Theory Design, Inc. 604-475-7002 45, 135 HADDONSTONE 866-733-8225 41 Old Town Fiberglass 714-633-3732 141 Riverside Plastics, Inc. 800-493-4945 141 Tournesol Siteworks 800-542-2282 23, 140 PLANTS/SOILS/PLANTING MATERIALS Briggs Nursery 360-482-6187 25 Ernst Conservation Seeds 800-873-3321 138 Proven Winners® ColorChoice® 800-633-8859 31 South Coast Wholesale 888-326-7256 140 Star Roses and Plants 800-457-1859 49 STREET FURNISHINGS Columbia Cascade Company 800-547-1940 135, 137, C4 Doty & Sons Concrete Products 800-233-3907 137 DuMor, Inc. 800-598-4018 7, 141 Forms+Surfaces 800-451-0410 9, 136 Infrared Dynamics 714-572-4050 131 Landscape Forms 800-430-6205 13 Madrax 800-448-7931 10 Maglin Site Furniture, Inc. 800-716-5506 2-3, 61 mmcité street furniture 704-576-2224 29 Petersen Concrete Leisure Products 800-832-7383 130 Salsbury Industries 800-624-5269 129 Sitecraft 800-221-1448 100 Sitescapes, Inc. 402-421-9464 136 Stop Spot LLC 303-733-3385 140 Thomas Steele 800-448-7931 140 Victor Stanley, LLC 301-855-8300 137, C3 STRUCTURES Gothic Arch Greenhouses 251-471-5238 128 Shade Systems, Inc. 800-609-6066 17 Shelter Outdoor 855-768-4450 141 THE BACK /ADVERTISERS BY PRODUCT CATEGORY DisplayandBGIndex_52024.indd 133 4/3/24
"We believe the performance of our landscape is equally important to the performance of our buildings, but those efforts have largely gone unseen. The SITES framework was an opportunity to really show we care about the trees, the creek, the soil, stormwater management—in addition to how much we care about the energy efficiency of the buildings." Learn more at sustainablesites.org. – Jim Walker, Director of Sustainability, University of Texas at Austin SITES certification can be used for development projects — with or without buildings — to enhance their sustainability, implement green infrastructure strategies and improve resilience. Dell Medical District, University of Texas at Austin Photographer: Charles Quinn Photography 4/1/24
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Executive Summary ▶ The outdoors now rivals the indoors for where people spend time. ▶ Millennial homeowners in particular want food gardens, natural materials. ▶ When interest rates drop, home sales and landscape work should accelerate. he gardens and landscapes of modern homeowners are changing. Aesthetics and biophilia are as important as ever, but how those landscapes function, what they bring to the humans and other species in their sphere, have evolved. And with that, how landscape products are made and function evolve as well. “Today’s residential landscape is likely quite different than the one you grew up with,” says Chris LaGuardia, FASLA, RLA, founder and principal of LaGuardia Design Group (New York City and Water Mill, New York). “Perhaps it’s the age-old question of each generation having a better standard of living than the previous one,” he continues. “Certainly, the public has gained an acute awareness of the need for a more sustainable, resilient, and ecologically sensitive approach to the landscape. Perhaps this also has to do with the public awareness of climate change. Health, wellness, fitness, and the advent of Covid-19 also brought about a paradigm shift in attitudes about being outdoors.” We asked LaGuardia and two other prominent landscape architects who work with residential clients, plus an industry partner that adapts to these changing needs and interests, about the current state of residential work. It seems that people really want to engage in the outdoors. Not just to look at it, but to experience it and be fed— figuratively and literally—by it. They also see how their exterior environments are part of the larger world and adjacent ecosystems. The home is bigger than the house There are of course variations between climate zones and regions, but almost everywhere the outdoors surrounding homes has evolved from sweeping lawns to new and different things. Cory Morris, PLA, associate principal at Hoerr Schaudt (Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles), says the emphasis is on outdoor living as an extension of the house. Also, what is in the outdoor space provides a certain flexibility—to engage in activities that otherwise might happen in another location. An outdoor kitchen replaces eating out, for example, or for those who work from home, it’s an engaging environment and even a place to grow food. “It helps people to be self-sustaining when they incorporate spaces for such things as games, meditation, and fitness in their landscape,” he says. “They’re less reliant on having to go somewhere else.” Industry partners have much to contribute. LaGuardia ticks off the products: “Typical now are the requests for outdoor dining venues, kitchens, built-in seating areas, pergolas with built-in heaters, speakers, lighting effects, fire pits, swimming pools and spas, cold plunge spas, tennis courts, and bocce, petanque, and pickleball courts. All these structural elements are very high on the wish lists for residential landscapes.” T ASLA SPONSORED CONTENT The message on environmental service is now embraced by homeowners. Minimalism is giving way to activities, food, serenity, sustainability— and resale value. BY RUSS KLETTKE RESIDENTIAL REVOLUTION: AMENITIES ON THE RISE Somewhat irrespective of climate, homeowners want and expect more outdoor amenities. May 2024 Expo Spread.indd 142 4/1
Get rid of the -cides and bring on the birds, bees, and beans As in business and institutional environments, there is a growing awareness of the environmental impact and service from residential landscape architecture. “We see continued and increased awareness of sustainability,” says Simon Prunty, ASLA, partner at Hoerr Schaudt. “Clients ask for native plantings and high performance plants that need less water and less care. There is increased interest in edible landscapes, a shift toward sustainable living, a desire to connect or reconnect with nature and food production, and a focus of weaving pollinator plants into gardens of all sizes.” From her perspective on the West Coast, Jodie Cook, ASLA, SITES AP, of Jodie Cook Design (San Clemente, California) is seeing a lot of interest in urban farming, native plants, and backyard ecology. “There is a distinct possibility that minimalism is dead, or at least less interesting than it used to be,” she says. “I think homeowners are craving a connection with nature in their own yards. Perhaps this is a holdover from Covid, but it could also be the case that with so much climate change and biodiversity-loss gloom, they are working with what they can control to help solve a pervasive problem.” She says that interest in wildlife-friendly landscapes, particularly seen among Millennials, also drives a rejection of the “-cides,” the chemicals that would hurt birds, pollinators, and some plants. “Clients want natural materials—decomposed granite and permeable pea gravel paths rather than concrete, and locally sourced flagstone, wood chip mulch, wood and steel prefabricated components, and a reduced use of plastic in the landscape,” she says. Something she wants more of: irrigation systems with the ability to mimic natural watering cycles, timed to the vegetation of seasonally dry environments. Building it greener—and financially smarter Changing tastes and greener goals should translate into product innovation. One company on the case ASLA SPONSORED CONTENT No endorsement of products or suppliers mentioned is intended or implied. Photo: Anthony Crisafulli for LaGuardia Design Group Landscape architects and industry partners who specialize in residential work will be a big part of the ASLA 2024 Conference on Landscape Architecture and EXPO in Washington, D.C. (October 6-9). Contact the ASLA Sales Managers at 202-216-2363 or visit advertise.asla.org/sponsorships. is Unilock, which makes pavers and segmental retaining walls. The company’s vice president of marketing, Diane Williams, says landscape architects’ plea for carbon reduction reached them and they’re taking tangible steps “to pave a greener way.” The company introduced a paver in 2024, EcoTerra, which uses a geopolymer as an alternative to cement in the top layer. “This reduces carbon by up to 15 percent,” she said. In response to residential customer demand, the company also expanded its offerings of permeable pavers with new colors, textures, and shapes that satisfy a broader range of designs. Williams says the crush of business in the pandemic subsided to normal levels in late 2023, in part due to high interest rates that diminished discretionary spending. She reports their web traffic is at an all-time high, suggesting that this dip in demand is likely temporary and 2024 will bring more landscape work from both remodeling and new home buyers. “Owners prioritize the ROI on their landscape projects,” says Hoerr Schaudt’s Cory Morris. “They think about the marketability of their homes. They want to know which exterior amenities show a return, and what are buyers’ ‘must haves.’”■ May 2024 Expo Spread.indd 143 4/1/24 2
144 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE MAY 2024 BKV GROUP THE BACK / BACKSTORY We have a lot of owners who want to immediately establish where private property is and boundaries, put up fences and things. This is the exact opposite. They don’t want anyone to be able to know where public stops and private begins. They wanted to blur those lines and make everybody comfortable walking everywhere. —BRADY HALVERSON Woonerfs are a Dutch urban design concept that raises the stakes on the idea of shared space. Without sidewalks, curbs, lanes, or other traditional apparatuses of street design, successful woonerfs must send sensory cues to drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians to be mindful of each other. At Piazza Terminal, a new mixed-use neighborhood development in Philadelphia, Brady Halverson, the director of landscape architecture at BKV Group, says they also had to think about aboveground and underground utilities, as well as a very proximate water table. They could be less focused on permitting because woonerfs are already part of the city’s approved street types, particularly in historic areas. Here, the design connects two existing streets and brings the public into the otherwise semi-enclosed space of the new blocks. A WOONERF CONNECTS A NEW DEVELOPMENT INTO AN OLDER TYPOLOGY OF THE CITY. Back-BackStory FIN.indd 144 4/3/24
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