LANDSCAPE DESIGN PRECEDENT RESEARCH

LANDSCAPE DESIGN PRECEDENT RESEARCH

As precedent research for a college campus commission (public space landscape design) I've been studying Beatrix Farrand's college campus landscape design work. Farrand's landscape design work at public institutions included Yale, University of Chicago, Oberlin, Vassar, Hamilton and Princeton.  My understanding is that the Graduate College of Princeton is the site where her work is best preserved. 

A few of Beatrix Farrand's classical landscape design principles were applied at the courtyard..

Read More

NO MAINTENANCE GARDEN AND LOW MAINTENANCE GARDENING

NO MAINTENANCE GARDEN AND LOW MAINTENANCE GARDENING

Whether your garden is a vertical landscape design or an urban landscape design it will require some maintenance. Low or easy maintenance gardening is what many people would like to embrace, either through necessity or preference. No garden will be a zero maintenance garden but most gardening activities have a lower input solution or alternative to consider.

A landscape designer can design a low maintenance garden, but there is no such situation where it could be a...

Read More

SUSTAINABLE DESIGN FOR RESIDENTIAL DRIVEWAY

SUSTAINABLE DESIGN FOR RESIDENTIAL DRIVEWAY

In the process of creating a Brooklyn landscape design, a unique sustainable solution for a residential driveway was created by my partner and I. 

Impervious surfaces (such as driveways) limit the amount of stormwater capture and retention. During rain storms these surfaces...

Read More

INCORPORATING SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES IN LANDSCAPE AND GARDEN DESIGN

Has "sustainable" in landscape and garden design become a buzzword? Is resilient a better term?

Many landscape professionals advertise “sustainable practices” and regenerative design approaches when they build landscapes and gardens.  When it comes to actually building these landscapes their approaches are sometimes less than advertised.  Is the term “sustainable” becoming a catch-phrase?

 

Illustration from Randall Munroe, xkcd comics

Illustration from Randall Munroe, xkcd comics

Is sustainability about “doing less-bad”, is it attempting to slow down environmental degradation, is it creating regenerative sites, restoring ecosystem functions, rebuilding the earth’s natural capital?

If it is a buzzword, does this bring attention to the issue or by misuse/abuse of the term does it become just a selling point?  Is the word “sustainability”, the new “organic.” In terms of landscape design, maybe the new word should be planting and building "RESILIENT."

For a collective vision on sustainability, please refer to the Sustainable Sites Initiative.

THE ZEN OF ROOF GARDENS

THE ZEN OF ROOF GARDENS

Look aloft, to the top of the buildings… a roof garden design is outward looking, a designed sanctuary high up on top of a building, sometimes with an endless panorama, a bright, beautiful, and open sky above it.  Most appropriately, it fits today’s city dweller with their overscheduled, time challenged lives. 

For many, traveling to a city park takes a 1/2 hour or longer to embrace nature; walking up a flight of stairs or out their side door to a shared...

Read More

DESIGNING PATHS AS A PROMENADE

DESIGNING PATHS AS A PROMENADE

“Promenade” is defined by Webster’s dictionary as a leisurely place to walk or ride, especially in a public space for pleasure or display.” It’s french in derivation, mid 16th century, (from "se promener"...'to walk')  recalling the actions of people of the court leisurely strolling as if on display, to be seen by all –  commoners as well as other gentry/society. 

In Paris these leisurely strollers are referred to as flaneurs.  Yet, in the Bronx of the 1930's, they are...

Read More

LANDSCAPE DESIGN AND VERSAILLES...NEVER UPSTAGE A MONARCH

LANDSCAPE DESIGN AND VERSAILLES...NEVER UPSTAGE A MONARCH

Most historians would agree that Versailles is one of the most splendid expressions of absolute monarchy in history.  A precedent in the history of great landscape design.

There's a marvelous story behind it! .... 

Andre Le Notre, (the landscape designer of Versailles) had the good fortune years earlier to...

Read More

HISTORY OF THE ROOF GARDEN IN NEW YORK CITY

HISTORY OF THE ROOF GARDEN IN NEW YORK CITY

The urban roof garden in Manhattan and other cities may have a significant precedent in ancient Pompeii! 

The landscape design of the Villa of the Mysteries preserved from Pompeii, AD 79 shows an entranceway which led to the peristyle, followed by the atrium and an extensive terraced gardens surrounded the villa on three non-entrance sides.  

The desire to create an aerial oasis recreationally at the Villa of the Mysteries could possibly be the same as at a firehouse 2,000 years later.  In an article from the year 1912...

Read More

GARDEN PARTY

GARDEN PARTY

Throughout the history of landscape design, garden designers have been creating beautiful gardens, designed for entertaining.

There isn't a country or culture that is more synonymous with the garden than the British. English landscapes are among the most beautiful and English gardens designed by Lancelot Brown to Gertrude Jekyll to Tom Stuart Smith are among the most bespoke gardens.

With tea, cakes and a beautiful garden to stroll in...

Read More

FIGURE GROUND

FIGURE GROUND

As far back as the 6th century, grand carpets were depictions of formal pleasure gardens. Landscape design and garden design influenced textile design.

Read More