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Ismaili Centre, Toronto, Canada

Drew Wensley, CEO Moriyama & Teshima

Drew Wensley the youngest partner for Moriyama & Teshima who was also appointed professor of practiced for the Landscape Architecture program walked us through the project life of the Ismaili Centre in Toronto, Canada. This particular project took around 10 years from project start to completion. Due to the different levels of complexity and iteration the project was a good example of thoroughness and precision.

I was thoroughly fascinated with how much care and attention the firm paid to every design detail. The Ismaili Centre represents a traditional Islamic architecture while exploring more contemporary material. The ideas that surround its creation focus on prayer, contemplation, intellectual discovery, and public outreach. Although the project life extended longer than initially planned and will continue to be monitored by the firm - the disclosure to us was incredibly real and important. These types of lessons can only be learned by practicing at this level of design. It was a real honor to be given access to these documents and I plan on studying them over the summer.

Networking in the Digital Age: Brad Collett

Professor Brad Collett web conference brought a fresh perspective on what networking means in the 21st century. How can we build a network without “networking”. Networking in the abstract can seem like a disingenuous chore - something more akin to work and a by-product of that work. This concept is further exaggerated when coupled with the multi-verse that is our digital selves. The internet is awash in services and features aimed at promoting our digital lives. In a sea of digital floatsam and jetsam how do we remain buoyant.

Personal relationships have always remained an important aspect of my networking capacity. An extension of this digitally would be using technology that leverages your personal strengths and knowledge and connects you to others that share in your passions. Be available. Help those around you succeed at projects that represent you passions. Show your gratitude towards those that have helped you and make sure your feelings are made public. Basically building a tangible network is a series of meaningful opportunities compounded into a social net worth.

This digital culture is much like an ecosystem and can benefit from from a proper balance of attention and nourishment. These relationships are only as important as the amount of time and energy spent on them. It is up all of us to build, maintain, and exercise our social muscles so that they remain useful and applicable. I know that I could be doing a better job of staying in contact with the people and organizations from my past. Often it is too easy to let those relationships drift apart. One of Professor Collett’s advice is to set periodic reminders to set time aside for maintaining these contacts. Its these little things that add up to a tangible network that can in turn work for you in the future.

Historic TVA Imagery and Data

#TVA

Diploma Studio: Landscape Architecture

Diploma Studio is alternative track for Graduate Students who feel their work is better explored through the nature of studio practice. Thesis has many rules and requirements that don’t necessarily help show case the academic world of design. Many of the most important aspect to having a Masters in Landscape Architecture is the ability to communicate visually. Thesis works really well for concepts that can be written and explained on a 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper. Those constraints are beneficial when ideas have larger visual narrative.

This semester there was only 1 actual thesis project. The rest of the students produced work through the Diploma Studio model. Clint Wayman, Caroline Sneed, and Clay Lezon worked together and separately on a project focused on the Tennessee Valley Authority’s impact on the greater system of waterways within our region. The project’s major theme was whether or not the TVA’s history in the region was “good’ or “bad”. Exploring the idea through different visual graphs and graphics. Bringing the data to the front of the conversation - how do large scale infrastructure projects extend into the landscape. The qualities of this type of social and infrastructural engineering track really poorly and only through extensive data maps can we begin to unravel the story.

In the second part of the presentation the group broke down into separate projects focused on very specific aspects of how the river impacts the people’s lives on a more site scale. River culture, pollution harvesting, and rearranging the eco-urban parcels post-dam were some of the aspects of focus. The projects were inspired with an attitude of thoughtful and speculative angst. Theme’s of what a post dam landscape would look like and how to use and harvest the byproducts of the dams waste were really interesting. This engaged the jury into a discussion and thus provided the audience with a quality experience. The Landscape Architecture department should be proud to have produced such a range of critical and thoughtful students.

Water resilient terrain and plantings are designed to adapt to the monsoon floods in Yanweizhou Park in Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province, China

Ecological Design: RESILIENCE beyond rhetoric

Nina-Marie Lister wrapped up the Church Lecture series with a very engaging topic of what resilience really means and how it performs in the Landscape. A resilient landscape refers to the ability of an ecosystem to withstand and absorb the unpredictable environmental changes while still maintaining the majority of structural functions. What are the new ways of thinking about these systems from an interdisciplinary standpoint and more importantly what is the agency for implementing these strategies.

Professor Lister has a background as an urban planner and an ecologist. This perspective helps leverage the work being demonstrated by practicing Landscape Architects in a way that communicates the broader implications in an urban system. Many of the infrastructural system being deployed in the urban landscape are rapidly declining. This includes the traditional storm water management, impervious surfaces, auto-centric design, and electrical grids. Understanding the relationships between how we have designed urban spaces in the past which tend to be static and how landscapes want to behave in a more fluid and dynamic way.

Unpredictability has to become part of the new narrative for designing urban spaces. The cost of using static systems to manage ecological processes is expensive to build, maintain, and replace. The cost of failure is even greater. The reality of climate change has give rise to a language of resiliency - an opportunity for communities to engage a new conversation concerning the realm of their community space. What key terms are important to generate the type of conversation necessary to move forward on designing these new spaces.

The profession of Landscape Architecture has landed dead center in this brave new world. There are real and substantial opportunities for the profession to lead this design movement. Landscape has the capacity to design and implement these changes but does it have the will to lead. So much of traditional infrastructure has been produced through the lens of engineering. In my opinion this model is outdated and the 100 year storm of ideas is crashing down on this 20th century mindset.

The Springs, downtown L.A.

Design Bitches

Design Bitches: The Comma is Everything

The design duo of Catherine Johnson and Rebecca Rudolph spoke about their Los Angeles practice. The lecture seem last minute and thrown together. Their work is inspired by eclecticism, “ugly beauty” and the cultural collisions of happings in L.A. The concept sounds interesting on paper and I am sure (hope) that there is meaning a depth within their work but when you only have a couple of slides and one of the lectures keeps losing her place and pace the whole thing tended to fall apart. This was perhaps the worst lecture I have seen through the Church series.

To sum up the lecture Design Bitches: The Comma is Everything, is basically what is says, where you pause or place emphasis creates the conversation or places meaning - especially important if the words, ideas, and phrases can be interpreted in multiple ways. This multicultural affected community that is L.A. has a lot of cross pollination of ideas, culture, and income. Johnson and Rudolph are riffing on these collisions and are basically mashing up architectural vernacular as a way to reflect back a phenomenological process. The problem is that their work doesn’t have a depth to it yet. The firm is relatively young (5 years) and can’t properly demonstrate the importance of their ideas. A couple of restaurant redesigns and some signage is not enough. All things equal I am glad the university is taking risks on the lecture series but that can sometimes come at a cost.

#helene binet

Helene Binet - Church Lecture

World Class Architectural Photographer Helene Binet lectured at the University of Tennessee. Her work ranges from simple light/dark studies on form and texture, to large scale monolithic structures, regional city wide scale, and even landscape. Most of the pictures displayed were almost monochrome, not quite black and white, with just a subtle range of color. The themes of the lecture memory, shadow, light, materiality, formation, and ground.

The power of image and composition to direct critical observation can be used in any medium or subject. Mrs. Binet work has focus on the built environment - especially in the field of structure and buildings. This relationship to large scale objects - the timing of the light, composing strong angles, and contrasting elements to read successfully in the two dimensional space is not easy. It takes significant planning, preparation, and a deft understanding of how light draws shape. Mrs. Binet draws out not only the strength and presence of built form but captures more subtle elements that are made ephemeral through the change of light through the day. Being able to capture that singular moment when all the environmental conditions play out on the shape and space created.

Temporal elements like time are tricky to capture when we as observers are caught up in the moment. I have returned to many of my favorite locations just to immerse my senses in this on going choreography - trying in my small way to capture by photograph a moment that I know will never return. Photography has that power to bring us back to that moment. This allows us to have better access of those memories and moments but to compose photographic space that others value, even if the person hasn’t visited the site. Visual story telling is an important element to design and learned much from this particular lecture.

Herb Kupfer - Landscape Architect - Great Smoky Mountians National Park

Our lecturer Herb Kupfer works as a Landscape Architect for the National Park Service here locally in the Great Smoky Mountians. Mr. Kupfer works in the road design and historic preservation for the park. His role is to balance the roadway engineering projects against the existing historic and ecological needs of the National Park System. This arrangement between the Engineering Corps and the NPS has been the established working model for well over 50 years. Landscape Architects act as a monitoring agency for design implementation for transportation infrastructure.

As a Landscape Architect I love the role design plays in the profession. I got a sense from Mr. Kupfer that this role has been diminished and substituted with more Construction Administration. Checking boxes and signing off on impact studies - making sure that agreements and deadlines are met. He did mention that there is a great emphasis on making sure that all plant material introduced into the park is not only native but grown from seed and stock that has been sourced regionally - as close to the area of implementation as possible.Knowing that this level of attention to detail is being placed on the NPS ecosystem is rather reassuring. I have a new level of respect for the work that Mr. Kupfer is doing for our Great Smoky Mountains - I just don’t know if its the type of work I would want.

Leah Chambers - KenKay Associates - San Francisco

Hired in 2012 as a Senior Associate for KenKay & Associates, Leah Chambers moved from EDSA in Florida to San Francisco. One of her major strengths for the company was having experiences that were geographically different from the existing team members. This concept of geographical expertise or differentiation has been with us for a while. Universities usually always hire outside of their local network - in fact there is usually policy in place to emphasize this concept. What is interesting is that there are now even more factors pushing for a mobilized work force.

As the digital age creeps into our social and economic lives, becoming connected to like minded professionals becomes easier and easier. Many of the digital platforms support and promote a social network of connectivity almost to an extreme. With all of these options how you want to be connected to these other groups becomes the question. This digital market place for ideas, talent on demand, and streaming service has become somewhat normal for the digitally empowered.

I myself have become enrolled into a ‘digital studio’ where I am part of a remote office of support for a Landscape Architect that I have only met over the phone. His projects flow digitally through a number of designers located all over the country - filtered back through his main office in Orlando, FL. Through phone, email, and digital storage options we are able to communicate ideas across platforms and with different team members anytime of the day. So why move to another location, why not just a remote studio where people live where they want?

In the abstract this argument for a digital work place seem valid and can be an effective tool for businesses. Ultimately nothing can compete with the immediacy of having people working along side with one another. Direct client contact and having a presence on the project site are a must for any successful design and work flow. Project complexity and the ability to quickly iterate and vet ideas through multiple conceptual work flows; analog, digital, or other creates an unmatched productivity. Which means that for now, I believe that even though work can be supplemented across the digital network - our physical presence is needed to generate the work that is required of us as Landscape Architects.

Touring DC/ exploring design

Design begins and ends with people - meeting with the people and the environments that produced these designs was our mission. The point of departure started in Old Town, Alexandria Virginia. I was struck by a couple of different aspects of this community. First, that the area seemed to be accessible and walkable with proper access to the subway system. There was also an emphasis on keeping the tone and character of the city in touch with the human scale. For instance, there are strict regulations on the type and size of the signage, proper sidewalk widths, and consistent building material. The scale was also regulated so there were not alot of building in excess of 4 stories. I can see why this type of planned community would appeal to certain demographics.

Our first stop was with Micheal Vergason a small firm of 13 Landscape Architects. The firm was literally unlabeled street side and you would have to look for the specific address to be able to find it. Small but well organized with a distinct touch of handcrafted attention to detail. The firm’s size was directly proportioned to meet Micheal Vergasons’s desire to be involved with every project. We were briefed on The American Veterans Disabled For Life Memorial, a project that took 13 years to complete. The design process was interesting in how many different agency’s it had to pass through to get clearance for being built.

Our next visit was with LandDesign - A landscape Architecture Firm located not more than 3 blocks away. Partner Peter Crowley met us at the door and we were shown the office layout and got to meet with the staff - who were very nice. The firm was located in a refurbished auto-garage that I felt had a certain type of charm. The layout was comfortable and all of the staff seemed to have plenty of room to work - a blend of public and private partitions. Principle Brent Martin gave us a presentation that sampled certain projects. While the projects seemed engaging on many different levels - somehow I just wasn’t struck with awe or interest. The combination of aesthetics, approach, and delivery seems out of sink with some of my passions. Regardless of those impressions the comfort and accessibility of the firm had a genuine resonance with me.

Lunch at the ASLA headquarters was our next stop with a visit to their green roof project. We were treated to gourmet pizza and brief on current projects - overhaul on the building headquarters, magazine status, and a Master Plan for the surrounding neighborhood. The later struck me as odd because of instead of crowd sourcing the master plan to its network of subscribers - acting as a client ASLA only RFP‘d 6 firms for the plan, seemed to me to be a missed opportunity. The green roof was nice enough but what really carried the project for me was how much attention has been paid to quantifying the value for having a green roof. They are documenting the success of the plants, the amount of storm water captured and the heat sink value when compared to the surround typical black tar roofs.

After paying 17 dollars to park for less than 3 hours in a nearby parking garage went traveled to George Town to visit with our last 2 firms: HOK and GGN. First off George Town feels more like an updated Old Town than an extension of the surrounding Washington, DC area. The areas character has a similar architectural treatment and restrictive zoning ordinances. HOK and GGN were practically next door neighbors but that was about all that they shared in common.

Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum is and international design office with multiple locations around the world. The office out of Washington, DC seemed to have around 60 employees with the ability to deliver a whole range of design opportunities. We had a lovely tour of the building met with the director of sustainability, saw much of the layout but really didn’t get to meet with any of the Landscape Architecture leadership. The visit seem to confirm my assumptions of how large firms are organized and operate at that scale - smaller work areas but with access to much more in regards to information and infrastructure.

Gustafson + Guthrie + Nichol’s satellight firm was the last one on the list. This extension of the Seattle based firm just recently became established in the Washington DC area. Because of this the firm was the smallest of all 4 that we visited with only 4 employees. The staff was nice and the Senior Associate Emily Scott was incredibly good at briefing the group on what projects were being developed for GGN. After our presentation we toured the very modest office - with the impression that they are looking to double the employees sometime in the near future. The best part of experiencing this firm visit was with how much of the design practice and aesthetics that appealed to me as a designer. I really appreciate the firms attention to detail and the how grounded in the Land Art tradition as a process worth exploring for contemporary urban space making. Needless to say I did apply for a summer internship with this firm.

MAde Studios, Church Lecture

Jen Maigret + Maria Arquero de Alarcon : are the principle leads for MAde Studios out of Michigan. This emerging Studio practice has a real focus on research and service as part of its design. Being located near Detroit allows for real design work to be applied to some of Landscape Architectures biggest challenges. The presentation examined how lines, playful, emergent, and hidden play a role in how landscapes and space are defined. The data analysis and visual projection of the Great Lakes water systems was particularly interesting because of some of the prior work I had done visualizing Tennessee's watershed system. Taking complicated data sets and making a visually striking narrative can be tricky and time consuming but the conversation/ dialogue that can be generated in these cross metro MEGA regions is invaluable.

I believe that alot of work needs to be developed in this area. Working across platform to develop procedures and policy to address these large systems seems to be one of the few ways that a healthy and a sustainable ecosystem can be achieved in the 21st century. I was especially struck by how different the speed of water moves through these large lake systems. Water entering Lake Superior may take roughly 200 years to leave the system - where as the water flow in Lake Erie is roughly 5 years. Given such a wide range - crafting a policy that can work for all of the communities touching these lakes can be difficult but as noted - a major disruption could have effect that lasts more than one life time.

An Evening with Paul Kissinger, EDSA

Lets talk about studio culture and how it effects our abilities both positively and negatively. At the core of this particular design profession - the corner stone of the academic rock - is STUDIO. This idea of studio can be retransmitted to the professional business of Landscape Architecture with the Principle replacing the Professor as the project leader. Part of making this arrangement work is the ideas and attitudes around the culture of those who are participating in the studio. Paul Kissinger is one of the principles at EDSA who has lead many different types of project since his hire in 1989.

The studio culture at EDSA based on Paul's account and the responses to our questions seems to be really engaged with the human condition both inside and out. This manifests into a broad idealistic vision that wants the highest quality of workmanship through design combined with a high standard of living for both producer and consumer. I was thoroughly convinced that EDSA has a highly ethical attitude and wants the best for everyone involved and maintaining studio moral is key to ascertaining that vision. I know first hand how detrimental a bad attitude can have an effect on a project. Its hard enough sometimes to create the energy needed to tackle a difficult project - but this is made even harder when just one of your team is having a bad day. There is more to life than this profession but when your profession is and revolves around life - you must retain a healthy balance between work and play.

#renaissancepark

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