Landscape Architecture Magazine July 2023

CONTRIBUTORS KOFI BOONE, FASLA, (“Tracing Bass Street,” page 70) is the Joseph D. Moore Distinguished Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at North Carolina State University. You can follow him on Twitter @kbbop. “I think that we are in a transformational moment when landscape architecture has never been as visible as a profession, consisting of professionals willing to tackle the grand challenges, including issues of justice and equity.” MACI NELSON, ASSOCIATE ASLA, (“Gateway Games,” page 44) is a nerd on a mission to help the general public better understand the world of landscape architecture. You can follow her on Instagram @thelandscapenerd. “This conversation explores a connection to designing experiences, regardless of discipline, and showcases how prioritizing fun can be a catalyst for good design.” JULIAN RAXWORTHY (“Mind the Milieu,” page 106)…

MORE BRIDGES TO BUILD “Boundary Work,” the Land Matters column in the May issue of LAM, is a welcome representation of a sea change currently underway in the discipline. I applaud the participants in the newly formed Consortium of Practice-based Researchers in the Built Environment (CPRBE), as they are trailblazers in testing the bounds of the term “research” in ways that are both a reaction to and a repairing of the deep fissures that exist between the academy and professional practice. Until a stronger feedback loop exists between those who are generating knowledge and those who can deploy findings in the real world, the discipline will be hampered in our ability to develop solutions to accelerating environmental and social issues, as well as our ability to be taken seriously by…

There are many paths into a site, and just as many into a story. “Tracing Bass Street,” the cover feature this month, came to us in one of my favorite ways—a casual conversation with a landscape architect I’d never met. Last fall I was visiting Knoxville at the invitation of the Tennessee Chapter of ASLA. At their annual meeting, I’d stood on a podium and talked about stories, where they come from, and how they come into being. Afterward, Chris Mantle sidled up to me with a phrase that often precedes some of the best and most unexpected stories that have appeared in LAM: “I don’t know if this is something you’d be interested in, but we’re working on a project….” The project was the master plan for Fort Negley,…

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Mill Race Park by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates in Columbus, Indiana, a now-beloved landscape and an early example of a community green space designed to absorb and even choreograph periodic flooding. Among this year’s Exhibit Columbus installations is a Studio Zewde–designed paean to the park, as well as two other landscape projects that complement its ecosystems and activities. Echoes of the Hill is a spare and poetic piece of sculptural placemaking, and less didactic than the other landscape installations being assembled for the fourth iteration of the event. Opening in August, the piece is an arcing, metal double spine connected to the ground by red cables. It embraces the park’s hill and faces the concert stage, a wide crescent that gradually rises…

At the National Geographic Society headquarters, the sculpture formerly known as Marabar once created pleasing dissonance in a corner of downtown Washington, D.C. Designed by the Los Angeles-based artist Elyn Zimmerman and dedicated in 1984, the sculpture’s massive boulders were set around a narrow rectangular pool, injecting a welcome natural element into a highly urbanized space. Yet that space was somewhat cloistered, flanked, and literally overshadowed by the society’s two buildings. Now, with a new name—Sudama—and a new location on the nearby campus of American University, the sculpture has been brought into the open, forging a far stronger connection to the city. In 2019, when the society announced that the sculpture would need to be removed to make way for new construction, Marabar seemed doomed. Advocacy by the Cultural Landscape…

In September 2022, Yvon Chouinard, the founder of the outdoor apparel company Patagonia, announced that he and his family had given up their ownership stake in the company—valued at about $3 billion—and transferred it to a nonprofit trust that would ensure that all future profits were directed toward protecting the planet. Keith Bowers, FASLA, the founder of Biohabitats, took note of this news with a mix of admiration and annoyance. Though he had long looked up to Patagonia and understood the momentous nature of Chouinard’s decision, he was irritated that the company had beaten Biohabitats to the punch. “I was bummed because we had been working on our perpetual purpose trust for a year and a half,” Bowers recalls. “But then I sat back and thought about it, and I…