Landscape architecture

A COUNTRY PLACE AND ITS MAKERS

This month sees the publication by Monacelli of Planting Fields: A Place on Long Island. Gilded Age country estates on Long Island’s Gold Coast are not unusual—there were originally 500 of them—but this one is, not least because the house and its 400 landscaped acres have survived, more or less intact, now a public arboretum and state park. I contributed a chapter. I chose to tell the story of Planting Fields more like a novel than a design history. The characters matter: the enterprising Helen Byrnes who starts it all, the talented Grosvenor Atterbury and James Greenleaf who in several important ways set the architectural tone for the house and garden,

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SKETCHING

Architects have always travelled with sketchbook in hand. Partly it’s a way of recording interesting places, but more importantly, it’s a way of seeing. The opposite of point-and-shoot, sitting and drawing is a leisurely way to absorb one’s surroundings. My friend Laurie Olin, a lifelong travel sketcher, has been publishing collections of his sketches, grouped by country; four years ago France Sketchbooks and recently In Italy, both from ORO Editions. Olin’s sketches are more than attractive impressions—although they are that—they also reflect a landscape architect’s practiced eye, being full of detailed notes and observations.

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CLEARING IN THE DISTANCE REDUX

Gakugei-Shuppansha has published a Japanese edition of A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century. This is the first foreign edition of the book, which was published by Scribner in 1999. Thanks to Mr. Hiroki Hiramatsu for spearheading this project and for his thoughtful translation. A social entrepreneur, Hiamatsu is the founder and CEO of Woonerf Inc. and co-founder of Green Building Japan.

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OFF LIMITS

Keep-Off-Grass-Sign-S-7260Andrés Duany takes issue in Architectural Record with Michael Sorkin’s review of Landscape Urbanism and Its Discontents. But the problem with a compilation of 20 essays by many different authors is that it rarely presents a coherent argument, so almost anything you say about such a book is (sort of) true. Although this is a sanctioned new urbanist collection, the contributors present a variety of–sometimes contradictory–views. Some admire the High Line, some don’t; some are still fighting a rear-guard action against the modern movement, some aren’t;  some see landscape urbanism as the enemy,

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WAMO

An international competition for the Washington Monument Grounds has attracted more than 500 participants, and the announcement of the six finalists from as far afield as Korea and the Netherlands has garnered attention in the architectural media. The competition is puzzling, because the sponsor is not the National Park Service, which is responsible for the grounds, but a private group with lead sponsorship from George Washington University, Albert H. Small (a real estate developer), and the Virginia Center for Architecture of the Virginia Society AIA. The competition maintains that the grounds are “unfinished,” despite that the Washington Monument (WAMO) grounds have just been handsomely done over by OLIN,

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The Olmsted Legacy

If The Olmsted Legacy, a one-hour documentary on the great landscape architect is playing in your area don’t miss it. It includes interviews with many Olmsted scholars (including yours truly) and is an excellent introduction to a man who influenced not only the way that we live in cities, suburbs and even wilderness, but also the way that we think about nature.

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