Landscape Architecture Magazine

DANIKA COOPER (“Reality Check,” page 114) is an associate professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning at the University of California, Berkeley. You can follow her on Instagram @dry_matters. “Johanna Hoffman included an extensive set of examples of speculative futures projects, and I wish I could have included more of them in my review.” DANIEL JOST, ASLA, (“Free for All,” page 64) is a PhD candidate at North Carolina State University, where he works with the Natural Learning Initiative. You can reach him at daniel.c.jost@gmail.com. “I’m excited to see how the risk management strategies explored in Arches Playground might encourage more targeted use of protective surfacing and more natural and playable settings under and alongside playground equipment.” SARAH CHASE SHAW (“A Ready Road Map,” page 42) is a Colorado-based freelance writer and landscape designer.…

STACH PLLC, Asheville, North Carolina @stachpllc PRICKLY DESIRES A Review of The Cactus Hunters Not a word about ecosystem services and the biodiversity in regions hostile to humans which are nurtured by cacti. Why is @landarchmag considering this book?! Only because cactus is a plant? Plants and landscape is LA’s green obsession. LA is not about “green.” That’s an outcome. When cactus collectors study and provide the ecosystems for a cactus species, they would spend less on their greenhouse. Just mimicking the cactus xerophytic landscape is cosmetic; introduce providers and participants of the energy/nutrient cycle. Nature should never be a pet dog. Sridevi Rao @sitahyderabadi A PLACE FOR EVERY PERSON Housing for neurodiversity by Office of Strategy + Design The benefits of the design are innumerable; most receptive is the opportunity to connect and bond with like-minded individuals in a…

A few days before I visited Joshua Tree National Park this spring, I picked up a book, as I am wont to do, about the cultural history of the park. Preserving the Desert: A History of Joshua Tree National Park, by the historical geographer Lary M. Dilsaver, is primarily concerned with how the park came to be—who championed it, who fought it, and the compromises that resulted. What snagged in my mind as I wound through the park was Dilsaver’s introductory essay (called, interestingly, “Coping with the Desert”), where he argued that part of the challenge of establishing the park in the early years was that the desert region did not fit into culturally established notions of landscape beauty. It was seen as desolate and dangerous, relatively empty of life,…

When cities plan to mitigate extreme heat, many draw from a now-familiar playbook—more trees, more reflective surfaces, and more air-conditioning. In Toronto, city officials are exploring a different strategy: changing the orientation, massing, and materials of new buildings to improve the habitability of public space. The project, currently billed as a “thermal comfort study,” represents a new frontier in urban adaptation. “We can’t change the climate,” says Dorsa Jalalian, an urban designer at Dialog, a design firm retained for the study. “We are just trying to extend the number of hours that we can be comfortable.” A FOUR-SEASON APPROACH TO BALANCE WINTER COMFORT AND SUMMER’S DEADLY HEAT. The idea that cities might shelter people from heat has a long, mostly pre-air-conditioned history, but in North America, new buildings are typically required to…

In a time of mounting climate threats, landscape architects are increasingly concerned with disaster mitigation, implementing strategies that can protect communities from flooding or wildfire. This would make them natural allies of emergency managers and federal, state, and local disasterplanning agencies, and yet, according to a recent study, landscape architects’ “collaborative input into the emergency management ecosystem… appears to be close to nonexistent.” The study, published in the journal Natural Hazards in December 2023, was authored by Erik Xavier Wood, a licensed landscape architect who teaches emergency and disaster management at Georgetown University. Wood compiled a good deal of evidence to make his point, noting that the last time a FEMA policy document mentioned landscape architecture was in 2007 in the context of anti-terrorism strategies. Meanwhile, FEMA’s 2023 Nature-Based Solutions guide lists…

Last year was a historic year for the removal of dams along American rivers. According to American Rivers’s national dam removal database, 80 dams were removed in 2023, including 15 in Pennsylvania alone. The year 2023 also marked the beginning of the largest dam removal project in U.S. history: the demolition of four dams along the Klamath River in California and Oregon. Following years of advocacy by tribes and environmental groups and led by the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, a private, independent nonprofit created out of the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement, the project will open up more than 400 miles of habitat for salmon, steelhead trout, and other threatened species. The removal of the first dam—Copco 2—was completed last fall, with the other three slated to come down this year. As…