2011

2011: A Look Back

rory — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:17:13 +0000

2011: A Look Back

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This past year has been an extraordinary one for LAF. We’ve provided more support than ever to students, faculty, and firms to increase awareness, generate demand, and strengthen our collective capacity to achieve sustainability through landscape architecture. Over the last year we:

Awarded a record-breaking $100,000 to students.
Recognized 40 new Olmsted Scholars, the next generation of sustainability leaders, and offered $1,000 awards to the five finalists in addition to the prestigious $25,000 award for the national winner.
Provided unique collaborative research opportunities for 10 faculty, student and practitioner teams through the innovative Case Study Investigation (CSI) pilot program.
Added significant content to the Landscape Performance Series (LPS), including 30 new case studies, 25 tools and calculators, and 35 Fast Facts.
Met with over 2,000 professionals to increase awareness about the innovative resources in the LPS to help make the case for more sustainable landscape solutions.

We could not have accomplished all this without the support from our many donors! Thank you to all who contributed, participated, and offered their financial support to make this good work possible, so that we may all achieve our potential to create a healthier, safer, and more peaceful planet.

Welcome 2011-2012 Board of Directors

rory — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:21:39 +0000

Welcome 2011-2012 Board of Directors

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The 2011-2012 LAF Board of Directors took the reins on October 30 at LAF’s Annual Board Meeting in San Diego. Lucinda Sanders, FASLA of OLIN took over as President, succeeding Kathy Garcia, FASLA of the City of Del Mar, who led the organization during a time of significant growth and evolution. Bill Main, Honorary ASLA of Landscape Forms became President-Elect.

Four Directors assumed new officer roles, rounding out the leadership team:

Vice President of Finance:
Mark Dawson, FASLA, Sasaki Associates
Vice President of Development:
Gregg Sutton, ASLA, EDSA
Vice President of Communication:
Jacinta McCann, FAILA, AECOM
Vice President of Education:
Kristina Hill, PhD, Aff. ASLA, University of Virginia
Vice President of Research:
Forster Ndubisi, PhD, ASLA, Texas A&M University

Tom Donnelly, ASLA of ValleyCrest Landscape Development retired off the Board after four years of service, including two years as the Vice President of Development. Under his leadership, LAF’s development capacity saw unprecented growth. Patrick Phillips of ULI also leaves the Board after a four-year term in addition to four years of service in the 1990s.

Four new Directors join the LAF Board, including Emily Vogler, LAF’s 2010 National Olmsted Scholar. LAF created this new two-year term Director position for a past Olmsted Scholar in order to gain new input and perpective. The new Directors bring experience and insights from firms, industry and the non-profit sector:

Uwe Brandes, ULI
Doug Mann, FASLA, HNTB
Emily Vogler, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
Lynda Wightman, Hunter Industries

LAF’s unprecedented growth over the last few years has been a direct result of the vision, leadership, and active involvement of Board members. Thanks to all for your service!

National Olmsted Scholar Receives $25,000 Prize

rory — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:22:36 +0000

National Olmsted Scholar Receives $25,000 Prize

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It has been an exciting year for 2011 National Olmsted Scholar Kate Tooke, who received her Masters in Landscape Architecture from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in May. The latest cause for congratulations? The birth of her daughter, Tessa on October 1!

Because Kate will not be able to attend this year’s Olmsted Scholar events in San Diego, LAF Board member Mark Dawson, FASLA met with her closer to home to present her with the $25,000 award.

Elizabeth Brabec, JD, ASLA from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst will represent Kate during the Olmsted Scholar ceremony at the LAF Annual Benefit on Oct 30, and Kate hopes to participate in the other activities remotely via Skype.

We wish Kate and her family all the best!

Xtreme LA: A Unique Design Challenge in Tucson

rory — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:25:30 +0000

Xtreme LA: A Unique Design Challenge in Tucson

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The fourth Xtreme LA event was hosted on October 4-6 by the University of Arizona in Tucson. Xtreme LA is a creative challenge for the design leaders of tomorrow. This unique professional development program teams select young professionals and students with prominent landscape architects for an intense 2-day charrette, in which participants develop design solutions for urban initiatives in a host city. Many thanks to Landscape Forms for producing this event.

Thirteen young professionals (under 35 years old) from across the country, who were identified by their firms as potential leaders, came to Tuscon to work with 13 landscape architecture students from the University of Arizona on pressing transportation issues.

The Arizona Department of Transportation is embarking on a process to connect Tucson and Phoenix with intercity rail. Meanwhile, the City of Tucson plans to build a modern streetcar line from the university through downtown, the first leg of a planned streetcar, light rail, and commuter rail system. The Xtreme LA Challenge was to design streetcar stops along the likely path of the intercity rail line to create convenient transit connections and a sense of place around the nodes.

Participants were divided into two teams and worked under distinguished team leaders with extensive experience in urban revitalization and transportation projects. Sean M. (Monte) Wilson is a Senior Vice President and Director of the HOK Planning Group who has served as lead designer on a range of transit-oriented developments, urban revitalization studies, and master plans. Trevor McIntyre is a Director at the IBI Group and has extensive experience in public consultation in the areas of transit-oriented development, design visioning, and waterfront development.

After briefs from local representatives and tours of key sites, the teams settled into the studio for a day-and-a-half of strategizing, developing conceptual plans, and creating presentation materials for their solutions. The teams took very different approaches with Monte Wilson’s team offering broad and strategic suggestions framed as a series of recommendations, while Trevor McIntyre’s team focused on a target area and presented specific solutions including some interesting element/product ideas.

Final presentations were given before an audience that included members of city council, local government agencies, and interested citizens. There was a strong showing of support from the community, and all appreciated the range of ideas presented and will consider them as plans move forward.

Xtreme LA was conceived by and is sponsored by Landscape Forms in partnership with LAF. In addition to fostering critical thinking, team building, and creative expression, the program provides a unique opportunity for intergenerational professional development, which is increasingly absent due to the economic downsizing and the resultant gap in mentoring resources in many firms.

Landscape Performance in Design Education: LAF Takes the LPS to the Academy

rory — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:27:12 +0000

Landscape Performance in Design Education: LAF Takes the LPS to the Academy

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The Landscape Architecture Foundation is known for its scholarships and support of education that multiplies the effectiveness of landscape architects. Now LAF is helping to introduce landscape performance into design education. This fall marks LAF’s first coordinated effort to bring the concept of landscape performance into the classroom as we work with faculty at the University of Washington and the University of Virginia to educate landscape architecture students on the importance of quantifying landscape’s ecological, economic, and social benefits.

In today’s climate of downsizing, budget reductions and program cuts, providing proof of performance to the decision-makers who impact policies, programs, investments, and land development must be a critical part of design education. Students need the skills and knowledge to quantify and communicate objective data in order for landscape solutions to compete in this burgeoning evidence-based market.

That is why LAF has teamed with Associate Professor and Director of the Green Futures Research and Design Lab Nancy Rottle at the University of Washington, and Associate Professor Kristina Hill, Ph.D. at the University of Virginia to pilot methods to integrate landscape performance in university curricula.

UW’s Sustainable Urban Landscapes: Landscape Performance graduate seminar incorporates a classroom-based pilot of LAF’s Case Study Investigation (CSI) initiative. With the assistance of two Summer CSI Research Assistants, Pam Emerson and Delia Lacson, students in the course will work with local firms to develop methods to quantify benefits and document high performing landscape projects to produce LPS Case Study Briefs. Potential projects include Hubbard Homestead, North 40 at Brightwater, Washington State University LID Center, Tacoma Chinese Reconciliation Park, Red Ribbon Park, and Magnuson Park. Watch for these case studies and more later this year.

At the University of Virginia, Professor Hill teaches that landscape performance is crucial to pursuing and evaluating successful design. In her Sites and Systems course, students will use the LPS this fall to review metrics that can be used to predict and/or determine levels of performance in designed public spaces. Students will also evaluate and propose other metrics based on their ability to measure diverse variables, such as aesthetic experience or walkability. Watch for new tools and calculators in the Benefits Toolkit in December.

LAF shares a vision with these talented professors of enhancing landscape design education, and ultimately leading the profession to routinely set and design for specific performance objectives, collect performance data, and document work. We thank Nancy and Kristina for taking the lead in this important movement, and for joining us in helping to prepare students to adapt to the future environment.

Contact LAF if you are interested in working with us to integrate landscape performance into your coursework. For more on this topic, look for LAF, Nancy Rottle, Kristina Hill and other CSI Fellows at the LAF Benefit, October 30 in San Diego, and the CELA Conference, March 28-31 at the University of Illinois.

Landscape Performance Series at 1 Year

rory — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:36:27 +0000

Landscape Performance Series at 1 Year

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It’s been a year since the Landscape Performance Series (LPS) was officially launched at LAF’s 2010 Annual Benefit by representatives of Founding Partner, the JJR/Roy Fund. Since then LAF has worked hard to build the LPS content and spread the word about this amazing resource.

We’ve personally introduced the LPS to over 2,000 people through 35 conferences, special events, and webinars. These include education sessions at major national conferences like the 2010 ASLA Annual Meeting, Greenbuild, CELA, LABASH, and the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, along with a host of local and regional events. While initial outreach has focused on the landscape architecture profession, soon we’ll be expanding efforts to target allied professions, nonprofits, and federal and municipal agencies. Look for our upcoming presentations at the ULI Fall Meeting, 2011 ASLA Annual Meeting EXPO, and 2011 Cities Alive Green Roof & Wall Conference.

The extensive outreach paid off in the form of a 2011 Honor Award for Communications from the Potomac and Maryland Chapters of the American Society of Landscape Architects. To date, the LPS web pages have been viewed 56,000 times by 8,000 unique users.

The Case Study Briefs now number 18 and are the most popular LPS content. Among them, Thornton Creek Water Quality Channel, Yale’s Kroon Hall, and the Menomonee Valley Redevelopment are the most visited, while Cavallo Point is the most discussed. Our collections of Benefits Toolkit tools and Fast Facts have more than doubled since launch, and we’re working to expand the Scholarly Works to include materials from both students and faculty.

Even more LPS resources are coming this fall. Our summer Case Study Investigation (CSI) initiative, which matched firms and faculty-student research teams, generated 25 new case studies and a wealth of information on methods and tools to quantify benefits.

To mark the LPS’s one-year anniversary, we’ll be rolling out one new case study per weekday leading up to LAF’s Annual Benefit in San Diego on Oct 30. Visit the LPS Case Study Briefs landing page to see the latest or get our daily announcement via Facebook.

We also want to hear from you. How are you using the Landscape Performance Series? Have the resources helped you make the case for sustainable landscape solutions? Who else needs to learn about landscape performance? What would you like to see more of? Please share you thoughts in the comment area below or by e-mailing lps [at] lafoundation.org (lps[at]lafoundation[dot]org).

Case Study Investigation (CSI) Wraps Up

rory — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 13:43:07 +0000

Case Study Investigation (CSI) Wraps Up

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LAF’s Case Study Investigation (CSI) Initiative officially ended on Aug 12 with presentations from the 10 faculty-student research teams. The program generated 25 new Landscape Performance Series Case Study Briefs, dozens of detailed, replicable methods to quantify landscape benefits, and new insights on existing research, tools, and calculators.

Publication of the new Case Study Briefs will coincide with the 1-year anniversary of the Landscape Performance Series. Starting Sept 10, LAF will publish one case study each weekday, culminating at the LAF Annual Benefit where the 10 Research
Fellows will be recognized. Stay tuned for the official roll-out schedule.

The Summer 2011 CSI program was a pilot for a new collaborative model to document the document the benefits of exemplary high-performing landscape projects and develop methods to quantify benefits. Here are some of the reactions from CSI participants:

“This is such a powerful model — LAF Research Fellow, Research Assistant, and Firm participant(s).”

“CSI engages more people in actively thinking about how to determine, study, report on, and promote landscape performance, rather than just passively agreeing it is a good thing.”

“The greatest strength of CSI is its potential to bridge the gap between academia and the professional world. Educating about landscape performance is a critical component of good landscape architecture curriculum because that is ultimately what we want to achieve as designers."

“I think the CSI program will just keep getting better and better, and more influential, and that means very exciting things for the field of landscape architecture.”

This fall, LAF will pilot another variation of CSI with faculty and students at the University of Washington: The goals and approach are being incorporated into an upper-level MLA graduate seminar course, linked to a landscape performance studio.

Heavy Metals in San Francisco Vegetable Gardens

rory — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:44:39 +0000

Heavy Metals in San Francisco Vegetable Gardens

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By Jennifer Gorospe, 2010 Douglas Dockery Thomas Fellowship winner

The summer of 2010 is one I will never forget — I visited 100 San Francisco vegetable gardens. There were community gardens with multi-million dollar views and an amazing assortment of backyard gardens. Some featured ponds, rainwater catchment, and greywater systems. Many incorporated terraces to take advantage of SF’s steep hillsides, with several “backyard” gardens actually on porches, patios and outdoor stairwells. Some gardens had bee hives or chickens, while others made creative use of whatever resources they had, including neighbor’s yards and broken Ikea furniture as planters. What they all had in common, though, were gardeners eager to know how safe it was to eat items grown there.

With support from the GCA/Douglas Dockery Thomas Fellowship in Garden History and Design and the California EPA’s Environmental Justice Small Grants program, I tested 100 vegetable gardens in San Francisco for 16 different heavy metals, including lead, cadmium, and arsenic. Some of the findings were not a surprise (raised bed gardens tend to have less metal than in-ground gardens), but from an Environmental Justice standpoint, I was surprised to find that high levels of lead are more often found in predominately White neighborhoods.

The Asian and African American neighborhoods studied had the lowest median metal concentrations even though these areas include an active Superfund site, a California Department of Toxic Substances Control remediation cleanup, plus other known and suspected pollution sources. Also of note was that neighborhoods with older homes (like San Francisco’s famous Victorians) showed higher amounts of lead than areas with newer homes, pointing to a relationship between lead-based paint and garden soil lead concentrations.

Most gardeners I encountered through this project did not know how to get their soil tested nor how to determine whether it is safe. I was not able to say what is definitely safe and what is not because in researching the current guidelines for “safe levels” of heavy metals in soil (for residential areas, brownfields, and gardens), I found the information to be inconsistent, not easily accessible, and confusing to interpret. I believe that the EPA should consider updating its garden soil guidelines to reflect levels published by other agencies and utilize public health agencies to engage gardeners in a dialog about heavy metals and safe gardening practices.

Besides providing free soil testing to local gardeners, I wanted my project to engage the gardening community. To this end, I hosted community meetings, created educational pamphlets, and launched a website, all aimed at helping gardeners eat as safely as possible from their gardens. The website includes the pamphlets, results from the soil testing, and a list of published “safe levels”. It can be accessed at https://sites.google.com/site/healthygardeners.

Jennifer is a Master’s degree candidate in Environmental Studies at San José State University, where she works as a Project Coordinator for the Office of Sustainability.

Olmsted Scholar Feature: Schoolyard Reform as Urban Greening

rory — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:47:48 +0000

Olmsted Scholar Feature: Schoolyard Reform as Urban Greening

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By Kate Tooke, 2011 National Olmsted Scholar

Nationwide approximately one-third of all school-age children attend urban public schools. For the most part, the campuses of these schools mirror their surrounding city environments: high-density neighborhoods mean that schools serving large student bodies have been built on small lots where outdoor space is tight and pavement is plentiful. In an era where education reform, public health, and environmental issues are all frequent topics of public debate, these small urban schoolyards have come into focus as places of great potential. They are natural community centers where we can not only encourage active recreation but also create diverse educational landscapes that foster future environmental stewards and contribute to the ecological health of the surrounding city. Across the country and worldwide grassroots groups are slowly transforming urban schoolyards into playgrounds, parks, edible landscapes and outdoor classrooms with widely variant benefits for children, communities and the environment.

My master's thesis research sought to understand the ways in which schoolyard reform movements contribute to urban greening efforts as well as how renovated schoolyards engage urban youth with urban ecology. As a former Boston public school teacher, I chose to focus my study on the Boston Schoolyards Initiative (BSI), which has renovated 78 public schoolyards in the city since 1995. I examined 12 elementary schoolyards in depth, comparing pervious surfaces and canopy covers before and after renovations as well as diagramming and quantifying how vegetated spaces overlap with areas for play and learning in the new schoolyards.

The results indicated some valuable increase in canopy cover (after 30 years of projected growth) as a result of BSI renovations, but little to no impact on the amount of pervious surfacing on school sites. In other words, most renovations in the sample group included some tree plantings, but paved areas generally remained paved. In addition, I found that although play and learning space accounts for over 50% (average) of renovated schoolyards, less than 8% of this play and learning space generally overlaps with ecologically-rich vegetated areas (usually a well-designed but fenced outdoor classroom). I divided the schoolyards into 5 typologies based on their quantities and configurations of play versus vegetated space, and my thesis ultimately recommended one schoolyard typology upon which to model future renovations (see figures).

Informal interviews with BSI staff, schoolyard designers and school personnel revealed concerns about maintenance, vandalism and safety as the primary reasons that more vegetated and sustainable features were not included in most renovations. My thesis identified a pressing need for a culture of small, safe-to-fail experiments as a way to begin addressing these commonly-faced challenges.

As the 2011 National Olmsted Scholar I plan to develop a design toolkit focused on making ecosystem services transparent, educational and sustainable features of urban schoolyards. I will travel to research successful features at targeted schools around the nation as well as engage school communities and schoolyard designers in dialogue about what systems could work. The research will form the basis for practical, replicable plans of small experiments which can be implemented during renovations and monitored by students as part of an integrated academic curriculum. Please stay tuned to this blog series for updates on my research and the developing toolkit.

Kate graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in May with a Masters in Landscape Architecture. She works at Dodson Associates in Ashfield, MA and is currently engaged in designing an outdoor classroom and natural playscape for a new public elementary school in the city of Westfield, MA.

Ten Research Fellows to Lead LAF Case Study Investigation (CSI) Initiative

rory — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:51:13 +0000

Ten Research Fellows to Lead LAF Case Study Investigation (CSI) Initiative

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Participants have been selected for LAF’s new Case Study Investigation (CSI) initiative. This unique research collaboration matches LAF-funded faculty and student research teams with design firms to document the benefits of exemplary high-performing landscape projects. Teams will develop methods to quantify environmental, economic and social benefits and produce Landscape Performance Series Case Study Briefs.

LAF Research Fellows lead the case study preparation, develop methods for data collection, and receive funding to support a student research assistant. These select faculty members provide expertise in quantifying landscape benefits, and the academic rigor that is needed to support designers, policy-makers, and advocates who are making the case for sustainable landscape solutions.

The following ten LAF Research Fellows will lead the Summer 2011 Case Study Investigation program:

Jessica Canfield, Kansas State University
Dennis Jerke, Texas A&M University
Mary Myers, Ph.D., Temple University
Bo Yang, Ph.D., Utah State University
Chris Ellis, Ph.D., University of Michigan
Byoung-Suk Kweon, Ph.D., University of Michigan
Kristina Hill, Ph.D., University of Virginia
Nancy Rottle, University of Washington
Ken Yocom, Ph.D., University of Washington
Alexander Robinson, University of Southern California

The number of proposals and highly-competitive selection process shows the strong level of support and enthusiasm for the CSI program. Depending on the results of the summer pilot program and available funding, we hope to offer another round of CSI in the fall to engage and support faculty, students and firms in landscape performance research.