America’s Health Threat: Poor Urban Design

Richard Jackson waits for a bus outside Los Angeles International Airport. The UCLA scientist is a leading voice in the call for better urban design for the sake of public health. // David Zentz for The Chronicle

Researchers can have revelatory moments in remarkable places—the African savannah, an ancient library, or the ruins of a lost civilization. But Richard J. Jackson's epiphany occurred in 1999 in a banal American landscape: a dismal stretch of the car-choked Buford Highway, near the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

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NEXT EMPLOYER EVENT

Attention all students and staff – A chance to meet an employer without leaving the college! 

WEDNESDAY 14^TH MARCH 1PM -2PM – THE WRITTLE ROOM

This event presents a great opportunity to meet with a local employer; the Colchester based Landscape Planning Group Limited and hear about landscape planning jobs and opportunities within their organisation. As you will see from their website, http://www.landscapeplanninggroup.co.uk they operate specialist consultancy services relating to:

• land
• landscape planning
• landscape design
• ecology
• arboriculture
• forestry
• specialist insurance & mitigation services

Spaces will be limited for this event so email angela.kinloch@writtle.ac.uk to reserve a place immediately.

Landscape Optimism: An Interview with Chris Reed

Chris Reed. [image courtesy of Stoss Landscape Urbanism]

In 2000 landscape architect Chris Reed founded StossLU, or Stoss Landscape Urbanism. Since then the Boston-based office has emerged as one of the leading advocates for enlarging the scope and scale of landscape projects and practices. As Reed wrote in an essay in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, "Contemporary landscape practices are witnessing a revival of sorts, a recovery of the broader social, cultural, and ecological agendas. No longer a product of pure art history and horticulture, landscape is re-engaging issues of site and ecological succession and is playing a part in the formative roles of projects, rather than simply giving form to already defined projects." [1]

Read the full interview http://places.designobserver.com

Notes
1. Chris Reed, "Public Works Practice," in Charles Waldheim, editor, The Landscape Urbanism Reader (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), 269.  

Two landscape internship possibilities: Deadlines approaching

Hargreaves Associates - Internship Opportunities

Hargreaves Associates - deadline 31st March:

http://www.hargreaves.com 

New Sasaki internship for aspiring strategists

Sasaki Associates - deadline 9th March:

http://www.sasaki.com

EFLA Student & Young Professionals Competition

EFLA Student & Young Professionals Competition gives you a chance to share your projects, ideas and sites with landscape architecture practitioners throughout Europe. The competition aims to help up and coming designers to get exposure for their projects and work. Any landscape architect (a student or a professional under the age of 35) can submit their “page” to the catalogue. This will exist both online and in a printed format. 

For the details on the competition please go to: http://www.younglandscapearchitects.org/

2011's 10 Notable Developments in Landscape Architecture

Lincoln Park SoundScape, New World Symphony Campus, Miami Beach, Fla. Photo by Robin Hill for West 8. Courtesy West 8 urban design & landscape architecture p.c.

It's year-end list-o-mania time and the email carpet-bombing of "best," "worst" and "top 10" lists, etc. is straining global server capacity. The architecture community's seemingly endless thematic round ups include buildings that are green, nature-inspired and spooky, along with free-range, macrobiotic and gluten-free. 

See the top 10 here...