City in a Garden: A Reflection on the American Society of Landscape Architects' 2015 Meeting and Expo

Photo Credit: Chicago Lakefront, Wikipedia User Name: Daniel Schwen

There is a very small population on this planet that finds discussions about bollards, botany, grading, and paving materials enrapturing. I am one of this odd population that delights in the parley of porous pavement who gathered in Chicago’s McCormick Center for the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) 2015 Meeting and Expo in early November. I was not entirely sure what to expect, because I am not a Landscape Architect. Instead, I am from one of the related, somewhat subversive branches of landscape planning and design known as ecological design, which is less focused on what you design, and more on the framework you use to design it. Ecological design frames the telos of design to respect an integral ecology, which, in turn, informs the whole systemic approach to the design process. I digress.

Thousands of people attended the ASLA conference. I had an enjoyable time, attending humbling education sessions about conservation strategies and listening to high-design conversations about monolithic water features that were one part aesthetically sublime and one part ecologically mortifying. I met people from architecture, design and planning who are engaged with inspiring work on the residential scale all the way up to nation-wide planning efforts. There were too many interesting talks and events to do justice to the insights they offered, but I will try my best to provide a glimpse of the highlights. Coinciding with each session I attended were several other fascinating sessions that I was only able to enjoy vicariously by listening to small talk in the expo.

Meetings should include a representative set of stakeholders. B. Batchelder '15

The first talk I attended was titled Designing with The Homeless, by Carol Mayer-Reed, Randy Hester, and Douglas Pardue, who discussed how to include individuals experiencing homelessness into the design process of public spaces. The homeless rely on many public spaces more than any other population of individuals, and their inclusion in a charrette is respectful and logical. I must admit, this inclusion was a new and brilliantly obvious notion that had escaped me until now. There was also discussion about designing spaces for the homeless that are dignified in appearance, in contrast to the all too common shelter spaces that succeed best at putting the “brutal” in “brutalist”. One of the speakers mapped homeless networks—this information could help inform the location of resource allocation and distribution to these populations. This session was both fascinating and moving. Some of the most vulnerable among us lack any social space in our society as it currently functions. The least we can do for them is provide humane spaces in the built world. It was inspiring to see people using their design backgrounds to do good work to make those inclusive spaces a reality.

Different bee life stages require different habitat. Cred: Molly Burhans

I also attended a pollinator education session, which is a topic that particularly interests me, since I was a member of a team of students at Conway that produced a city-wide Pollinator Vison Plan for a non-profit in Portland, Maine. I was naively hoping for a scientific lecture that could answer my questions about how to effectively integrate entomological behavior research into design for pollinators. However, I quickly realized that this was not what this talk was about. Although it was not the talk I expected, it was hopeful to hear about nationwide efforts to support pollinators and the vital ecosystems services they provide us.

Transformational Learning: Integrate Ecological Research Into Design was a session that caught my interest weeks before the conference. This talk discussed how to integrate research opportunities into landscape design, as well as how to thoughtfully apply scientific research to designs, in order to increase their ecological integrity and the surrounding ecosystem's health. Something that has occurred to me in the past is that one goal of lighting design within the landscape might be to help reduce the incidence of diseases that employ photosensitive insects as vectors. This thought was inspired by the research one of my former instructors who studies mosquito behavioral plasticity and photoperiods of artificial and natural lighting. This project made me reconsider the potential of using lighting, water, materials, and virtually any element of a design in experiments that might help to increase both scientific understanding and the application of that understanding to designs. Alexander Felson and his advisee Nikki Spinger, Thomas Woltz, and Kong Jian Yo lead the discussion at this session. Kong Jian Yo’s team is working on a project that will clean up an entire lake in China—the renderings of that project were aesthetically breathtaking and ecologically inspiring. Alexander presented the theory behind this integration as well as a discussion of his efforts to integrate ecology research and design. Thomas Woltz from Nelson, Byrd, and Woltz is also part of a team working to learn more about how different reforestation and conservation designs best promote biodiversity.

Woltz was also involved in an education session titled Conservation Agriculture: Quantifying Results and Expanding Territory. The Conway School is in some respects a gigantic education experiment, and a constant of that experiment involves permaculture and sustainable agriculture experts, ecologists, landscape architects, and conservation biologists all working with students on design. To be honest, I was not anticipating I would find a session at an ASLA meeting that could have been a studio lecture at Conway, but I did. This session placed a farmer, a conservation biologist, and a Landscape Architect on the same stage to talk about such diverse topics as food security, ecological integrity, cultural landscapes and aesthetics.

Geodesign: Visualizing Green Infrastructure presented by Stephen Spears, Mathew Wilkins, and Brooks Patrick was another outstanding talk. Once again, the software capabilities for design are absolutely mind-blowing—ESRI’s City Engine and the possibilities for visualized rule-based design, for example, provide a powerful way to approach planning. Geodesign is a framework for approaching projects that I first encountered during graduate school. One of my instructors, Paul C. Hellmund, was lecturing about a design framework and he mentioned that it was largely inspired by Carl Steinitz. He held up Steinitz’s book “A Framework for Geodesign: Changing Geography by Design,” which I quickly thereafter borrowed. After reading this book, my life was irrevocably changed and my entire learning experience at the Conway School was revolutionized. It is delightful to encounter academic work that is so impactful. It was a new and positive experience for me to be in a room with many people who were familiar with this work, and other geodesign work, and to learn how people around the world had applied and augmented geodesign frameworks.

I also attended talks on water, human resources in the context of Landscape Architecture firms, bioregionalism, public and private spaces, as well as a number of other subjects that slip my mind at the moment. I was pleasantly surprised to see hand-rendered designs at the conference. I love the technology available for design, and I do not shy away from it. However, I thoroughly admire the art of architectural drawing as well, and personally enjoy getting a break from my computer to draw and paint. It was useful to see how some firms are balancing their use of new technology with the traditional disciplines of the field.

For me, the sessions which included Woltz, and the talk on Geodesign were the highlights of my experience at the meeting. Not only did they touch on subjects that I deeply care about, the speakers were incredibly humble and willing to share their successes and failures in their efforts to work toward designs that genuinely make the world a more verdant and just place. These talks were extraordinarily informative, and I was humbled and inspired, taught valuable information, and filled with joy by these sessions.

In addition to the education sessions, there was the “Expo”, which had display booths for things like paving surfaces and lawn furniture. There was also playground equipment dappled through the Expo—if I had not been wearing a dress most days and if I could have found an adventurous friend to join me, I probably would have spent more time “testing” this equipment. I did test some exercise playground equipment, including one piece of equipment that seemed like it could more easily shred knee ligaments rather than help people shed weight—I gained a great deal of respect for the value of this Expo in helping individuals determine what should be included or not included in common spaces.

The American Society of Landscape Architects did an good job coordinating this interesting and valuable conference. I met a number of extraordinary people and obtained a much better sense of how others are making landscapes function for a greater good.

Author: Molly Burhans 
www.goodlandproject.org

Millennium Park, Chicago is one of the most iconic public spaces in America. Edward Uhlir of the Millenium Park foundation provided a narrative about the development of this space's design, sponsorship, and inmplementation. Wikipedia: by DDima