In this Webinar, chaired by AJ Architecture editor Rob Wilson, the speakers will be asked to present and talk about a recent project, considering the key issues in terms of material and specification and comparingthis with current work.This will befollowedby discussion of howthey are looking to change the way they specify and work with suppliers and manufacturers in the future from choosing samples to on-site coordination, with questions from the audience.

Speakers will beStephanie Thum-Bonanno, associate, Delvendahl Martin Architects; Ian OBrien, founding director, Ian OBrien Studio andAndrew Macpherson, architect, Moxon Architects. They will be talking about Delvendahl Martins KH House project;Ian OBrien Studios The New Steading extension in Perthshire andMoxon Architects on their new HQ for Aberdeenshire Council in Fraserburgh, amongst other projects.

Whether you are specifying architect or a supplier providing products and services to the architecture community, this webinar will include valuable case studies and insight to help you navigate this challenging period.

AJSpecification Live is a series of events run by the AJ, providing in-depthinformation into the design and specification ofbuilding components and construction methods. The event is free to attend register today to confirm your attendance!

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Join us for AJ Specification Live Webinar - Architects Journal

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered humans relationship with natural landscapes in ways that may be long-lasting. One of its most direct effects on peoples daily lives is reduced access to public parks.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued guidelines urging Americans to stay at home whenever feasible, and to avoid discretionary travel and gatherings of more than 10 people. Emergency declarations and stay-at-home orders vary from state to state, but many jurisdictions have closed state and county parks, as well as smaller parks, playgrounds, beaches and other outdoor destinations.

Theres good reason for these actions, especially in places where people have spurned social distancing rules. But particularly in urban environments, parks are important to human health and well-being.

As a landscape architect, I believe that Frederick Law Olmsted, the founder of our field, took the right approach. Olmsted served as general secretary of the United States Sanitary Commission during the Civil War, and his knowledge of contagious diseases informed his visions for his great North American urban parks, including Central Park in New York, Mount Royal Park in Montreal and Bostons Emerald Necklace park system. In my view, closing parks and public green spaces should be a temporary, last-resort measure for disease control, and reopening closed parks should be a priority as cities emerge from shutdowns.

Olmsted was born in 1822 but became a landscape architect rather late in his career, at age 43. His ideas evolved from a diverse and unique set of experiences.

From the start, Olmsted recognized the positive effect of nature, noting how urban trees provided a soothing and refreshing sanitary influence. His sanitary style of design offered more than mere decoration and ornamentation. Service must precede art was his cry.

Olmsted came of age in the mid-19th century, as the public health movement was rapidly developing in response to typhoid, cholera and typhus epidemics in European cities. As managing editor of Putnams Monthly in New York City, he regularly walked the crowded tenement streets of Lower Manhattan.

At the U.S. Sanitary Commission during the Civil War, Olmsted led efforts to improve sanitation in Union Army military camps and protect soldiers health. He initiated policies for selecting proper camp locations, installing drainage and disposing of waste, ventilating tents and preparing food, all designed to reduce disease. And in 1866 he witnessed adoption of New Yorks Metropolitan Health Bill, the first city law to control unhealthy housing conditions.

The insights Olmsted gained into connections between space, disease control and public health clearly influenced his landscape architectural career and the design of many urban park systems. For example, his design for the interlinked parks that forms Bostons Emerald Necklace foreshadowed the concept of green infrastructure.

This system centered on stagnant and deteriorated marshes that had became disconnected from the tidal flow of the Charles River as Boston grew. City residents were dumping trash and sewage in the marshes, creating fetid dumps that spread waterborne diseases. Olmsteds design reconnected these water systems to improve flow and flush out stagnant zones, while integrating a series of smaller parks along its trailways.

Olmsted also designed Americas first bike lane, which originated in Brooklyn, New Yorks Prospect Park. Of the tree-lined boulevards in his design for Central Park, Olmsted said, Air is disinfected by sunlight and foliage. Foliage also acts mechanically to purify the air by screening it.

In all of his urban parks, Olmsted sought to immerse visitors in restorative and therapeutic natural landscapes an experience he viewed as the most profound and effective antidote to the stress and ailments of urban life.

Today researchers are documenting many health benefits associated with being outside. Spending time in parks and green spaces clearly benefits urban dwellers psychological, emotional and overall well-being. It reduces stress, improves cognitive functioning and is associated with improved overall health.

In my view, government agencies should work to make these vital services as widely available as possible, especially during stressful periods like pandemic shutdowns. Certain types of public green spaces, such as botanical gardens, arboretums and wide trails, are well suited to maintaining social distancing rules. Other types where visitors may be likely to cluster, such as beaches and playgrounds, require stricter regulation.

There are many ways to make parks accessible with appropriate levels of control. One option is stationing agents at entry points to monitor and enforce capacity controls. Park managers can use timed entries and parking area restrictions to limit social crowding, as well as temperature screening and face mask provisions.

For example, in New Jersey, many public parks have reopened for walking, hiking, bicycling and fishing while keeping playgrounds, picnic and camping areas and restrooms closed. They also have limited parking capacity to 50% of capacity.

In Shanghai, China, the government recently reopened most parks and several major attractions, including the Chenshan Botanical Garden and the city zoo. Entry requires successful screening and online reservations, and visits are limited to a maximum of two hours.

Technologies such as GPS tracking and biometrics can set a precedent for future green space interaction. Residents could sign up for reserved time slots and log into apps that monitor their entry and distancing behavior. Some Americans might be put off by such technocentric means, but officials should be clear that making visitation easy and safe for all is the priority.

There will be challenges, especially when people flout social distancing rules. But urban parks and nature offer plenty of benefits that are especially important during a pandemic. I believe that finding ways to enjoy them now in a manner safe for all will be well worth the effort.

[You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help. Read The Conversations newsletter.]

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Parks matter more than ever during a time of sickness something Frederick Law Olmsted understood in the 19th century - The Conversation US

The Hudson River is tidal, gaining a mean elevation of only two feet for 150-plus miles inland from the Atlantic. It is flanked, almost without interruption, by bluffs and cliffs. Most communities along it have only a slender strip of land at river level. Historically, industries and infrastructure were sited below, with more salubrious parts of towns built up the slopes. Most industry is gone. Communities want to reinvent their riverfronts, which means contending with the tides and storms of a changing climate. Theyre getting help from Josh Cerra, ASLA, the director of graduate studies in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Cornell University. With collaboration from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservations Hudson River Estuary Program, he has been bringing community-based Climate-Adaptive Design studios to Hudson River towns.

The studio has obvious pedagogical value. Students learn site research and engagement skills, and to imbue design with climate science. Meanwhile, it lets Cerra pursue an interest in applied education and cross-disciplinary experiences. In developing their concepts, his studentsget consultantsother students, from Cornells Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering. To assess the studios benefits, Cerra is collaborating with a Cornell researcher who studies behaviors and conservation management. Their inquiries, he says, include how working with engineers or other technical partners may enhance learning innovation for landscape architects. And then there is the studios value to the towns, which are gifted with provocative visions for their futures.

This past fall, Cerras studio11 third-year MLA candidatesfocused on Ossining, on the east shore of the Hudson about 30 miles north of Manhattan, where the topography is especially steep. A rail line to the city traces the bottom of the bluff. Circulation on the waterfront and to the town center is constricted. Only two streets cross the railway, over narrow viaducts. On the river side, a single street parallels the tracks; its sides are often crammed with commuters cars, more like a parking lot than a right-of-way. Visual chaos is accentuated by a lot of vine-tangled, rusted chain-link fencing.

The land-use mix in the roughly mile-long study zone between the tracks and the river is typical. Vestiges of industry remain: a working oil transfer facility, a historic, if architecturally unremarkable, brick factory building. There are a couple of restaurants and private marinas and a wastewater treatment plant. Several features are not so typical of Hudson River towns, including the original compound of the famous Sing Sing state prison; its barely used since the facility expanded uphill, but still off-limits and taking up space. There is also the dock for a cross river ferry, one of only two now regularly operating north of New York City. And at the waters edge stands a 188-unit apartment house completed in 2016. About a third of a mile of shoreline is composed of two parks separated by a public boat club and launch. These spaces give a glorious view toward the steep wooded ridge two miles away on the opposite shore. One park, quite small but in good shape, was built along with the apartment building; the larger one, an acre, is uninspired in design, run-down, and at one point narrows to the width of a single footpath. During Hurricane Sandy, in 2012, the storm surge at Ossining was about nine feet, and nearly all of the current waterfront including the rail line was flooded. (Using the FEMA terminology for describing flood events, Sandy would be considered a 1 percent or 100-year storm.)

The semester in Ossining was the studios seventh iteration. Early on, selection of locations was fairly informal. In fall 2015, the first was conducted in Catskill, just across the river from Hudson, where I live. I went over to view the students final designs, met Cerra, and brought him back to see our waterfront. Like that of just about every town along this magnificent river, Hudsons waterfront is both daunting and enchanting. He was enchanted, but undaunted. I offered to organize local support, and Hudson became the next venue.

Nowadays, Cerra and the Estuary Program select towns not just for their waterfronts interesting challenges and potential but also for communities demonstrated progress toward wise planning. They solicit candidate venues with a detailed request for applications and a preapplication webinar. Once a locale is chosen, but before the students first visit, there are meetings with officials to identify key resource people and waterfront issues. Local participants now receive a 12-page guide describing the studio process, expectations for their involvement, and suggestions for leveraging the studio to stimulate planning momentum. After it ends, the Estuary Program follows up to keep the student propositions active in the local conversation, and publishes a lookbook for mass distribution of projected local climate-change impacts and the students ideas. Last year the state issued an RFP for a consultant to help one town take elements from the studio proposals and move them toward implementation, offering a $125,000 fee. So strong was the response that they ended up making two such awards for concepts devised during studios held in Kingston and Piermont.

(I use town here generically for anywhere the studio has focused, because New York legal terminology is confusing. Every place in the state is either a townthink townshipwhich can contain municipalities called villages, or else it is a city. Hudson is a city, but of fewer than 7,000 residents. The Village of Catskill, population 4,000, is in the Town of Catskill. The Village of Piermont, population 2,700, is in the Town of Orangetown. The City of Kingston has 24,000 people, and hosted the studio three times. Ossining is a town of 40,000 within which is the Village of Ossining, a dense core including two-thirds of that population, the commercial center, and the waterfront.)

The Town and Village of Ossining already had a strong record of initiative and collaboration on planning. Their joint letter of interest detailed current efforts. Those included, for the town, a new comprehensive plan with a sustainability and complete streets orientation, and a new master plan for the larger waterfront park, both in process. The village was moving forward on updating its comprehensive plan: inserting a mixed-use and mixed-income housing project on a moribund site just inland of the tracks; extending the ferry pier to accommodate larger boats; and facilitating development of rental housing on sites next to what became the study area. A planned link to a statewide bike and pedestrian trail network would connect the riverfront and the upland business district. There was excitementbarely contained by the official tone of the letterabout the imminent opening of the Sing Sing Prison Museum in two historic structures, the facilitys former powerhouse and an 1825 cellblock. These projects and others, still fluid, meant that the studio could expect informed local engagementand perhaps influence what got built.

Ossining was certainly aware of sea-level rise. Local regulations had been modified recently to address future flood events. The design of that apartment building was altered after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when a bulkhead built to prepare its site was overtopped by storm surge. Still, people in river towns may not fully visualize the anticipated severity of local impacts. They are, though, likely to be aware of local obstacles to change. Those might include political discord and lack of planning capacity, but also facts on the ground like valued historic sites or, ironically, recent investmentssuch as Ossinings new apartment building and the museum, both intended to animate the waterfront, or its wastewater plant, which recently had nearly $15 million in upgrades.

The students do become aware of such particulars. But they are involved in a learning exercise, using newly acquired design skills to dream up concepts. They are not constrained by politics and budgets, as they will be when in practice. So their concepts can seem abstract or radical to the point of impossibility to people in the towns. Even so, Cerra says, the proposals inspire conversation about what theyre interested in and what resources they can bring to bear to push some of these ideas forward. Thats building capacity, right there. Still, raising awareness of risks and offering possible responses is not the same as actually building something to adapt a threatened waterfront. We learned about setting up that expectation. You know these are not going to be constructible when we get to week 16.

At semesters end, the students presented their concepts publicly at the Ossining library. All depicted enhanced access to the waterfront, with some vision of resculpted shoreline and floodable parkland that would evolve with rising waters. Where the concepts became unnerving was in addressing those big facts on the ground: if, and when, to dismantle the apartment building; and how to defend, or relocate, the wastewater plant. The third rail, so to speak, of all challenges was the train. Some students suggested elevating it by six feet on a berm or by 16 or even 30 feet on a viaduct; tunneling it under the raised grade of a terraced park; or rerouting it altogether, inland alongside a highway. But the tracks hug the shore for 150 miles; this cannot be resolved within one community, and the cost of any move is unimaginable. The boldest, perhaps most realistic proposal was to abandon rail for a system of ferriesmade feasible, the student designer pointed out, because with warming the river wont freeze over.

Cerras students had presented similarly in Hudson in 2016, attracting considerable interest. Four years laterblame political discord? lack of planning capacity?the waterfront remains untouched, the studio a dim memory. Kingston, by contrast, has a planning department, a sustainability coordinator, and an active Conservation Advisory Council of citizen volunteers. Last October the city organized Weaving the Waterfront, a walking, biking, and boating tour of 10 current recreation and resilience projects. They included the studio proposal funded for further development, which would create a living shoreline of tidal wetland and beach. While Piermont has the smallest population of the studio towns, it has outsized capacity: the highest average household incomenearly three times that of Catskill or Hudsonand a Waterfront Resiliency Commission established following Hurricane Sandy (whose members include the Columbia University climate-change expert Klaus Jacob). Funding further development of a studio concept there seems an equally good investment.

Graham Harlan Smith, now an assistant landscape architect at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, was a student in Cerras Hudson studio. A lot of academic work, you can get off into fantasyland. It was grounding, he recalls of the public engagement aspect of the studio. You see that there are parameters you dont necessarily get from an academic settinglike, anything thats too radical might be good for visioning but might not get much mobility. Practicalities about more than physical constructability, but What can a social unit achieve? Smith, an Ossining native, attended all the public events of the recent studio there. What struck me was how diverse the students projects were. Theres utility for the town with that, a variety of ideas to explore. But its a gnarly waterfront. Theres a lot going on down there that is beyond the power of a local municipality.

As the Ossining studio concluded, the village was interviewing to hire a professional planner, and the urgency of shoreline adaptation was broadly agreed upon. We have a lot of issues to contend with as the Hudson starts to rise, the Town Supervisor Dana Levenberg told the students that day at the library. Thank you for helping us understand how to take an active role in planning. Of course, this is just a start.

Contributing Editor Jonathan Lerner sloshed around the City of Hudsons waterfront when it, and the railroad tracks, were underwater.

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THE RIVER AND THE REAL WORLD - Landscape Architecture Magazine

A new high-rise in the works for Uptown is the biggest Dallas development announced this year.

The 27-story office and retail tower will sit on a prime corner on McKinney Avenue, Uptowns Main Street, making it the tallest building on McKinney Avenue.

Trammell Crow Co. plans to build the 2401 McKinney tower on the block between Maple Avenue and Fairmount Street.

The more than 2-acre site next to the Crescent is occupied by Trulucks restaurant and Golds Gym.

Its in the heart of Uptown, Trammell Crow senior managing director and principal Scott Krikorian said. Its a great opportunity for us to transform this underutilized site with a world-class office development with a significant amount of street retail.

Trulucks will be the anchor retail tenant for the project.

They had a 20-year lease, Krikorian said. The key was to work out a deal with them to provide for a new restaurant in the building.

Crow Co. has been working on the site for years.

We assembled those two tracts of land with Golds and Trulucks starting in 2016," Krikorian said.

Plans for the building call for 670,000 square feet of offices, 15,000 square feet of retail and underground parking.

Crow Co. selected Connecticut-based architect Pickard Chilton to design the project, and Dallas HKS will be the architect of record.

In January, we did a design competition, Krikorian said. We had five world-class architects come in and give their vision for the site.

Landscape architect James Burnett will also work on the 2401 McKinney project.

Krikorian said Crow Co. wants the new tower to be worthy of a neighborhood that already has high-profile buildings by architects Philip Johnson, Robert A.M. Stern and Csar Pelli.

The buildings are all here along McKinney, from the Crescent to the Ritz-Carlton go McKinney and Olive incredible architecture, he said. We wanted to do something that would be different but also in the same genre of great architecture.

The 2401 McKinney tower will have landscaped plaza areas on the street and terraces on cantilevered sections of the buildings floors.

Weve tried to maximize the open space and push back from the surrounding buildings, Krikorian said. We set the building back along Maple so that we could create a connection of our plaza that aligns with the Crescents motor court.

Crow Co. plans to start construction on the tower early next year with an opening in mid-2023. The developer is seeking zoning changes to allow for greater height and density for the project.

The developer is pushing ahead with this new project as leasing wraps up on Crow Co.s 20-story PwC Tower in the Park District complex at Pearl Street and the Woodall Rodgers Freeway. The 497,000-square-foot high-rise is 94% leased. Crow Co. recently signed a deal with Morgan Stanley for a block of office space in the building.

All of the recent office building additions to the Uptown area have leased ahead of schedule and at higher than anticipated rental rates.

Obviously the market has been very tight in Uptown in this part area, Krikorian said. Who knows what happen when you come out of COVID-19 well see.

But I do believe in this location, and what we are taking about building is a generational asset.

He said the developer has already identified a couple of potential anchor office tenants.

Crow Co.s McKinney Avenue tower is one of the few major Dallas developments unveiled during the pandemic.

Crescent Real Estate announced plans last month for a more than 30-floor luxury residential tower on Maple Avenue between the Stoneleigh Hotel and the Crescent.

Other office projects previously announced for the Uptown area include a 27-story tower planned by Granite Properties at Maple and Cedar Springs Road.

Stream Realty is planning to build a 12-story office at the Quadrangle. Ryan Cos. is planning an 18-story office tower on Cedar Springs at Routh Street. Dallas developer KDC is teaming up with investor Miyama USA Texas to build a 30-story office tower overlooking Klyde Warren Park at Harwood Street.

And developer Harwood International is planning a more than 40-story office tower on the edge of Victory Park near Harry Hines Boulevard.

Only two offices are under construction north of downtown: Hillwoods 15-story Victory Commons in Victory Park and Kaizen Development Partners 25-story building going up at Akard and Olive streets.

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New McKinney Avenue tower will rise from block occupied by Truluck's, Gold's Gym in Uptown - The Dallas Morning News

In October of 1862, with the country still reeling from the Second Battle of Bull Run and the Battle of Antietam, Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect and a chronicler of the Southern slave economy, published a pamphlet that called for a nationwide effort to assemble provisions to care for sick and wounded soldiers. The recent battles East and West have completely exhausted the reserved stock, he wrote, and it is found now not only impracticable to accumulate supplies, but impossible to meet even urgent demands daily made by hospitals within sight of the very dome of the Capitol. His plea has a familiar ring today, as does the title of the publication, What They Have to Do Who Stay at Home.

Olmsted is most beloved for his work on New York Citys Central Park and Prospect Park, which he designed and built with Calvert Vaux before and after, respectively, the War Between the States. In recent weeks, New Yorkers have ventured out for strolls and sits among the blossoming landscapes that Olmsted wrought from unscenic acreage a century and a half ago. But Olmsteds service to the country during the Civil War is what makes him especially relevant just now. In 1861, Olmsted gave up oversight of Central Park to run the newly created and privately funded U.S. Sanitary Commission, a predecessor to the American Red Cross. The Civil War was a public-health emergencymore soldiers died of disease than of battlefield wounds, owing partly to the miserable condition of the Armys medical apparatus. Olmsted oversaw the creation and operation of medical boats and field hospitals, and set up new triage and quarantine procedures for infectious patients. The emergency tent hospital in Central Park and the U.S.N.S. Comfort parked on the Hudson were probably the Olmsted-iest things weve seen in a while.

The United States had a relatively small standing army at the start of the Civil War, one that was further divided, in two, by secession. Volunteer regiments were raised and equipped in an enthusiastic but ad-hoc manner, and, when the first test of the new Union forces came in July of 1861, at Bull Run, the result was a disorganized melee. Olmsted, wanting to document and cure the deadly lack of discipline, morale, and medical preparation that he and his front-line responders had witnessed, deployed a team of Sanitary Commission inspectors to conduct a meticulous seventy-five-question survey of the soldiers. Armed with those insights, Olmsted compiled a Report on the Demoralization of the Volunteers, a document the commissions board scuttled for fear that it would have hurt recruiting efforts. The Sanitary Commission was generally a thorn in the side of the federal government, the leaders of which did not immediately appreciate the meddling of wealthy New York lites, or the implication that the war was not under control. Lincoln himself referred to it as a fifth wheel.

So, that October, Olmsted went straight to the people, specifically to the Loyal Women of America, with a direct plea for badly needed supplies for the winter, asking that every woman in the country knit or buy a pair of woollen stockings. Existing sewing societies and reading clubs were prevailed upon to gather blankets, drawers, splints, and pillows to support wounded limbs. Seeing morale as key to health, Olmsted called for jelly, booze, and backgammon boards. Books, for desultory reading and magazines especially if illustrated will be useful, he wrote. (Side note for desultory readers: the Internet Archives National Emergency Library currently offers two very worthwhile biographies of Olmsted: Witold Rybczynskis A Clearing in the Distance and Lee Halls Olmsteds America.)

Olmsteds appeal was printed in newspapers across America, and carried a pithy endorsement from President Abraham Lincoln, who said, lukewarmly, that there is no agency through which voluntary offerings of patriotism can be more effectively made. The White House itself wasnt much help, as Olmsted pointed out a few paragraphs later: For the means of administering to the needs of the sick and wounded, the Commission, he wrote, receives not one dollar from Government.

The welfare of the casualties would be up to the people and to the states, many of which launched their own robust supply drives aimed at equipping native sons. This deeply frustrated Olmsted, who complained, a year later, What real patriot can wish or be willing, even, to have soldiers from his State, or from his town, or his kindred, enjoying extra comforts and luxuries, while wounded men by their side, or on the distant battle-field, are, perhaps, in actual stress of life for want of the very supplies which a better distribution would secure to them? Olmsted was a big fan of democracy doing big things for everyone, including future generations. Whether scenic beauty or war, hospital or park, Olmsted believed that we were all in this together, like it or not. Incompetence wouldnt do. Short-term thinking wouldnt do. It seemed to Olmsted that the entire point of the war was for the states to come together as a country. In union is strength. In disunion is weakness and waste. Can we not, in this trial of our nation, learn to wholly lay aside that poor disguise of narrowness of purpose and self-conceit, which takes the name of local interest and public spirit, but whose fruit is manifest in secession? he wrote.

He was out with the Army as often as he was in Washingtona Fauci and a front-line worker. After the Battle of Seven Pines, in June, 1862, Katharine Prescott Wormeley, one of the Sanitary Commissions top nurses, wrote a letter to her mother, saying, Mr. Olmsted is everything,wise, authoritative, untiring; but he must break down. . . . To think or speak of the things we see would be fatal. No one must come here who cannot put away all feeling. Do all you can, and be a machine,thats the way to act; the only way. Closing the letter, she noted that she was sitting on the floor with Olmsted, resting, with a pitcher of lemonade between them.

At the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day of the Civil War, some twenty-three thousand Americansfrom the North and Southwere killed, wounded, or missing. The Sanitary Commission agents arrived three days after the battle, and, according to Olmsted, within a week the commission had delivered to the hospitals ten thousand shirts and drawers, five hundred bottles of stimulantsboozetwo thousand sponges, several tons of soup, and other nice articles of nutriment.

That list suggests the current contents of a restaurant called Olmsted, on Vanderbilt Avenue in Brooklyn, which this magazine called an urban sanctuary back in 2016. Its truly one now. The chef, Greg Baxtrom, and his co-owner, Max Katzenberg, had to furlough their staff after the stay-at-home order, but decided to turn their kitchen into a food bank for neighborhood restaurant workers. Soon they started feeding hospital workers, too, and then whoever needed a meal. And now, having received donations of baby formula, diapers, bras, and toothbrushes, Baxtrom is giving away more than food. Were basically a bodega now, he said by phone the other day, in the midst of opening boxes. He was converting the restaurants private dining room into the Olmsted Trading Post, selling bread, organic vegetables, bottled cocktails, and wine, to help fund their food-bank efforts and rehire some of his furloughed employees. To ward off demoralization, flower boxes and a rainbow pennant banner frame the front window, on which the Trading Post logo is nicely painted, as though the pop-up may stay for a while.

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Frederick Law Olmsteds War on Disease and Disunity - The New Yorker

The new World War I Memorial replaces Pershing Park. Courtesy GWWO Architects.

Pershing Park, a secluded pocket near the White House, is being converted into a national World War I memorial. At the behest of its promoters, the memorial removes the active spaces for people that made the park popular, while keeping secondary elements that close off the park from the city and keep it desolate.

The previous park was built around features meant to encourage social activity before budget cuts and poor management left it in disuse. Already isolated by berms meant to shield it from Pennsylvania Avenue on the south, it became an underused hole in the urban fabric.

The $46 million memorial conversion only slightly alters the physical spaces, but completely reverses the use of the park. Gone are its two core active uses, the pool that doubled as an ice rink and concession stand. A sculpture wall, quotations, and other educational elements take their place.

The new memorial. Image from National Captital Planning Commission (NCPC).

This set of isolated tweaks looks nothing like the first visions for the memorial, unveiled in 2015. In entries to a design competition, designers proposed razing the entire park and building anew. However, the memorials backers rushed to bypass the politics of its design. In doing so, they threw their designers into a grinding bureaucratic process that, at the end of the day, was not able to save what made the park an attraction.

Defenders of the existing park used historic preservation to save the physical landscape, and won, in a way. But that forced officials to only balance important physical features, with war commemoration. Any consideration of creating a useful, lively urban space was completely squeezed out.

All of the conference-room politicking and meetings couldnt make up for the shambolic competition and the anti-urban ambitions of its organizers. Worse, we lost the opportunity to adapt the park to changing conditions, and rethink the car-centered assumptions that led to its biggest deficiencies.

Ultimately, the new design illustrates how, when it comes to urban spaces, process is not a substitute for the right goals.

Pershing Park started with a good design but declined due to poor operation

Pershing Park was built in 1981 by the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation (PADC), an organization set up to revitalize Pennsylvania Avenue as a monumental but still vibrant live-work area. The Market Square complex, containing apartments, offices, retail, and the Naval Memorial, embodies the balance of urban uses the PADC sought.

The original park design by M. Paul Friedberg, whose firm also designed Yards Park, consisted of three elements: a sunken pool that could convert to an ice skating rink, a small memorial to General Pershing, and a glazed concession stand.

A diagram of the three elements of existing park design. Images from NCPC.

The pool was separated from the noise of 14th, 15th, and E Streets by imposing berms topped by walkways and benches. The park was more open to the northeast, towards the hotels and theaters north of Freedom Plaza.

Why the berms? Remember that in 1979, that part of Pennsylvania Avenue was busy. E Street south of the White House was open to traffic as a direct route to I-66. At the same time, the Willard Hotel and theater and restaurants on the north side of Freedom Plaza were big draws so the designers logically opened the park to the busier street.

Pershing Park in front of the Willard Hotel. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Carol M. Highsmith. Ice rink licensed under Creative Commons.

The park and its ice rink were popular into the 1990s, when competition from spaces like the National Gallery Sculpture Garden ice rink drew people away and Congress disbanded the PADC. Maintenance of the park was turned over to the National Park Service (NPS).

Pershing Park. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Carol M. Highsmith. Image licensed under Creative Commons.

That agencys chronic budget problems, combined with poor oversight of the parks notorious operator, Guest Services, Inc., led to a slow decline until 2012, when neither the fountain, concession stand, nor ice rink worked.

The WWI memorial bypasses regular process and gets mired in controversy

At the same time, a group trying to build a National World War I Memorial was blocked from appropriating DCs World War I Memorial, south of the Reflecting Pool, for national purposes. With some encouragement from NPS and other groups, memorial promoters got Congress to unilaterally pick Pershing Park in the 2015 military budget.

This authorization from Congress to enhance the existing site let them skip the lengthy site selection process most memorials go through, meaning that if nothing went wrong, they could break ground in November 2017. However, this jump meant they also skipped due diligence about other planning objectives like livability or historic preservation, not to mention the politics of DCs limited space.

As a result, planners conducted the open-ended historic preservation analysis at the same time as the memorial was soliciting ideas through a design competition. The rules given to entrants and judges are critical for getting good results. The World War I Memorials design guidebook discouraged active uses and food sales while downplaying the significance of the existing landscape. Its no surprise that so many submissions were extravagant knockdown schemes.

The Honor proposed placing a reflective Brodie helmet on a plateau above the street. Image by WWI Centennial Commission.

The problems with this became apparent quickly as planners issued warnings, and groups like the Cultural Landscape Foundation rallied to defend the existing park. Then one of the competition judges, the respected landscape architect Laurie Olin, resigned in protest over the level of demolition. By 2016, finalists already had to significantly rework their designs.

Joe Weishaar, Sabin Howard, and GWWOs winning design "The Weight of Sacrifice" would have demolished most of the park.

Skipping site selection clearly became a mistake in July 2016, when the Historic Preservation Office determined that Friedbergs design was indeed historically significant. The Park Service and the various design review agencies were now obligated to follow strict rules in the Section 106 process, while the existing parks defenders, like the Cultural Landscape Foundation and the Association of Oldest Inhabitants of Washington, gained the upper hand.

By Fall 2016, the alterations were limited to the core of the park. Image from National Park Service.

The memorial organizers shortcut had sent their designers to a bureaucratic Donner Pass, where three years of long meetings stripped the design to the bare bones of what the congressional mandate of enhancement could justify in the face of preservation law.

By June 2017, the Section 106 process had led to the preservation of the fountain.Image fromNational Park Service.

In the end, the park will reopen by the beginning of next year, but the bronze sculptural centerpiece will not be completed until 2024.

In the final design, approved in October 2019, the memorial wall is freestanding.Image fromNCPC.

The park keeps the forms, but changes the function

In the new design, the basic layout remains but the use is fundamentally altered. A long wall of sculpture and a stone plaza now occupy most of the pool. A large stone fountain, which doubled as a zamboni shed, is gone. In its place, water features on the sculpture wall pick up the slack. Likewise, the concession stand is gone, replaced with an overlook outlining the history of the war.

The preservation process left the walls and statues of the Pershing Memorial itself largely intact, with minor adjustments.

The kiosk is replaced with a belvedere with history exhibits.Image fromNCPC.

In the remaining areas of the park, the renovation adds quotations, bronze QR codes that cue up online exhibits, new lighting, and a number of accessibility improvements.

However, the large berms that separate the park from passersby remain on three sides. Rather than a balance of activity, reflection, and commemoration like an urban Neapolitan the memorial is three scoops of the same flavor, buried in the same tough shell. Its a departure from the original vision.

Historic elements got protection; an active park lost out

Framing the impacts on the park around narrow federal preservation rules left the active uses only lightly protected. While some people on the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts lamented the loss, they had little leverage. The dialogue was structured as one of preserving the historic fabric versus commemoration. It was accepted that the social function could go.

In this sense, I would consider the new memorial an adaptive re-use, but not one the park needed. Remember, the berms that seemed to close off the park from the city existed to shield traffic coming to and from I-66. But that traffic isnt there anymore, and we shouldnt be planning Pennsylvania Avenue Americas Main Street as a noisy, polluted traffic sewer anyway.

The memorial park will still be pulled back from the street.Image fromNCPC.

Wouldnt a design that made those edges more inviting but preserved the core functions be better from both urbanism and preservation perspectives? We will never know, because the World War I Memorials organizers rushed to squeeze their dour vision onto a once-thriving park. The preservation process saved its stones, but institutional inertia left one of the few lively places on Pennsylvania Avenue to be embalmed.

Neil Flanagan grew up in Ward 3 before graduating from the Yale School of Architecture. He is pursuing an architecture license. He really likes walking around and looking at stuff.

Originally posted here:
As downtown DC's Pershing Park becomes a World War I memorial, process preserves a landscape but doesn't save the park for people - Greater Greater...

This article was first published on July 31, 2018. Its interesting to look back at the regions history, so we are sharing it again.

It may be a place where street musicians, unsung poets, and self-styled orators perform for transient audiences. Artists will come with their easels and paints. The pigeons will come and people will come and feed the pigeons. Lovers will come. Fathers will come with children. Intellectuals will come with their notebooks.

Thats how planners described the vision for Freedom Plaza, the square along Pennsylvania Avenue NW between 13th and 14th Streets, in a document unearthed by DC Council public information officer and @councilofdc tweeter Josh Gibson. Instead, its anything but.

Gibson said, None of this came true. Not even the pigeons. Michael Neibauer described it in the Washington Business Journal as an imposing concrete expanse with little to offer the public.

One of the projects designers, architect Denise Scott Brown, agrees. In a phone interview, she described the original design as a lovely success, but said, I see the execution as a failure.

What happened? To understand this, we must start with what the site was originally planned for, which was something much different.

An aerial view of Freedom Plaza from the Old Post Office Pavilion, dated June 1985. Image by The Commission of Fine Arts used with permission.

It started with the goal to rejuvenate Pennsylvania Avenue

Pennsylvania Avenue is more than just the address of the White House. Its a national symbol, reflecting the ceremonial and commercial center of the District. After World War II, though, economic decline caused the avenue to deteriorate to the point that it needed presidential intervention.

At the request of President John F. Kennedy, an organization known as the Presidents Council on Pennsylvania Avenue was formed in 1963 with the goal to improve the avenue, especially its appearance. The council was made up of architects, urban planners and other experts. A year later, the groups first report proposed several changes with street furniture, raised terraces for parade viewing, broad setbacks, and a shared cornice line.

An aerial photo taken of Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Image by The Commission of Fine Arts used with permission.

The centerpiece of this vision: National Square, between 14th and 15th Streets (where Pershing Park is now), with a 150-foot-wide fountain at the center, a memorial to General John Pershing to the south and 600 parking spaces underneath.

An illustration of National Square. Image by The Commission of Fine Arts used with permission.

The report voiced high hopes for this planned project. It said the square would symbolize and serve as a reception area for White House visitors. According to Thomas Luebkes publication, Civic Art: A Ceremonial History of the US, the square was modeled after The Place de la Concorde in Paris.

These plans changed over time with four alternative schemes brought to the federal Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) in January 1966. While the CFA approved a reduced version with the fountain moved to the west, the organization said that the plan still contains numerous unsolved problems, including the failure to clearly define the avenues terminus.

A rendering of National Square. Image by The Commission of Fine Arts used with permission.

National Square faded once Congress created a temporary federal agency, known as the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation (PADC), which produced a comprehensive plan in 1974 after working with the CFA and other agencies.

A rendering of National Square (left), and arendering of how National Square would have changed the look of Pennsylvania Avenue NW (right). Image by The Commission of Fine Arts used with permission.

Congress approved the plan a year later for the development of five public open spaces, the first of which would be Pershing Park and an adjacent square, Western Plaza, now Freedom Plaza.

Miniature White House and Capitol and 100-foot pylons

By March of 1978, Western Plaza was planned to be a large, rectangular plaza incised with Pierre Charles LEnfants map of DC, lined by low landscaping with two 100-foot-tall marble pylons framing the Treasury Building. Eventually, the design shifted with the terrace raised and with flagpoles, a pool of water, and statue of Casimir Pulaski added.

A model of Robert Venturis Western Plaza with pylons, dated 1978. Image by The Commission of Fine Arts used with permission.

Also added were miniature, three-dimensional marble models of the White House and US Capitol, but these would soon prove the most problematic.

In September of that year, the DC government officially objected to Western Plazas design. The Districts Director of Planning, Ben Gilbert, described the pylons as an unnecessary complicating factor and the miniature buildings and other sculpture pieces not appropriate for this location. Not too long after, DC Mayor Marion Barry also rejected the design, and The American Society of Landscape Architects asked for a more landscape-oriented scheme.

In 1979, the CFA had the incised LEnfant plan pulled closer to the center, the paved area in front of the John A. Wilson District Building enlarged, large urns for seasonal flower displays added, and the pylons replaced by flagpoles.

When mock-ups of the miniature models of the White House and US Capitol were temporarily installed, Scott Brown said, Immediately, tourists came there with their kids, put them in front of the buildings and took photographs of them with the big buildings in the background, which was exactly the thing that we wanted them to do.

A model of the USCapitol miniature planned for Western Plaza. Image by The Commission of Fine Arts used with permission.

Despite the interaction with the mock-ups, Scott Brown said that then-Architect of the Capitol George White looked at them very carefully, both up close and then back 150 feet or so. He came back and he said, I dont know what to say. Close up, I love them, and far away, I dont like them.

It wasnt until all vertical elements were removed that the CFA approved the design in September 1979. In 1980, Western Plaza was complete.

Eight years later, it was renamed Freedom Plaza in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Into the 1990s, the space was further modified with a fountain incorporated into the plazas pool.

Freedom Plazas present and future

The final product, according to Scott Brown, is It had no shade. It didnt have much interest. It had no scale.

It also has no single entity to watch over its wear and tear. The PADC dissolved in 1996. There was a bill in September 2014 by DC Councilmember Jack Evans to create a District Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation to ensure suitable development, maintenance and use of the vital area of local, as well as federal, importance, but it never passed.

Occupy protesters at Freedom Plaza in 2011 by Ted Eytan licensed under Creative Commons.

One group of people do use Freedom Plaza regularly: skateboarders. The open hardscape and railings of Freedom Plaza make an excellent and popular skate park, though skating there is not actually allowed and Park Police regularly chase skaters from the park.

Scott Brown said, They came from all over the country to wreck our plaza, which they nearly did, and all those inscriptions on the floor and everything else, thats ruined by roller skating. Others, like GGWash contributor Dan Reed, point out that designing public spaces to welcome skaters can reinvigorate public spaces.

Over the years, Freedom Plaza has at times had more activity than just skateboarders. In October 2011, scores of protesters occupied Freedom Plaza, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York, and its a favorite spot for local activists to hold rallies.

2015 Protect Trans Women Day of Action by Ted Eytan licensed under Creative Commons.

There have also been much lighter, less politically charged events, including an outdoor movie screening in June 2017 and a pole vaulting competition that same month.

Events like these have caused others like Birnbaum to see the merits of the emptiness. I think whats great about the space is the fact that its open, and it can be programmed, he said. You have to think about it also in relation to when Pershing Park was created Imagine that you have the option that you want to be in dappled light in a more intimate space in an elevation that is sort of screened from the cars, you go and you have your lunch on the waters edge at Pershing Park. If you want to be in the middle of the city and have that powerful visual connection to the Capitol and feel the bustling traffic around you, then youre in Freedom Plaza.

Pole vaulting on Freedom Plaza by Joe Flood licensed under Creative Commons.

In 2016, eighth-graders at Two Rivers Public Charter School to proposed new uses for the public space. Amanda Kolson Hurley of Washington City Paper reported that students said the space was boring, cold, gray, and it doesnt know what it wants to be. After reimagining the space or designing public art for the plaza, the students presented their designs to panels of experts in architecture and urban planning.

The designs, Hurley wrote, included using lighting to set off the quotes in the fountain, adding a stage to the east for large events, moving the fountain to the middle, adding a small cafe and public bathroom, and installing two rows of large sculptures representing the different cultures of the world. Surprisingly, one of the students also proposed adding large models of the White House and US Capitol in the plaza, with a unique detail that visitors could write on them or drop postcards into them.

As these students did, we must also rethink unsuccessful public spaces. While fallen in stature, Freedom Plaza is still capable of becoming a positive presence in the city. The DC Councils Gibson said in an email, My main gripe is that the fountain hasnt worked in forever. Just having that work would make a bit of a difference, make sitting in the shade-less baking sun a bit more tolerable, etc.

Whether Freedom Plaza can and will regularly bring together street musicians, unsung poets, self-styled orators, artists, pigeons, lovers, fathers (and mothers), and intellectuals, still remains to be seen.

Michelle Goldchain is a Washington, DC-based journalist, photographer, podcaster, YouTuber, and visual artist. Her bylines have been seen in Washington City Paper, DCist, Curbed, Eater DC, Racked, Recode, Vox, and Whurk Magazine. She is the founder of the newsletter and podcast, called Capital Women, which is focused on women in DC. She is also the co-creator of the YouTube show, Artsplained.

Continued here:
How the execution of Pennsylvania Avenue's Freedom Plaza failed - Greater Greater Washington

VANCOUVER -- Pictures of people flocking to parks and beaches during the COVID-19 crisis have caused waves of frustration on social media, but sometimes there's more to seemingly outrageous crowd photos than meets the eye.

That's the point Vancouver landscape architect Jeff Cutler set out to prove late Sunday afternoon when he headed down to Kitsilano Beach with a number of different camera lenses and a drone.

"There can be a lot of people on the beach and it can look quite crowded," said Cutler. "It's not until you get into the air and look down that you can really start to get a true picture of how people are behaving."

Cutler took pictures of the beach using a 35 mm lens, a 70 mm lens and a 200 mm telephoto lens the latter capable of compressing a scene and making faraway objects appear closer than they are and compared the results.

The shorter the lens, Cutler noted, the more spaced out beachgoers looked.

"A 35 mm is closer to the human eye, and that's a much wider angle view. When you look at that, you can start to see spaces between people a little bit more," he explained.

But the starkest contrast came when Cutler captured the beach from the skies using his drone. The image shows people by and large maintaining a safe physical distance.

Of course, not everyone was following the rules diligently. While British Columbians were supposed wait until the Victoria Day weekend to begin increasing their social interactions and meeting a select few friends or extended family members for physically distanced picnics, there were some large groups congregating in Vancouver on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The park board said rangers handed out nearly 2,000 warnings to people who weren't keeping their distance over the weekend, which led officials to reverse their decision to reopen parking lots.

But provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said she believes most people were following her recommendations.

"The vast majority of people are doing the right thing and taking this to heart, and I thank them because that's how we're going to get through this," Henry said during her daily virus briefing on Monday.

"I think we can sometimes get caught up with the small minority of people who are maybe having too much fun and are disturbing those of us who are trying to keep a little bit separate."

California decided to close some of its beaches after images surfaced showing huge crowds of people out enjoying the sunshine. Cutler, who designs parks and other public spaces for a living at space2place, said part of the reason he shared his images was to avoid an outcome like that in B.C.

"It's of particular interest to me, and I've just watched during the pandemic how valuable public spaces are," he said. "If they were closed I think that would be really difficult on people."

Original post:
Just how crowded are B.C. beaches? Pictures highlight how perspectives can mislead - CTV News

Future phases could include a hotel and up to 100,000 sq ft of offices

18 May 2020, 16:24Dan Whelan

Scarborough International Properties has submitted an application to Salford City Council for 189 new homes, as the latest phase of the 25-acre Middlewood Locks development.

The Middlewood Locks residential project close to Salford Central station is being delivered by a joint venture between Scarborough, China-based Hualing Group and Metro Holdings, a property development and investment group based in Singapore.

The schemes third phase, designed by Whittam Cox Architects, is to provide 176 one- to three-bedroom apartments in two blocks. The blocks are to reach 10 storeys and 12 storeys respectively and are situated on the northern side of the Manchester Burt and Bolton canal, opposite the 275-home first phase of the scheme.

There would be 13 canalside two- to four-bedroom townhouses.

The scheme will feature more than 2,000 residential units once complete

The project will also feature 5,150 sq ft of ground floor commercial and retail accommodation, and an additional 5,000 sq ft of offices.

Subject to planning approval, work will start in early 2021 with completion expected in the summer 2023, according to Scarborough, whose chairman is Kevin McCabe.

The landscape architect for the scheme is Planit-IE and the lead contractor is expected to be BCEGI, which delivered the first two phases.

The second phase, comprising four buildings of up to 10 storeys in height and a total of 546 apartments, topped out in February and is set to complete in 2021.

Phases one and two were bought by a joint venture between Delancey Oxford Residential, fund manager APG and developer Qatari Diar for 180m in early 2019. The apartments are being rented under the ventures Get Living brand.

Once complete, Middlewood Locks will provide a total of 2,215 new homes and 900,000 sq ft of commercial space, including offices, hotel, shops, restaurants, a convenience store and gym.

Overall, the site has a gross development value of more than 700m, according to the developers.

Paul Kelly, development director of Scarborough, said:This is the next step in creating a reality of our vision forMiddlewoodLocks.

This development is providing much needed homes and will provide quality office space capable of attracting major organisations alongside further retail and leisure space all in an environment that recognises that people come first.

Continued here:
Plans in for third phase of Middlewood Locks - Place North West

The existing car park would be reconfigured to offer more levels

18 May 2020, 10:06

An outline application to increase spaces at a ground floor car park at Kelvin Close to 718, from 474 spaces, by building a multistorey facility has been submitted to Warrington Council.

The project seeks to reconfigure the existing park by constructing a new, five-storey car park.

The applicant for the scheme is North West Portfolio, a special purpose vehicle owned by developer Emerson Group.

The group, which owns two office buildings off Kelvin Close one partially let and one vacant is taking advantage of the current low occupancy to build the car park in preparation for when the buildings become fully let, according to the planning documents prepared by Emerson Group.

The applicant is concerned that, should the buildings become fully occupied, there would be insufficient parking provision.

The first building, partly occupied by Carphone Warehouse, spans 42,500 sq ft while the vacant building two is 50,000 sq ft.

It will be extremely difficult to attract new tenants to these buildings without appropriate additional parking provision, the application documents state.

At full occupancy, these buildings can accommodate a very significant number of employees.

Orbit Developments, part of Emerson Group, is the agent for the offices and Appletons is the landscape architect for the scheme.

Read the rest here:
Car park expansion mooted for Birchwood offices - Place North West