LITTLE ROCK A landscape architect and an auto refinish technician who performs shows as Elvis Presley are challenging Arkansas incumbent land commissioner.

Republican John Thurston, 41, of Little Rock has served as state land commissioner since 2011. He was formerly employed as a staff member at Agape Church in Little Rock and a certified religious assistant in the Arkansas prison system. He and his wife, Joanna, have five children.

Democrat Mark Robertson, 60, of Little Rock is the head of MESA Landscape Architects. A landscape architect and land planner, he previously worked as a surveyor for the U.S. Forest Service and in the construction industry. He and his wife, Le Ann, have one child.

Libertarian Elvis D. Presley, 48, of Star City is an auto refinish technician at Camps Custom Paint and an entertainer who performs shows as Elvis Presley. He legally changed his name in 2006. He ran for governor as a Libertarian in 2010. He and his wife, Valerie, have five children.

Candidates were asked three questions and allowed up to 150 words for each answer. Each responded via email.

What in your background qualifies you to be land commissioner?

Presley: I will answer your question with a question. Are there any qualifications for the office? I think if a person can balance a checkbook, then he or she could be qualified in a sense. I do believe that honesty is a start.

Robertson: I have over 35 years of experience working with Arkansas lands and land-based issues across Arkansas as well as globally. I have a real understanding of the communities within our state, and how our land can be used as an asset to help communities, and public education, thrive. As a citizen advocate Ive worked with the state Legislature on issues with significant importance to our local communities, bringing both sides of the aisle together to get things done for Arkansas. This experience will be invaluable in establishing policy to benefit Arkansas.

Thurston: I am the current land commissioner and have served since 2011 with a proven record of honesty, integrity and transparency. I set out four years ago to make this office a leader of ethics and transparency and I have done just that. Aside from my duties in the office I also serve as president of the Western States Land Commissioners Association and have received support from the Arkansas Realtors Political Action Committee.

If you are elected or re-elected, what plans to do you have for the office?

Continued here:
Q&A: Democrat, Libertarian challenge land commissioner

Landscape Architect Carolyn Ramsbottom has graduated from Lincoln University but a special piece of design work she did while studying there two years ago will be coming to fruition on Labour Day.

While at the School Of Landscape Architecture (SoLA) in 2012 she and fellow student Gerrard Thomson won a competition to design reflective, cultural-based gardens for the Places of Tranquillity project.

These will being publicly unveiled next week at 3pm by project partners Lincoln University, Healthy Christchurch and Greening the Rubble. It has taken time to find suitable land, but they have finally been built on the corner of Manchester Street and Cambridge Terrace.

Both former students have gone on to careers as landscape architects but the design was their first public project and they are excited to see it come to reality.

Ms Ramsbottoms garden has a South East Asia theme and she has been involved in the layout right down to digging holes and putting in the plants.

"It had to be (at the time) a 'temporary garden', able to be done by hand where possible and to be transferable to a permanent site later down the line. Working within these constraints as well as trying to create a tranquil space, and a great design was a challenge," she said.

"It's amazing really and I still can't quite believe it. The prospect of seeing a design placed in the city centre is a real privilege and I can't wait to see it completed."

"I just hope that it does what it says on the tin and gives a feeling of tranquillity, whatever that may be for an individual. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, so time will tell whether it's a success," Ms Ramsbottom said.

She now works as a landscape architect and nursery assistant at a tree nursery and has free rein to design projects.

Mr Thomson said his design was for a South Pacific Garden with a brief to create a tranquil place for both native and immigrant Maori and Pacifica people to relax and reflect.

See the rest here:
Former Lincoln students' garden plans finally bear fruit

2014 Pinnacle Award 2013 Top Landscape Design Luxury Pools Magazine by NJ Landscape Contractors Residential & Commercial Landscape & Pool Architecture Firm Located in Bergen County NJ -14X International Award Winner. Worldwide Design Services

Cipriano Landscape Design is a 14X international award-winning residential and commercial landscape architecture firm. Since 2006, our NJ design firm has earned 80 design awards for extraordinary works of landscape architecture, including swimming pool, landscape, and masonry projects of all sizes and styles. William Moore, NJ Certified Landscape Architect #823 heads the design team of Cipriano Landscape Design. Bill provides internationally acclaimed design services from our Mahwah, NJ office for homeowners all across the globe. Whether it is a custom pool design, or estate landscape ideas, Bill uses creativity, resourcefulness and experience to come up with innovative designs and intelligent site plans for our clients.

Bill joined our staff in 2004 and has excelled in producing functional luxury designs that not only look amazing but also meet every need of the homeowner. He possesses a real talent for gaining approval under challenging or strict municipal regulations in addition to his award-winning landscape and pool designs. Bill is 15 for 15 in various zoning, building and environmental variance approvals. To further ensure that you receive the backyard of your dreams, Cipriano employs a Certified Building Professional with the APSP, expert horticulturists, heavy equipment operators, master stonemasons and estate management professionals. Together, all of these services and skills allow Cipriano to design, build, and maintain luxury inground pools, landscapes, patios, outdoor kitchens and every other backyard amenity you can imagine.

Our 14-year-old design and build model for complete swimming pools and landscapes offers a convenient solution for busy homeowners looking to trust one qualified company with their entire project. The process preserves the intent and quality of the project as it passes from the design stage to the critical phase of construction. We do not simply design a pool, patio and landscape and leave you to do with it what you will. We offer homeowners the option of allowing us to make that design a reality with experienced, technical and detailed construction techniques. Numerous design awards are testimony to Ciprianos more than two decades of landscaping experience, and over a decade of custom inground pool construction, which we gladly pass on to our clients.

View original post here:
Landscape Architecture Firm Bergen County NJ-2014 Pinnacle ...

Imagine a tour of Portland offered by landscape architects. They would probably take you off the beaten tourist path, perhaps to narrow Vera Katz Park.

Here, they would explain that the greenery was cleverly designed alongside the Portland Armory annex, the first building on the National Register of Historic Places to earn the highest green building certification, and the repurposed home of Portland Center Stage.

Yes, smart use of existing buildings, energy, water, nature and transportation are top topics for a profession focused on sustainable, urban design.

And landscape architects are in heaven here, according to the Landscape Architect's Guide to Portland, Oregon, a new digital guide to the city that can be viewed on a smartphone, tablet or computer screen, with links to downloadable maps and bike routes.

It's a great guide for visitors to become acquainted with Portland's five "quadrants" and for residents to be reminded of the city's leading role in providing parks and plazas, as well as less scenic waste management systems. There's even a nod to theMississippi Avenue Food Cart Pods and the Pearl District Brewery Blocks.

The free guide was researched and written by members of theOregon Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects to educate city leaders, urban planners and designers around the world.

At the Oct. 7 launch party at the urban-oasis Lan Su Chinese Garden, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., said, "ASLA is one of the secret weapons for livability. The profession blends the built environment with the natural environment. This guide is a visual portrayal of the unique elements that we are so proud of here."

Portland's landscape architects -- from those who established grand parks in theearly 20th century to those creating waterfront parks and bicycle infrastructure today -- have played a crucial role in making the city a better place to live, said Mark A. Focht, president of ASLA and first deputy commissioner of Philadelphia Parks and Recreation.

"Landscape architects have long played a major role in designing the city's public realm, and the key spaces between buildings that serve as the connective tissue for communities," said Focht.

Lloyd Lindley, who heads his eponymous Portlandurban design, planning and landscape architecture firm, introduces the guide by explaining Portland's evolution since agrarian Native Americans civilizations and speculates about the future of sustainability, including renewable energy efforts.

See the rest here:
Guide to sustainable Portland: American Society of Landscape Architects applaud PDX successes

Landscape Architecture Drawing Skills
Why are Autocad and hand drawing skills so fundamental to landscape architects? If you want to increase your income and job placement rates listen to the compelling reasons why drawing is so...

By: Karen Kesteloot

Read more from the original source:
Landscape Architecture Drawing Skills - Video

Photo courtesy Lawrence Halprin Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania.

Landscape architect Lawrence Halprin conducting a Driftwood City Discussion at Sea Ranch during a July 5, 1966, workshop.

Fifty years ago, a breathtaking, 10-mile-long, mile-wide strip of the California coast, 105 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge, was declared a privately-owned model community and opened for radically eco-friendly residential development. Owned and managed for 42 years as a sheep ranch, the new town was named The Sea Ranch (the The is mandatory).

Al Boeke, manager of The Sea Ranch for its new owners (Oceanic Properties, a division of Hawaii-based Castle & Cooke), enlisted the advice and support of Larry Halprin (who died in 2009), now regarded as the countrys most idealistic, farseeing, nature-loving landscape planner, to come up with a strict set of guidelines to prevent his dream development from turning into one more piece of suburbia-by-the-sea. Halprin, in turn, picked two architectural firms he trusted to realize his ideals, and demonstrate to subsequent designers, builders, and homeowners what could be done the integrate their buildings with this unique setting. Joseph Esherick was the most respected architect of the Bay Region Tradition at the time. MLTW (Charles Moore, Donlyn Lyndon, William Turnbull, and Richard Whitaker) was a young Berkeley-based group of friends who had designed a couple of small but remarkably innovative houses in northern California, which had attracted Halprins favorable attention.

MLTW was invited to design what was called Condominium I: an interlocked redwood cluster of 10 individual homes under one common roof sloping down to the sea, punctured by mineshaft modern towers facing south. Each distinctive unit manipulates a common kit of parts, and has a different orientation to the ocean.

Finished in 1965, Condo I seems to grow out of the land, like a pile of elegantly shaped and assembled wooden boulders facing rock formations that rise out of the sea, forever washed and sculpted by climbing ocean waves. It went on to become the most famous building of its time in the country. Eshericks contribution was a family of six natural houses tucked under one of the many old cypress hedgerows that divide the grassy meadows, perpendicular to and behind the steep oceanside bluffs. They were designed in such a way that one is almost unable to say where landscape ends and building begins, particularly now that the hedgerows have grown to embrace the houses. Some even had sod roofsa conceptual statement found in later Sea Ranch housesto help hide their intrusive existence. As Esherick wrote, The ideal kind of building is one you dont see. Along with Eshericks welcoming village store, bar, and post office (signposted with Barbara Stauffachers stylized rams-head logo), these model buildings reflected Halprins kibbutz-bred ideals of an egalitarian, democratic community, with people and houses living lightly on the land.

Fifty years later, there are about 1,800 houses and 1,300 permanent residents at The Sea Ranch, California, 95497. Many non-residents also own property here, which makes them members of The Sea Ranch Association (TSRA), which became the legal owner of about half of the original 3,500 acres. When people buy a lot at The Sea Ranch, they simultaneously become members of the Association and legal owners of a parcel of the commons land open to all memberswhich includes many acres of legally protected ocean-fronting hedgerow and meadow land, as well as forested land east of the highway. Oceanic Properties saw its $27 million investment on the Sonoma County coast driven underwater by a nearly 10-year-long moratorium on building new houses and (effectively) selling new lots, the result of a 1972 California law designed to keep the states public coastline open to all. Oceanic decided to sell its unsold share of The Sea Ranch to the incorporated non-profit owners association it had created. Many of the nonresident owner/members today use their properties as second or vacation homes, which they rent out to visitors between their own stays. In recent years, some houses here have changed hands for a million dollars or more.

After generating a great deal of controversy and hostility (and many lawsuits) among property owners, the moratorium was ended in 1981-82 by a complex compromise agreement, which satisfied few. Even after 1982, disputes continued, occasionally becoming hostile and divisive. What have they been arguing about for more than 30 years, in what was intended to be a challenging but Utopian demi-paradise?

Many of Halprins original guidelines have been respected, and a common (perhaps too common) design language did emerge, one of irregular but simple wood-faced buildings that merged with or at least respected the landscape and their neighbors. But Halprins hopes for clustered housing, which left clear the meadows and bluffs, were overridden early in the day by Oceanic Properties decision to realign building lots to obtain maximum ocean views. By the end of the 1960s, Halprin had been dismissed by Oceanic. In 1969 Boeke quit, leaving planning and management in the hands of less idealistic administrators. This, as architectural critic and editor Donald Canty wrote in 2003, marked the beginning of the end of the heralded Sea Ranch plan.

Both Halprin and his principles for the development of The Sea Ranch had been all but canonized, if often disregarded, by 1983, when he held the first of three day-long workshops to re-educate residents about those principles, discuss benign, malign, and unavoidable changes over time, and (he hoped) put a stop to unorthodox and wayward growth. Halprin conducted similar workshops in 1993 and 2003. Sea Ranch residents apparently need to be reminded of the founders ideals once a decade.

Excerpt from:
The Sea Ranch at Fifty

IOWA CITY, Iowa Steve Ford has joined Stanley Consultants as a senior landscape architect. Based in the companys Iowa City office, Ford serves as the local design professional for Stanley Consultants Denver-based Urban Design team.

Ford has worked in the Iowa City Corridor and eastern Iowa area for more than 30 years.

Fords design and planning expertise includes park/site master planning, trail design, campus master plan design, streetscape design, landscape planting plans and sports fields. In this new position, he will continue to working with existing clients while reaching out to new clients throughout Cedar Rapids, the Corridor and eastern Iowa.

Founded in 1913 in Muscatine, Stanley Consultants is a global consulting engineering firm that provides program management, planning, engineering, environmental, and construction services worldwide.

View original post here:
Ford joins Stanley Consultants as senior landscape architect

Lone Tree will be getting its first community-wide community garden next year and the city wants resident input.

That's why Lone Tree is holding a meeting on Oct. 20 with Michael Buchenau, executive director and landscape architect for Denver Urban Gardens, who will be leading the design of the garden.

Jennifer Drybread, senior planner in the community development department for Lone Tree, said Denver Urban Gardens will be collecting resident input that will inform the garden's uses, purpose and character, or the spirit of the garden, such as what events the community holds at the garden. The non-profit has helped to design and construct 140 community gardens around the Denver Metro area, 35 of which are at local schools. That's important because this new community garden will be located at Lone Tree Elementary, a site Drybread was chosen for its central location.

Angela Hamel of Edgewater waters a garden plot at the Saints Community Garden at Jefferson High School in Edgewater on Monday, July 21, 2014. The garden is part of the Denver Urban Gardens. (Cyrus McCrimmon, Denver Post file)

She said a survey done last year found 212 Lone Tree residents were interested in a community garden.

"When we did the survey we found a lot of people were interested in having a community garden and as the city builds more housing units, there's going to be more of a demand for that," Drybread said.

Drybread said the site would probably accommodate 20-25 plots, plot fees yet to be determined, and the garden would open in spring 2015.

After Denver Urban Gardens finishes a sketch of the new garden, there will be a period of fundraising before its constructed. Lone Tree Mayor Jim Gunning said it was important the city not fund the garden so there was significant buy-in from the community members.

"Our job was to help them find a location so that it can be a community garden," Gunning said. "We didn't want them to have to travel 10-15 minutes outside the community people weren't interested in that. They wanted something that was close enough that they could do something in the middle of the day."

Drybread said the idea has been in the making for a few years and Gunning said there's been a lot of talk in the community about a community garden in recent years.

Read more:
Lone Tree to get first community garden

Wednesday, October 15, 2014, by Spencer Peterson

Photos via Herman Miller

Earlier this year, Herman Miller spent $21K to help repaint and restore a playground in Atlanta's Piedmont Park designed by sculptor and landscape architect Isamu Noguchi (of coffee table fame). To commemorate the effort, Herman Miller has published an essay by architecture critic Alexandra Lange that explores how Noguchi's ideas for playgrounds as a "primer of shapes and functions; simple, mysterious, and evocative; thus educational," influenced how they took shape in America, despite the fact that most of his proposals went unrealized.

A lot of Noguchi's influence was due to his effect on playground pioneers Richard Dattner and M. Paul Friedberg. Built in 1975 as the High Museum of Art's bicentennial gift to the city of Atlanta, Noguchi's one-acre Playscapes embodies his attempts to use simple, sculptural forms to encourage unstructured play. Now that planners are thinking more about playgrounds as "organic" experiencesthink the now ubiquitous "sprayground"it's worth revisiting a play area that doesn't come right out and tell children what to do. It's also nice to see one of Noguchi's works looking so fresh.

Photos via Herman Miller

Photos via Herman Miller

The Great Playscapes [Herman Miller]

Originally posted here:
Preservation Watch: Explore Atlanta's Restored Noguchi-Designed Playground

"Song of the Land" with American Sign Language
Disability Pride! Song of the Land with Sign Language (2nd in a set of 4) features 19th century, landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, plus, Central Park time-travel. Creative...

By: Leslie Fanelli

See more here:
"Song of the Land" with American Sign Language - Video