NEWS RELEASE 22 March 2015

Te Kopahou entranceway on south coast wins NZILA Supreme Award

The entranceway and visitor centre at the Te Kopahou Reserve on Wellingtons south coast has won the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects George Malcolm Supreme Award for its outstanding design and execution.

The award was presented at the NZILA annual conference in Rotorua on Friday evening.

Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown says the award is a fine tribute to the huge amount of painstaking work over the past few years to transform the entrance of the former Owhiro quarry into a beautiful and popular gateway to Te Kopahou Reserve.

The overall project was led by Wellington City Councils senior landscape architect, Charles Gordon. Council architect Carlos Gonzales was instrumental in creating the visitor centre building.

Mayor Wade-Brown says anyone who remembers the very unpleasant industrial landscape at the western end of Owhiro Bay Parade after the closure of the quarry and its takeover by the City Council in the late 1990s will celebrate the transformation.

It was a blasted, potholed area, pretty much devoid of any vegetation, and it was dominated by a very large and ugly workshop building.

Now the area is truly attractive. The landscaping and planting has had time to become established and the quarry building has been repurposed in a highly creative way to become a busy and popular visitor and interpretive centre.

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Te Kopahou entranceway on south coast wins NZILA Award

Erin Wait's design image for Ballan's east entrance

Whether it's eucalypts in Coleraine, rare apples in Templestowe or threatened species in Canberra, arboretums are all about amassing trees and parading them in the one spot. That was the way of it even before Scottish garden designer John Claudius Loudon introduced the term to the English-speaking world in the 1830s.

But what's to say that's how it has to be? Some flout-the-rules horticulturalists are now maintaining that a botanically significant group of trees can be woven through a whole town and still be considered an arboretum.

Central Victoria's Ballan, with 3500 residents and a gold-mining past, is the testing ground for such lawlessness. A series of designs by RMIT landscape architecture students, who propose how Ballan in its entirety might be both arboretum and township, are on show for the town's Autumn Festival on Sunday, March 22.

One design has groups of trees strewn all over town and connected by bike paths; another has them spilling out of a central shopping strip, while a third has trees arranged to reflect the land's original topography (the town now taking the more regular form of a grid.) There's an arboretum based on the shade patterns different trees will cast on the footpath, and another highlighting the myriad effects they can have on wind movement.

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Pure fancy these are not. One of the 15 proposals has already been given the go-ahead. Erin Wait's "design insertions" at the town's east and west entrances are to be installed from May. Her proposal, which also suggests grouping trees at the train station and near the Werribee River, considers how you might navigate your way around Ballan through colour. The plantings she has laid out for the entrances will be composed of different varieties of Acer saccharinum, which is renown for its fiery autumn colour.

With these designs sounding as much like creative urban planting as a systematic process of establishing a tree collection, RMIT landscape architect lecturer Michael Howard says it is a way of looking at "how you can interrogate two ideas and bring them together".

Just as modern-day meadows have merged the allure of the perennial border with that of the wild grassland, he wonders whether an arboretum can't marry something of both the street tree and the botanically significant "park-type" collection.

Howard credits Ballan local Stephanie Day with first coming up with the whole-of-town arboretum concept. In a catalogue that documents the student designs, Day describes how she was inspired to broaden her thinking about arboreta during a visit to Singapore where she was struck by a sign that read, "Treat Singapore as your garden."

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The greening of central Victoria's Ballan

Reconsidering Ian McHarg - An Interview with Ignacio Bunster-Ossa
Landscape architect and urban designer Ignacio Bunster-Ossa, FASLA, LEED AP, visits APA #39;s Chicago office to discuss his new book, "Reconsidering Ian McHarg", available now from APA #39;s Planners ...

By: American Planning Association

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Reconsidering Ian McHarg - An Interview with Ignacio Bunster-Ossa - Video

(Note: This is a guest post by Hilary Flannery)

Dwight Law didnt come out to Asia because he was enraptured with the culture of the Orient Orient. It was a fluke.

Laws undergraduate days in the U.S. stretched out longer than expected. He was ready to wrap up a degree in landscape architecture from California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo in 1993 when a planned study trip abroad was scrapped because of political tumult in South America. Laws extended college enrollment landed him a seat on a study trip the following year to a different part of the world: Asia. I never planned to stay, he recalled in an interview.

Yet Law changed his mind about leaving. The Kansan took a job at U.S. landscape architecture design firm Belt Collins in Singapore. When the Asia financial crisis hit in 1997, his layoff in 1998 became a career turning point. Law took the plunge as an entrepreneur, co-founding a company in the Southeast Asian financial hub that added 30 landscape architects in three years. The work kept coming as rivals squeezed by Asias economic pain closed.

His success put him on the radar of Hong Kong businessman Vincent Lo. Best known back then as a cement supplier , Lo was launching a historically flavored nightlife real estate project in Shanghai, Xintiandi, that many saw as misguided at a time when fast money was to be made in packed-in residential towers. Today, Xintiandi is a city icon visited by thousands daily that has helped turn Lo into a billionaire, ranking No. 1,118 on the 2015 Forbes Billionaires List with an estimated fortune worth $1.7 billion. Law, through his landscaping architecture help at Xintiandi, was eventually offered more work in China by Lo. That led to a life-changing decision to relocate to Shanghai.

It was the first in a career of enviable twists in China: Law has consistently found work from businesses owned by Asias richest people. Besides Lo, he has done four Shanghai projects for Malaysian billionaire Robert Kuoks Kerry Properties, as well as another commercial project in the city for trend-setting Soho China, owned by Beijing billionaires Zhang Xin and Pan Shiyi. Among others, Law has also worked in China for Hong Kong billionaire Peter Woos

American landscape architect Dwight Law has build up a successful business in Shanghai.

Marco Polo Hotel chain. Lawssuccessesfor business elites has also helped him win high-profile Shanghai government projects, including the redesign of the garden at Xujiahui Church and creation of Donghu Park in front of a home of the citys famous pre-revolution city gangster Pockmark Tu.

He is comfortable designing great public places in uber-urban Shanghai, and equally at home working on a resort deep in a bamboo forest and tea terraced mountains in rural China, says U.S. architect and frequent Law collaborator Ben Wood. The two have been fortunate, Wood says, to be on a yellow brick road to fame and fortune in a country undergoing the greatest urbanization in the history of mankind.

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Good "Connections" Help Turn Shanghai Expat Into Landscape Architect For Asia's Rich

WASHINGTON, 17 de marzo de 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Los arquitectos paisajistas son las personas responsables de disear los parques, las plazas, las ciclovas y otros espacios verdes que hacen de los exteriores lugares entretenidos, saludables y sostenibles. Si tuviera que elegir su espacio verde preferido para fotografiar, cul sera? Esa es la pregunta que hizo la Sociedad Estadounidense de Arquitectos Paisajistas (American Society of Landscape Architects, ASLA) al lanzar el Mes Mundial de la Arquitectura del Paisaje en abril.

Experimente el comunicado de prensa multimedia interactivo aqu: http://www.multivu.com/players/English/7474051-asla-world-landscape-architecture-month/

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140325/DC90161LOGO-b

ASLA presenta el evento antes conocido con el nombre de Mes Nacional de la Arquitectura del Paisaje en colaboracin con la Federacin Internacional de Arquitectos Paisajistas (International Federation of Landscape Architects, IFLA). Los participantes celebrarn la arquitectura del paisaje atrayendo a sus comunidades mediante la campaa de redes sociales #WLAM2015. Los captulos de ASLA tambin presentarn la profesin en las escuelas y se pondrn en contacto con organizaciones miembros de IFLA de otros pases mediante Skype y las redes sociales.

"Estamos muy entusiasmados de celebrar la arquitectura del paisaje a nivel global", expres Nancy Somerville, Hon. ASLA, vicepresidenta ejecutiva y directora ejecutiva de ASLA. "Tenemos muchas ganas de trabajar con organizaciones miembros de la IFLA de todo el mundo y ayudarlas a desarrollar la prxima generacin de arquitectos paisajistas".

"En una poca en que el mundo enfrenta importantes desafos causados por la industrializacin, la urbanizacin, los cambios climticos y el agotamiento de los recursos naturales, el Mes Mundial de la Arquitectura del Paisaje pone el foco en nuestra profesin de vanguardia", dijo la profesora Kathryn Moore, presidenta de la IFLA. "Nos complace que la colaboracin internacional de este tipo ilumine las soluciones que ofrece la arquitectura del paisaje".

Celebre #WLAM2015 y aydenos a viralizar nuestra iniciativa: asla.org/wlam

Cmo compartir su foto de #WLAM2015:

- Descargue la tarjeta de bolsillo que incluye la leyenda "Designed by a Landscape Architect" (Diseado por un arquitecto paisajista) aqu: http://asla.org/uploadedFiles/CMS/Events/WLAMcard8.5x11.pdf

- Tome una foto de la tarjeta en su lugar favorito, ya sea un parque, una plaza o cualquier otro espacio verde diseado por un arquitecto paisajista.

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Los arquitectos paisajistas diversifican sus iniciativas y necesitan su ayuda para el Mes Mundial de la Arquitectura ...

Rockville, Maryland (PRWEB) March 16, 2015

With spring right around the corner, this issue showcases award-winning landscape and remodeling projects by the region's top architects, interior designers and landscape professionals. These stunning designs are sure to provide fresh and inspiring ideas for the home. This issue also features the hottest picks in home technology from the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The latest in fine furniture is spotlighted and combines style and sophistication.

Further highlights from this issue include Excellence in Landscaping, where four award-winning projects deliver alluring outdoor escapes; Glass House, where a design team creates a light-filled modern retreat on the Magothy River; Simply Chic, where interior designer Erica Burns combines function and period style in a Northwest DC home; Modern Aerie, where Patrick Brian Jones revamps a Logan Circle penthouse with a vibrant modern art collection in mind; Rivers Edge, where Architect Jim Rill and designer Jodi Macklin focus on stunning water vistas in a waterfront renovation and H&D Luxury Remodeling, where four custom-home remodeling projects are featured.

An excerpt from Glass House: It gets better, whispers architect Scarlett Breeding, touring a new home she designed near Annapolis. Surveying this virtually transparent steel, glass and stone creation with sweeping water views, a visitor wonders what could possibly get any better than this.

The owner assembled a team of experts he knew could create the modern retreat he imagined. Scarlett Breeding, landscape architect Kevin Campion, builder Bret Anderson and interior designer Helen Sullivan had already collaborated on his DC home and other residences. Together, they delved into the projectpossibly one of their most challenging to date.

As a starting point, Breeding found inspiration in the local vernacular. The form comes from the traditional Chesapeake cottage, with its simple gabled roof, she explains. There is one gable form in the middle and matching ones on either side. We reduced them to their simplest elements, then subtracted out the roof and wall planes so they became far more transparent, to maximize light and views. Even the garage doors are glass.

Dormers and skylights create lofty second-story spaces, yet allow the house to maintain a single-story presence. It has large room volumes but does not feel inappropriate for the neighborhood, which is primarily cottages, says Breeding.

As always, this issue's Indulgences section tempts everyone with the best of the good life in travel, toys, spring fashion and food. It's an issue you won't want to miss!

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The Spring 2015 Issue of HOME & DESIGN Magazine is Now on Newsstands

At the private Witt Ranch, historic trees establish a sense of history in a landscape that combines personal favorites and native plants. (Santa Barbara Botanic Garden photo)

By Rebecca Mordini for the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden | Published on 03.16.2015 9:27 a.m.

The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden has put together a truly unique version of its annual Cultivating the Wild: Native Gardens Tour on Sunday, April 19.

Heading out to the Santa Ynez Valley in limousine buses, the tour goes behind the scenes to explore very different approaches to sustainable landscaping. Dry farming at a vineyard, personal style at a private ranchero and an entire neighborhood of native landscaping all challenge preconceived ideas about the limitations imposed by drought. This years tour includes the delicious culinary creativity of New West Catering enjoyed with dry farmed Stolpman wines at the private Montanaro Farm.

Landscape architect Puck Erickson provides the foundation of the tour at the Santa Ynez Valley Botanic Garden. As one its founders and designers, she identifies key native plants in the area, and gives an inspiring view of how creating this garden brought a community of native plant lovers together.

After 19 harvests were just as obsessed with improving our wines as we were with our first vintage in 1994, according to Peter Stolpman, managing partner of Stolpman Vineyard.

The vineyard implements sustainable viticulture techniques, including dry farming, in which the vines are not irrigated after they have matured. A personal tour from the owners will give a rare view, and taste, of dry farming.

What would it look like if everyone replaced their lawns with native landscaping? Guests will see for themselves in the tour through the gated Mission Oaks community in Solvang. The common areas are landscaped predominately in native plants that blend seamlessly into the surrounding landscape, while front yards show the wide variety of personal expression available using natives.

Witt Ranch is a private ranchero where historic trees establish a sense of history in a landscape that combines personal favorites and native plants. A guided tour of the gardens around the main house and the charming guest cottages will inspire your own landscape designs.

Guests who wonder just how good a dry farmed vintage actually tastes, will not be disappointed as Stolpman wines will be served with a mouth-watering lunch from New West Catering. Valley insiders know that New West is owned by the same chefs as the eclectic Industrial Eats, one of the hottest dining destinations in the area. To complete this incredible insiders experience of the valley, this delicious meal is served at Montanaro Farm, where visitors are transported back to Californias ranching heyday in the original grocery restored to its 1887 style.

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Botanic Garden Tour to Showcase Creative Ways to Garden with Little Water

A Little Chaos - Sneak Peek - in Cinemas 17th April
Watch this sneak peek of A Little Choas, in cinemas April 17th, starring Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts and Alan Rickman. Madame Sabine De Barra (Kate Winslet) is an unlikely candidate...

By: LionsgateFilmsUK

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A Little Chaos - Sneak Peek - in Cinemas 17th April - Video

Custom Outdoor Living
Your home landscape is more than just grass and flowers; it can truly be turned into a livingspace. Here to discuss the latest trends and technology, the difference between a Landscape Architect...

By: todaystmj4

Excerpt from:
Custom Outdoor Living - Video

A Little Chaos - Official Trailer - in Cinemas 17th April
Madame Sabine De Barra (Kate Winslet) is an unlikely candidate for landscape architect of the stillto-be-completed Palace of Versailles. She has little time...

By: LionsgateFilmsUK

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A Little Chaos - Official Trailer - in Cinemas 17th April - Video