Early last week, on the heels of the Sustainable Sites Initiative updated system launch, the International Living Building Institute offered the updated version of the Living Building Challenge, v2.0 - which offers a comprehensive building rating system for not just green, but regenerative buildings.
:: image via ilbi
The new system offers a much more robust system that incorporates local food production, expands the notion of sites and access to nature, limits gated communities and incorporates a number of other equity issues. The other major difference is that the results of certification are based on the end result, not the planned result as is standard in many projects. This is part of the reason there is not an officially designated Living Building to date - but many are in various stages of development around the world - on the race to be the first. I'm excited to take a look and see these new changes.
While I'm happy to see the expanded scope, I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't continue to move forward with the separate Living Sites and Infrastructure Challenge - but instead incorporated these ideas into v2.0 of the LBC. Combining sites and buildings makes a lot of sense and the LBCv2.0 integrates the two in a much needed way that is lacking in the majority of system approaches. As a way of measuring landscape projects, it's often hard to remove the building from site scale projects (thus they are not even ratable) - making the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SSI) the only viable game in town as a purely site-specific system.
There's plenty of rating systems out there, so time will tell the overall relevance and reach - but they tend to fall into two categories. Those in the first category attempt to respond the complexity and cost of LEED by offering a more accessible, yet watered down rating that has less impact, and thus less relevance. LEED remains the industry standard, but for those who want to push the boundaries of green beyond mere sustainability, there is luckily these alternatives out there. As LEED inches forward at a conservative snails pace by incrementally incorporated somewhat minor updates and additions to new versions, I foresee SSI and the Living Building Challenge filling some of the vacuum.
They may not gain the same market share as LEED - but will truly define what regenerative design will be for both buildings and sites - something that cannot happen now that LEED has become the defacto standard and is driven by market forces as much as a green agenda.
Living Buildings 2.0
Size Does Matter, or Not
An interesting article in Planetizen called "Beloved and Abandoned: A Platting Named Portland" investigates one of the unique, frustrating and beloved quirks of Portland. This is, our slicework of 200 foot square blocks... making for a lot of roads, and development of tiny blocks. It's our burden to bear. The article is a fascinating ride - so check it out.
:: all images via Planetizen
The authors discuss the 'Hippodamian' grid, which is an interesting way of saying square, and relate it to current urban design theory and practice. "Current planning literature brims with references to "the grid" in juxtaposition with curvilinear and dendrite conventional suburban layouts. The "grid" as a network concept has been widely accepted and is now regarded as a superior geometry for laying out greenfield and infill sites."
There is also the reference to the success of Portland directly related to these small blocks, which I'd disagree with (as the authors soon do). I'd say Portland succeeds in spite of this phenomenon, and the issues pervade - as is shown with a reference to successful urban grids, mostly those of the non-square ilk. "Urbanists and romanticists have expressed equally strong sentiments about Paris, London, Barcelona, Curitiba, Amsterdam and Venice. Of the six, only Barcelona adopted the Hippodamian grid in 1859 for its vast expansion, and Venice, without a classic grid, is the preeminent pedestrian haven, yet neither city matches the urbanist’s praise for Portland. Whatever the mix of reasons, Portland dominates the American planners' imagination feelings and talk. Disentangling this intangible realm can be an elusive goal; grounds and figures on the other hand may produce tangible results."
A grid alone is not the recipe for success, and in practice there are few pure iterations of the grid, with zigs, zags, curvy spots, the axial geometry of Ladds addition, and many other quirks. As a fan of the grid for wayfinding and layout, there's something to be said for the rigorous adherance to the formality, which much theory has been laid out in curvy, suburban blah. Some support of the grid: "The degree of connectivity of the street network could count as another practical reason. 'Network', by definition, is a set of linked components, whether a spider-net, a fishnet, or the Internet - all networks connect. What distinguishes them is the manner, geometry and frequency of connection: leaf, tree, blood vessels, telephone and web networks are dendrite, hierarchical (fractal) but fishnets are not. Portland’s is a dense fishnet with nodes at every 200 feet, which produce 360 intersections per square mile -- the highest ratio in America, and 3 to 5 times higher than current developments. For example, older and newer areas in Toronto, typical of most cities, range from 72 to 119 intersections per square mile in suburbs and 163 to 190 in older areas with a grid. As connectivity rose in importance as a planning principle, Portland’s grid emerges as a supreme example.
Coupled with connectivity, its rectilinear geometry is indisputably more advantageous for navigation on foot, car or bike than any alternatives. Visitors often feel lost and disoriented in medieval towns and in contemporary suburbs and this feeling leads to anxiety and even fear and a sense that all is not well."
The grid is rightly stated as derived by speculators for maximum corner lots - not in the grand plan of some more model communities. The fact is, again, that the grid can improve or degrade the urban environment, as the authors mention, but success is not inherently depending on that as the only criteria. "Evidently, Portland’s founders either understood little about infrastructure costs or judged them irrelevant; a judgment that no planner, developer or municipality today would take at face value. When economic efficiency matters, Portland’s grid fails the grade."
In a theoretical sense only. There's comments from Sitte and Duany on the lack of art in the grid... but really is urban planning about art? Is curvy and artistic more successful in an urban context? I doubt it. Anyway, the fact that our grid, much like the national grid system, is overlaid on a extant topography in somewhat irresponsible ways have led to issues with erasure and negative impact on natural hydrologic patterns, which only bend when topography and streams are too steep or significant to pipe, grade, and cover over. Also, the sheer amount of street paving is significant, as our small blocks lead to significantly more stormwater impacts. This however, has been the genesis for innovative strategies such as green streets to combat this - sort of making a silk purse out of a bad grid.
While it may be easy to ignore progress in combating our bad grid, it's again a pointless thought exercise (these adaptions in the following paragraph are the lifeblood of modern urbanism, as we can't recreate what has already been created). Thus, it's interesting to think of ways of refuting the present by showing how the past is flawed: "The ordinary impression on the ground that the Portland grid 'works' in contemporary traffic conditions is casually taken as a sign of suitability. This view obscures an entire century of engineered physical, mechanical and management adaptations which are overlaid on the 1866 platting. Remove these (in a thought experiment) and imagine the outcome. Clearly, an ill-suited geometry is made to work with interventions such as dividing lines, medians, traffic signs, traffic lights, directional signs, bollards, street widening, one-ways, traffic circles or roundabouts and many others."
I think that's called adapting to change, but then again, it's a thought experiment, so fun nonetheless. As the authors conclude: "For reasons of land efficiency, infrastructure cost, municipal expenses, rainwater management, traffic safety and flow, and the demand for increased pedestrian share of public space, the praised, pure Portland platting will likely not find new followers. Portland will remain a adored and beloved by urbanists, but her Hippodamian grid layout seems destined for the archives, abandoned as a good idea of a byegone era. This transcendence leaves urbanists, who seek to regenerate a contemporary urban pattern that is as pure, complete and systematic, looking for alternatives: ones which excite the same first blush of adoration and delight and lead to a deep abiding love, but also hold up to intense scrutiny of their economic, social and environmental performance."
I agree with the main tenets of their thesis (and it's a great notion and read) and frankly think the grid is a pain in the ass, but it's one of those theoretical arguments that really doesn't mean much in terms of modern urbanism, particularly in a city that plans things to death and beyond. Few if any new cities are built from scratch with no existing contextual framework - so maybe in the few new communities, a particular utopian grid system can be applied - probably modeled after the latest New Urbanist theory. It'd be interesting to imagine a re-thinking of the 'Hippodamian' grid being retrofit, as is, into something else in Portland - elongated, filled in, abstracted into a more pure and reasonable pattern, with streets removed to be open spaces, bikeways, and other green infrastructural systems. But the question is moot, a thought experiment if you will, and like it or not we are stuck with our pattern.
We deal with it, we plan around it. We love its street/building staccato chatter back and forth, with our 360 intersections per square mile, and we curse the stop sign hovering on your bike every 200 feet, waiting for that car to come zipping by take you out. It makes life exciting. But, in general it doesn't mean much, and isn't as derogatory to a high quality public realm as implied. Portland isn't to be copied for urban form, and really shouldn't be degraded for a grid system that was done without regard. We're known for for innovation and foresight in policy, transportation, stormwater management, and other factors. Many of these come from the very problems that arise from our back-assward small grids. But it works, because sometimes a grid is just a grid.
PlastiCity FantastiCity
The fabulous RMIT based journal KERB has recently announced a new competition called PlastiCity FantastiCity, to envision a new urbanism. From the site: "The competition re-envisions city systems to explore fantastical opportunities that enable groundbreaking and fun projects which shake the design world. A multi-disciplinary approach is encouraged though not required and we are sure that with help from you and your site we can hit our target audience."
The most telling idea of what the competition is about is through the definitions of the two terms - both mashups/portmanteaux with some interesting ideas:
PlastiCity (pro-noun)
FanstastiCity (pro-noun)1. The theory that a space’s most beautiful quality can often be the way in which it is continually made by those who inhabit it.
2. The projection of a speculative world into a pragmatic application.
Look forward to seeing the results - and definitely considering an entry. It's nice to see amidst many of the pseudo-seriousness of the competition scene something to embrace the crazy, outlandish, and fantastic.1. A world of limitless possibilities.
2. The city that exists in your mind, living in your wildest dreams and your most peculiar sketches.
Also, stay tuned for my coverage of the previous issue of Kerb 17, which literally amazed me with a series of essays on 'Is LA Dead?', a take on the future of the profession from a range of sources.
Sustainable Sites - Update
From some sneak peeks of the latest update to the Sustainable Sites Initiative (more from L+U here), I was both excited about the next iteration and establishment of more rigorous set of criteria, and a bit curious how it was going to maintain some of the necessary distance, inclusivity and poetry that is lacking in many other site rating systems. I'm not sure how I feel about the new split between the guidelines and the 'case' for sustainable sites
The full text from the Sustainable Sites website:
"The Sustainable Sites Initiative: Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009 is the product of more than four years of work by a diverse group of experts in soils, hydrology, vegetation, materials and human health and well-being. It is expanded and updated from the Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks –Draft 2008, which was released in November 2008. The Initiative developed criteria for sustainable land practices that will enable built landscapes to support natural ecological functions by protecting existing ecosystems and regenerating ecological capacity where it has been lost. This report focuses on measuring and rewarding a project that protects, restores and regenerates ecosystem services – benefits provided by natural ecosystems such as cleaning air and water, climate regulation and human health benefits.
The Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009 includes a rating system for the credits which the pilot process will test for refinement before a formal release to the market place. The Rating System contains 15 prerequisites and 51 credits that cover all stages of the site development process from site selection to landscape maintenance. If you are interested in becoming a pilot project to test this Rating System, please apply here. Feedback from the pilot projects will be used to create a reference guide which will provide suggestions on how projects achieved the sustainability goals of specific credits.
The companion document titled The Case for Sustainable Landscapes provides a set of arguments—economic, environmental, and social—for the adoption of sustainable land practices, additional background on the science behind the performance criteria in the guidelines and performance benchmarks, the purpose and principles of the Sustainable Sites Initiative, and a sampling of some of the case studies the Initiative has followed."
It's great to see a site-specific system taking shape, and can't wait to see it begin to permeate the discussion of true sustainability and green building - and addition long-lacking in the current dialogue. For a bit of additional info, check out this short presentation 'Landscapes Give Back' which makes a case for the role of landscape in this discussion. More to come.
More to come after I have a chance to take a look at the updated documents. Additionally, the concept of What is a Sustainable Site will be a common theme in the next year, as the Oregon ASLA embarks on a number of events, discussions, workshops, and symposia around this idea.
Remembering Lawrence Halprin (or at least some of his projects)
In the blogosphere, this is old news now. It's been a week since I heard about the death of landscape architectural icon Lawrence Halprin - actually the day after while in a meeting where part of the topic was discussing the iconic nature of his park sequence in Portland as inspiration for a small plaza I am designing. We looked at the inspiration - not the copying of the forms - and I of course found my way back to his sketches of the sequence.
:: image via Halprin Landscape Conservancy
I was reminded of one of the items that originally to Portland - as we had learned about the work, particularly those in the sequence below. Eager to see some real 'landscape architecture' I hurriedly visited downtown to see these in person soon after moving to town. How disappointing in person, to see the gray, life-less, broken space of the Auditorium Forecourt Fountain (now Keller Fountain) as it was shut down pending repairs to pumping equipment. I was deflated, and walked the sequence seeing this project in it's full rainy, gray splendor with not a person in sight. It was a formative experience in disconnection with the aura of a space and the designer vs. the space in action.
:: image via Halprin Landscape Conservancy
To my wonderful surprise, I visited a year later, at the height of summer, pumps functioning, and the space was literally crawling with people. Then I realized that I was only seeing one facet of the story - not the entire design, or the changes in use over time, and seasons, and day and night. I had a similar experience the first time I visited the Keller Auditorium for a play and sat at intermission looking over the fountain lit in an eerie glow - providing the forecourt not just from outside but within the building itself, connecting architecture and landscape. 
:: Keller (Forecourt) Fountain - image via artscatter
The first day of 'Intro to Landscape Architecture' class I was teaching at Portland State, we took a tour of the sequence as a primer on what the profession is all about - and I was amazed that many of the students hadn't known about the spaces (mere blocks from campus) and what the opinions of the space were - both good and bad. Even without knowing, the spaces can still teach.
:: Pettygrove Park - image via Oregon Sustainability Center
:: Lovejoy Fountain - image via World is Round
The other aspect I loved in school and still today is the lively sketches. These are not art per se, but serious and whimsical studies and exercises in seeing and understanding. These taught me that it's important to look and draw, and that the benefit to yourself is the point, not some form of artistic integrity. They also showed a realization of contextual forms and processes and generators of design inspiration. And they become beautiful because you see the inspiration expressed and abstracted within the designs.
:: image via Halprin Landscape Conservancy
A final snippet of story came on a visit to Seattle to see Freeway Park as well, which was amazing and beautiful in places, and a similar expression of abstracted concrete mountains. It was also a true expression of a dated, somewhat irrelevant and possibly dangerous space that harbored unsavory elements and activities - and perhaps was not part of the original context. This made me wonder about the longevity and relevance of spaces and the need to protect and restore icons - but also our need to let some of them go (or at least change to meet the times). It's a tricky thing for landscape architects to design timeless - when our materials are always changing. 
:: image via hugeasscity
Strange how the formative aspects of life in landscape architecture get played out in time and history. I actually also had an opportunity to redo one of the Halprin-(esque perhaps) projects done with SOM on some towers in the auditorium district (the now remodeled Harrison West complex) - and the limits of concrete, ivy, and trees in making space for people - and how the 60s and 70s, much like in architecture created some great, and some laughable projects.
This affected me like the passing of Ian McHarg a few years back, which struck hard. came when I was amidst a complex, layered, mapping exercise which directly reflected the legacy of integrated planning, and for me personally that the access to many disparate layers of data - together - is a powerful notion. McHarg and Halprin were much more accessible heroes than Olmsted - because they were living in the same world that I was as a youthful LA.
More good reading on the subject is found at the Oregonian, Art Scatter, Portland Architecture, and Inspiration Wall. I've been remiss on reading the blogs lately - but imagine there is an outpouring of wonderful stories - which are deserved. I learned much from Halprin's work and went through amazement, disappointment, reality, and acknowledgment that landscape and taste changes, and that all good design draws from place, engages people in many ways, and is timeless... much like city itself. I wasn't quite as obsessed with the man and his work as some others locally - nor did I visit the spaces often, but nonetheless personally he will be misse. Thankfull, he will not be forgotten in the many works and a legacy of design inspirations (and those inspired, such as myself) that he left behind.
Terragrams
Just when I think Twitter is a roiling mass of wasted time and energy, I get a link or two that make me reconsider. One of these, spotted by @landmatters is for a site that obviously has been under my radar called Terragrams - an ongoing podcast series for landscape architecture hosted by landscape architect Craig Verzone. 
From their site: "Terragrams is a podcast series disseminating discussions about the landscape. As our societal conscience and appreciation of the landscape heightens, Terragrams provides a wide portal into landscape architecture and the lives and thoughts of the professionals who shape it. The project aims at capturing, distributing and archiving these voices. It is an easily accessible, open audio digital archive aimed at collecting first-hand, face-to-face conversations between and about people in and around the field."
The cast of characters featured is a veritable who's who of landscape architecture - captured in audio for your listening pleasure. Highlights (for me at least) include Julie Bargmann, James Corner, Elizabeth Meyer, Richard Forman, Chris Reed , Liat Margolis, and the latest iteration by Ken Smith . Good stuff, and more good interviews to come.
FLYP Media - High Line
A reader pointed me to a new online magazine entitled 'FLYP' which takes the idea of new media to a level. that isn't just an electronic display of the content but a more interactive idea of content. A recent article about Diller, Scofidio + Renfro and their work with Field Operations on the High Line.
:: image via FLYP
McDs as Density Indicator
It's interesting to make connections between mapping and healthy communities. In this case it's not just health in terms of people (such as this correlation between parks and obesity) - but factoring in local business, access to fresh/healthy food, and even the idea of non-drive through oriented business. The always fantastic Strange Maps offers a slice of this view, using a map of 'The McFarthest Place' in the contiguous United States. This map case a look at geographical distribution of McDonalds of which there are 13,000 or so in the US.
:: image via Strange Maps
From Strange Maps: "This map is the brainchild of Stephen Von Worley, who got to thinking about the strip malls sprawling out along I-5 in California’s ever less rural Central Valley: “Just how far can you get from generic convenience? And how would you figure that out?” His yardstick for that thought experiment would be the ubiquitous Golden Arches of McDonald’s – still the world’s largest hamburger chain, and to cite Von Worley, the “inaugural megacorporate colonizer of small towns nationwide.” That’s not the whole story: like other convenience providers aimed at the motorised consumer such as gas stations and motels, McDonald’ses have a notable tendency to occur on highways and, specifically, to cluster at their crossroads."
Having grown up in North Dakota, where a 3-4 hour one-way drive isn't uncommon for a quick 'day trip' it's not a surprise that this McFarthest Place comes from that general vicinity of the upper Great Plains - in this case South Dakota amidst the badlands. The exact coordinates are on the post (N 45.45955 W 101.91356) leaving a 145 mile drive to McDonalds (which probably sounds pretty good if stranded in the desolation of the Badlands for a week or so). I've roughly shown this on the map below - and it's also interesting to see how it is equidistant the parallel freeways.
:: image via Google Earth (additional info added by L+U)
The lack of people, coupled with large land area, leads to a specific indication of the density of the US - obviously as the marketing muscle of McDonalds to interject themselves in close proximity to population centers. A quick glance at the map will obviously lead you to some of the less dense areas of the country: More: "This map moreover demonstrates that the spread of McD’s closely mirrors the population density of the Lower 48, the most notable overall feature of which is the sudden transition, along the Mississippi, of a relatively densely populated eastern half to a markedly less populated western half of the country. Some notable ‘dark spots’ in McDensity east of the Mississippi are the interior of Maine, the Adirondack region of New York state, a large part of West Virginia, and the Everglades area of southern Florida."
It may be the best bet if you want to get away from it all - to get as far away from the McDonalds. I actually remember seeing something like this for Wal-Mart as well - which probably has a totally different set of socio-economic markers on location.
Best of... the Rest
Well, finally back at it after a bit of time off and some flurry of activity around Parking Day 2009. More to come on our 'award winning' most playful entry to the Seattle People's Parking Lot, and the beauty of oversized Connect Four - and stay tuned for more posts upcoming.
:: 4-Play - image via CoJourn
A few resources that popped up in my inbox in the interim. Landscape+Urbanism made a couple of lists, including the Top 50 Construction Blogs (#44) and the 100 Innovative Blogs for Architecture Students (#1). Many thanks for the love there.
Video: The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
A great video series on YouTube - featuring 'The Social Life of Small urban Spaces' videos (a companion to the book, or is that vice-versa) by William 'Holly' Whyte . The content is kind of late Mad Men era (OK it's the 1970s, but one expects Don Draper to mosey through the shot looking dapper, but with someone other than his wife on his arm) but still fascinating. I wonder why no one is doing this type of urban analysis in our modern times (and please let me if you know some modern iterations of this) as our media-accessible world this seems easy - maybe even through a series of security cameras stiched together.
I've embedded the first installment below... but check out the full series of videos... I'm through a few and they are pretty intriguing.
Thanks @space2place on Twitter for the link to these.
Digital Exhaustion
It's seems a little time off makes one introspective, or at the very least a bit nostalgic. Did you ever feel that impossible to scratch, lingering itch in the back of your mind? You know, the one that you can't subsume, but says we've devolved from a culture that celebrates the built beauty and artistry of real work instead of the purely hollow digital promise of things never to be realized (probably for good reason). Recent competitions made me pause in my continual striving for the 'new' and the 'innovative' (perhaps to my detriment) - surmising that the results were somewhat disappointing, wildly unimpressive, or at least detached from a reality in way that is somewhat pointless.
While the Bering Strait competition is somewhat pointless but still cool, and the Rising Tides competition is somewhat cool and still pointless. This doesn't mean these were not necessary, but they at least had some modicum of timeline and program to make them worthwhile in attacking some viable social or global issue. It seems we've entered an age of the neo-competition - that which is more concerned with quick turnaround than substance - actually voiding the root concept of what a competition is built for - meditation on ideas and expansion of the graphic normative processes. We've entered a world of the mundane and the ephemeral that is short on time and equally short of program - which leads to a set of winners that leaves one unimpressed by the results an even questioning why the competition was initiated in the first place. (see 21st Century Streets competition for a recent example).
Reburbia is another great case study in the neo-mundane. By it's very structure, it's an ephemeral collage of ideas... with a short timeline and an open-ended program that is sure to develop ideas that are both shotgun and shot from the hip. I really like the ideas generated (well at least some of them), but they are all just snapshots. And, well, the results were pretty indicative of this web-oriented vs. design oriented paradigm. Apologies to the very successful bloggers and designers who represented the jury - but it's gotta be a tough job to judge this open-ended mileu and decipher something wonderful to present to the design world.
This isn't to demean the 'winners' of these competitions, as this seems to be the new trend - and we should evolve to think of this soundbite sort of project as probably something along the new norm. Six months between initiation and award is something that we no longer have the luxury of . Something that can be swirled around for a solid week prior to the photo-shopping, ready to wow the internet world with the latest idea - oooh, urban ecology, urban agriculture, urban ________. yawn. It's the same kind of cultural change that spawns the excitement of pointless bloggery books, the endless twittering and incessant tumblr-ing that substitutes quantity for content, the new for the real, and exposure for meaning.
At least I'm excited by the WPA 2.0 finalists... something to sink your teeth into at least. More on these later - and continuing into the next phase... ah sweet relief.
