Every now and again Toby and I get together at a local coffeehouse to talk about our practices and about landscape architectural issues in general. Conversation never lags — as we did when we worked together at Copley-Wolff, and over meals with other LA friends, and even before then, when we were both grad students [...]
Archive for the ‘Walls’ Category
Grist for the mill — landscape architects talk
Posted in Deb's posts, Gristmill, Landscape architecture, Toby's posts, Walls, What we're thinking, tagged ASLA, ISA, landscape, landscape architecture, LID Center, native plants, North End Parks, Rose Kennedy Greenway, spatial design, stone walls on June 9, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Then he took Berlin
Posted in Deb's posts, Gristmill, Miscellaneous, Places, Walls, What we're thinking, tagged Berlin Wall, Brian Rose on March 30, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Brian Rose’s website, the subject of yesterday’s post, also features his photos of the Berlin Wall and its environs before, during, and after its fall. He writes about the experience of place in Berlin, and for anyone whose knowledge of the Wall is limited (mine was derived mainly from watching Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire [...]
more resources for understanding and preserving stone walls
Posted in Materials, Walls, tagged landscape, landscape architecture, stone, stone wall legislation, stone walls, stone walls in massachusetts on August 16, 2009 | 1 Comment »
The DCR has a publication here on the preservation of stone walls, with lots of references to good historical and legal resources. They write: How do we learn to recognize these features when toppled stone boundary markers or collapsed and tree-filled cellar holes often go unnoticed in the woods? Even when identified, it may be [...]
au contraire, the in-between of it
Posted in Places, Walls, tagged Christopher Alexander, landscape architecture, linkedin, Paris, thick edges, thick walls on August 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Of course, a wall doesn’t have to be physically massive to take on functional “thickness” — even a balloon-frame house can have a comfortable window seat or a wrap-around porch. And the principle of “thickening the edges” (borrowed from Christopher Alexander and company) isn’t only about walls. What is a sidewalk restaurant but a thick [...]
The ins and outs of it
Posted in Deb's posts, Miscellaneous, Walls, What we're thinking, tagged complexity in design, linkedin, sensory experience of landscape, Walls on August 12, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Like that Steinberg drawing, the Parisian building facade pushes in and pushes out, has ceilings and floors, and carves places — albeit the tiny ones of deep sills and shallow entryways — out of mass. Items get applied, chunks get taken out. It’s easier to see those thicker building walls in older American cities — [...]
closer still
Posted in Places, Walls, tagged linkedin on August 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I like Deb’s nodding lights, below, and I know it isn’t fair to compare Concord with Paris, but . . . . . . but as usual, the Parisians have been there, and they have found an elegant solution. Attaching lights to building facades allows the lighting of narrow streets without adding clutter to sidewalks. [...]
New Hampshire stone walls
Posted in Deb's posts, Gristmill, Materials, Walls, What we're thinking, tagged landscape, legislation, New England landscape, stone, stone walls, weathering on August 10, 2009 | 1 Comment »
The Boston Globe just published this piece about stone wall theft throughout New England. It describes the just-passed New Hampshire law that will assess triple damages for the restoration of a stolen wall — plus attorneys’ fees — against those who steal that stone wall. That’s a lot of spondulix. The article is worth a [...]
quarry query
Posted in Walls, Working Landscape, tagged cambridge landscaping, David Phillips, illinois science + technology park, jl burke construction, mankato limestone, quarry waste, rockport granite, salvaged quarry stone on July 14, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Sorry about that title. I’m curious about quarry waste, and whether that’s a resource that can be better utilized. Quarries that produce architectural stone end up rejecting stones that, due to inherent flaws or damage in the quarrying process, don’t meet architectural standards. Given a mason with the time, discernment, and connections to select individual [...]
New stone, old stone
Posted in Materials, Miscellaneous, Walls, What we're thinking, tagged engage with landscape, landscape, stone, stone walls on July 7, 2009 | 2 Comments »
In that last post, I don’t mean to imply that all veneer stone walls come from shady dealings, by any means, or that they are bad in and of themselves. I use veneer stone walls in plenty of my projects, and veneer is a valuable construction method in any number of applications. Often they are [...]
Stone walls for the taking? Let’s hope not.
Posted in Materials, Miscellaneous, Walls, What we're thinking, tagged engage with landscape, landscape, stone, stone walls on July 6, 2009 | 11 Comments »
Quite frequently I design a project that calls for one or more stone walls, and almost as frequently the stone I specify is New England fieldstone. Fieldstone walls are ubiquitous in this part of the world, and a good wall, even if it’s newly constructed, can help give structure and readability to a landscape. Because [...]
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Deborah Howe
Toby Wolf
