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April is, of course, World Landscape Architecture Month (!), and you should tell your friends and family as much at every opportunity. You will also want to share this month?s LAM far and wide, which is made easier because the online version is free. Yes, free.
It?s an issue packed with great stuff at every scale. There is the 700-square-foot garden in Brooklyn by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, where a tiny space is made to seem bigger by packing it with plants around a wonderful fragmented footpath that is not as scattershot as it may appear. There?s the Phipps Conservatory?s Center for Sustainable Landscapes in Pittsburgh by Andropogon Associates, a crucible of super high performance on several levels, not least the level important to butterflies. In Honolulu, Surfacedesign took an intelligent license with the design of a midcentury modern office building by the architect Vladimir Ossipoff to make a finely machined response on its surrounding plaza, complemented by native species all around. And up at the scale of the city, we look at the long-industrial Menomonee River Valley in Milwaukee, where landscape architecture is vital in making a large district habitable to people, animals, and plants with hopes of retaining it as a base of manufacturing jobs. There?s much more to discover about a spectrum of topics?dog parks, how design firms grow, drawings by Lawrence Halprin, a book on John Nolen, and a look back to a century ago when ASLA...