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Launching a design firm is not for the faint of heart. In building a landscape architecture business, mobile tech and shared work spaces have changed the game, but some things remain the same?long hours and total dedication are a given. Kevan Williams talked to more than a dozen young firms about what it takes to take the leap in a postrecession world and what keeps principals up at night. If big demands take time away from design, they also deliver independence and professional growth. Principals talk candidly about finding balance, building on experience, and focusing on a few key elements among other backstage insights.
Steve Durrant, FASLA, is a bike evangelist, and that makes him a bike lane evangelist, too. Fred Bernstein profiles Durrant and his firm, Alta Planning + Design, about the current state of our bicycle infrastructure. Chicago?s Riverwalk is a triumph of patience and public landscape design. The work, by Sasaki, is an insertion into the long-used but somehow underutilized spaces along the channelized Chicago River that runs right through the heart of the city?s iconic Loop. In the Foreground, Timothy Schuler looks at the emerging questions about aesthetics and renewable energy. Can we?and should we?make wind and solar farms look better and relate more meaningfully to the places where they are increasingly part of the economy" Allyn West looks at the opportunity that drought and tree die-off made in Houston?s urban forest in Eco...