Every week, we bring you the latest news in placemaking, landscape architecture, the nature-mental health link, and much more. Check back each week for new roundups and items.
National Landscape Architecture Month: Healthy Living Through Design 2013
With the theme of Healthy Living Through Design, National Landscape Architecture Month (NLAM) 2013 will spur a country-wide discussion about the profession’s role in the most important issues facing our country, such as reducing childhood obesity, cleaning the air, greening the streets, and urging people to get out and take advantage of the great parks and landscapes available to them. Many of the projects taken on by landscape architects, including those featured on the ASLA Year of Public Service blog, address one of these four issues.
A Building Not Just Green, but Practically Self-Sustaining
Tenants have already begun moving into the six-story Bullitt Center, in advance of its grand opening on Earth Day, April 22. With the final touches nearly complete on the 50,000-square-foot office building at 1501 East Madison Street, at the edge of the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, its occupants are about to embark upon an unparalleled and very public experiment in sustainability. To earn its environmental bragging rights, the Bullitt Center must complete a rigorous one-year certification process called the Living Building Challenge, which requires both water and energy self-sufficiency, among a list of 20 demands.
Grown in Detroit
A little more than a decade ago, the notion of a neat, well-designed garden here at the paved epicenter of car culture, the General Motors headquarters is a few blocks away would have seemed like a hallucination. But although abandoned buildings and vacant lots are still vexing issues in many parts of the city, this section of the downtown core has been transformed. The waterfront along the Detroit River is slowly developing into a series of linked green spaces and public plazas. Sports venues, even the home of the hard-luck Lions pro football team, draw hordes of loyal fans downtown. New caf’s and pop-up retail spaces lure shoppers from suburban malls. Companies such as Compuware and Quicken Loans have opened big offices here and brought in employees from outside the city.
Bench Innovations in Boston
Public seating sets the scene for chance encounters, people watching, connecting with nature, or just taking a break. Indeed, public spaces without seating can seem pretty uninviting. To create an iconic bench or street seat for the Fort Point Channel area in South Boston, Design Boston invited all types of designers from around the world to submit concepts to their Street Seats Design Challenge. Nearly 170 concepts came in from 23 countries. Just 20 made it to the semi-final round. According to the organizers, the goal of the competition is to create a sense of livability in a pretty rugged urban area, while also being socially and environmentally conscious.
Why Playing Outdoors Makes Children Smarter
Author and clinical psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison writes, Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity. It is through unstructured, open-ended creative play that children learn the ways of the world. While playing outside, children explore with all their senses, they witness new life, they create imaginary worlds and they negotiate with each other to create a playful environment.
