Archinect - Features

Op-Ed: A Unique Moment for Landscape Architects

2022-09-21T13:38:00-04:00

I recently joined American Society of Landscape Architects President Eugenia Martin, FASLA, and hundreds of other global leaders in landscape architecture in Gwangju, South Korea, at the International Federation of Landscape Architects World Council Meeting. IFLA represents landscape architects worldwide, with 77 member associations globally, including ASLA in the United States.

The time together was a reaffirmation that the global community of landscape architects share goals to promote and diversify the profession, set high professional standards, and exchange knowledge and best practices across cultures and communities.

Investigating the Relationship Between Public Art and Public Space with LAA Office

2021-12-13T15:25:00-05:00

When public art is incorporated into a design space, how does it interact with its surrounding architecture and landscapes? For Lulu Loquidis and Daniel Luis Martinez, the importance of bridging the gap between public space, community-driven design, and the built environment is essential. The duo are co-principals of the multi-disciplinary design studio LAA Office based in Columbus, Indiana.

After living and working in New York City for several years, their move to the Midwest helped foster an eye-opening opportunity for creating positive design interventions. They explain: "Some of the biggest issues that need to be addressed relate to social, economic, and cultural inequities that privilege certain groups over others. Specifically, in our work, we're hoping to find ways of making art and design accessible to folks that can't normally afford it or who see themselves removed from the processes that shape the built environment around them."

To learn more about LAA Office's path to s...

A Conversation with Mia Lehrer on Her Origins, Civil Service, and Design Leadership

2020-05-27T13:32:00-04:00

Born in El Salvador, Mia Lehrer grew up under a mother and father committed to making a difference in their local community, a quality the pair passed along to their children. It was at a young age that Mia and her siblings began advocating for the well being and empowerment of those around them through pursuits like teaching locals to read at their self-led summer school in the family’s home garage. Later, the family left Central America due to the break out of civil war and young Mia began to develop an inclination towards design. She explored vocations in architecture and landscape design and soon enrolled at Tufts University, pursuing a degree in Environmental Design.

With a growing and solidified interest to work on the design of cities, Mia embarked on a self-directed education through reading and attending lectures, leading her to the Master of Landscape Architecture program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. In 1982, Mia Lehrer + Associates was founded, and t...

Studio Visits: Studio-MLA

2020-05-19T12:57:00-04:00

The city within a city is a common architectural idea, but few times does one have an opportunity to experience this loose concept as a physical reality. Studio-MLA captures the essence of this dynamic interior urbanism, as it situates itself as a kind of indoor campus greenhouse. But, instead of districts and cities, there are conference rooms, workstations, plazas, and outdoor environments designed to enrich and enlighten the experience of its users. Color, light, and space delineate the the unique character of Studio-MLA, a character that radiates from the studio's eclectic leader and founder, Mia Lehrer.

For our latest Studio Visit, Archinect’s Paul Petrunia sat down with Mia Lehrer to talk about the city within a city that is Studio-MLA, its many uses, the workplace culture, and its special place as a community hotspot.

San Francisco-based Design Firm SAW Tackles Architecture's Design Blindspots by Challenging Possible Outcomes

2019-06-13T13:34:00-04:00

Within architectural practice, navigating through blind spots in the design process is something many studios work through. In Dan Spiegel and Megumi Aihara's case, SAW's mission is to approach these moments of design obscurity by focusing on their passions for architecture, landscape architecture, and design. With their goal of designing both for the inside and outside, Spiegel and Aihara use object materiality and scale to produce potential outcomes in spatial design.

From their stunning residences to the integrative urban-scaled projects they design, SAW uses their interdisciplinary approach to develop highly technical yet subtlety beautiful landscape and architectural works. For this week's Studio Snapshot, Archinect chats with Spiegel and Aihara about their experience in running a practice and the strategic risks they take when designing for the ever-changing environment.

#ArchinectMeets @shitgardens

2018-10-23T11:23:00-04:00

#ArchinectMeets is a series of interviews with members of the architecture community that use Instagram as a creative medium. With the series, we ask some of Instagram’s architectural photographers, producers and curators about their relationship to the social media platform and how it has affected their practice.

Social media has undeniably affected the way we perceive, interpret and share opinions about architecture today. While we use our own account, @Archinect, as a site for image curation and news content, we wanted to ask fellow Instagram users how they navigated the platform.

We spoke to the curators of @shitgardens, a curated selection of the worst landscaping the internet has to offer. A viable theory suggests that there is more to learn about humanity from the deplorable than the exemplary, either because it is in much greater numbers or it reveals basic human desires with less inhibition. As subscribers to this belief system, especially as it applies to our relationship ...

Designing from the land up: an interview with Wittman Estes Architecture + Landscape

2017-06-26T09:00:00-04:00

When Matt Wittman and Jody Estes founded their Seattle-based practice, Wittman Estes Architecture + Landscape in 2012, they saw a space in the market for an integrated practice that brought indoor and outdoor space together as one whole. For this Monday's Small Studio Snapshot, we talk with the duo about their love of nature, getting clients to allocate funds for landscape, and their goals for the future.

Screen/Print #56: Diana Balmori is interviewed by MAS Context about Bilbao's Abandoibarra Master Plan

2017-05-19T12:11:00-04:00

The story of Bilbao—and its Architectural Wonder™—has been told to the point of cliché. Yet in MAS Context's BILBAO issue, the familiar trope is given new life and depth as a series of architects, designers, and denizens of the city explain how they helped to transform this Spanish industrial town into a case study for holistic, rejuvenating design. In this excerpt from the issue for Screen/Print, Iker Gil interviews the late, great Diana Balmori about her firm's work on the Abandoibarra master plan.

Taking a step outside with Terremoto's David Godshall, a self-proclaimed punk and art-historian-turned-landscape-architect

2017-05-01T09:00:00-04:00

For this week's Small Studio Snapshot, we're heading outdoors to talk with David Godshall, a self-proclaimed punk and art-historian-turned-landscape-architect.

Godshall, alongside with Alain Peauroi, founded TERREMOTO, a landscape architecture firm with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco specializing in localized landscapes that are both formally and conceptually adventurous.

Screen/Print #39: "Pleasure" from PennDesign's LA+

2016-01-07T13:55:00-05:00

In an era marked by ecological crisis, the figure of the landscape architect can assume an austere, if not downright sanctimonious, stance. Like some contemporary prophet, the landscape architect calls for repentance, moderation, and preparation – a voice in the wilderness of our apparently excessive time. Yet the discipline’s origins are far less pious, as is made clear in “Pleasure,” the newest issue of LA+, produced by the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design. Revisiting arcadias of past and present – from the gardens of Ancient Rome to the resort-styled Discovery Bay development in Hong Kong – the issue considers the complex relationship between landscape architecture and pleasure.

Screen/Print #35: PennDesign's "LA+"

2015-07-23T17:58:00-04:00

It all comes back to the land. LA+, the new publication produced by the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design, places landscape architecture at the origin point of a diverse panoply of disciplines. Put out twice annually, LA+ features precisely curated content from an array of professions that all come to focus on the landscape.