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The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) has just released the latest episode of their ongoing Pioneers of American Landscape Design series featuring an oral history and overview of the work of the 2021 inaugural Oberlander Prize winner Julie Bargmann. The D.I.R.T. founder and University of... View full entry
Writer and academic Mabel O. Wilson, architect Thomas Phifer, landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, and Yale SoA Dean Deborah Berke are among the newly-elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters according to an announcement from the institution... View full entry
The Obama Center design team has been reworking plans for a proposed controversial garage on a portion of the historic Midway Plaisance, across the street from where the presidential complex is to be built in Jackson Park. [...]
When I left off on this story in November, Tod Williams, one of the architects, said relocating the garage was under consideration, given the concerns of community groups for the historic publicly owned Midway property.
— Chicago Sun-Times
Curbed Chicago picks up the story where the Chicago Sun-Times left off and reports about some of the praise and criticism that was presented at a meeting the Obama Foundation had called on December 20 at its Hyde Park Headquarters. The hearing was led by the project's architects Tod Williams... View full entry
The most important question related to the Obama Presidential Center on Chicago’s South Side doesn’t have that much to do with its architecture.
It is instead: What kind of landscape stewardship can a presidential museum and library offer? To be located in Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted’s Jackson Park, the project already has a heap of canonical landscape history to contend with. So can the Obama library make a great park greater?
— landscapearchitecturemagazine.org
"So this new landscape has the potential to improve upon the already very good. But for whom?," Zach Mortice asks in his piece for Landscape Architecture Magazine. "Will these grounds remain public and accessible for all South Siders and Chicagoans, free of charge?" View full entry
The Trinity River Park, which will be 10 times the size of Central Park in New York, will be made up of 7,000 acres of the Great Trinity Forest, 2,000 acres of space between the Trinity River levees and 1,000 acres of already developed space.
MVVA’s design will build on municipal efforts to connect the river with the city. It envisions the space as a “beautiful and naturalistic network of trails, meadows and lakes living in harmony with the river”.
— globalconstructionreview.com
Related stories in the Archinect news: Results of the Dallas Connected City Design ChallengeA look at some cities revitalizing their blighted riversNational Geographic takes a closer look at the world's great urban parks View full entry
During a lecture given at Kansas City Design Week earlier in the year, Gullivar Shepard of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) called the St. Louis Arch Ground project, known as CityArchRiver 2015, one of the most challenging projects he has been involved in. — thisbigcity.net
Previously: The "Park Over the Highway" is now underway View full entry
The appointment signals the start of implementing the Menil’s master plan for its “neighborhood of art,” which consists of six buildings devoted to art spread across several blocks, as well as outdoor sculptures, green spaces and bungalows. — artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com
The multidisciplinary design team led by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates and Thomas Phifer & Associates was recently named winner of Design Waller Creek: A Competition. Organized by the Austin, TX-based Waller Creek Conservancy, this international design competition called for ideas to revitalize a 7-mile stretch of Waller Creek, a neglected Austin urban ecosystem, and thus turning a "currently fragmented and undervalued section of the city into a vibrant, livable, and workable district." — bustler.net
