New Books in Architecture

Stefan Al, PhD, is a native of the Netherlands, a low-lying county that would not exist without flood protection, is an architect, urban designer, and infrastructure expert at global design at Kohn Pedersen Fox in New York. He has served as a TED resident, advisor to the United Nations High Level Political Forum on sustainable development and Professor of urban design at the University of Pennsylvania.Adapting Cities to Sea Level Rise: Green and Gray Strategies(Island Press, 2018) is a tool kit for adapting and managing sea level rise and storm events for metropolitan cities and smaller communities. It’s a “how to” guide to create better comprehensive strategies and ideas for implementation. The beautiful and simple diagrams illustrate the difference responses possible for cities and the pros and cons of each. The book makes the argument that collaboration is the key to finding successful solutions for all stakeholders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

Vacant lots, so often seen as neighborhood blight, have the potential to be a key element of community revitalization. As manufacturing cities reinvent themselves after decades of lost jobs and population, abundant vacant land resources and interest in green infrastructure are expanding opportunities for community and environmental resilience. Vacant to Vibrant: Creating Successful Green Infrastructure Networks (Island Press, 2019) explains how inexpensive green infrastructure projects can reduce stormwater runoff and pollution, and provide neighborhood amenities, especially in areas with little or no access to existing green space.Sandra Albro offers practical insights through her experience leading the five-year Vacant to Vibrant project, which piloted the creation of green infrastructure networks in Gary, Indiana; Cleveland, Ohio; and Buffalo, New York. Vacant to Vibrant provides a point of comparison among the three cities as they adapt old systems to new, green technology. An overview of the larger economic and social dynamics in play throughout the Rust Belt region establishes context for the promise of green infrastructure. Albro then offers lessons learned from the Vacant to Vibrant project, including planning, design, community engagement, implementation, and maintenance successes and challenges. An appendix shows designs and plans that can be adapted to small vacant lots.Sandra Albro, research associate at Holden Forests & Gardens, investigates how improving soil and plants can boost the ecological and social value of vacant lots in Great Lakes cities. She is project manager for two projects that test low-cost, low-maintenance urban greening projects that manage stormwater and revitalize communities in Gary, IN; Cleveland, OH; and Buffalo, NY. Ms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

Today’s guest hails to us from England. Mr. Edward Hutchison’s new book is Drawing for Landscape Architecture: Sketch to Screen to Site (Thames & Hudson, 2019). Can you draw? The answer is yes and we must. As designers, understanding the landscape beings with the basics. Like learning your musical scales, so is drawing to design. It’s the fundamental skill to understand a place’s the culture, space, color, and discovering the genius loci. Mr. Hutchison’s latest book is “how to do it.” He explains his process for understanding how taking the time to understand the site influences his designs and the benefits of it.Edward Hutchison is principal of his own successful landscape design practice in London. He was previously an associate of Foster + Partners. His drawings have been included in major exhibitions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

If there’s one thing that conjures up the – rightly contested – idea of a ‘civilisation’, it is grand palatial or religious buildings, and many such structures are foremost in how China is imagined throughout the world. But as Nancy S. Steinhardt notes in Chinese Architecture: A History (Princeton University Press, 2019), many iconic edifices such Beijing’s Forbidden City or Shanxi’s temples share features in common with the humblest ordinary dwellings which people in what we now call China have inhabited for centuries.Steinhardt here draws on decades of exhaustive reading and tireless fieldwork to tell the story of Chinese building practices, principles and techniques across space and time, from the earliest archaeological traces of construction right up to the present day. Both highly accessible and richly illustrated with hundreds of colour photographs, as well as intricate technical diagrams, this extraordinary treasure trove of a book is much more than an architectural compendium. The countless insights Steinhardt offers into the wider worlds of art and urban planning, and the political, economic and religious contexts in which Chinese buildings have been built for thousands of years, will serve as an engrossing and materially-rooted account of Chinese ‘civilisation’ for anyone with even a fleeting interest in the country.Ed Pulford is a postdoctoral researcher at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

Raymond Jungles is the founder of the Miami based Landscape Architecture firm Raymond Jungles Inc. He graduate from the University of Florida with honors in 1981. And, was elected as a Fellow in 2006 in the American Society of Landscape Architects. Raymond’s work has earned 2 national awards and 40 state awards. He has lectured internationally at a diverse number of institutions and universities. In his book The Cultivated Wild: Gardens and Landscapes (The Monacelli Press, 2015), Jungles discusses his design process and its synthesis with local ecologies for our human desires of cultivated landscapes. The story of Jungles’s mentors weaves in and out of his projects. The art and ecology begins in the photography and hand drawings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

Jason Dewees is the staff horticulturist at Flora Grubb Gardens and East West Trees in San Francisco. Responsible for the Tree Canopy Succession Plan for the San Francisco Botanical Garden, he serves on the Horticultural Advisory Committee for the San Francisco Botanical Garden, and on The San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers Advisory Council.Five years in the making, Jason's beautiful, award-winning book Designing with Palms (Timber Press, 2018) offers a wealth of design inspiration and ideas, exquisitely photographed by Caitlin Atkinson and featuring gardens in Hawai`i, South Florida, the Bay Area, Southern California, South Carolina, and the Desert Southwest. Jason shares lessons from some of the best designers working with palms in the United States. Useful information about the palm family and a portfolio of hardy and popular palm species equip designers and gardeners to embrace the power of palms in landscape design. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

Downtowns are more than economic engines: they are repositories of knowledge and culture and generators of new ideas, technology, and ventures. They are the heart of the city that drives its future. If we are to have healthy downtowns, we need to understand what downtown is all about; how and why some American downtowns never stopped thriving (such as San Jose and Houston), some have been in decline for half a century (including Detroit and St. Louis), and still others are resurging after temporary decline (many, including Lower Manhattan and Los Angeles). The downtowns that are prospering are those that more easily adapt to changing needs and lifestyles.In The Heart of the City: Creating Vibrant Downtowns for a New Century (Island Press, 2019), distinguished urban planner Alexander Garvin shares lessons on how to plan for a mix of housing, businesses, and attractions; enhance the public realm; improve mobility; and successfully manage downtown services. Garvin opens the book with diagnoses of downtowns across the United States, including the people, businesses, institutions, and public agencies implementing changes. In a review of prescriptions and treatments for any downtown, Garvin shares brief accounts—of both successes and failures—of what individuals with very different objectives have done to change their downtowns. The final chapters look at what is possible for downtowns in the future, closing with suggested national, state, and local legislation to create standard downtown business improvement districts to better manage downtowns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

Bradley Cantrell and Adam Mekies' new book Codify: Parametric and Computational Design in Landscape Architecture(Routledge, 2018) Bradley Cantrell and Adam Mekies, "Codify: Parametric and Computational Design in Landscape Architecture" (Routledge, 2018) Landscape architecture has a long history of innovation in the areas of computation and media, particularly in how the discipline represents, analyses, and constructs complex systems. This curated volume spans academic and professional projects to form a snapshot of digital practices that aim to show how computation is a tool that goes beyond methods of representation and media. The book is organized into four sections; syntax, perception, employ, and prospective. The essays are written by leading academics and professionals and the sections examine the role of computational tools in landscape architecture through case studies, historical accounts, theoretical arguments, and nascent propositions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

This is a magically journey about the mystery of the design process. Chip Sullivan's Cartooning the Landscape (University of Virginia Press, 2016) is about using your drawing skills to exercise and stretch your imagination. He takes you step by step through a process of creativity to enhance your own design and challenge your limitations. Why not? Where does creativity come? This book will help guide you on your own path to go there...somewhere. You are your only limitation.Chip Sullivan is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

During a career spanning six decades, Lawrence Halprin (1916–2009) became one of the most prolific and outspoken landscape architects of his generation. He took on challenging new project types, developing a multidisciplinary practice while experimenting with adaptive reuse and ecological designs for new shopping malls, freeways, and urban parks. In his lifelong effort to improve the American landscape, Halprin celebrated the creative process as a form of social activism.Kenneth Helphand is a Fellow in the American Society of Landscape Architects and professor emeritus of Landscape Architecture at the University of Oregon. His fascinating insights and research reveal a design process that lead Landscape Architecture’s most iconic places. In this interview about his new book Lawrence Halprin (Library of American Landscape History, 2017), Kenny discusses the love that Halprin had for landscape and his role in shaping the way the public uses and enjoys its public spaces. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture