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Consumers often find them­ selves torn between the push to green along with other social and economical factors, such as convenience, appeal, cost and com­fort, but what if one solution marries them all?

 

An ancient concept, now a modern revolution in sustainable energy seems to be achieving just that.

 

Next Energy, a Canadian manufac­turer of geothermal heating systems  recently partnered with Yanch Heat­ing & Air Conditioning, to complete an installation on the northern shores of picturesque lake Joseph in Ontario's beautiful Muskoka region. The project aimed to achieve the basic demands of what most new home owners and those looking to green retrofit are oth­erwise finding challenging; a balance between savings, convenience, com­fort and class.

 

This Port Caning home built by Tamarack North Ltd. first prescribed an energy source that was both cost effective and accessible in an area where natural gas is unavailable and fuel transport posed a significant chal­lenge. With rising energy costs and a looming oil crisis, stable resources also weighed heavily. In addition, the home's stature also called for an aes­thetically pleasing design and sensible levels of inside comfort. The clear solution was geothermal.

 

The different units provide indi­vidual heating zones, which allow oc­cupants to control temperatures inde­pendently in different areas; an advantage not offered by most alternative heating methods. The process also eliminates the use of combustion, making for a safer, cleaner living environ­ment, with no danger of carbon monoxide and no fossil fuel emissions.

 

Requiring just one-third of the space of traditional systems, geo­thermal is typically designed to fit with the provisions of varied projects and can accommodate any combination of radiant in­ floor heating, forced-air heating,  domestic hot water and air conditioning all from the same unit. It can function well in many situations, even as a practi­cal solution for large commercial build­ings or swimming pools.

 

Geothermal integration produces many additional benefits as it has with the Lake Joseph project; it is quiet, discreet and more aesthetically pleas­ing. The equipment is compact and self-contained, with no noisy outdoor units or exterior wall venting, which also improves building envelope weather tightness.

 

President of Tamarack North Ltd., Chris Madden says although geother­mal installation is initially an expen­sive investment, it is a growing con­sideration.

 

"In our market... we are finding that the customers are quite willing to con­sider geothermal heating. It is the most expensive type of heating to install, but at the level of construction we are doing it's becoming quite accessible".

 

“Though seemingly costly at face val­ue, geothermal configuration can mean significant savings over time, protec­tion front volatile commodity prices and a decrease in the drain on resourc­es for the future. Canadian consumers who retrofit currently receive up to ten thousand dollars in rebates through both federal and provincial programs, and though projects vary, they will typ­ically see a turnaround on their invest­ment in just four to seven years.

 

"Compared to propane and oil, geo­thermal is about one-quarter the op­ crating cost, so economically it makes sense and is also extremely green with no emissions," said Regional Sales Man­ager with Next Energy, 'Jim Weber.

 

 

 

 

Weber says homes converted to a Next Energy system from oil or electric Will cut about 75 percent off their year­ly heating and cooling costs, or up to 80 percent in the case of propane. A typi­cal retrofit only takes about two to three days for installation and is designed to last beyond the life of the home.

 

The impact on the environment is clear. Geothermal has immense po­tential to reduce carbon emissions and considerably reduce global warming. Data from Natural Resources Canada and tile Environmental Protection Agency show that geothermal systems have the least environmental imprint in comparison to any space conditioning technology available; something to consider and part of a bulk of knowl­edge Next Energy is working to com­municate to the general population.

 

"Next Energy goes to market trying to educate consumers ...we aren't just selling a box or a furnace, we're selling a concept," explained Weber.

 

"Through our partnerships with companies like Yanch 1-Heating our goal is to achieve guaranteed success for the homeowner, where they aren't just purchasing from a contractor, but in­stead a network of support systems."

 

One of the few companies that spe­cialize only in geothermal Weber says, Next Energy- has no distractions and are 100 percent focused with ten years of hands-on experience, bringing more than just an exceptional product to market. In a grow­ing Canadian trade the company is poised to become an industry leader and despite the recession is holding strong.

 

Worldwide, geothermal energy is also emerging as a marked renewable force. Ac­cording to the Geothermal Energy Association, geother­mal sources currently supply energy to meet the needs of 60 million people worldwide and are a growing commodity in 24 countries. Developing countries are the top benefactors, as these sourc­es preserve the natural environment, provide energy and economic inde­pendence and can meet the need for electricity in remote regions.

 

With its adaptable and efficient structure, geothermal could revolu­tionize energy consumption in Can­ada and combat the coming energy crisis, but Without any solid plans for mass production Canadians must sup­port their own sustainability for now -one home at time.

 

 

Treetops are all the rage these days. Ecotourism destination include a tree house restaurant in Auckland and a teahouse in Japan. And for the stir-crazy office worker there are even tree house office popping up in the Pacific Pennsylvania’s Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia.

 

Out on a Limb, a new permanent installation at the arboretum, invites you to literally experience trees as the birds and squirrels do. Visitors move from solid ground into the canopy through a series of gently sloping boardwalks, wooden gateways, and human sized habitat structures that reach heights of up to 50 feet. Constructed of galvanized steel and locally harvested hardwoods, the branching walkways wind through woodland habitat vignettes rising out of some of of the oldest tree specimens in the collection.

 

 

A new permanent installation at the Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia,

Out on a limb, brings visitors into the forest canopy

 

 

The stark contrast of steel with the organic texture and structure of the surrounding hardwoods is jarring at first, but lead architect Alan Metcalfe says it was intentional. The designers at Metcalfe Architecture & Design, working with arboretum director Paul Meyer, CVM Engineers, and Forever Young Tree houses, wanted to remain honest about the fabricated character of the exhibit while still reflecting and responding to the natural architecture of the surrounding mature forest and providing space for learning and connection.

 

 

Out on a limb allows visitors to enjoy the Morris Arboretum’s mature

tree collection from an unusual vantage point  

 

 

One of the most popular spaces in out on a limb is a convergence of boardwalks, affectionately known as the “Squirrel Scramble” where two oversized hammocks hang several stories above the ground. Metcalfe says the intent of the “Scramble”  was to provide the feeling that one is suspended, literally, in the canopy. Adults and children alike can be reclining in the dappled sunlight, others actively exploring the space, climbing and playing as squirrels or chipmunks might.

 

 

  a giant nest at the end of a suspension bridge isn’t for the birds -

it’s  a people perch 

 

Other points of interest include a giant nest woven of grapevine at the end of a swinging suspension bridge and a teahouse pavilion that provides an outdoor classroom space and board views into the surrounding woodland. For hours, admission, and program information visit the Morris Arboretum online at www.morrisarboretum.org.

 

My talk to you today is really more like a jour­ney, m search or some­thing that may have never existed - but the very notion of which raises issues of crucial relevance to our contemporary world.

 

We commence this journey by recog­nizing what History seems to demon­strate so persuasively: namely, that our attitude to the landscape is fundamental to existence, and the great civilizations of the world have almost all produced vital traditions of landscape architecture - which have become axiomatic of that culture. Thus the gardens of Fontainebleau and Versailles, with their exquisite geometric patterns laid out like giant carpets, tell us much about the great power and centralization of France, and its extraordinary ability to take pleasure in - and exert great control over - Na­ture. Here plants, hedges and trees are carefully nurtured and manicured to form pre-conceived geometric shapes.

 

In an extraordinary tour-de-force. Yet however beautiful these gardens might be, one cannot help but think of Le Corbusier when he returned Lu his Paris apartment after 'World War 11 had finally ended. With his absence over three years, the small terrace garden he had always tended so diligently was Unrec­ognizable. The grass had grown wild, to a height of over two metres. In his jour­nal, Corbusier notes dryly: "How we fal­sify nature!"

 

To me, as an architect, this comment has indeed Profound implications. For just as Louis Kahn asked himself the fundamental question: "What does a brick want to become'?" so also we could ask ourselves: "What does grass want to become?" When we cut and prune, chop and change. are we not falsifying its true nature beyond recognition? And yet in the name of treasuring it…!

 

The English garden seems different - yet is it! Here also, Nature is manipu­lated - though not, it's true, into unrelent­ing geometric patterns. No. here the control is far more ingeniously exercised, for the visual vocabulary is drawn from Nature herself. (the cows in the meadow, the copse of trees on the hill). but in a manner that subtly, yet irrevocably, in­tensifies this imagery. So however "natural" the English garden may seem, you know you are looking at a mise-en-s­ce’ne. Once again nature is being ma­nipulated for man's own purposes. (Ap­ropos of such landscaping, I believe it was the great landscape painter John Constable, with his masterful rendi­tions of the English countryside, who said : 'There is nothing more odious than a Gentleman's gardens').

 

So we return to our own quest: which is to find the Hindu garden. Now there are of course wonderful gardens in In­dia -and today, after all these centu­ries, many have taken deep root in the Indian terrain, and in our psyche. Yet almost all came into being through out­side interventions, in fact through in­vasions for the must part.

 

 

A Discourse under a Barh tree 

 

 

 

Thus when the Moghul Emperor Babar, the scion of the dynasty that created the ineffable gardens at Shalimar and in Kashmir, first arrived with his conquering army lie wrote back to Kabul asking not just for more troops, but for gardeners! As he trav­elled across the rich and fertile plains of the Punjab, with its abundance of wells and water, he could not believe that lie had not seen a single garden.

 

How could the great civilization of In­dia, with its prodigious and sophisti­cated accomplishments, (ranging from mathematics to metaphysics, and including all the arts: sculpture. painting, architecture. dance, etc.). not have shown the slightest interest in gar­dens' Perhaps the answer is a relatively simple one: in Hinduism. Nature is Sacred-so any attempt to manipulate Nature just for human pleasure is something which I believe would be quite anathema to Hindu philosophy-or Buddhist or ,lain, as well. Do not forget that the Lord Bud­dha found Enlightenment while sitting under a pipal (Fictus religiosa) tree - and to this day, all over India the pipal tree is held to be sacred. For the most part, no one, anywhere, will ever touch such a tree - leave alone prune it to make it look better!

 

Could we in India have developed a land­scape tradition despite this? Well, there is of course the example of China - with its peerless gardens. The Chinese gar­den is of course marvellous and rather different from the English model, which it is believed to have influenced deeply. To begin with, the Chinese garden makes no attempt to appear "natural", but on the contrary, revels in its highly stylised renditions of nature. And it uses these stylized images to set up a dialectic be­tween the two fundamentallv different ways we experience space: viz, the Narrative and the Holistic. Both these paradigms can also exist in Architecture - for a building can be designed as an unfolding narrative, like the successive episodes of a television soap opera or the brilliant series of set-piece scenes that make up the Chinese garden.

 

The Japanese garden is, to me at least, an even more beautiful version of its Chinese prototype. because the elements here are more natural (the moss-cov­ered stones, the gnarled tree roots, etc. ) - but this, in a way, is counter produc­tive, since the sensuous pleasure of ac­tually being there becomes its own re­ward. I do not see these gardens as be­ing particularly Buddhist, but to the ex­tent that they express the wabi-sabi tra­ditions of Japan, they can be called Zen. Yet I would venture to suggest that the primordial roots of their Chinese proto­types might have been derived from pre ­Buddhist times. The Buddhist reverence for the inviolate sacredness of Nature would never conceive of such manipu­lation. No, what is more intrinsically Buddhist is something like the Deer Park at Nara in Japan. Here nature is not ma­nipulated, but is experienced in its natu­ral and sacred state.

 

How is this achieved? In Sanskrit, the word for garden, vatu, involves re-cap­turing a space or a tree with an enclo­sure, or fence, to make it sacred. It is the transformation of profane space into a sacred space that makes vata. There is also in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism the concept of the chaitya - vriksha, liter­allv 'tree-temple', where a tree itself is converted into a shrine by means of erecting an enclosure, or a even a elabo­rate temple, around it. Here, it might be mentioned that trees (when turned into a garden in the sense of vata) are believed to be the abode of innumerable spirits and genii. Cutting them would render these spirits homeless and therefore hos­tile to humans. As a Rajasathani tribal once exclaimed to a friend of mine: "The trees are always singing!"

 

In India, the notion that Nature is sacred has in turn generated the belief in a Sa­cred Geography. Thus geographic hap­penings -- such as the confluence of two rivers, a mountain range, the mother lake of Mansarovar (which is the mys­terious source of the three major rivers of North India)-are greatly revered and have attracted vast numbers of pilgrims of centuries.

 

Now Sacred Geometry exists in almost all belief-systems, including Hinduism ­as witness, the many different Yantras and mandalas all across the land. Like a belief in Sacred Geography. it comes about through a deep and compelling awareness of the unseen forces, of the invisible, that inform our everyday lives. In other words: of the non-Manifest world, which under-lies the one we see.

 

This notion of Sacred Geography, in the framework of Sacred Geometry. indi­cates the process by which Nature be­comes Art - a transformation which is not merely narrative. but conceptual. In this construct, Architecture is conceived as a Model of the Cosmos - with its pri­mary aim being to express not Beauty, but Truth. And so the first piece of archi­tecture the Buddhists built, viz. the Stupa at Sanchi, is a direct three-dimensional representation of the cosmograph - an iconic circular diagram depicting the Buddhist world-view, with the mythic Mount Meru as the axis mundi at the centre. Or again, consider Borobudur in Indonesia, with its seven levels repre­senting the seven stages of Nirvana -a structure that Andre Malraux deemed to be the most perfect building in the world because it so clearly expressed the beliefs of the society that built it. (The only equivalent in the West, lie felt, might be the great Cathedral of Chartres).

 

 

Aerial view of Borobudur,

a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist monument in Indonesia

 

 

Thus, too, a Hindu temple is really a Model of the Cosmos, based on the sa­cred vastupurush-Mandala a matrix of squares. in which each god has a spe­cial place, with a void at the centre wherein is located Brahman, the all-per­vading principle of the universe. Even the water tank in front of the temple for pilgrims to bathe is in the form of a sa­cred pool called a kund a stepped well which some believe to be an inverse model of the cosmos.

 

Today, living in our contemporary world, it is difficult for us to understand all this, because ever since the Gothic gave way to the Renaissance, architecture has in­creasingly celebrated the physical world in which it exists (Commodity, Firmness, Delight). Thus today, any attempt at metaphysics seems quite incomprehen­sible. Yet in India, these Hindu and Bud­dhist beliefs are still very prevalent. So when we lay out a garden today, one can­not help but wonder: instead of trying to cannibalise quasi - Moghul traditions or faux-English ones, could we not just go back to the basic principle that Nature herself is sacred and inviolate? This is not such an arcane approach as might appear, for today it connects directly to Our passionate espousal of environmen­tal and ecological issues -- as for instance, for the astonishing rain forests of Brazil and Malaysia, whose unique beauty is generated, we have begun to realize, not just by their impact on our visual senses but by our instinctive understanding of their intrinsic nature.

 

 

A rain forest

 

Three unlikely design concepts actually get built in Toronto. Are the wavedecks a hazardous, inaccessible flight of fancy or good public space?

 

The Simcoe Wavedeck is the newest feature on Toronto’s evolving waterfront. Its excictinf undulations create a memorable and engaging public space that pushes the limits of safety that pushes the limits of safety and accessibility.

 

There are design ideas that seem as if they could be implemented. This has been the case in recent years in architecture, where each new computer-generated fantasy by any of the big names gets everyone’s head scratching in a collective “How are they going to build that?“ Such ideas have been less the case in landscape architecture, where form tends to follow function by necessity. While architecture can still hide level floors, elevators, and ramps within a skin of just about any material and design, landscape architecture’s  surface tend to be for both and  actual use.

 

So when the landscape architecture firms West 8 of Roterdam and du Toit Allsopp Hillier (DTAH) of Toronto, as part or their winning competition entry fot Toronto’s central waterfront in 2007, rendered a series of crazily undulating wooden decks spanning harbor boat slips, it honestly seemed a bit unlikely they would ever get built. How would people walk on those plank roller coasters? Wouldn’t  the liability exposure be extraordinary? How do you make wood do that?

 

 

the story of the wavedecks is the story ot how crazy ideas get built

 

 

"We sit in our studio in Rotterdam," admits Marc Ryan, a na­tive Torontonian now with West 8, "and dream up crazy scuff." Which is what it seemed like at the time, but that's how you win competitions. Waterfront Toronto. the semipublic agency respon­sible for the reinvigoration of the entire waterfront, shockingly held them to the idea.

 

Today, three so-called wavedecks are in place and open to the public. Each has its own personality, but they are remarkably similar to the original renderings prepared by West 8 + DATH (the official name of the joint venture that is designing the water­front). Standing on the Simcoe WaveDeck - the most improba­ble of the three - Ryan himself seems incredulous they got built. He even looks a little embarrassed, as if the designers got the last laugh, pulled one over on the public and the funders by getting to do whatever they wanted, just as star building architects seem to.

 

But the last laugh goes to the public itself. On that gloomy late-summer day, Ryan was witness to kids exploring Simcoe's humps as if they were an adventure playground, out-of-town tourists posing for pictures on the ipe decks, and average Torontonians sitting and reading and watching the boats bob in the harbor. Had he ventured our 10 hours earlier, at nearly midnight, he would have seen small clutches of 20-year-olds engaged in deep and not­ so-deep conversation on the benches, just out of sight of couples cuddling down by the water's edge.

 

As fantastical as the wavedecks are, they provide public space that is both engaging and relaxing-nor an easy combination to pull off. And since the wavedecks are built out over the water, that public space is reclaimed literally from thin air. Getting here, of course, wasn't easy. It also wasn't cheap: Reel had a construction cost of about $2.7 million U.S., Spading was about $3.4 million U.S., and Simcoe ran about  $4.8 million U.S. But the story of the wavedecks - how they deal with accessibility and safety, how they were actually constructed, how they create both public space and natural space-is the story of how crazy ideas get built.

 

The three wavedecks were completed from west to fast, with Spading the first done in Sep­tember 2008, followed b_y Rees and Simcoe in 2009. One more is planned at Parliament. Each   one is named for the nearest perpendicular street, and all are meant to widen the pedestrian route along the waterfront and the Queens Quay road and transitway at the places where Toronto's har­bor slips pinch inland toward the street. Essential­ly, they are undulating wooden boardwalks of ipe and cedar, with stainless steel accents in the form of guardrails and bench Supports. Each has its own personality. "Spadina is the classic," says Ryan, de­ scribing the quite formal, symmetrical, high-In-the-middle promontory, which won a 2009 ASLA Honor Award. Rees is the quintessential expression of how Adriaan Geuze, International ,IL LA, West 8's to under, describes his plans for the waterfront: as a place where the city kisses the lake. The Rees deck dips in the middle, coming to within 35 inches of the water. Simcoe, says Ryan, "is a smile; it's for fun." It's a rumpled wooden carpet, with two tall hills that rise to more than I I feet above the harbor.

 

Despite their different personalities, though, ^they have delib­erate commonalities in their Structure and aesthetic. "The wave­decks establish a powerful language chat repeats," exlpains Ryan. "As you walk the street, you'll have encounters with different but familiar elements." That coherence is a critical aspect of the en­tire waterfront project, which will eventually create a wooden boardwalk along five miles of Lake Ontario. The wavedecks are one aspect of that theme, and they reinforce several existing stretches of very popular boardwalk and will lac­er be joined by wooden bridges at the mouths of the slips.

 

The best way to think of them srtuctually is to envision seven long ribbons of glue laminated untreated coastal yellow cedar. Between the ribbons is ipe planking. The space between the ribbons varies by wavedeck but is general ly just over four feet. Each beam has a small shelf on each side that carries the planking. These ledges undulate differently than the tops of the beams, and this creates steps and side slopes^, as the deck rises and falls. Every element serves both structural and aesthetic purposes. The glue-lam beams carry the majority of the weight, but their faces are visible wherever there are steps. The distance be­tween the beams is narrow enough to allow the ipe to remain sup­ported only at the shelves (except for the outermost spans, which have additional steel under them). The whole structure is support­ed from below on perpendicular steel beams reaching out from the harbor wall and sitting on concrete columns set into the har­bor floor. The decks are beefy, designed to resist the lake's ice up­lift and wave action, and to support, says Ryan, "1,000 people or a fire truck."

 

Vertical elements are subtle compositions in steel and wood, and, as with the structural elements, ^everything does double duty. Low steel rails seem purely ornamental but are carefully placed relative to slope and drop-offs. Benches have steel bases with ipe cladding and provide a safety function in addition to being comfortable for sitting or reclining. “There was always a desire to keep the wavedeck edge open and free," says Ryan, "but you have to mark that edge. [The benches] are our answer to a toe rail."

 

 

The decks were designed in a complex interplay between com­puter modeling and full-scale mock-ups built in West 8’s office. This combination allowed the designers to test what it would feel like to walk on certain slopes and cross slopes but also to achieve precision to within one-sixteenth of an inch. The approx­imatelv 20-inch-thick beams were constructed off site from one­ inch-thick strips of wood in 65-foot sections (except the most se­vere undulations at Simcoe, where the sections are much shorter and the wood strips are one­ quarter-Inch thick, to allow for tighter curves). The off-sire construction reduced the amount of precision construction required on site, where it would be far more difficult to achieve Essential­ly, the structure (steel supports and glue-lam beams) of each deck fits together like a puzzle, and then the ipe planks are screwed into place on the ledges that are an Integral part of the beams. The vertical elements, likewise, sit on the ledges, and the planks are cut around them, giving the appearance that everything rises from beneath the deck.

 

"This structural purity is a perfect reflection of the aesthetic pu­rity It actually conjures modernism, though in a naturalistic, nonrectilinear way. Form and function are inextricable, but here form is driving function, and then function becomes form.

 

The wavedecks, however, despite their satisfying elegance and strangeness, don't seem to follow the regular rules for plazas and screetscapes. They are wholly public spaces, and they are well used, but there are no apparent ramps, no obvious division between flat areas and steeper slopes. They are more landform than plaza, and that raises some questions about accessibility and safety.

 

"This is like a double black diamond ski run," says Ryan, referring specifically to Simcoe's pre­cipitous slopes. "But we're taking people's com­mon sense into account, just aS if they were hik­ing." Though Simcoe's hills constitute the most abrupt topography on any of the three wavedecks, each has its slopes, steps, and traction concerns. The magic of the design is the tact that even though each deck looks like (and in fact is) a sin­~^,le monolithic composition, the designers know, Mid have marked, exactly where the differences in slope occur. That notation is not done with garish yellow striping or incongruous texture changes, but rather with small raised metal discs. These discs occur at the outer edges of the decks (here accompanied by textured yellow dots and steel bol­lards), to generally warn users that this is riot a uniform plane. They also true the accessible pathways across the decks, with wheelchair icons placed at the edges of the routes.

 

 

 

Each wavedeck is composed of seven beams running parallel to the harbor wall, as at Simcoe, above. The beams themselves are both structural and aesthetic. They support the ipe planks that form the surface of the wavedecks, below, but their tops and faces are exposed, creating steps and ramps. Each of the beams undulates differently, which gives the decks their apparent randomness, bottom.

 

 

 

West 8 + DTAH have also allowed for universal accessibili­ty through the shapes of the decks themselves. Spadina has a central rise that is slightly higher than the adjacent street, while its outer corners plunge down toward the water. From the har­borside corners of the deck, there are diagonal pathways that rise, step free and at less than 5 percent, to the central high poi nr. From there, it is possible to move downslope in either direction along the water to the low points. The slope here is between 5 and 8 percent, and a handrail and grippy treads are on the planking. Despite the undulations and steps, a fully accessible route is here, but it's subtle.

 

 

 

Likewise at Rees, the center of which dips down to the water, the accessible route is present but understated. Metal discs mark a path­way^, from the Queens Quay corners down to the center, creatively dodging steps on either side and never getting steeper than 5 percent. The Rees slip is home to a sailing program for persons with disabil­ities, so the steel rail c the center of the wavedeck is removable to al­low easier access to boats than exists anywhere else in Toronto today.

 

At Simcoe, accessibility and safety are more complex because the slopes on the big hills well exceed 8 percent. 7wo step-free, accessible routes down to the water slip between the hills and steps. They are either marked with the usual metal discs or flanked by a curvy steel rail that winds around both ills. The rail is low, about knee height, and easily stepped over, but it is meant to signal the adventurous part of the deck. On the hills, the ipe planks are beveled, so they create a sawtooth surface to the walks, which helps with traction. A taller steel railing separates the hill area from the water, though it has horizontal cable rails, which are climbable and likely unsafe.

 

Ryan admits iliac the Simcoe hills were a bit of a stretch for Toronto, even coming on the heels of the very successful Spadina deck. There haven't been any major incidents, though, even though a favorite local sport has been to slide down the beams. Since each successive beam is taller arid steeper than the next, users can choose their level of comfort. Ryan and Waterfront Toronto are subscrib­ing to the idea that if people actually are given less information about the hazards of a place, they will be more alert and more care­ful. That's an idea, of course, that is hotly debated in North Amer­ica, but it expresses the European sentiment that people need to be responsible for their own actions when in unfamiliar environments.

 

A more difficult discussion is whether the accessible routes are marked effectively enough. For someone with limited mobility or sight, those little metal discs might be hard to identify quickly. To improve safety, the stair nosing detail used at Spadina a stainless steel strip with a textured grip was modified ac the other two wavedecks. Rees and Simcoe have white stripes, which are much more apparent in the all - wood landscape. It could be suggested that brighter markings would help with accessibility, but then that kind of striping would mar the aesthetic of the decks.

 

 

 

Underneath each wavedeck is another world. Toronto Harbor is a tough place for aquatic life: lots of boats, lots of stormwater runoff, nor much habitat. But the wavedecks are trying to reme­dy that by restoring habitat in the slips they bridge. "Every time we build a new human public space," says Ryan, "we're also build­ing these biotopes.^° During construction of the decks, contrac­tors; recontoured the lake lx-d, bull[ shoals with river stones, and attached tree root fans to concrete on the harbor floor. Some of th is was done randomly, by just tossing stuff in to the water, and some more carefully by construction workers in scuba suits.

 

 

 

Though perhaps a small gesture, this habitat creation speaks to some of ^-Waterfront Toronto's sustainability goals. Many of' the organization's projects are restoring degraded landscapes and creating new commmunities with high-efficiency buildings and walkable neighborhoods. In fact, the last remaining wavedeck, Parliament, will actually be a long boardwalk and plaza that will  collect and treat stormwater from an adjacent condo complex. The water will drain to ranks at the dock wall, and those tanks wiII be the basic for the boardwalk. The water will flow to a larger holding area, over which the wavedeck will be built. The required size of this last tank determine,.] the size of the wavedeck, and the undu­lating wood ^theme will have its ex­pression as a series of biomorphic win­dows down into the tank. The wood will bulge upward at the windows, at most as if something had been pushed through from beneath. The windows will allow in sunlight for ultraviolet

light treatment of the stormwater and will make the treatment process visible. Current plans are for three holes and two sculp­tural towers. The project is presently in schematic design and has no set implementation date.

 

Encountering the wavedecks for the first time is a complete surprise, especially Simcoe, with its waves that tower more than head high. They are completely our of the ordinary, redefining what a plaza surface can be. They actually, in photographs. look a little like the photorealistic renderings from West 8 + DTHA's original competition entry, which is a good thing because it means the designer and client invested the time and money to re­alize the vision. In both architecture and landscape architecture (especially the latter), wild ideas tend to get watered down. It's easy to back away from some of the more grandiose schemes by citing liability concerns, constructability issues, and accessibili­ty rules- The wavedecks could easily have become flat or stepped plazas with custom benches and sleek steel railings. They could have east IV become three of the same, for the sake of greater con­tinuity and lower design and construction cost. What got built is probably the most difficult way to cross a boat slip.

 

Some cities build unexpected, love-it-or-hate-it works of archi­tecture to put themselves on the map (actually Toronto has done that, too, from the 1)6) New City Hall, known as the ^-flying saucer;" to Will Alsop's Ontario College of Art and Design to re­cent works by Daniel Libeskind and Frank Gehry). The water­front wavedecks are the landscape architectural equivalent of that: a bit sensationalist, highly photogenic, and completely new. But Spadina, Rees, Simcoe, and the forthcoming Parliament go two better. They create new public space and they help activate miles of existing lakefront. They might be a little hazardous, but they're a lot of fun-and not easily forgotten.

 

 

 

GENERAL DESIGN. Award of Excellence

SHANGHAI HOUTAN PARK :

LANDSCAPE AS LIVING SYSTEM, Shanghai. China

Turenscape, Beijing, and Peking University Graduate

School of Landscape Architectur, Beijing

The 2010 Shanghai Expo Bureau

LONG AFTER THE END of the urban-Chemed Expo 2010 in Shanghai, for which it was created, Houtan Park will mature and season in the ways it reconnects the city center to the Huang­pu River. The mile-long brownfield site is only 100 to 265 feet wide and serves as a megastructural way to control flooding in the city, which was previously the work of a 22-foot-high barren con­crete wall. Terraced plantings, which incorporate former factory facilities, and a constructed wetland maintain the flood control and retain runoff, cleaning up to 500,000 gallons of river water  a day while paying homage to both the area's 18th-century farm­ing landscape and its 20th-century industrial heritage. Pathways through the seasonally changing crop and wetland vegetation al­low people to walk easily through the park and are punctuated with small, bamboo-lined gathering spaces and views to the Shanghai skyline. "This is a powerful illustration of how land­scape architecture can restore the ecology and history of a place," the jury noted, "while accommodating human use and reinforc­ing the value of nature within a vibrant urban context."

 

 

GENERAL DESIGN, Honor Award

 

THE BROCHSTEIN PAVILION AT RICE

UNIVERSITY. Houston

The Office of James Burnett, Houston

Rice University

 

 

THIS NEW SOCIAL HUB for the Rice University campus is re­markable for its restraint and purity of form. It is designed as a landmark destination at the university and shows how landscape architecture fosters social interaction. The school wished to en­hance spatial connections around its central quadrangle, which was originally the primary cast-west axis of the campus. Meticu­lously detailed and unpretentious, the 6,000-square-foot glass, steel, and aluminum pavilion offers a transparent, sublime contrast m the buildings around it. Surrounding this pavilion is a 10,000­-square-foot plaza of scored and sandblasted concrete. Linear bands of horsetail reed define the edge of the outdoor dining area and sep­arate the adjacent pedestrian paths. A bosque of 48 alle’e lacebark elms provides an organizing framework at a human scale while a row of live oaks reinforces the existing space. Long, black concrete fountains with beach stone till the garden with the murmur of running water and reflect the filtered light that falls through the canopy. Movable Furniture and subtle site lighting encourage im­promptu gatherings amid this campus oasis. The jury admired the pavilion's "beautiful simplicity and scale," which help to set­tle the space into its surroundings on the Rice campus.

 

 

GENERAL DESIGN, Honor Award

CONNECTICUT WATER TREATMENT FACILITY,

New Haven, Connecticut

Michael Van Valkenburgh

Associates Inc., New York City

South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority

 

WITHIN A MODEST BUDGET, this project presents a microcosm of the surrounding regional watershed and shows the aesthetic potential for highly functional municipal landscape design. The rich terrain works at a hu­man scale to invite people to engage with the land as they observe the water that flows through it, and the elemental landscape design offsets the sleek I i near form of the treatment facility. The swales re­place a traditional engineered drainage system and create topo­graphical variety through the reuse of excavated soiI. The primal yet sophisticated planting program is ecologically restorative - the vegetation filters storm water runoff and recharges the groundwa­ter table. The native species require no fertilizer or pesticides, and their colors and textures change with the seasons. By transforming a formerly flat lawn into a dynamic, ecologically diverse public space, the design improves on the long-standing community use of the grounds and the site's connections to its suburban surroundings. "The design is educational as it tells the story of the ecology of wa­ter purification," observed the jury. "Yet what draws people in is its exquisite sculptural execution."

 

 

GENERAL DESIGN, Honor Award

CROSSWATERS ECOLODGE, NANKUN

MOUNTAIN RESERVE, Guangdong Province, China

EDSA Inc., Jacksonville, Florida

Longmen Mount Nankun Zhongheng Ecotourism Development Company Limited

 

 

THIS PROJECT, among the first ecotourism destinations in Chi­na, aspires to create an immersive educational experience. The client wished to protect the nature reserve, established in 198 i, and enrich the lives of the 5,000 locals whose income depends a]­Most exclusively on harvesting bamboo from the forest. From the outset, the design team engaged this community as it devised a I 0-year plan to develop lodging, interpretive, activity, retail, and civic facilities on the subtropical mountain. The Crosswaters lodge is the first phase of that plan. Its grounds and facilities highlight the importance of bamboo and its place as "Friend of the people," as the plant is known in China. All of the plantings in the facility's botanical gardens and grounds are na­tive to the region. The landscape architect meticu­lously studied the topography and social makeup of the area to develop the project's sustainability guidelines for design and construction. "This proj­ect stands out in this region for using found and salvaged local materials and collaboration," said the jury. "This is a place we'd like to visit."

 

 

GENERAL DESIGN, Honor Award

 

THIS LINE, SECTION 1. NewYork City

James Corner Field Operations (project lead) and Diller

Scofidio + Renfro, New York City

The City of New York/Friends of The High Line

 

 

 

 

THIS ALREADY RENOWNED URBAN PARK (see "Back on Track," Landscape Architecture. October 2009) serves as a timely lesson in ecological sustainability, urban regeneration, and rile cre­ative reincarnation of infrastructure. For 50 years, the High Line separated freight mains from streets. The crick was abandoned in 1980 and became an eyesore threatened with demolition-until the appearance of opportunistic plants triggered die idea of creat­ing a park. In 1999, a group that called itself the Friends of the High Line formed to realize this extraordinary transformation through a strategy the design team terms "agri-tecture." This first section extends for more than half a mile. Its combination of hard and soft surfaces creates areas for heavy foot traffic while leaving plenty of room for rich vegetation. Because the innovative open­ grid concrete plank paving system allows visitors to meander amid the ^plantings, the space encourages a more peaceful pace as people enjoy the vistas of Manhattan and the Hudson River. Besides its providing wildlife habitat and Valuable open space for New York City, the High Line has become an economic generator for the neighborhood. The jury said it looked forward to seeing how the public continues to use the park as it matures.

 

 

GENERAL DESIGN, Honor Award

 

NUEVA SCHOOL, Hillsborough. California

Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture, San Francisco

Nueva School

 

This SEMISUBURBAN prekindergarten no eighth grade exper­imental school emphasizes ways to develop children's imagi­nations. The LEED Gold campus design replaces a parking lot with expanded facilities and a central plaza that visually connects to the larger landscape and to the bay beyond. Woodlands next in the site are laced with trails to extend the learning environ­ment, which the designers highlight by including local flora in the material palette and preserving a majestic heritage oak chat anchors the campus center. Shifts in grade, planting, and pave­ment break the plaza into functionally smaller outdoor rooms. A stormwater runnel with a row of ginkgo trees filters rainwater and further breaks down the scale of the plaza. The landscape ar­chitect collaborated closely with the design team on native - grass­covered berms that shelter the library's eastern facade and a green root system that replicates the endangered native California grass­land habitat. Cypress for shade screens, decking, and outdoor furniture was milled from ailing trees on the site The jury admired the project for its well-designed scale and thoughtful blending of architecture and landscape architecture.

 

 

GENERAL DESIGN. Honor Award

 

THE QINHGANGDAO BEACH RESTORATION:

AN ECOLOGICAL SURGERY, Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province. China

School of Landscape Architecture, Beijing

The Municipal Guvernment of Qiuhuaungdao City

 

 

 

HEAVTTY ERODED AND BADTY ABUSED coastline has been restored as a living, harmonious system. Located in a coastal tourist destination in northern China, the 6,4 kilometers of littered sand dunes, once a national bird reserve, had been destroyed by development and then deserted. This reformative design pro­tects the dunes from erosion on the windy shoreline with a board­walk that maintains established native plant communities while reconnecting people to beach views. The recovery plan includes replicating tidewater holes that catch rain and allow wetland plants and animals to settle in once again. Nine green islets built in a once-barren artificial lake also serve as nesting areas. A new wetland museum teaches visitors about aquatic ecology and pro­vides a physical connection to it. Replacing shoreline concrete with riprap and hard-surface pathways with a boardwalk increas­es the permeable surface, supporting ground-cover planting. "It is so simple," said the jury. "It makes nature accessible and uses all native plants. 1r is a project of hope."

 

 

GENERAL DESIGN. Honor Award

 

ROOFTOP HAVEN FOR URBAN AGRICULTURE, Chicago

Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architect., Chicago

Gary Comer Youth Center

THE GARY COMER YOUTH CENTER ROOF GARDEN is an after school teaming space for youth, and also a space for sen­iors, in a neighborhood with little access to safe outdoor environ­ments. In its third year, the garden produced more than 1,000 pounds of organic food. It converts 8,160 square feet of space that otherwise might have gone unused into a place of beauty and respite. It also helps lower the costs of climate control. The land­scape architect worked closely with the architect and donor to develop this roofscape of flowers and vegetables. A full-time gar­den manager maintains the gardens and develops educational programs. The roof system, with soil 18 to 2-1 inches deep, is built to let rambunctious kids dig for potatoes and carrots and tend to cabbage, sunflowers, lettuce, and strawberries. Because it is warmer than ground level, the roof is used through the winter and is surrounded by the school's third-floor corridor and class­rooms. Circular metal skylights scattered throughout the garden become sculptural figures on the roof and illuminate the spaces below. "This project is so ^{straightforward} a collaboration between landscape architect and architect, it is redeeming," said the jury.

 

 

GENERAL DESIGN. Honor Award

 

SQUARE FOUR, BEIRUT, Lebanon

Vladimir Djurovic Landscape Architecture, Broumana, Lebanon

Solidere (Societe Libanaise de Developpement et Reconstruction)

 

 

A SMALL YET PIONEERING PRESENCE in a newly rebuilt section of Beirut's city center, this is one of the first public spaces com­missioned after Lebanon's civil war, and it now welcomes people to the heart of a reborn capital. The challenge was to create, within 815 ,square meters, a refuge dedicated co the city and its people while addressing its context and prominent location. Nestled among an­cient ruins, modern buildings, mosques, and churches, Square Four (see "Two Trees Grow in Beirut," Landscape Architecture, November 2007) responds to the abstractions of its surroundings and is defined by the essential constituent elements of its location. Two towering historic focus trees frame the square's composition as surviving wit­nesses to Beirut's long periods of strife. The square's ocher main components are a raised water mirror along the street, which be­comes a boundary as it visually expands the space; a 20-meter solid stone bench facing the warm and a long wooden deck embrac­ing the trees. "Within a prescriptive site," the jury said, "the de­sign amplifies the impact of the panorama and reflections-its context to transform the corner into a city landmark."

 

 

GENERAL DESIGN, Honor Award

 

THEATER GROUP RETREAT, Western Maine

Landworks Studio, Boston 

 

 

 

 

 

FOR YEARS, THIS LAKEFRONT CAMP RETREAT in rural western Maine had been neglected and disorganized. Its salvation came when a prominent New York City theater company, working with its landscape architect, focused on restoring the site's ecological and cultural integrity. The goals were to remediate erosion, decreased water quality, deforestation, soil compaction, and shrinking habi­tat while increasing plant and wildlife diversity, making it easier for people and cars to move around and incorporating meaningful gathering spaces and performance areas on its 10 acres. The clients wouldn't al low large machinery on the site, so al I work has been by hand, resulting in an intimate, collaborative effort. Forest bands, a hedgerow, and a centrally connecting boardwalk guide movement on the site and diversify the spaces and their functions. Native un­derstory plantings and various earthworks catch stormwater and create localized ecological hot spots. "A simple diagonal axis makes this place very special," the jury remarked. "The thematic econo­my and its importance to the user really come through

 

 

GENERAL DESIGN, Honor Award

 

TIANJIAN QIAOYUAN PARK, THE ADAPTATION PALETTES, Tianjian City, China

Turenscape, Beijing. and Peking University Graduate School of Landscape Architecture, Beijing

The Municipal Government of Tianjian City

 

 

THROUGH ALTERED LANDFORM and plant adaptation, a de­serted shooting range and garbage dump have been turned into a low-maintenance urban park that contains and purifies stormwater, remediates salinated alkaline soil, and provides envi­ronmental education. This 54-acre urban park in northern coastal China arose from a heavily polluted site. Inspired by the adaptive vegetation that enlivens the landscape in this region, the land­scape architects let nature work by digging a series of pond cavi­ties. With the rains, cavities turned into ponds, wetlands, and sea­sonal pools. Some remained dry. Soil pH improved and diverse habitats arose as workers initiated plant community evolution by both seeding and allowing native vegetation to grow unhindered. Platforms and paths ^allow visitors to sit or scroll among vegetation patches, learning from an environmental interpretation system along the way. The park achieved its goals in two years, with the seasonally changing landscape attracting thousands of people every day. "The transformation is remarkable," the jury noted. "There is a lot of complexity despite its apparent simplicity."

 

 

GENERAL DESIGN, Honor Award

 

UNDERWOOD FAMILY SONORAN LANDSCAPE

LABORATORY, Tucson, Arizona

Ten Eyek Landscape Architects Inc., Phoenix

The University of Arizona

 

 

THE SONORAN LANDSCAPE LABORATORY (see “Drowning in the Desert," Landscape Architerture, January 2010) is both a high-performance outdoor classroom and the entry plaza to a Facility that has landscape architecture, architecture, and planning students working side by side. It is its own case study in water har­vesting, climate regulation, air and water cleansing, recycling, ur­ban wildlife habitat enrichment, and human well-being. The for­mer grayfield is now a thriving habitat that shades the southern exposure of the new College of Architecture and Landscape Archi­tecture expansion with a vine-covered scrim. An 11,600-gallon rank collects graywater from the building and supports a native­planting garden demonstrating sustainable design in the arid Southwest. The project, which is a collaboration between a pub­lic university and private-sector supporters, turned a problem ­ponding runoff, including from the adjacent parking lot-into an asset: a low-cost arroyo and a cleansing, cooling biosponge garden and urban wildlife habitat chat students find interesting and attractive. "This project honestly commits to its laboratory Intent, even as it creates a pleasing social space," the jury observed.

 

Tree-Lined Green

Drive through North West Crossing in Bend, Ore., and right away you notice some-thing different from almost every other new community: mature pine trees, with lots and homes and parks and roads designed around them. The trees not only preserve the area’s rich timber history, but also represent the developer’s desire to create a sustainable community that would transcend market fluctuations.

 

North West Crossing has certainly done that, more than tripling its local market share of home sales since the downturn began in 2006 and recording 54 sales (16 of them spec homes) last year amid one of the hardest-hit economies in local history. “It’s the shining star of Bend,” says David Ford, the project’s general manager. “Buyers consistently tell us that the design of the community influenced their purchasing decision.”

 

Developer West Bend Property Co. commissioned a detailed tree survey of the 483-acre parcel (a former tree farm) to help drive the master plan and integrate the ponderosa pines into the community as both a sig-nature feature and a competitive advantage. More subtle (if no less effective) measures to create a sustainable community include multiple road connections to downtown Bend and surrounding streets and a carefully planned and scaled retail center that fronts the city’s main boulevard. “It feels like an extension of Bend, not an exclusive or separate community,” says Ken Pirie, an associate with Walker Macy of Portland, Ore., the land planner.

 

Pirie also attributes the project’s success to well-scaled homes. Beyond the lure of mature pines, he says, “The homes aren’t overblown. They’re com-pact, well-designed, and efficient. It feels like old Bend.”

 

 

  By keeping existing pine trees, North West Crossing looks

like a mature neighborhood—only with housing that performs

much better than the competition.

 

And it helps that the developer created a committee of pre-approved, financially stable local builders to conduct lot sales lotteries and enforce strict home design guidelines, including mandated alley-accessed garages. By those rules, builders can not purchase adjacent lots to cluster their homes, mitigating model home parks and creating design diversity that harks back to suburban development of the early 1900s. “They challenge each other to build better homes,” says Pirie.

 

Homes within North West Crossing, now at 560 occupied units toward a 20-year build-out of about 1,350 homes by 2020, are not only regulated in their design, but also must be certified per Earth Advantage, a regional, comprehensive sustainable building program crafted to the building culture and climate of the area. “Buyers expect green-built homes now,” says Ford. “Even if they’re not willing to necessarily pay more for them.”

 

In addition, two of the commercial buildings with-in the project’s Neighborhood Centre are certified under the LEED-Commercial Structures rating sys-tem, the first in the state to achieve that distinction.

 

Still, the overriding design and construction of the master plan, trees and all, is what truly drives the ability of North West Crossing to sustain its success. To that end, the developer is reworking the project’s next section of 300 lots slated for release by tweaking lot sizes, reducing the number of parcels offered per phase, and adjusting the phasing sequence per cur-rent market demand. “The developer’s goal from the beginning was to be sustainable,” says Ford. “It drives everything.”

 

In the Wind

 

Wind power may not be for everyone, but it might work for your next project.

 

It’s ugly. It costs too much. The ROI doesn’t pencil out. What people used to say about residential solar-electric power generation is now being applied to another renewable power option, wind.

 

Then again, offering new, better-built homes that generate “free” energy and amortizing its up-front costs (minus tax credits and other rebates) into a 30-year mortgage may be just the ticket to push your homes into the sales column.

 

Like solar, a small wind turbine de-signed for a single residence is most effective (and only practical) when added to a high-performance home. Assuming other optimum conditions—namely, average annual wind speeds over 12 mph—a 10 kW turbine can off set up to 80 percent of grid-sup-plied electricity.

 

Recent support among policymakers (tax credits), utilities (re-bates and net-metering), and local zoning authorities (height variances) has helped push wind power closer to practical reality. Despite the economy and a $20,000 in-stalled cost, the residential wind sector grew 78 percent in 2008 and another 15 percent (about 10,000 installs) last year to crest the 100,000-unit threshold.

 

Even with its limitations, the potential market for small-system turbines is about 13 million installations, says Ron Stimmel, small-systems manager at the American Wind Energy Association. “It’s the next step beyond making a home energy efficient,” he says.  A wind resource map from the DOE shows a swath of optimum conditions from the Dakotas to North Texas, while a table produced by the National Climate Data Center shows average annual wind speeds for hundreds of cities.

 

A more realistic opportunity, says Stimmel, may be in systems that serve a community instead of individual homes, such as La Casa Verde in San Francisco, where a trio of turbines generates 40 per-cent of the project’s electricity.

 

Wind energy may not be suitable for every home,

but the market for free, maintenance-free, renew-able energy,

still in its infancy, is growing.

 

 

The Guts of Green-Approved

At first glance, the Green-Approved product qualification program launched last year by the NAHB Research Center may appear to be just another third-party certification to consider in your sustainable building specs.

 

But that’s only if you build to the ANSI-approved National Green Building Standard (NGBS). The Green-Approved program is designed to identify and qualify products and systems specifically for the NGBS, in large part to streamline the specification and verification process (and costs) for builders seeking certification.

 

The program essentially pre-approves products and systems that comply with and earn points under the NAHB Green rating system instead of requiring builders to submit documentation of a product’s qualities, such as VOC emissions or recycled content, to a verifier. It also enables builders and design professionals to find and consider products on the list prior to beginning green projects built to the NGBS.

 

The Research Center, which acted as the secretariat for the ANSI consensus approval of the NGBS and is an established and accredited testing facility, evaluates products submitted for inclusion in the online Green-Approved directory. “We will accept third-party data or verification [of a product’s claim] from any competent and accredited lab” to conduct that evaluation, says Research Center president Michael Luzier. “It’s a straight-forward application and verification process” that typically takes the Center’s staff  mere days to con-duct once the applicant (a manufacturer) submits the required paperwork.

 

Applicants pay a one-time fee of $200 and an annual fee of $1,000 for each product listing and $250 per practice area for which the product qualifies for NGBS points to retain their status in the directory. They must also submit written reconfirmations annually or resubmit data if the product has been altered.

 

  Engineered structural lumber from i Level is among a growing

number of products and systems on the Green-Approved list