In our last Green Team post, we discussed the challenges brought on by the frequently slow pace of construction and the benefits of installing temporary landscapes during the waiting period. Here, we continue our commentary about time and the landscape, focusing on the challenges of matching contemporary materials and furnishings to historic sites.

Landscapes do not exist in isolation. They occupy a very specific spatial context. The materials of a landscape—furniture, paving, lighting, plants, etc.—are in constant conversation with their environs. So, the process of material selection typically requires that a landscape architect look beyond the project’s boundaries to understand how the materials will be integrated into the larger context. Sometimes, we want a material to fit in. At other times, we want it to stand out or contrast with the surroundings. A sensitive approach to material selection that allows for the preservation of a site’s character while modernizing other design features is often required when working on historic locales.

Contrary to what you might believe, contemporary furnishings can sometimes blend seamlessly with historic elements. This was true for our project at St. John the Divine, a massive and unfinished 1892 gothic cathedral in New York City. Our modern day challenge was to design a playground adjacent to this cathedral.

Children’s play equipment is typically bright, showy, and clunky, made to appeal to kids. So it may seem that playground equipment has little in common aesthetically with a gothic cathedral, but we argue that they actually share structural similarities—the steel frame of the play equipment and the buttresses and arches of the church.

The play equipment in the foreground reflects the gothic architecture of the adjacent cathedral while providing multi-faceted climbing surfaces.  Photo: Mathews Nielsen

Our design team worked with a playground equipment manufacturer to create clean, minimalist play pieces, their forms echoing the gothic arches, while providing plenty of child-friendly interactive forms and surfaces. The use of a single dark color created harmony between the equipment and the cathedral. This design element was extended to the fence at the perimeter of the play yard, enhancing the impression that both elements look like they belong. Read more…

In our last post, we addressed the challenges of designing around underground utilities. Another challenge faced by property owners and designers is the post-design waiting period—in response to the phasing of projects or due to the unpredictable nature of the construction process.

The typical scene of cranes, fencing, building debris, etc. that is associated with a construction site.  Photo: Liz Ernst

Design. Wait. Bid. Wait. Build. Wait. It’s no secret that getting a project built is a process. Once a site is in construction, the finished product could take months—even years—to be completed, and the landscape component of a project often occurs near the end of a site’s construction cycle.

These “waiting periods” are part and parcel of the construction world. So, what if the design process took this waiting period into consideration? What if temporary or short-term strategies could be incorporated into a designer’s plans from the outset?

Rendering from Hudson Square Streetscapes Improvement Plan showing multiple landscape strategies, all of which help form and shape the framework of the final streetscape vision. Courtesy: Mathews Nielsen

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Walking down a busy street, we rarely think about the interconnected series of stormwater pipes, train tunnels, electrical conduit, water lines, and tree roots that lie just inches beneath our feet—a “web of spaghetti,” as we call it. Typically, these common infrastructure components are out of sight and out of mind, yet they play a significant role in landscape design, particularly in urban settings.

A tangled web of utilities is exposed during a recent streetscape project in Lower Manhattan.  Photo courtesy  Mathews Nielsen

In our previous post, POPS for the People…and the Developer, we described the benefits of privately owned public spaces (POPS) and the requirements associated with incorporating their designs into the city’s fabric. The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) has published similar guidelines for streetscape plantings, including plant spacing as it relates to other built elements, infrastructure, and utilities. For example, a typical street tree pit would optimally be five feet by ten feet in size. The minimum horizontal distance from the edge of the tree pit as noted in the guidelines is four to six feet from any built obstruction (building, railing, stoop, etc.), three feet from a hydrant, five feet from a parking meter, and two feet from a gas or water valve. What happens when they prohibit any kind of planting or subsurface improvements? This was our challenge when planning future improvements for a small gathering space within Fox Square, a major crossroads in Brooklyn.

Existing conditions of Fox Square. Photo courtesy Mathews Nielsen

Fox Square proves the point we like to make: Some of the smallest sites can be the most challenging. At a mere 10,000 square feet, the site was selected for redevelopment as a part of the New York City Department of Transportation’s (NYCDOT) public plaza program in conjunction with the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. Through community outreach and conversations with the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and city agencies, it was determined that the primary goals of the redesign were to create a safe pedestrian environment by buffering them from existing traffic on Flatbush Avenue, discouraging jaywalking, and providing places to sit and gather. Read more…

The public’s role in the long-term success of any landscape project cannot be overstated. After all, it’s people who use these spaces; they are the true arbiters of a well-designed space over time. To create a successful open public space requires a strategic framework that is mutually beneficial for both developers and the public. To help this effort along, the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) has established a zoning incentive program: Privately Owned Public Spaces, or POPS.

The primary goal of POPS is to unite function with aesthetics—to create public spaces that provide respite in the city’s dense urban fabric. In exchange for additional floor area or relief from setback restrictions the program requires a developer to provide user-friendly amenities to increase the experiential qualities of the open spaces adjacent to their properties. These spaces must meet stringent design standards to create public plazas that are open, inviting, accessible and safe.

Setting the standard for POPS, though not one itself, Manhattan’s 1967 Paley Park is a timeless landscape rich with public amenities like moveable seating, canopy trees for shade, green walls/planted areas, and water features (as permitted obstructions). Today’s zoning regulations encourage developers to build on these successes and provide public spaces that offer a variety of seating, vegetation, lighting, artwork, cafes, and other amenities. While typically located outdoors like the iconic Paley Park, POPS can sometimes be found in unique settings like lobbies, subway entrances, atriums, and building arcades.

I recently worked with fellow Green Team member Terrie Brightman on a POPS recertification permit for 2 Gold Street (Mathews Nielsen was the original designer in 2008). This time, the new process asked us to meet POPS requirements while pursuing strong and unique designs for these spaces.

The pavement extends to the street, uniting the the plaza with what would become a sidewalk.  Photo: Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architctects

Circulation is a key aspect of POPS design. The stipulations for clear paths are stringent, with limited walkway obstructions that are meant to ease the pedestrian right of way. At 2 Gold Street, several circulation patterns are integral to the plaza’s design. The pavement extends to the street curbs and facilitates pedestrian movement into it, without hindering circulation at the site’s edges.

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Our introductory Green Team blog addressed a common misconception: There is no space left for new landscapes in New York City, the dense urban expanse that is our home turf. In fact, there are available spaces, but they’re likely to come with some complex problems. Finding ourselves wrestling with small, challenging, and limited spaces, we sometimes take an unexpected approach. We look up!

Our initial site analysis for New York projects—and others—entails, in part, identifying ALL available space than can be improved. Crisp, white walls may be de rigueur for the interior artist, but they are far too banal for a vibrant, metropolitan landscape. By using a site’s vertical surfaces, we can expand the benefits of a project to include increased planting areas, aesthetically appealing live or inanimate screens, thoughtfully designed edge conditions, improved views, reduced cooling requirements for adjacent buildings, and the mitigation of urban heat island effect (UHI), thus furthering the definition of “the space.”

The design of exterior vertical surfaces can take on many forms and configurations including green screens, green walls, cable trellis systems, wall-mounted planters, trellises, and planters housing fastigiate (columnar) species, to name a few. The selection of the proper treatment for these surfaces is based on sun/shade conditions, design intent, the structural capacity of the surface to receive the enhancement, available soil volume for plants, and so on. If we propose a woven wire or cable trellis system, we must consider the method of its attachment to the building’s surface as well as whether the receiving wall or support structure can sustain its weight load in addition to the living, twining plants that will grow over the plane. Some factors that influence plant selection, as well as the ultimate success of the installation, are planters, soil volume, irrigation, and solar orientation.

We work with a wide variety of systems and approaches on vertical landscapes throughout the city. At Spring Street Plaza, a 200-foot-long wall abutting the adjacent building was designed and installed to allow us to use a vertical screen system for vines. This wall provided the structural support for the vegetated system while ensuring that no portion of the work was attached to or interfered with the structure of the neighboring property (our post on property lines talks about the consequences of this). Once installed, the green screen, with its dense vine cover comprising six vine species, provided a sense of enclosure for the plaza, acting as a vegetated backdrop to the small “rooms” of the plaza design. The wire grid also provided structure for the installation of custom light tubes into the screen, creating a playful effect of illuminated planting at night. The 10-foot height of the new wall—a pedestrian scale intervention— also helps deemphasize the presence of the adjacent building.

A view south across one of the seating “rooms” of the plaza showing the vine-covered green screen along the western edge of the site. Photo courtesy Elizabeth Felicella

Light tubes inserted into pockets in the wire grid screen accent the vines and illuminate the site. Photo courtesy Elizabeth Felicella

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In our blog, From Field to Park, we discussed the post-tagging process for trees and transporting them to a project site. Here, we turn our attention to property lines and their importance to a project’s success.

It is not often that property lines are tangible, constructed elements visible at the boundary of every plot of land or building lot. More often, we find that these critical legal delineations—represented by a linear arrangement of one long and two short dashes on surveys or within drawing files—are not easily identified in situ. They can be like the mosquito buzzing in your ear. You never see it, but then feel the bite. An error in siting this legal boundary correctly in the field or on drawings can quickly escalate from minor drafting revisions to major design changes or worse. Inherently an American privilege, property ownership is measured in fractions of an inch. As designers, we must be aware of what that fraction may cost if not properly documented.

A misconception when reviewing design drawings? The belief that a contract limit line, natural features like streams or ridgelines, or built elements such as perimeter fences or building facades are what demarcate the edge of the property. It’s imperative that at the start of a project, the true property line—and not an arbitrary edge—is identified. An assessment of edge conditions should be part of the initial site analysis to determine if future design elements will impact this relationship.

Credit: Mathews Nielsen

We used a red balloon to represent a proposed sculpture to assess sight lines at our West Point Foundry Preserve project. The designers studied the views from within the property as well the view into the property from adjacent lots to the project site. Views are not confined by property lines and must be considered from all angles.

There can be several oversights at the property perimeter. These are often discovered in later, more costly stages of a project and frequently occur when the initial assessment was not comprehensive or when insufficient data was available for a site. Some typical lapses include subterranean footings for buildings or structures that extend beyond the property line, misdirected overland drainage flows that will either unnecessarily enter or unlawfully exit the site, or the construction of a barrier (wall, fence, screen, etc.) that is improperly located on the adjacent property. While a site element and its foundation may be positioned properly, we must also consider the excavation of and any necessary shoring for foundations that may extend beyond the property line.

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In our previous post, “Tree Tag…You’re It”, we let you in on the details of what landscape architects call “tree tagging,” as well as my spring experience with tulip poplars, and some of the challenges we face in the field during the selection process. Here we discuss the post-tagging process.

The landscape architect’s job doesn’t end when she leaves the nursery. The trees we’ve selected must be maintained, cared for, and prepped in anticipation of delivering them to the project for installation. This multi-step process involves digging up the trees from the field, preparing each tree by its root condition, packaging, delivery, and finally, installation.

Tulip poplars (Liriodendron tulipifera) tagged in spring 2012 were alive and well at the nursery in the fall …and had grown over an inch in caliper in five months!

Digging Times

Digging trees is dictated by the calendar year and season, as well as by planned installation schedules, and even specific plant types.

Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichtum) trees tagged in the field are dug and balled in burlap by machinery in early spring, prior to the planting season.

A tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera), for instance, isn’t a picky tree, but others certainly are. Trees we call “fall dig hazards” drop their leaves well into the season—they don’t go dormant until very late in the fall. These finicky species include hawthorn, sweetgum, cherry, and pear trees. Read more…

We interrupt our Tree Tagging series to bring you this special post…Our Green Team wanted to share some of the more interesting holiday plant facts we’ve uncovered so you can impress your family, friends, and colleagues while sipping on a poinsettia (1/2 ounce Cointreau, 3 ounces cranberry juice, and a champagne float) and enjoying a handful of chestnuts (Castanea sativa) at your festive upcoming gatherings.

The Holiday Tree Tradition

Evergreen trees have been a symbol of the season since the sixteenth century, but the Germans were not likely thinking about the evergreen tree market as a booming winter business. Approximately 30 million trees are sold over the holidays each year in America. Where do all of these trees come from?  The bulk of the U.S.’s crop (98 percent, to be exact) comes from tree production farms, with Oregon topping the list of acreage dedicated to holiday trees. In 2007, the total farmed acreage was equivalent to nearly 40  New York Central Parks!

The Mystery of Mistletoe

Much like an overeager paramour kissed under the mistletoe, the seeds of this plant (Viscum album in Europe and Phoradendron serotinum in North America) “stick” to a host plant after being transported by birds. Mistletoe is parasitic and lives off a variety of tree species by extending a proboscis-like root structure into a branch, through which it pulls nutrients and water. This sapping of nutrients can weaken the host plant and occasionally results in death. Due to its parasitic nature, mistletoe can only be cultivated by seed. So, be careful who you kiss this season, or you might find yourself with a draining new attachment of your own.

More Than Just Candy!

Royal ambassadors in ancient Rome were known to carry mint sprigs in their pockets, because the aroma of peppermint (Mentha x piperita) was thought to prevent a person from losing his or her temper. Today, peppermint oil is used in a variety of home remedies, mainly as a calming agent to soothe an angry person or upset stomach. Remember to have your peppermint candy cane in hand to keep your cool while holiday shopping!

The Fashionable Holiday Sweater

The holiday tradition of ugly sweaters wouldn’t be nearly as irritating if it weren’t for their scratchy wool. When Australian sheep farmers started planting non-native species of clover (Trifolium sp.) in the 1940s, they observed a heartier clover crop, but at the cost of decreased sheep flock sizes. It turned out that the more vigorous, non-native clover contained an endocrine disruptor that lead to the sterilization of the sheep and therefore,  notably reduced flocks. The clover’s self-defense mechanism, while extreme, is certainly something to ponder over a glass of eggnog at your yuletide family function.

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In our last Green Team post, Planting for the Future, we described the importance of the planting environment in a comprehensive landscape design. Trees create the planting framework and structure for a site at the macro level, so their selection and placement are crucial aspects of the design process. This post is the first of two that describe what landscape architects look for when picking the perfect tree—we call this “tree tagging”—and some of the challenges we face in the field during the selection process.

A tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) with a straight trunk and pyramidal canopy is ready to be tagged. Photo by Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects

Finding a Fit

After tree species are vetted for a project and the desired plant list is completed, there comes a time when a landscape architect moves out from behind her drawing set, turns off AutoCAD, and heads out to a nursery—“department stores” for plant materials—to examine trees growing in ground and to make selections.

Typically, the designer is accompanied to the nursery by the landscape contractor, who acts as a liaison between the designer and the nursery manager to locate plant material specified for the job. Because plant availability ranges across nurseries and geographic regions, it is not uncommon for a designer to select and tag plant material from multiple nurseries, which can be a time-consuming—albeit crucial—process.

A typical tree tag, locked on a honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos cv. Inermis), showing the unique embossed number for record. Photo by Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects

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If they are to thrive, all living things—plants included—require space to grow and reproduce. Unlike other forms of life that can move to optimum conditions, plants are unable to relocate themselves to ensure their survival. When it comes to urban landscape design, plants are initially dependent on the designer who chooses their location. Over time, they rely on a caretaker to maintain their health.

As a recent graduate new to the practice of landscape architecture, I am learning that there are circumstances that can breed conflict between landscape architects and real estate developers. Developers usually prefer an “instant” landscape ripe with lush, mature plantings rather than one that grows into its space and strives for sustainability. And so I’m consistently reminded that the key to long-term project success and a healthy designer-client relationship lies in finding a balance between the client’s satisfaction and the expertise of the landscape architect.

The perils of “instant” landscapes: Trees planted too close together experience stymied growth.
Credit: Mathews Nielsen

At Mathews Nielsen, we have recently worked on a number of projects that required either a landscape renovation (complete or partial) or a newly designed landscape. In most cases, the developers—our clients—prefer instant landscapes. Visually appealing, they offer immediate gratification and, at least initially, more bang for the buck. Dynamic plant masses can provide enticing counterpoints to static buildings, instantly attracting potential residents to a development. But these advantages are quickly undermined by the disadvantages to the landscape’s longevity.

The benefits of sustainable landscapes: Proper spacing allows plants to thrive over time.
Credit: Mathews Nielsen

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