Ground 06 - summer 2009 - Awards, Ground

Ground 06 - summer 2009 - Awards

Ground 06 - summer 2009 - Awards, Ground

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06
Landscape
Architect
Quarterly
10/
Features
CSLA
Awards
OALA
Awards
16/
Round Table
Winning Trends
Summer 2009
Issue
06
Messages
03
.06
LetterstotheEditor
I particularly enjoyed the issue on trees [
Ground
05]. Like the previous
issues,
Ground
includes articles that are theoretical and challenging
while providing practical information that is relevant to our practice
in Ontario.
President’s Message
I am honoured to hold the prestigious office of OALA President
and look forward to serving the membership. The president’s job
is typically a busy one; however, I am comforted by the knowledge
that I am surrounded by extremely talented and dedicated coun-
cillors who are there to help. On behalf of Council, I extend a
heartfelt thanks to Arnis Budrevics for his successful tenure as
president for the past two years.
One concern I have is that the images don't seem to be as crisp as
they could or should be. Since our profession is quite visually orient-
ed, can the images in
Ground
be printed with greater clarity without
compromising any sustainability objectives you might have?
The OALA held its 41st Annual General Meeting on May 6, 2009
at the Grand Hotel in Toronto. This was another successful event
and included presentations of the OALA Awards and the CSLA
Regional Awards of Excellence that are featured in this issue of
Ground
. The 2009 OALA Pinnacle Award recipient is Gerald
Lajeunesse and the first recipient of the new President’s Award
is Linda Irvine. Congratulations to all individual and professional
award recipients.
Finally, congratulations on the CSLA award that
Ground
received
this year. The award is well-deserved acknowledgement of your
great work and recognizes the passion and commitment of the
Editorial Board!
REAL EGUCHI, OALA
PRINCIPAL, EGUCHI ASSOCIATES LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS
Editorial Board responds:
A number of readers have commented on image quality. The Editorial
Board is working with the magazine's graphic designers and the
printer to improve the reproduction quality with minimal compromise
to the environmentally sustainable quality of the paper.
The Canadian Society of Landscape Architects and Town Planners
was founded in Toronto, in 1934, by nine visionary landscape
architects. From humble beginnings, the profession has advanced
and enjoys a place of respect amongst the professions. The CSLA
is now comprised of ten component organizations across Canada.
In April, the OALA, a component of the CSLA, joined all compo-
nents in promoting World Landscape Architecture month.
Editorial Board Note:
The Editorial Board is pleased to announce that
Ground:
Landscape Architect Quarterly
received a National Merit Award in
the Canadian Society of Landscape Architect's 2009 Professional
Awards Program.
This year, the CSLA celebrates 75 years as a professional society,
and the OALA has the honour of hosting the CSLA Congress on
August 13 – 15, 2009, back in Toronto, where it all began. The
Congress theme, “Perspectives 360˚ on 75,” will honour our roots,
celebrate our current achievements, and take a positive look at
the future of our society.
The 75th CSLA Anniversary Congress Committee, co-chaired by
Jim Melvin and Jim Vafiades, has created a program that will
appeal to the entire OALA and CSLA membership. I encourage the
OALA membership to attend all or part of the Congress to cele-
brate this milestone, enhance your education, expand your net-
works, and to show landscape architects across Canada what
good hosts Ontarians can be.
I look forward to speaking with all of you at the conference.
Hope to see you there.
LAWRENCE STASIUK, OALA PRESIDENT
PRESIDENT@OALA.CA
Up Front
04
.06
ans move through arterial street landscapes
designed for cars—or, as he describes it,
“how people get to the store, what makes a
street good for walking on, what streets are
hard to cross.” And he’s particularly interest-
ed in the inner suburbs of Toronto. “Creating
walkable places has become such an
important discussion in landscape planning
and design,” says Hess. “But it’s often talked
about in terms of the downtown or the new
developments on the urban fringe. In gen-
eral, there’s not a lot of study of how people
actually negotiate the inner suburbs.” And
so Hess has gone to the people, finding out
what their experiences on foot are like.
0A
WALKABILITY
strollingtheinnersuburbs
01
His “walkability studies,” carried out in col-
laboration with the Centre for City Ecology,
start with the most basic of questions: for
example, can you cross the street at the big
intersection? “People in these neighbour-
hoods are generally not used to having
someone ask them, ‘How do you get to the
supermarket in winter without a car?’” says
Hess. “We tell people that we really
do
want
to know, that we’re not joking.”
Paul Hess, a professor in the professional
planning program at the University of
Toronto, talks a lot about walking. And in
his presentations, he has a particularly
favourite slide that’s guaranteed to elicit
chuckles from his audience. The image
shows an arterial road in Scarborough—
one of those busy thoroughfares with a
speed limit drivers interpret as an invita-
tion to excess. On one side of the six-lane
road is a No Frills grocery story; on the
other side is a strip mall. Both are popular
destinations in this densely populated
apartment neighbourhood.
For his "walkability
studies," carried out in
collaboration with the
Centre for City Ecology,
Paul Hess asks people
about their experiences
of getting around
arterial neighbourhoods.
0A/
Katherine Childs
IMAGE/
Inner-suburb
thoroughfares
often pose mobility
and safety challenges
for pedestrians.
0B/
Katherine Childs
IMAGE/
At the workshops, participants not only
describe their experiences in these arteri-
al neighbourhoods, they also engage in
informal mapping exercises. The maps
end up covered in markings that annotate
daily frustrations: “dangerous at night,”
“not enough time to cross,” “very slippery
in winter.”
The effort to establish
a National Botanical
Garden in Ottawa on
the site of the Central
Experimental Farm
raises issues related to
heritage landscape
preservation.
0C/
Andrew B. Anderson
IMAGE/
In the middle of the road, with cars whizzing
past, is something that can best be
described as a cage. There’s no crosswalk
leading safely to this metal structure intend-
ed for people protection, no concessions to
self-propelled mobility. Just a cage that
looks a lot like a prison for pedestrians.
“When we ask people if their neighbour-
hood is good for walking, they often start
off saying yes. But the interesting stuff
comes out in the details,” notes Hess.
“There are a lot of typical problems that
come up over and over,” things that could
be addressed, some of them very simply.
For example, care needs to be taken to
create details such as well-functioning
sidewalks that drain well, are not icy in
winter, and are lined with healthy shade
trees in the summer. Fences, too, he says,
are overused and often run needlessly
between destinations—such barriers are
UpFront:
Information
on the
Ground
“In the planning world, arterial roads are
for moving traffic,” says Hess, “but for the
people who actually live in these places,
getting across the street to the shops is a
huge issue.”
Over the years, Hess has spent a lot of time
hanging out on arterial streets breathing in
exhaust. He is interested in how pedestri-
Up Front
05
.06
often taken down by pedestrians as soon
as they are put up, if these barriers block
connections to parks and ravines, for
example. Destinations such as grocery
stores, transit stops, and apartment build-
ings need to be connected as directly as
possible with safe pedestrian infrastruc-
ture. Hess suggests that landscape archi-
tects consider adding walkways and
shade to mall parking lots so people can
get from the bus stop to stores in comfort
and safety.
BOTANICAL GARDENS
debateinottawa
02
As a capital city, Ottawa shares many com-
monalities with other great capital cities of
the world: celebrated parks, monuments,
buildings, and greenspaces. Many of us
can remember being paraded through the
city on class field trips or on dreaded family
vacations, and we probably shared similar
itineraries: Parliament Hill, the Byward
Market, Sussex Drive, and maybe even a
foray into the Gatineau Hills. However, there
are a number of lesser known, often over-
looked features to the city. For example, no
other capital city in the world can boast a
richly historic working farm—the Central
Experimental Farm—within a short bike ride
from the seat of government.
0C
an area adjacent to the Fletcher Wildlife
Garden and the Hartwell Locks of the
Rideau Canal. The OBGS notes that when
the Central Experimental Farm and
Dominion Arboretum were established in
1886, 65 of the Farm’s 465 acres were
intended to be devoted to “ …the important
purposes of an Arboretum and Botanic
Garden where all the useful trees, shrubs
and plants of the Dominion …will be
brought together…“
Although the results of Hess’s walkability
studies are currently being compiled and
analyzed, the conceptual underpinning of
his work has immediate relevance: Hess
urges designers to begin thinking of the
landscapes of arterial roads, apartment
towers, and strip malls as functioning
social
places
rather than simply as collec-
tions of streets and buildings. Although
they may not have the main-street condi-
tions we normally associate with vibrant
cities, these areas are nonetheless home
to thousands of people, many of whom do
not own cars. In these neighbourhoods,
people of all ages hang out, stroll after
supper, shop, and visit by foot. The key,
says Hess, is that “designers need to
reorient their understanding of these
places, and then plan how neighbourhood
activities can be facilitated.”
TEXT BY NETAMI STUART, OALA, AND LORRAINE
JOHNSON, BOTH OF WHOM TEND TOWARDS BICYCLE
RATHER THAN BIPEDAL LOCOMOTION.
The chosen site has been controversial. The
volunteer group Friends of the Farm, which
since 1988 has worked tirelessly to protect
the integrity of the cultural landscape of the
Farm, opposes the development of a
national botanical garden on the Farm,
which was designated a National Historic
Site in 1998.
Despite its long list of attributes, Ottawa is
one of very few capital cities that does not
have a botanical garden. Perhaps fitting for
a place with a somewhat bureaucratic rep-
utation, the
idea
of a national botanical gar-
den for Ottawa has been studied for close
to a century. In 1929, the National Research
Council of Canada proposed one; Greber’s
famous 1949 plan for Ottawa included a
national botanical garden; and the 1951
Massey Commission also proposed one.
Yet in spite of this historic support, the idea
has not, until recently, taken root.
And so, the story of Ottawa, the Central
Experimental Farm, and the would-be
National Botanical Garden raises a series of
complex questions that combine cultural
landscape preservation, horticulture, arbori-
culture, agriculture, and an elusive quest to
achieve a balanced solution for a unique
landscape challenge. The Ottawa Botanical
Garden Society continues to work towards
its goal of establishing a National Botanical
Garden at the Central Experimental Farm,
while Friends of the Farm continues to
work towards the maintenance and
enhancement of the Farm. Who said life
in Ottawa is boring?
Taking its cue from a 1998 study which
found that public opinion supported the cre-
ation of a botanical garden, a group called
the Ottawa Botanical Garden Society (OBGS)
was formed to promote the idea. The OBGS
adopted the following as its mission state-
ment: “To re-establish and enhance a
botanic garden at the Central Experimental
Farm dedicated to display the diversity of
plant life, explain the economic and social
role of plants, and expand our knowledge
of plants and their cultivation.”
For more information on the
Central Experimental Farm, visit
www.friendsofthefarm.ca. For more
information on the National Botanical
Garden, visit www.ottawagarden.ca.
TEXT BY ANDREW B. ANDERSON, OALA, A PROUD
OTTAWA-PHILE AND A MEMBER OF THE
GROUND
EDITORIAL BOARD.
The OBGS selected as its preferred site 34
acres at the Central Experimental Farm, in
0B
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