As an architect of contemporary architectural design and now working as an artist, my focus is to engage people in a shared experience; capturing an authentic sense of place, context and narrative. I view the integration of Fine Art & Architectural Elements offered through my newest venture, Studio Vlock, as a natural evolution of that vision; one that enables me to design pieces that inspire memorable experiences and create unique environments for social gathering, quiet reflection, and visual delight.

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SPATIAL PRACTICE

LABASH 2021 - SUNDAY, APRIL 11th 

Tonight’s session will begin with three, 10-minute presentations from our panelists: the first by, Dr. Ghazal Jafari, founding director of OPEN SYSTEMS / Landscape Infrastructure Lab, and currently an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at University of Virginia; next, a presentation from Khensani de Klerk, an architectural designer and planner from Johannseburg, and co-founder and director of Matri-Archi(tecture); and lastly, a presentation by Ana María Durán Calisto, co-founder of Estudio A0, a lecturer at Yale University Architecture, and doctoral candidate at UCLA. These conversations will deal with theoretical questions that pertain to landscape architecture and other spatial disciplines -- engaging with large, complex issues of ethics and justice, along with the specificity that these terms assume in various cultural contexts. Our panelists bring a wealth of relevant experience and knowledge, stemming from their practices in architecture, landscape architecture, planning, activism, and academia. Additionally, these spatial practitioners work in three regions that are traditionally underrepresented and under-engaged in landscape architectural curriculums. Following the panelists’ presentations, we will convene for a discussion moderated by our two organizers: Jihany Hassun and Vanessa Dikuyama.

Topo-phyla (Tow-Poe-Fahy-luh ) is an analysis and process driven landscape design firm serving Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and the Bay Area. With an emphasis on sense of place and site-specific design, Topophyla brings a relevant and unique approach to every project.

French gardener, garden designer, botanist, entomologist and writer

Manifestos discussed during the interview (English translation):

The Third Landscape
http://www.gillesclement.com/cat-tierspaysage-tit-le-Tiers-Paysage

The Planetary Garden

http://www.gillesclement.com/cat-jardinplanetaire-tit-Le-Jardin-Planetaire

The Garden in Motion

http://www.gillesclement.com/cat-mouvement-tit-Le-Jardin-en-Mouvement

Projects in Paris:

Gardens at Quai Branly
https://catharinehoward.co.uk/the-gardens-at-quai-branly-paris-by-gilles-clement

Parc André-Citroën

http://icity.ikcest.org/city/project/195

Studio Petrichor aims to mitigate the effects of climate change and strengthen your relationship to the landscape through thoughtful design, ethical practices, and nature-based solutions.

This is a special episode. This particular episode with Paul & Jack Haden from C2 Collaborative represents the evolution of the podcast. Not only do we have a wonderful conversation with this Father / Son duo on site. But after the podcast we put microphones on both of them and filmed them talking amongst themselves throughout one of the most cutting-edge mixed-use urban communities in the country. Follow along this voyeuristic editing style as they talk about framing, patterns, concepts behind a park, and an impromptu conversation from a resident gathering ingredients for lunch from one of the community gardens on site

Landscape Designer - Former Professional Boxer

Superbloom is an award-winning landscape architecture firm located in Denver, CO. Our practice of transformative design was founded on a commitment to crafting meaningful connections between people and the land.

https://www.larchitect.org/    https://hapsagency.com/

Shawn Maestretti's work at Studio Petrichor https://studio-petrichor.com/ resonates deeply with the metaphor of the first rain experience that stirs something intrinsic in humans. The smell of the first rain, defined as "petrichor," evokes a sense of renewal, calm, and connection to nature. This sensory reaction is rooted in our survival instincts; rain signals life, growth, and sustenance. Throughout history, humans have been tied to the land and water. The arrival of rain often meant the end of drought, the rebirth of crops, and the revival of ecosystems. Thus, the first rain isn’t just a sensory pleasure—it’s a symbol of hope and balance, ensuring survival by replenishing resources vital for life.

This same ethos drives Shawn’s work at Studio Petrichor. His approach to landscape architecture, particularly as discussed in the podcast with Jason Wan https://www.hunterindustries.com/, reflects the harmony between human intuition and the natural world. Just as the first rain revives the earth, Shawn’s designs aim to restore balance and sustainability to landscapes. By integrating water-smart technologies like rainwater harvesting and smart irrigation systems, Shawn helps create self-sustaining environments that support native ecosystems while conserving vital resources.

What stands out to me in this podcast episode is its immersive, almost voyeuristic quality, driven by the reliance on the video component available on LAP's YouTube channel. This layered experience invites listeners to engage their imagination, much like reading a book that leaves room for personal interpretation of its visual elements. Whether you choose to dive into the full video or simply listen, the episode offers a rich narrative that allows your mind to fill in the sensory details, making it a versatile and enjoyable experience in either format.

https://www.larchitect.org/

https://www.instagram.com/realtorkaitlin

What Architects Can Learn from a Real Estate Agent's Viral Social Media Strategy

In this episode of The Landscape Architecture Podcast, host Michael Todoran interviews Salt Lake City real estate agent and Instagram personality Kaitlin Hannig, whose darkly funny “asshole home tours” have gained a massive following by breaking all the conventional marketing rules.

This conversation is especially relevant for architects, landscape architects, and interior designers who are navigating how to present themselves online. Caitlin shares how she built a loyal audience not by showcasing perfection, but by leaning into flawed, human, and refreshingly honest content.

We explore:

• Why traditional marketing tropes fall flat in today’s digital culture
• How to create content that speaks to your audience instead of about yourself
• The power of humor, vulnerability, and storytelling in professional branding
• Why beauty alone doesn’t engage—and what does
• How design professionals can stand out in a sea of aesthetic sameness

Whether you run a small studio or work in a large firm, this episode will challenge how you think about digital presence, authenticity, and the kind of content that actually drives trust and engagement.

http://www.mosbach.fr

Catherine Mosbach is the founder of Paris-based design firm mosbach paysagiste, which she established in 1987, as well as the magazine Pages Paysages, which she co-founded with Marc Claramunt, Pascale Jacotot and Vincent Tricaud. Catherine is renowned for socially and environmentally responsible work that attests to temporality and continuing change, referring those who interact with these landscapes to relationships with history, culture and the elements.

Mosbach’s many projects include the Solutre archaeological park in Saone-et-Loire, Walk Sluice of Saint-Denis, the Botanical Garden of Bordeaux, the other side in Quebec City, Shan Shui at the International Horticultural Exposition in Xian, the Place de la Republic in Paris, Walking Mediterranean Fort Saint Jean in Marseille. Mosbach’s work reveals latencies and hidden layers in the landscape, making the amorphous, ambiguous or slow-moving apparent in real time. The firm’s projects are often close to a decade in the making, with precise relationships to site conditions, rhythms of activity and occupation and seasonal variation.

Mosbach is the recipient of the equerre d’argent award with Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa for the Louvre Lens Museum Park in 2013, and Phase Shift Park (Gateway park) in Taichung was honoured in 2014 in the Iconic Concept Award category by the German Design Council, Munich. Catherine was named an officer of the Legion of Honor proposed by the President of the Republic Francois Hollande in 2016, and is a graduate of the Landscape Architecture School of Versailles. She also instructs the course Build with Life: Transformation and Formation: Landscape and Islamic Culture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

https://www.dezeen.com/2020/11/12/mosbach-paysagistes-phase-shifts-park-taichung-taiwan-landscape-architecture/

https://landezine.com/museum-park-louvre-lens-by-mosbach-paysagistes/

https://defensiblespace.org/

To increase wildfire resilience and maintain habitat quality in the Southern California Wildland Urban interface (WUI)

As a discipline, landscape architecture has distanced itself from gardening, and landscape architects take pains to distinguish themselves from gardeners or landscapers. Landscape architects tend to imagine gardens from the office, representing plants with drawings or other simulations, whereas gardeners work in the dirt, in real time, planting, pruning, and maintaining. In Overgrown, Raxworthy calls for the integration of landscape architecture and gardening. Each has something to offer the other: Landscape architecture can design beautiful spaces, and gardening can enhance and deepen the beauty of garden environments over time. Growth, says Raxworthy, is the medium of garden development; landscape architects should leave the office and go into the garden in order to know growth in an organic, nonsimulated way.

Raxworthy proposes a new practice for working with plant material that he terms “the viridic” (after “the tectonic” in architecture), from the Latin word for green, with its associations of spring and growth. He builds his argument for the viridic through six generously illustrated case studies of gardens that range from “formal” to “informal” approaches—from a sixteenth-century French Renaissance water garden to a Scottish poet-scientist's “marginal” garden, barely differentiated from nature. Raxworthy argues that landscape architectural practice itself needs to be “gardened,” brought back into the field. He offers a “Manifesto for the Viridic” that casts designers and plants as vegetal partners in a renewed practice of landscape gardening.

Sponsored by: https://www.bciburke.com/

SEL .nft https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/68753288684922086608564403316877929801832631715139355806789553097587046744065

https://www.punkrockzen.com/ 

Marcel Blanco known by the street name SEL, is a Los Angeles based, multifaceted artist best recognized by his paintings and murals that evoke emotion and thought through his use of color, narrative imagery and movement. 

His foundation began in the early ’80s when he started designing flyers and t-shirts for local punk/hardcore bands around Los Angeles. In his quest for new inspiration he discovered graffiti art and became part of the early L.A. graffiti scene which lead him to join the WCA (West Coast Artists) crew, one of seminal graffiti crews in Los Angeles. He then re-focused and aimed his creativity on computer graphics and art direction in the music and entertainment industries working on packaging and marketing material for indie and major record labels. 

Today his work expresses an introspective reflection that seems to touch people. His pieces are filled with emotion and a sense of individual wonder that easily grabs the eye of the audience creating a connection that goes beyond the aesthetics. Wether mural, painting, digital print, or installation the expression in his work is undeniable.

SARA ABED

Executive Director- National Association of Minority Landscape Architects 501(c)(3)

https://www.nationalamla.org/

VIVIANA FRANCO

Founder And Executive Director Of From Lot To Spot

http://fromlottospot.org/

LEIGH JERRARD

Founder of Greywater Corps

https://greywatercorps.com/

GABRIELLE NEWMARK

Founder of Swamp Pink Landscape Architecture (SPLA)

http://swamppink.com/

Joanna Karaman & Michael Todoran

 

Robert Andrade

Mark Susser

https://atomicirrigation.com/

Robert Andrade explores the values and meaning embedded in materials symbols and structures of the built environment by employing the use of industrial materials and construction methods evocative of urban spaces and various landscape typologies. Andrade is also interested in how humans intervene in the natural world, imposing order and artifice on raw wild life. He works in many different mediums including sculpture, photography, drawing, sound and more recently landscape design. He has exhibited throughout the United States and also enjoys collaborative projects at all scales. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

This episode is a lecture I (Michael Todoran) gave at Cal Poly Pomona's Department of Landscape Architecture on January 31st, 2017. I have been debating whether or not I should release this lecture for 3 years now because of the vulnerability in this lecture. I talk about sobriety, PTSD, and major failures in my life.

I hope you find this episode both insightful and entertaining.

https://www.larchitect.org/

Today’s conversation is centered around a post-industrial site on the north-eastern edge of Paris, known as Chapelle Charbon, that is soon to become a new public park for the city of Paris. As a former rail depot, the 6.5 hectare (or 16 acre) site will be developed in several phases over the next decade. As part of this process, the design firm Taktyk was commissioned to design a temporary park called La Parc de 12 Saisons or The 12 Seasons Park, that evolved over a three-year period between 2017 and 2020. Around the same time that Taktyk began their work, two other curious site explorers stepped into the scene, driven by an artistic interest in the sonic qualities of the terrain, giving voice to a historic space that had been essentially forgotten about for decades. The story begins with a serendipitous encounter between three people: Sébastien Perfornis of the landscape design firm Taktyk, John Bingham-Hall from the artistic organization Theatrum Mundi and Alexandra LaCroix, director of the opera company MPDA. We met in person in the office of Theatrum Mundi in the 8th arrondissment of Paris at the beginning of March 2020. Taktyk was represented by landscape architect Yara Falaka.

Voi[e,x,s] Chapelle Charbon #1 (performance 22 and 23 June 2018)

https://vimeo.com/292686286

Voi[e,x,s] Chapelle Charbon #2 (performance 5 October 2019)

https://vimeo.com/384798801Theatrum-Mundi 

https://theatrum-mundi.org/project/voiexs/

https://theatrum-mundi.org/library/voiexs_interview/Taktyk

https://taktyk.cargo.site/12-Seasons-ParkCie MPDA

https://www.ciempda.com/voiexschapellecharbonLe Parc des 12 saisons

https://www.facebook.com/CollectifChapelleCharbon.Parcdes12saisons/

POC Architecture General Information

Who we are & our mission

(all our main talking points) 

We are a couple of black architecture students from Canada. We created this page to showcase architecture projects done by people of colour. During the course of our education, we noticed a lack of architecture projects from people of colour being taught. As a result, this page was created to promote diversity in the field of architecture. 

As black architecture students we found it difficult to find a role model and motivation when we rarely learned about black architects or other architects of colour on a daily basis. We believe it does the next generation of architects a disservice if they do not learn diverse perspectives of design and experiences from people of colour in the industry. There are architects of colour doing great work however they are highly under-represented in the profession. This is a problem because students and professionals definitely need a more expanded/global understanding of design. It would ultimately help them create sustainable and successful architecture all over the world. We encourage everyone to contact their school or speak with their colleagues at work about the lack of diversity in the architecture profession. We challenge architecture schools to diversify their case studies and include more work from people of colour. We also call upon architecture firms to reevaluate the amount of diversity in their organization. 

We showcase work from architecture students, professionals etc. and multiple mediums of work are encouraged.If you are a person of colour and would like your architectural work to be featured on our Instagram page “POC_Arch”, please email us at pocarch@gmail.com or direct message us for further inquiries. 

http://www.sdisf.com/book

Surfacedesign, Inc. is a landscape architecture and urban design firm based in San Francisco, California. This award-winning practice focuses on creating dynamic parks, plazas, waterfronts, civic landscapes, and private gardens. James A. Lord, Roderick Wyllie, and Geoff di Girolamo, in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team of landscape architects, urban designers, and architects, provide innovative design solutions for a wide range of projects.

Interactive and meaningful collaboration between project stakeholders, ranging from clients, designers, community groups, and city agencies are essential components to the shifting tactics required to program dynamic public sites. Surfacedesign’s outreach and visioning work focus on building partnerships and innovative strategies for placemaking.

Integral to the ideology of the practice, Surfacedesign focuses on cultivating a sense of connection to the built and natural world, pushing people to engage with the landscape in new ways. Our approach emphasizes and celebrates the unique context and imaginative potential of each project. The studio’s design process is rooted in asking novel questions and listening to a site and its users - a process that has led to engaging and inspiring landscapes that are rugged, contemporary, and crafted.

Thierry KANDJEE is a landscape architect, in charge of taktyk Brussels and Chair of Landscape in the Architecture Faculty La Cambre Horta. His practice based research investigated how to design landscape skeletons as a model of/for robust landscapes.

Sébastien PENFORNIS is an architect and urban designer in charge of taktyk Paris office. He also teaches at the ENSAB, Rennes. His practice based research explored the notion of play and serendipity through the landscape design processes and transformations.

Rennie Tang is a designer and educator based in Los Angeles. As a professor of landscape architecture at California Polytechnic State University Pomona her teaching methods emphasize one-to-one scale spatial construction, topographic manipulation and material exploration. She is recipient of the 2017 Excellence in Design Studio Teaching Award from the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA). Her research interests include human mobility, health and well-being in urban landscapes and intergenerational play; this work has been presented and published locally and internationally at conferences as well as by invitation from museums and art festivals. Her collaborative project ‘Punt.Point’ with artist Sara Wookey was recently purchased by the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Notable designers she has worked with include landscape architect Walter Hood and artist Mary Miss. She has taught at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Woodbury University and University of Southern California and has practiced in Montreal, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, Berkeley, Oakland and Vienna.

This episode features Kofi Boone, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, and NC State University College of Design. He focuses on the changing nature of communities and developing tools for enhanced community engagement and design. 

This episode was researched, produced, and edited by Joanna Karaman with coordination by Michael Todoran. Special thanks to ASLA for logistical support and additional music by Jochanan Samama. Further thanks to Kofi Boone for his participation and input. Please visit our website, larchitect.org for more info. Until next time, ‘The Larchitect Team’.  

https://www.hunterindustries.com/

Nick Straabe is a Licensed Landscape Architect currently focused on the design, specification, sales, implementation and management of low voltage lighting and irrigation systems for Hunter Industries. Jason Wan establishes Maintains and Builds relationships with Landscape Architects for Hunter Industries.

Signe is a Founding Principal of MNLA and has been practicing as a landscape architect and urban designer in New York since 1978. Her body of work has renewed the environmental integrity and transformed the quality of spaces for those who live, work, and play in the urban realm. A Fellow of the ASLA, she is the recipient of more than 100 national and local design awards for public open space projects and is published extensively nationally and internationally. Signe is a professor of urban design and landscape architecture at Pratt Institute in both the graduate and undergraduate Schools of Architecture and is the former President of the Public Design Commission of the City of New York. Born in Paris, Signe received a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, in Urban Planning from Smith College; a Bachelor of Arts in Landscape Architecture from City College of New York; and a Bachelor of Science in Construction Management from Pratt Institute.

The Second Studio is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by Architects David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features different creative professionals in unscripted and long-format interviews with thoughtful takes and personal discussions. Honesty and humor are used to cover a wide array of subjects.

https://islandpress.org/books/schools-heal

https://www.larchitect.org/ 

What would a school look like if it was designed with mental health in mind? Too many public schools look and feel like prisons, designed out of fear of vandalism and truancy. But we know that nurturing environments are better for learning. Research consistently shows that access to nature, big classroom windows, and open campuses reduce stress, anxiety, disorderly conduct, and crime, and improve academic performance. But too few school designers and decision-makers apply this research to create healthy schools. Schools That Heal details the myriad opportunities—from furniture to classroom improvements to whole campus renovations—to make supportive learning environments for our children and teenagers.

This episode is sponsored by https://www.bciburke.com/ 

BILLY KRIMMEL
FOUNDER, ECOLOGIST
Billy completed his PhD in Ecology at UC Davis where he focused his research on native plant-insect interactions. Billy also holds a Bachelor of Science from Brown University and serves on the board of directors for the California Native Grasslands Association.

Billy founded https://www.miridae.com/  with the intention of creating a habitat for native species within human-occupied areas and engaging people with the species interactions occurring in these habitats. With each project, we come one step closer to creating a network of habitat gardens and migration corridors to support resilient populations of native species.

Thomas Balsley is a renowned designer whose New York City-based practice is best known for its fusion of landscape and urbanism in public parks, waterfronts, and plazas throughout the US and abroad. For over 35 years, Tom’s work has reshaped social and cultural spaces with robust sustainable landscapes that teem with public life. In New York City alone, he has completed more than 100 parks and plazas, including the 2014 ASLA Honor Award-winning Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park and Gantry Plaza Park, across the East River from the UN; Riverside Park South; Chelsea Waterside Park; Peggy Rockefeller Plaza; Capitol Plaza; and the recently completed 51 Astor Place plaza, across from Cooper Union. In an unprecedented gesture, a small park on 57th Street was named Balsley Park in recognition of his design contributions to the city.

Spacemaker Press devoted a monograph to Thomas Balsley Associates’ work: “Thomas Balsley: The Urban Landscape.” In 2015, Mr. Balsley received ASLA’s highest design honor, the Design Medal. ORO Editions has just released his firm’s second monograph, “Thomas Balsley: Uncommon Ground,” with foreword by James Corner and an essay by Ian Volner.

https://www.larchitect.org/

A Low-Brow, Crass Approach to Plant Ecology & Evolution as muttered by a Misanthropic Chicago Italian. Amidst mild profanity and general irreverence, we examine plant life (the base of Earth's food chain) and the nature of the rocks and soil they grow on, as well as the evolutionary adaptations that enable them to do what they do. The goal of "Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't" is to both educate people as well as light the fire of curiosity on their ass, hopefully inspiring them to go outside and observe and question the living world around them. Thanks for reading. Have a great day and go fuck yourself.

https://taylor-pr.com/

Taylor & Company is the PR firm with the creativity, quality, expertise, and tenacity to achieve effective and impressive results for clients in architecture, design, and furniture.

this episode sponsored by: https://www.bciburke.com/

Sarah Lisiecki combines a passion for play, the outdoors and movement with more than ten years in the play industry and hundreds of presentations given on topics from Inclusive Design, Musical Play and Trends in Play at Parks and Recreation Conferences, District Meetings, Landscape Architect Firms and Representative Trainings. She studied Communications and Political Science at University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire and is a Certified Playground Safety Inspector (CPSI). As an advocate for play as a critical part of development, she serves on the Steering Committee of the US Play Coalition, on the Parks & Recreation Editorial Advisory Board, is part of the IPEMA Marketing Committee, is a member of multiple play research project teams, the Product Development Council and presents at a variety of conferences, Lunch and Learns, panels and events. She spends her spare time hiking, running, biking and climbing and with her rescue dogs.

Wilks Family Director, Ian L. McHarg Center

https://www.larchitect.org/

https://www.bciburke.com/

Interested in typologies of the built environment - the artist and landscape designer explores the values and meaning embedded in structures and symbols using industrial materials and construction methods evocative of the urban space along with various landscapes. His artwork examines the relationship between humanity and the natural world, reflecting on how we intervene in the environment, imposing order and artifice, and how time will mark itself on the urban fabric. Andrade’s open-ended practice includes the use of a variety of mediums, ranging from drawing, photography, digital fabrication to sound, and are shown in various formats, including installations, public interventions and collaborations. He is of Mexican-American heritage and is originally from National City, California.

https://www.freshoffthevote.com/

FRESH OFF THE VOTE is a grassroots podcast on a mission to make politics fun. Our team is 100% self identified Asian American Pacific Islander youth ready to make waves for the November 2020 election. We created the podcast as a home for conversations on the different key issues of the election and to discuss voter engagement strategies for AAPIs by AAPIs. 

Landscape Architect Hikes Appalachian Trail

this episode sponsored by: https://www.bciburke.com/

Cliff Garten

Cliff Garten is an internationally recognized sculptor and founder of Cliff Garten Studio in Venice, California.

By connecting people to places and infrastructure through sculptural material, social history and ecology, Garten's work locates the latent potential in every public place and situation to become more than the specific functions it appears to perform. Sculpture and landscape, function and form, like public and private experiences are never distinct, but exchange places throughout the day. Sculpture defines our interaction and movement by creating energy between things, generating interest in public activity, reframing our private lives and creating a sense of place within public and private realms.

Garten received a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Master of Landscape Architecture with Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

https://www.studiopappaterra.com/

Today’s episode feels especially timely with a heavy heart. As fires in the Palisades area of Los Angeles continue to devastate communities and landscapes, we are  reminded of the growing urgency to design with resilience and sustainability at the forefront.

Our guest today is Elisa Read Pappaterra, a landscape architect and founder of studio pappaterra. Elisa is renowned for her expertise in fire ecology and her dedication to designing landscapes that not only harmonize with the natural world but also mitigate the risks of living in fire-prone areas. Her work is as vital as it is inspiring, offering solutions that preserve life, property, and biodiversity.

This conversation was recorded in Santa Barbara on October 5, 2024, following Elisa’s keynote speech at San Marcos Growers’ final event, “The Last Dance: A Celebration of 45 Years of Horticultural Legacy.” Elisa shares her insights on the importance of understanding a site’s cultural and ecological “soul,” as well as her approach to creating firewise, ecologically sound, and artistically inspired landscapes.

This episode is a  reminder that how we design our landscapes today will shape the safety and resilience of tomorrow. Whether you’re a designer, an advocate, or simply someone invested in the future of our environment, this is an important and compelling episode.