Your favorite memories of playtime as a child likely recall experiences of adventure and exploration. Discovering the world around you by climbing trees, building forts, chasing lizards, making mud pies, and creating forts from the household furnishings is part of being a child; it’s also the premise for a type of play environment known as… Read more »
Your favorite memories of playtime as a child likely recall experiences of adventure and exploration. Discovering the world around you by climbing trees, building forts, chasing lizards, making mud pies, and creating forts from the household furnishings is part of being a child; it’s also the premise for a type of play environment known as adventure playgrounds.
Prevalent in Europe and Japan since the early 1940s, these so-called “junk playgrounds” were places where children could build, explore, and experiment with their own recreational environment. The process did not often result in a traditionally beautiful space and, in fact, critics labeled them community eyesores. Nonetheless, the concept became popular in those countries (the U.S. has yet to catch on in any significant way), and while each adventure playground is different, they all have a few things in common: Adults from the community (known as play workers or leaders) are present, and they assist and supervise the children. The physical elements vary depending on available resources and the imagination of the children and staff but often include tree houses or playhouses (typically built by the kids), logs, rope, recycled tires, campfires, and ponds. Sometimes even farm animals are looked after by the children and staff. In these places, young people can realize their own ideas by originating activities, games, and structures.
As children use their imaginations to create play environments under supervision, they also develop physically and intellectually. Making decisions about how to play strengthens their problem-solving skills and social development as they learn how to negotiate relationships. Children also feel invested, and learn to care for the things they create. These kinds of spaces encourage growth because the focus is on the process, not the result. A good adventure playground constantly changes and evolves according to the new ideas and uses the children design and implement.
Some view the environments as dangerous because they do not conform to the building requirements of a conventional playground. In the U.S. especially, liability and safety are concerns and it’s true that there is potential for danger. In reality, though, the accident rates at adventure playgrounds tend to be lower than conventional ones. They all have trained staff, set hours of operation, and age requirements (most do not allow kids younger than five or six), and some even require that the parents be present. It’s hard to compare them to conventional stand-alone playgrounds because they operate so differently, perhaps more like a staffed community center. Despite the liability concerns, adventure playgrounds can often be covered under the same insurance as any other part of a city park, so this is a hurdle that can be overcome. Larger concerns are funding and land availability, which are often the causes for their closure.
It’s widely accepted that play is important to a child’s development. Adventure playgrounds can be a valuable addition to any community and I hope to see more places create their own unique play environments as the word spreads.
“Get a bicycle. You will not regret it if you live.” Mark Twain’s words came to mind as I did my best to survive a bike ride through downtown Los Angeles. Cars came within inches of me as they darted around, swerving from lane to lane. Buses lumbered along and pushed me further into the… Read more »
“Get a bicycle. You will not regret it if you live.”
Mark Twain’s words came to mind as I did my best to survive a bike ride through downtown Los Angeles. Cars came within inches of me as they darted around, swerving from lane to lane. Buses lumbered along and pushed me further into the mix of traffic while I dodged potholes and road construction. Why did I ever agree to make a video about the hazards of urban biking?
As part of a proposal to a client for an urban bike plan, my wife, a former corporate video producer, and I were asked to create a short public outreach video that would juxtapose the benefits of sound bicycle planning with the dangers of poor bicycle planning. Rather than create a typical public service announcement, we were tasked with making a story-based video that would be easily relatable.
We storyboarded potential biking scenarios, discussed the overall message and the best way to reach the audience. During the weekend, we set out to film with our bicycles, DSLR camera, tripod, GoPro, and chest harness.
Chaos happens naturally in downtown LA. We spent several hours planning different scenarios that would communicate the hazards and chaos of urban biking. However, after strapping on the GoPro, we were able to capture all of the various scenarios within just 15 minutes of biking. Car doors flew open right in front of me; trucks cut me off; someone ran a red light. A small piece of gravel even hit me in the eye. How fortunate!
That was the easy part. We then had to find examples of good bicycle planning in downtown LA. While it was a much bigger challenge, we encountered a few examples. I filmed my wife riding on the same green bike lane from different angles to make it look like she was riding through different parts of downtown. For other shots, she rode through a pedestrian plaza because we couldn’t find any other examples of good bicycle design.
Following a few days of creative editing, the video came together just in time for the interview. After seeing the video, several members of the client team said that it captured the experience of urban biking well and highlighted many of the reasons why the bike plan project was necessary. As bicycle planning continues to improve, Mark Twain’s quote will hopefully evoke more belly laughs than nervous chuckles.
SWA San Francisco was recently shortlisted together with partner Studios Architecture and a handful of other teams for an ideas competition for the Berkeley Global Campus at Richmond Bay. The 130-acre site along the bay’s edge is just seven miles from the current campus and will grant graduate degrees related to world health, climate change,… Read more »
SWA San Francisco was recently shortlisted together with partner Studios Architecture and a handful of other teams for an ideas competition for the Berkeley Global Campus at Richmond Bay. The 130-acre site along the bay’s edge is just seven miles from the current campus and will grant graduate degrees related to world health, climate change, and urban studies in concert with overseas institutions.
Judged by a panel that ranged from developers to professors, the design process raised unique questions for landscape architecture in the globally transformed Anthropocene. Our investigations will certainly inform the future of the campus, but I continue to wonder about the larger cultural forces at play in spaces that will be transformed by climate change. Most importantly, how might the designer aid the articulation of such processes in ways that are culturally poignant?
In The Aesthetics of Disappearance, architect-turned-philosopher Paul Virilio writes, “The pursuit of forms is only a pursuit of time, and if there are no stable forms, there are no forms at all.” In his exploration of the effect of societal acceleration upon object perception, he frames the paradox forced upon designers facing an era of significant climate change. As landscape architects, we are fairly comfortable with change in the ecological realm—ideas of succession and ecological process are as old as our trade—even if it is often difficult to convince the public or clients of proposals that recognize these concepts. Inextricable from the ecological changes we will witness, however, are the more numerous and complex cultural shifts that will inevitably accompany these changes.
How can designers frame relationships to indeterminacy? How might the politics of the future be influenced by those of us who will shape interactions in liminal spaces such as the unknown extents of sea level rise? Perhaps some degree of vulnerability in the design itself offers the most good when the importance of such perceptions is valued. What could such landscapes look like and where would they exist?
Before these bigger questions could be explored, basic planning solutions were addressed to restore access to the bay for Richmond itself. One of several site frameworks emphasized easy and immediate access by foot to the surrounding and often marginalized communities and schools. Curiously, these paths found alignments with historic Eucalyptus windbreaks—one of the early results of European settlement in California that now hold significant cultural merit despite their common dismissal as an invasive.
Our proposal insisted (refreshingly) that the water be allowed to enter the site, proscribing a landscape design not framed by promises of permanence, but one which generates its identity through the changes across its breadth that would come with saline intrusion and the accompanying shift of native ecotones. Change itself becomes the generator of the site’s identity into the future and the landscape will invariably overcome the frames that situated it on day one, such that subtle migrations might be visible over time. If one approach is to emphasize this poetry of change, we were able to design for such transformation here.
Painter Rene Magritte stated, “I never show bizarre or strange things in my paintings…but ordinary things that are gathered and transformed in such a way that we’re made to think that there’s something else of an unfamiliar nature that appears at the same time as familiar.” As forward-thinking designers, perhaps we can follow his message and not just mark change, but embrace how this change might fracture the design frame itself and reveal its own history.
Established in 1990, Retrospect is an annual public outreach event organized by the Dallas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Hosted at the NorthPark Center (a prominent Dallas mall), its purpose is to introduce Dallas-area design firms to the local community and raise funds for the Dallas AIA Chapter. The exhibition consists of three-dimensional… Read more »
Established in 1990, Retrospect is an annual public outreach event organized by the Dallas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Hosted at the NorthPark Center (a prominent Dallas mall), its purpose is to introduce Dallas-area design firms to the local community and raise funds for the Dallas AIA Chapter. The exhibition consists of three-dimensional displays demonstrating how designers can lead efforts toward making our cities better places to reside. This was the third year SWA Dallas participated in the event along with 20 other firms.
Our project investigated the quantity of park space in Dallas, both in its entirety and by council district. The outcome was an unbiased survey of one of our city’s most valuable assets—quality open space. Each of our seven frames represented two council districts and highlighted the percentage of park space to total area. The green space was represented by air plants suspended within each frame. The amounts varied greatly from district to district, which meant that the quantity of air plants intensified as the viewer peered through the installation from multiple vantage points. Dallas can currently claim just seven percent of parks space.
The process from start to finish lasted about a month and served as a great opportunity to bring the office together to creatively explore ideas apart from the normal scope of our work. Over the course of a few lunch and happy hour meetings, we honed in on a concept and began figuring out how to materialize it. Week one involved sketching ideas and reaching out to local fabricators for access to more sophisticated machinery to help realize our vision. When digital fabrication proved to be a dead end, we hit the drawing board once again and prepared to make the installation ourselves the old-fashioned way. It was time to get our hands dirty. Week two was spent roaming the aisles of Home Depot purchasing supplies and mocking up the frames and concrete base to help us better understand what we were getting ourselves into.
After working out (most) of the bugs during week two, weeks three and four were all about production. We hit plenty of snags along the way, but each forced us to take a step back, reconsider certain aspects of the project, and ultimately improve our vision. We greatly underestimated the amount of paint needed, and three quarters of the way through hit supply issues with the particular color we were using. Nearly finished with the installation, we had to go back and revise our strategy. Attempting to juggle our busy office schedules with finalizing the design and construction of our installation led to many late nights toward the end of the process, but fueled by Coronitas and home-cooked fajitas (props to Luis Carrera’s family!), everything came together nicely.
Special thanks to Donny Zellefrow, Luis Carrera, Jean-Pierre Casillas, Yuan Ren, Amanda Kronk, Leah Hales, and Jianchun Zhu for their ideas, sweat, and help along the way.
Every year nearly two million visitors flock to the isolated city of Cabo San Lucas, on the southern tip of North America’s West Coast, to experience the beautiful geography where desert meets sea. Among the numerous high-end resorts there is a five-star standout called The Resort at Pedregal, where I spent 20 days during January… Read more »
Every year nearly two million visitors flock to the isolated city of Cabo San Lucas, on the southern tip of North America’s West Coast, to experience the beautiful geography where desert meets sea. Among the numerous high-end resorts there is a five-star standout called The Resort at Pedregal, where I spent 20 days during January last year—but not as a paying guest indulging in sport fishing, fine dining, and tequila drinking: I was working.
What sets this place apart from the other world-class luxury resorts in Cabo is its unique location between the rocky Pedregal mountainside and the Pacific Ocean. Accessible only by a 300-meter-long tunnel bored directly through granite, The Resort at Pedregal has unimpeded sunset ocean views on a pristine, white-sand beach that was virtually inaccessible before the site construction. SWA Dallas provided full landscape architectural services there, drawing inspiration from local culture, plants, and geography. Since opening in 2009, the resort has consistently ranked in the top three on lists for best Mexican resorts in U.S. News & World Report and Travel + Leisure.
Together with all the beauty and tranquility that this oceanfront site offers, there is also the looming potential for disaster. And in 2014, it struck hard. Hurricane Odile hit Cabo San Lucas on September 14th; with sustained winds of up to 125 mph it was the strongest hurricane ever to make landfall in the Baja Peninsula. Situated smack between a mountain and a hurricane, my future home away from home took a beating.
Immediately after the storm passed, the resort began rebuilding. Every day without visitors is a major loss for a regional economy based on tourism, so they hit the ground running with the goal of being operational ASAP. Nearly everything that was constructed five years before had to be rebuilt or refinished in some way. It was primarily an exercise of removing and replacing anything that had been affected by the saltwater, pelting rocks, and winds, (which was 90 percent of everything on site). SWA was rehired to redesign and oversee construction of the site landscape. Which is how I ended up on the scene.
As the Dallas office updated the plans, a unique opportunity to improve upon lessons learned surfaced. We requested input from the hotel management group, the everyday users (the most important opinion), hotel staff, and outside contractors that provided event set-up and landscape maintenance services. These groups commented on what worked well before and what could be done to better suit their as well as their guest’s needs. Incorporating these updates into the new set of plans provided a better understanding of the project as an inhabited space, and SWA was able to improve on its design.
While providing the on-site field work necessary to complete such a fast-paced project, I was able to make decisions based on input from hotel staff and landscape maintenance crews, who knew the constraints of the site better than anyone else. I worked from sunup to sundown, taking advantage of every hint of daylight to assist the landscape crews with moving boulders, spacing plants, facing trees, and reviewing the plant material brought in every day. The only downtime was a 30-minute lunch, when most of the laborers would take a quick nap in the shade or grab some food at the hotel staff cafeteria. I tried to find new people to practice Spanish with, invariably a two-way lesson. It was a nice way to unwind before heading back to the chaotic work day and many of the hotel staff enjoyed it as much as I did.
One particularly challenging aspect of the job was finding replacement plant material. As the hurricane affected such a large geographical area, regional nurseries and growers had also lost much of their plant inventory. And with a large number of resorts all attempting to replace damaged plants at the same time there was a very limited supply. Replacing plants was a constant battle; we continually found more dead plants as the pelting rocks from the strong winds had penetrated cacti, causing them to slowly rot out. A lot of mixing and matching of existing and new plants occurred to find matching sizes.
As the weeks counted down to days it seemed like the rebuilding would not be finished for the opening on January 31st, but in the final hours we pulled it off with the help of everyone on site. Waiters and bellhops ran wheelbarrows of plants across the site while bartenders and concierge assistants swept up debris. Just before the first guests arrived, perfection was once again achieved for The Resort at Pedregal, only this time even better.
This project serves as a model of interoffice collaboration to effectively complete a project as it moves from design to construction and the potential for design improvement with keeping the user top of mind and actively involved in the process.
Watch a video of the re-opening at The Resort at Pedregal, courtesy of the resort:
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One Response to “Building it Twice: Post-hurricane Lessons from a World-class Resort”
Dear SWA,
Nice article, it reminds me of my 5th year BLA Thesis project. I studied 2 island resorts in Ambergris Caye Belize. One of the many discoveries I made was that one of the resorts recycled hurricane damaged material to create an artificial reef. This new amenity was a huge hit, open the everyone and created needed habitat for thousands of sea creatures. If I may suggest, in the future using artificial reefs to reduce material removal costs by recycling “clean material”, habitat creation and recreation opportunities. It is truly a win win win.
Please let me know if you have any questions about my thesis.
Thank you,
Robert C Jones, PLA ASLA Robert.jones.c@gmail.com
It’s no news that the Golden State is potentially facing its most serious drought ever. The topic has been a media staple since NASA released an alarming report revealing that California has one year of water left in its surface water reservoirs. With water resources already being stressed—increased population growth and a decrease in available… Read more »
It’s no news that the Golden State is potentially facing its most serious drought ever. The topic has been a media staple since NASA released an alarming report revealing that California has one year of water left in its surface water reservoirs.
With water resources already being stressed—increased population growth and a decrease in available surface water supplies are putting a squeeze on communities across the state—future trends will only compound existing conditions. As the most populous state, California is expected to reach 50 million people by 2050. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report from 2013, California will continue to experience reduced snow packs and warmer temperatures. These conditions will lead to increased evaporation and a reduction in available water for both urban areas and agriculture. Food security for Californians and the multitudes of other Americans who depend on its food and wine production, will be further challenged.
Of the total precipitation which falls in California, 50 percent is infiltrated into soils in rural areas or piped to the ocean in urban areas. The other 50 percent is appropriated for human use. Of the latter, 80 percent is channeled to agriculture and the rest is diverted for residential use. The hydrologic cycle in California needs to be understood and used as a formative system in urban planning and design to ensure resiliency for our communities and for the state’s economy.
First we need to maximize the capture and storage of the 50 percent that returns to the environment. In order to retain and improve rainfall for future years, we need to allow precipitation to infiltrate into soils for uptake by plants and release back to the atmosphere through evapotranspiration. We can capture 100 percent of rainfall events up to a 100-year-storm level at the neighborhood and city scale through high-performing open spaces, which include bioswales, rain gardens, and detention ponds. For 100-year+ events, the regional scale can be used to lay out a matrix of large, interconnected open spaces.
The next 50 percent has the big finger pointing at agriculture. Yet, by arranging our cities based on the water cycle we can reduce our use of potable water. Currently, recycled water is used to irrigate vast areas of ornamental landscapes that surround our urban environs. What if we reconfigure these decorative landscapes and turn them into productive members of society by creating a heterogonous patchwork of agricultural open spaces stitching together our communities—places where recycled water becomes the formative system. Graywater from residential areas can then be filtered to acceptable agricultural levels and used to either offset or replace surface water demands. Instead of fields of stagnant groundcovers and static trees, the landscape will come to life with shifts in seasons, workers, and harvests and people will become connected to their food, farmers, and water use. A local food network will be generated, with grocery stores, farmers markets, and restaurants all benefiting from the local supplies. Local food brings local jobs, and local spending compounds the multiplier effect.
Farm areas in close proximity to sources of recycled water are at a unique advantage over others especially in time of drought and in a future that is anticipated to be far more water-scarce. Agriculture is part of the identity and economy of California. A radical shift in everyone’s way of life is required. As the population in California continues to grow, so will the demand for water, food, and land. Our ability to offer ingenious solutions to these issues will be essential to sustaining the places we live.
Image courtesy of Michael McCullough via Flickr: http://tinyurl.com/mu9fo37
Robert C Jones, PLA ASLA
Dear SWA,
Nice article, it reminds me of my 5th year BLA Thesis project. I studied 2 island resorts in Ambergris Caye Belize. One of the many discoveries I made was that one of the resorts recycled hurricane damaged material to create an artificial reef. This new amenity was a huge hit, open the everyone and created needed habitat for thousands of sea creatures. If I may suggest, in the future using artificial reefs to reduce material removal costs by recycling “clean material”, habitat creation and recreation opportunities. It is truly a win win win.
Please let me know if you have any questions about my thesis.
Thank you,
Robert C Jones, PLA ASLA
Robert.jones.c@gmail.com