It seems that urban agriculture, veg.itecture, and ecoplanning take a good bit of the attention span of myself, this blog, and the media. I forget sometimes to feature that bastion of landscape and urbanist principles rolled out in one neat package – quality urban landscape projects. There are many, from the recent ASLA national award winners, including the fantastic Lurie Garden in Chicago’s Millenium Park by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd. and the Fountain Promenade at Chapultepec Park in Mexico City by Grupo De Diseño Urbano SC which both blend park beauty and urban density with impeccable landscape detailing.

:: Lurie Garden – image via ASLA

:: Fountain Promenade – image via ASLA

There are also a steady stream coming from competitions and commissions world-wide. Another great old project from Pruned (thank god – a post like the old days), investigates a project winner from the Envisioning Gateway competition by Ashley Kelly and Rikako Wakabayashi entitled Mapping the Ecotone. Perhaps the idea of ecotone – perhaps the use of time as a design elements that works with, rather than ignoring, climate change. Trevi’s analysis is in fine form, check it out:

:: images via Pruned

Another competition winner, one I first spotted in the great book Urban Landscape – and recently on Coolboom is the City Lounge by Carlos Martinez and Pipilotti Rist in St. Gallen, Switzerland. I’m usually not a fan of blatantly avant-garde landscape design that is lacking in landscape, but there’s something about this design I like – perhaps that it seems like a safe fall surfaced adult playground for the city.

:: images via Coolboom

Perhaps more art that landscape architecture, Designboom features the installation ‘Landmark Route’ by Ronald Hernandez, Marcelo Valdes, Osvaldo Veliz uses wood clad boxes for resting and information along a rural route in Chile.

:: images via Designboom

Patel Taylor’s Eastside City Park in Birmingham, London (via BDonline) is a thin ribbon of activity measuring 40m x 800m, acting as a catalyst for development along the way. The graphics depict water features, a variety of spatial arrangements, and large metal ‘gateways’ to frame the vistas.

:: images via BDonline

And finally, the Brooklyn Bridge Park is nearing construction, via a post in World Architecture News. The plan doesn’t tell much other than the interconnected gems along the waterfront spine, but the renderings are a bit more evocative.

:: images via WAN

Until this last one, that wins the award for throw-away digital image of the day – a placeless, formless farmer’s market on gravel that could take place virtually anywhere. Someone must have needed some filler on a board or been at the end of a long day. 🙂

:: image via WAN