Preservationists Don’t Put Too Fine a Point On It in Their Maximalist Postmodern Reno

Sept. 2023 Ι Dwell An architect/preservationist and a city planner/1980s-vibe channeler, Jonathan Solomon and Meg Gustafson are fluid aesthetic experts. But when it came time to design a house together after getting married, they weren’t interested in a ground-up project. They wanted “something that already had authenticity,” says Meg. But also “something that we wouldn’t… Continue reading Preservationists Don’t Put Too Fine a Point On It in Their Maximalist Postmodern Reno

Apocalypse-Proof

Sept. 12, 2023 Ι Places Journal  When it was completed in Lower Manhattan in 1974, 33 Thomas Street, formerly known as the AT&T Long Lines Building, was intended as the world’s largest facility for connecting long-distance telephone calls. 1 Standing 532 feet — roughly equivalent to a 45-story building — it’s a mugshot for Brutalism,… Continue reading Apocalypse-Proof

Step Down, Splash Down

June 15, 2023 Ι Landscape Architecture Magazine  A few years ago, if you wanted to visit the site of Cascade Park in Chicago, designed by Claude Cormier + Associés (now CCxA), you’d find yourself near the shores of Lake Michigan at a 50-foot cliff overlooking a vacant pit bordered by a foreboding service road that… Continue reading Step Down, Splash Down

Top of the Rock

July 20, 2023 Ι Landscape Architecture Magazine  Faced with the need for a meditative and richly planted landscape for an affordable and supportive housing project in the Bronx on top of exposed bedrock, Brian Green, a landscape architect at Terrain-NYC, looked to the other geologic formations in Manhattan, particularly in Central Park, and in the… Continue reading Top of the Rock

Bet the House

March 2023 Ι Landscape Architecture Magazine  Pulling off the road during a hot and sticky New York City summer day two years ago, and into the Berry public housing complex on Staten Island, Kate Belski of Grain Collective had a bit of a revelation. She found herself in a central lawn dotted with trees, surrounded… Continue reading Bet the House

High in the Sky, Where the Money Stacks Up

Aerial view of First National Bank building in Chicago, Illinois, circa 1969.

August 31, 2023 Ι Architects’ Newspaper In the 1960s, the same Chicago city agency conjured some of the worst and the best in American residential high-rises, and in rapid succession. The Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) Robert Taylor Homes were the nation’s largest public housing project when they opened in 1963: the buildings locked in a… Continue reading High in the Sky, Where the Money Stacks Up

What Landscapers Can Teach Landscape Architects

July 26, 2023 Ι Bloomberg CityLab  At one of the nation’s most prestigious landscape architecture schools, the summer studio of Ohio State University professor Michelle Franco has students learning how to pull up weeds, prune trees and mix soil. Sometimes, this calls for expertise beyond what Harvard-educated Franco can provide. So she brings in the… Continue reading What Landscapers Can Teach Landscape Architects