rhondaswallowsreflections-blog

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Sustainability Leadership Careers in NGO, Business and Policy. “How to Get a Job Saving the Planet.”... Baker Center Environment and Energy Forum 10/24/2016- Webcast

The title caught my attention,” How to get a Job saving the Planet!” That’s my passion, as a landscape architect, is to make the world a better place. This is the reason that I chose this webcast to reflect on in my blog. After listening to Dr. Eban Goodstein speak for about 20 minutes I realized that he was trying to recruit students into Bard Center for Environmental Policy’s master and PhD programs at Bard College in New York. Dr. Goodstein asked the question “Who wants a job making the world a “greener” place? Yea, that’s what landscape is all about. So I continued to listen intently. I was curious about the opportunities in the environmental field in sustainability and as Dr. Goodstein mentioned that they are a planet saving business. Isn’t that the business that landscape architecture are in ?

The Bard Center for Environmental Policy degree programs prepared students to focus on serious issues that the world faces today and years to come if we don’t start making changes in our lifestyles. This is again my interest and passion as a landscape architect student and this is what has brought me into the program. He asked the question,“ What we do for the next 30 years for the future of the earth , can we say that we met the needs of the people (examples. water, food, etc.)? Yes we all need to start looking for ways that we can save this planet. It can be through changing bad policies and making them good polices for the planet. Another one is through education. Educating the people of ways and methods to save the planet. Also businesses who are changing their way of doing business to save the planet and making money at the same time. Dr. Eban Goodstein shared the stories of graduates who are now working in great jobs that are creating sustainability in the environmental field and are saving the planet and making money. 

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April 23, 2018 Plant Sciences Alumni Speaker Matt Dawson...”How College and Horticulture Guided Me to a Fruitful Life”

Matt shared with us the mentors that guided him in the directions that he took in his career after graduating from University of Tennessee with a degree in Horticulture. Matt discussed how important the horticulture club was to him   while attending UT but there is no longer a horticulture club today. This was a concern for the alumni because the group were a close-knit group that supported one another. This reminded me of the landscape architecture program which is a small and close knit group. This makes you feel like you are part of a family.  Matt expressed how he felt that these types of organizations provide mentor-ship to students which is important to graduating students who are entering the workforce. Another point that Matt shared with us is the importance of building a network with students that you went to school with. Several of the students that he went to school with are partners with him in his business today. Matt’s passion is Horticulture and tried designing also in his business but he decided to get to know the best landscape architects and designers. After working with the landscape architects and designers, his business grew from a $3,000 projects to $300,000 projects. He expressed how Landscape Architects need Horticulturist and Horticulturist need Landscape Architects in the business to be successful. He expressed landscapes as “Living Art”. I feel the same way. Landscape Architects draw their vision and plants give the design “living art”. 

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Integrating data and design makes for a more accurate design. Bringing the data visually can express the design in a storytelling mode and communicate complex ideas, allowing the data used to tell the story. We can find new insights from data. As Brad said, “Data is like our oil, we pay a lot of money for data”. Data design can quickly and effectively communicate a complex idea that can build things and create positive change.  As Brad expressed, “there are more data now than ever before.” This is one way of exploring the world. Also, when integrating data and design we can find new insights from the data that we can express in our designs. The masterplan for the Houston’s Energy Corridor is a good example of this. SASAKI used the data to design a multi dimensional, urbanistic, world class place to work, live and invest. Its a vibrant place that provides walk and bike to work, opportunities in a mixed-use, transit-served, ecologically rich community. Research plays an important role in landscape architect’s design and I see bringing data visualization, digital engagement, and user-centered design into planning and design projects. On the surface, design practices and data science may not seem like obvious partners. But these disciplines actually work toward the same goal, helping designers understand users so they can craft elegant digital experiences. While data can enhance design, design can bring deeper meaning to data. 

Brad Barnett....Data Design

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Erin Kelly   Lead landscape Architect at the city of Detroit’s planning and development office.

Erin expressed that projects may never happen which I have heard this from  other Landscape Architects that we have interviewed this semester. This must be a deterrent factor as you go to work everyday.  Working in the city’s planning and development office, as an landscape architect, is a different type of job than what we have learned about. This just displays that there are many avenues that Landscape Architects can take through out their career path. Erin mentioned also that designing isn’t the most important part of getting a project done. I would think in Erin’s situation, working in the planning and development office, that having good communication skills, collaboration with many different disciplines, and a vision would be important in implementing projects and getting them done. Erin’s task for the city of Detroit is to create a new urbanism in Detroit and a new typology of neighborhoods, angling for tangible policies that repriorities fresh produce and recast the role that farming can play in a modern American city-the New Urbanism in Detroit. This vision will provide growth and a better stewardship of the land which the city of Detroit will reap many benefits. One of the benefits would be working in the regions to transform vacant land into an asset.  Erin explained why Detroit? Because people plus lots of land. Investing in these spaces is like development without development, make the most of the land. Most importantly, follow your passions and seek to leave the world a better place than how you received it. 

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Chicago Trip...April 5-8

My visit to Chicago was busy and cold but rewarding, simulating, productive and an eye opener to what type of firms and businesses landscape architects work for. The Professional Practices class is the best class! This class has prepared me well for a career in Landscape Architecture. I’m thrilled to have had the opportunity to take this field trip to Chicago. Probably will never seek a job in Chicago but you never know :) The type of firm/business that would be a joy to work for is Omni Ecosystems. As a Landscape Architect, I want to be involved with bring natural, thriving ecosystems into cities and onto buildings. Within the next 25 years the statistics show an increase of population ,almost doubling, who are moving into the cities. As a Landscape Architects, we have to start planning and designing for this. I believe in what Omni Ecosystem is doing,  connecting cities with nature and restoring balance within the built environment. I want to make this world a better place, a living infrastructure, redefined! Erica, who works for Omni Ecosystem and is a graduate of University of Tennessee, will be a good contact person. One of the advantages of the trip is to set up networking with the firms that we visited for future use in our career. I plan to revisit Omni Ecosystem to see the beautiful green roofs when they are in bloom.

The next firm that is of interest or I would love to work for is Hoerr Schaudt. Hoerr Schaudt interest me because this is a firm that works on residential projects , private gardens and public parks. As Landscape Architect, you can  specialize and work with just certain projects. This is an area I would like to spend my time, as an Landscape Architect, working on, residential and private garden projects. Their team is urban designers, landscape architect, horticulturists. This is my kind of people who I would love to work with and learn from on any project.

The other firms: Port Urbanism and Site Design Studio were not studios that I was impressed with. Both firms showed us creative and inspiring designs, but I just wasn’t impressed with their style and the climate of their office.  However, Port’s projects are unique especially the Chicago Loop Alliance. The Fort Dickerson Quarry and Knoxville Battlefield Loop are cool projects, as well and are located in Knoxville!

I am very appreciative of the firms that allowed us to visit and take their time to talk to us and show us around the office. I am appreciative to the firms that we visited who reached out and had a positive impact upon educating us about landscape architecture career. I know that their time is money. Each firm spent several hours with us educating and encouraging us, up-and-coming landscape architects.

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Micah Rutenberg  Petting Zoo  April 4

Micah’s lecture “Petting Zoo” was an unusual lecture in the sense that I’m not sure why it was titled “Petting Zoo”, maybe using a Techno-Scientific Petting Zoo as a conceptual construct and metaphor. This talk connected the specificity of Dolly Parton Parkway to its emergence as a virtual place and exemplary anthropogenic urbanism in which technology, nature and culture became inextricably intertwined. Micah’s anthropogenic urbanism included the stretch of road that connects Great Smoky Mountain, Sevierville, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. After seating in four CoAD Church lectures, I’ve come to the conclusion that Architecture Design students and Landscape Architecture students do not think the same. I’m sure all Architecture students understood where Micah was going with this lecture but I didn’t. One thought I had though, human beings embody the awesome power of the sublime of the Great Smoky Mountains but as more and more tourists sought out the wilderness as a spectacle to be looked at and enjoyed for its great beauty, the sublime in effect becomes domesticated. As a landscape architect, I think this is sad. Amelda R. Wegwerth, Landscape Architect for Great Smoky Mountains National Park, mentioned in her interview with the class that many tourists that visit the Park see the great beauty of the wilderness from their car ! How does that happen? For me to enjoy the great beauty of the wilderness, I need to be involved with with the wilderness and that can’t happen in a car. 

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Atlanta Beltline....Kevin Burke

Altanta Beltline is a place I plan to visit one day especially the bike trails. The Beltline, “ where Atlanta comes together “, is a former railway corridor around the core of Altanta, Georgia. Many years ago, Atlanta was the railroad hub for all trains going east to west , so there are many corridors in the Atlanta area. The Atlanta BeltLine is the most comprehensive revitalization effort ever undertaken in the City of Atlanta and among the largest, most wide-ranging urban redevelopment and mobility projects currently underway in the United States.  It is under development in stages as a multi-use trails, parks, new art exhibits and new affordable housing.

Atlanta Beltline have done a good job of communicating to the public the progress of the projects through their website, and engaging the community through meetings and door to door communication. This gets the public on board and provides support for the completion of the projects.

I enjoyed the interview that we had with Kevin Burke. He is the project manager for the Altanta Beltline project. He just tells it like it is. My first impression of Kevin was that he seemed more of a construction superintendent not a Landscape Architect. Kevin shared that he doesn’t get to design very much but maybe once a year and that the company contracts out to other firms for designing the projects.

This is the second Landscape Architect that we’ve interviewed who are project managers. I’m not sure if this is a job position, as a Landscape Architect, I would want to work in. But Kevin is doing a good job in that he is making Atlanta and better place to live through his expertise and experience as a Landscape Architect.

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Mind of the Maker APX lecture “Marshall Prado”

This was another architect lecture that I had trouble understanding what he was discussing but I found several slides fascinating. Marshall discussed his ICD/ITKE research project that he was involved with and demonstrated the architectural potential of a novel building method inspired by the underwater nest construction of the water spider. This natural production process shows how adaptive fabrication strategies can be utilized to create  fiber-reinforced structures. How cool is that.  He showed a video of how a spider builds his nest so he took this idea to build a lightweight fiber composite shell forming a pavilion with unique architectural qualities, while at the same time being a highly material- efficient structure. He said that he wanted the structure to be light in weigh but strong. I don’t know of a better way then to learn from mother nature. Marshall said that the design concept is based on the study of biological construction processes for fiber-reinforced structures. So he took this biological formation sequence into a building construction application and developed an industrial robot that is placed within an air supported membrane envelope made of ETFE. I not sure how that works but to see the robots working to spindle the fibers together like a spider building a web was fascinating. Mitchell explained that robotic fabrication in the field of architect has developed rapidly, opening up new possibilities for architecture design.

The ICD/ITKE research pavilion project served as a demonstrator for advanced computational design and manufacturing techniques and shows the potential of interdisciplinary research and teaching.  

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Recode Knoxville Community Meeting ...Mar. 22

This is the first zoning ordinance meeting that I have attended and was surprised that there were not more people there. Knoxville zoning ordinance hasn’t undergone a thorough review in half a century. This meeting is the first presentation of the draft ordinance followed by an open house. From the survey there were 1600 + responses gathered from the community. Feedback from the community will help inform the final draft which is expected later this year. Most of the presentation I didn’t understand but when they started discussing landscape requirements I sat up! In the draft, the highlight of key issues and revisions to the current regulations are a landscape plan is required, selection and installation requirements, species diversity requirement and tree preservation and construction protection. In the parking lot perimeter, interior, site landscape and buffer yards all required landscape! I maybe wrong but this would be substantive change to the city of Knoxville. A green infrastructure with a better sustainable ecosystem. Permeable areas planted with live landscaping up to 40% of which maybe permeable landscape materials. A greener infrastructure have many benefits for a urban city and I hope that this is the plan and the plan gets implemented. 

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“Scales and Modes of Human Interaction” William Di Bernardo of  SCAPE Studio and Mckenna Cole of Local Projects..March 21

This lecture was a refreshing change from listening to the other Church lectures in the sense that Church lectures discuss Architecture and this lecture covered the broad range of what it can mean to be educated in Landscape Architecture . I’m usually totally lost in the other lectures but this one I was attentive to everything that was being discussed. William and McKenna were students together in college and have worked on a diverse range of interdisciplinary projects as an Landscaper Architect and working at two separate firms. McKenna Cole is a vision experience designer, distilling complex geospatial data sets and also an experience designer in research where she focused on data-driven visualization projects for human rights organizations. Who would ever thought that an Landscape Architect would be involved in this type of work? I forgot to mention that McKenna is also involved with crafting with her job at Local Projects and the crafting is centered on storytelling. Maybe this is what drew her to be involved with the human rights organization, creating projects that are emphatic and authentic to human experience. Tell your story! William is designing ecologically resilient cities. He is engaged with the urban environment and generates ecosystems, revive landscape systems and the path of economical development which includes experimenting designs and research. William creates captivating, innovative environments that remain sensitive to the human scale and to the ecosystems of the cities. The broad range of what it can mean to be educated in Landscape Architecture was truly discussed in today’s lecture. Thanks! 

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Geolf Manaugh A Burglar’s Guide to the City ....March 19

Studying architecture the way a burglar would, Geolf takes us through tunnels, down elevator shafts, and out across the rooftops of an unsuspecting city. Geolf  intricate, deeply researched, discussed ways burglars have entered buildings and why architects have not thought of the ways to enter as the robbers do. Geolf’s book is to make one think about cyber and digital security of a building and to think as a burglar so to figure out the different ways of entering a building. Geoff Manaugh’s liaisons with burglars and bank robbers reveal the unexplored niches and  loopholes of our cities, and through the eyes of urban hackers we find new possibilities for reinterpreting the built environment. Burglary is an architecture crime . It is a crime that has an intimate relationship with architecture.

The city as seen through the eyes of robbers, Geolf wants us to understand the city as an arena of possible tunnels and picked locks and architecture itself as an obstacle to be outwitted and second-guessed. Geolf shared many reports of burglary and the many unique ways the burglars have entered the buildings.

Manaugh argues that burglary is built into the fabric of cities and is an inevitable outgrowth of having architecture in the first place. Studying brilliant bank robbers and bungling burglars, this is a fascinating look at the city from its underworld that will change the way you look at buildings

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Lecture Series-Architecture and Structure in the Computational Age...Bill Baker

Bill has dedicated himself to structural innovation from small special structures to the design of tall buildings. His best known contribution has been to develop the "buttressed core" structural system for Burj Khelifa (Dubai). The Burj Khalifa is currently the world's tallest manmade structure. Bill said, "We design in a world of limited resources that needs to grow, designers are facilitators of dreams". Yes, that's the way I feel as a student of the Landscape Architecture program, as a designer we can facilitate dreams. Bill has achieved many awards as an engineer. He received Fazlur Khan medal for lifetime achievement firm council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. First american to receive Fritz Leon Hardt prize in recognition of his engineering accomplishments.Baker was honored the Institution of Structural Engineer Gold Metal, institution's highest individual award for advancement in structural engineering. In his lecture, Bill discussed geometry as an intersection of architecture and structure but get geometry right! Bill talked about not being afraid to resemble past design and describe your design in words. Know the past, take the idea and make it your own. I have heard this from several instructors. If you find a design that you like take it and make it your own even the designs from the past. I have studied many historical landscapes which are unqiue and inspirational.

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Imelda Wegwerth Smoky Mt National Park

Imelda is a Landscape Architect who works for Smoky Mountains National Park. I did not know that the National Parks hire Landscape Architects. I would like to work for a National Park. I like working outside. Imelda’s responsibilities at the Park is a project manager. She hasn’t been able to spend a lot of time designing but she doesn't seem bothered by this. Project manager is another type of job that a Landscape Architect may be ask to do. I’m excited about the opportunities and variety of jobs that are available for Landscape architects. The jobs are not only designing but include project managers, planners, consulting, writing proposals, residential designer, researcher just to name a few. This makes me want to work harder, to learn more and to discover where I want to specialize as I continue to study in Landscape Architecture. Working for a national park would open the doors to being involved with environmental studies, research, improving ecological systems and preserving wildlife habitat. National Parks’ mission is to protect american natural and historical heritage and facilitate their use by the public. This type of work is my passion. I want to be outside. I want to be able to spend part of my time designing but not to have to spend all my time in an office. As a project manager, Imelda is part of a team and works with different disciplines, as many of the other firms that we have interviewed do. Working with different disciplines on a project would be something that I would like so to learn from the different disciplines.

Having 59 national parks in United States there should be plenty of job opportunities for landscape architect, if you don’t mind relocating. 

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MKSK Matt Leasure

MKSK is one of several firms that our class has interviewed and is one of several firms that has been involved with designing a riverfront. This would be something I would enjoy being part of as a Landscape Architect. Matt mentions in the interview that he writes a lot of proposals but wished he could design more. There are many different jobs that a Landscape Architect may do on the job. Research is an important job for Landscape Architects. For MKSK , research has been site analysis, understanding what you are dealing with before designing. Another project MKSK was involved with was the 2013 removing the main street dam. MKSK’s design narrowed and restored the river’s natural flow and improved the ecological system and the river habitat. This would be my dream job. I want to be involved with improving the ecological system and river habitat of the city of Kingston where I live. MKSK ‘s greenway’s  project is a transformational moment in the city’s history, beautifying the heart of Columbus and providing residents with a new park space, recreational opportunities, and a restored riverfront. The cultural wall is a  great idea which captivates Columbus’ cultural experience what the community wanted. There are tangible benefits of meaningful and transparent public engagement and how identifying and addressing concerns before an opportunity is presented to the market, strengthens relationship and builds credibility across constituencies. Many  voices with one vision. Getting input from the neighborhood is important. My fifteens years experience ,as a School Counselor, will prepare me as an Landscape Architect to be a good communicator and a good listener which are important skills to have.

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Olin Lives Here

Olin is changing its hometown and its own practice. Olin has a worldwide reputation for lasting, beautiful, public minded design and now have expanded their practice beyond the design of celebrated public spaces to the stewardship of urban ecosystems. This is good stuff. This is my cup of tea! My passion as a Landscape Architect is to build expertise and implement green infrastructure services that pull together the social, financial and ecological aspects of sustainability. This is the direction of landscape architecture, sustainable urban cities. Olin studies cities as an economic and ecological system that must be viewed over the long term. Olin is a firm long known for high design which now intends to become known for “deep research”. They want to focus on how urban environments adapt to change and how environmental and social system and not monuments create healthy urban culture. Olin’s image changing and evolving is by listening to one’s client. My background is in Exercise Physiology, so healthy living is my passion, to create places to enhance life.

This is what differentiates Olin from other firms is in their value for social justice. If a project isn’t in line with their values then they turn down the project. Money isn't their deciding factor but their values are. WOW! This is a type of firm that I would enjoy working for. They have values. Olin has developed a culture that all of the employees work well together. They want to work together and they want to work for Olin. You can become a very successful firm and accomplish much if the employees are happy. The word passion continues to pop up as we listen to different firms, so I feel that this is an important characteristics as a landscape architect, to have passion for your work . This is my 2nd career and I’m following my dreams.

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Yolanda Daniels: Parsons School of Design:  Feb.19,2019

This was my first attendance for the Architecture + Design Lecture series. I was not enlightened but maybe the next one will be more of an interest to me. The first design Yolanda displayed was about Female Urinal prototype?? Why?  Maybe because there is a growing recognition of the competitive advantage offered by creative practice and design thinking in the new economy. Designers who are skilled at collaborative research are in increasing demand. Yolanda’s research interest in revealing connections between social systems and the spaces they are enacted in brings on a different perspective for me. Her design and research with the connection to African slavery was impressive and meaningful and added new insight into slavery. This project designed the ShotGun House and Yolanda explain this as an intimate landscape. Very interesting!  Great amount of research goes into this type of innovative design, formal exploration, and material invention.