Landscape

My First Landscape Architecture Internship

June 29, 2017 by jread Leave a Comment

After a year in grad school I finally got my lucky break with a joke of a landscape architect in downtown Miami. I won’t say any names in case he is still in business, because after all he was a nice guy and he did (sometimes) pay me to be his intern.

One of many projects that I neither started nor finished.

I can hardly call this an internship but I did learn a lot. I practically forced this guy to hire me, and by that I mean I was extremely persistent. He didn’t think I had the AutoCAD skills that he needed from an intern, but I knew I was a quick learner and I could see that his business needed a lot more than AutoCAD skills at this very moment.

I could tell right away this guy was a mess. We met for the first time at a coffee shop across the street from his office, because his “assistant” (why didn’t he just say his wife?) had the key to the office. He was in greenish pants, I was in a greenish blazer. He showed up at least a half hour late, but at least he paid the bill. He came over to the table in a rush, ran his hand through his slick black hair, slung his computer bag onto the table, “I need help!” he stammers, and I respond, “I’m here to help!”

I’m here to help and of course I’m also here to learn. I listen and even take notes as he shows me some of his current projects as well as some CAD tricks. He mentions his disorganized whiteboard full of incomplete tasks. I reassure him that I’m great at organizing and getting things done, and that I’ll have those CAD skills down in no time.

Over the next few weeks we’re back and forth — I might not have the AutoCAD skillset he needs, but oh wait, I can learn and plus I can help you with that growing to-do list!

My first project: picking up where someone else left off

December 9, 2016 was my first day on the job. He showed up late, explained a few things to me, and left shortly thereafter. This was the nature of our working relationship — some days he showed up late, other days he didn’t show up at all. I become frustrated. If he can’t help me help him then why am I here and why is he trying to run a business?

Jenna started a week later, and we became good friends. Usually it was just the two of us in the office, attempting to decipher the boss man’s cryptic text messages so we could assist him in completing his projects. Often it was futile. We spent a lot of time in the Whole Foods two blocks away, because there was no point in sitting in the office, confused about what the boss man wants done, and unsure whether he would show up at all. Besides, the checks would bounce more often than not so we were essentially performing volunteer work much of the time.

Sometimes he would take us on “field trips” or site visits where I would play photographer and Jenna would play note-taker, or vice-versa. Usually the two of us would find something to giggle about while sitting in Miami traffic in the back seat of his Range Rover, and often times he would stop at the juice bar to grab us a treat. So it wasn’t all bad, you see.

One day the boss man wanted me to call around and get quotes from various landscaping crews, since his current guys turned out to be unreliable. I decided this would be more fun and more effectively done on my bicycle, so I informed him that I would be working from home that day. I did just that — I lived in Pinecrest at the time where there are handfuls of landscaping crews out in the neighborhood on any given day. Spanish is harder for me to navigate on the phone so communication was an added benefit of performing this task in person. Plus they’re overall more willing to talk to a lady on her bicycle than to a phone caller.

The boss showed up less and less. Jenna and I speculated as to what could be going on in his personal life – though we got to no specific conclusion. The wifi stopped working for a while and he asked us to go to the men’s clothing store downstairs, inquire about something random, and oh by the way, can we get your wifi code as well? We were successful in acquiring the password but unfortunately the signal did not reach around the corner to the fourth floor. When he asked us to go try the same sketchy tactic at another locale we instead took a lunch break and I don’t believe I returned to the office that day.

We became known as the girls with the backpacks. We would (usually) show up to work at the agreed-upon time, discover that there was yet again no internet, and then scout around downtown Miami for a place with cheap enough food and reliable enough wifi. Sometimes we went to happy hour when the sun began to set. We were the girls with the backpacks during the workday, as well as in the evenings, in the streets of downtown Miami.

The months went on and this got old. I started this internship so I could learn and help this guy grow. I began to understand why he had been through so many interns and was now down to barely two. On a positive note, you learn a LOT when you’re trying to help someone run their business, with no direction. In the end, I phased myself out of this position, left on good terms, thanked him for what I did learn, and returned to Orlando to begin what would be a new internship and another chapter in my life.

Grad Design 4: Food for Thought

March 18, 2017 by jread Leave a Comment

the limestone study challenge and designing for hydrological juxtapositions of the Everglades

rendering: quarries as a recreational extension of the Everglades

When designing anything in South Florida one major factor is going to be water, not only from the sky, and not only from the ocean on the east and the Everglades on the west, but also through the shallow and porous limestone below.

miami-everglades-limestone-diagram — hydrogeology from Miami Beach to Everglades

limestone-quarry-miami — study of limestone rocks found at quarry site

Week one we did a ridiculous amount of analysis. We looked at history of the site, existing conditions, hydrology, demographics, geology, land use and more.

context-study-everglades — initial context study: history, land use, demographics, geology, and the like

issues and opportunities based on site visit, inventory and analysis

The Challenge: An Invented Remote Landscape

Providing a destination for artists engaged in the study of ecosystems, productive landscapes, and cultural expression connected to the land, while exposing to the public the spectrum of land uses ranging from mining to habitat restoration, from pristine to disturbed. Artists will reside, study, congregate, collaborate and display their art here.

Design Solution: Edible Artscapes

This project takes place in a land once inhabited by alligators and anhinga, manatees and moringa. Once a slough of tree islands and free-flowing freshwater, the humans discovered its riches down below, and destruction ensued.

In the early 1970’s mining began in the area, clearing large swaths of habitat, blocking natural hydrological flow, scraping, shaking, blasting and extracting the limestone beneath the surface. This practice continues today, and leaves in its wake large barren pits where crystal clear water enters through the porous substrate.

hydrology-wellfield-protetion — diagram of site’s hydrology including proximity to a well field

A spectrum of land uses surrounds the Lake Belt located just west of the Miami-Dade Urban Development Boundary and adjacent a major expressway. Municipal wellfields are scattered throughout, limiting depth and breadth of mining in certain areas.

everglades-quarries-site — site sandwiched between residential concrete jungle and sensitive wellfields beneath the Everglades

No longer an active mine, the project site boasts a peculiar tapestry of human-inflicted textures, from deep uninhabited lake to barren sand pit, man-made dirt roads, to areas cleared of vegetation. The scars of the mining days remain, and it is the resident artists who will re-inhabit the area and save the day.

artists who cook with invasive species and explore the regenerative potential of the site’s resources, for example

art that makes you think about your food and the environment, for example

This project is about restoring and renewing disturbed landscapes while inhabiting these spaces of contemplation, isolation and inspiration. Resident artists are challenged to leave the landscape better than they encountered it, involving themselves in productive exploration while finding inspiration in the geology, ecology, history and use of the land.

Land is used and cultivated in productive and ecologically beneficial ways. Residents are encouraged to add color to the landscape in any creative manner they see fit.

the vision: a prolific landscape and thriving artist community

Repurposed industrial buildings from a former cement factory provide housing and studio space for the artists, a relocated visitor center and various covered areas throughout the site.

The general public is engaged through recreational trails showcasing works of art and through markets which sell foodstuffs produced onsite. The goal is to create environmental awareness through what we need most from the land: fresh food.

drawing interest and engagement from the outside in

Planting strategies aim to renew disturbed areas, create habitat, add biodiversity, and rebuild rich soil. Due to nearby municipal wellfields, surface water must be kept pristine, achieved through organic agricultural practices on site and lakeside plants which cleanse and purify.

This is starting to look like the Bahamas project.

First Place Win in FIU Charrette: Public Art on Campus

January 25, 2017 by jread Leave a Comment

Three days, four (contributing) team members, and a cash prize for winning first place! See the story here.
We were assigned to groups, and collaborated with art and architecture students.

A brainstorming session was followed by an entire-group crit; the second day some more brainstorming and group work followed by a more private and quite useful critique; we didn’t get much sleep that night, knowing we were onto something good.

The idea was to rearrange public art on campus in a way that draws more people to notice and appreciate it. The art students thought about the art itself. The landscape students thought about what surrounds the art, bringing people to it or sending them away. The architecture students were basically useless, as usual.

I proposed hills – I felt that these are much more inviting than the existing flat lawn. Nobody wants a soggy ass.

Day three was presentation day; thank goodness we presented second and not last.

Grad Design 3: Permaculture in the Bahamas

December 19, 2016 by jread 3 Comments

This semester’s project site is New Providence island, commonly known as Nassau, in the Bahamas. We had two weeks to learn everything the internet could tell us about our project site, and then all thirteen of us would take a week-long field trip to see it in real life.

Prior to our arrival, we split up the tasks and did a thorough inventory and analysis of the island, so we’d know what to look for during our field trip.

Two weeks was not enough time to anticipate everything we would need to snap photos of, and one week onsite was not enough to explore the possibilities.

count on me to snap those hard-to-reach photos

Finding data, especially GIS data turned out nearly impossible for some things. One classmate traced every single bus route on the island because no map existed, then joked (in all seriousness) about selling it to the Bahamian government.

We studied the topography, geology, and hydrology to create a transect model through the island. We found a porous limestone layer beneath the thin layer of soil, and a freshwater lens that’s becoming brackish due to saltwater intrusion.

It’s this proximity to limestone, with so little fertile soil on top, that makes large-scale farming difficult (… can’t we just build more soil? … maybe farming shouldn’t be so large scale?).

Issues we noticed onsite were lots of trash, little recreational space, and very expensive food. There was also limited public trasportation, a mess of Haitian refugee camps in the middle of the island, critiques of the educational system, and the threat of rising seas.

Me being me, my ears perked up at food. My prior research had revealed that Bahamian food production is low and imports are high and my in-person experience proved that costs of nutrient-dense real food were exorbitant. I would dig deeper into this food situation.

research and diagram by Jana. layout by Maidy.

Apparently food production isn’t keeping up with population growth. That’s a problem. Not just here, but everywhere, in one way or another.

So they have a ton of fish. They’re exploiting the seas, exporting most of it and creating an overfishing problem. They export almost no meat, dairy or poultry, or maybe they’re just not producing it in the first place. Something to look into.

My initial thoughts (and preliminary sketches): let’s grow more food! In schoolyards, churchyards, and everywhere in between!

In theory it sounds peachy. But let’s get to the bottom of this — there must be a reason they haven’t thought of it already.

I put an agricultural focus to my historical analysis and I find that cultivation has failed repeatedly since the arrival of Columbus and the introduction of monocropping. Who knew?

research & sections by Jana. layout by Maidy.

The ancient Arawak and Lucayan civilizations practiced what was known as pothole farming, where they used organic matter to create rich productive fertile soil. The pothole or conuco method of cultivation guaranteed them a dependable food source. They created rich soil despite the salt water and limestone down below.

This was my confirmation that it’s time we get back to basics and introduce a not-so-new form of agriculture to the island.

After the trip we got back to work. We had the option to pair up or go it alone. After a few weeks of working alone, Maidy and I realize we have similar projects and might benefit from teaming up and sharing the workload. Regenerative Farmscapes is born.

The goal of this project is to enhance quality of life through environmental awareness, food security, and a means for economic empowerment. Bringing agriculture down to the human scale will encourage the Bahamian people to become involved in their food production.

small-scale residential implementation *rendering by Jana*

Working models that demonstrate viable and sustainable methods of planting, production and harvesting are interwoven into varying scales of everyday life, including educational centers, market places and recreational amenities.

Maidy had already dug into the traditional agricultural situation.

And she’d mapped out a soil analysis for New Providence. Silly me, I figured we could just build soil everywhere!

diagram by Maidy thanks to her awesome GIS mapping skills

I argued my point about the permaculture concept and made a simple diagram for my audience, evaluators, and stakeholders to understand.

Why permaculture in the Bahamas? This way we could sustainably provide the community with fresh food, and it would indeed be more effective than larger-scale mechanical farming. Additionally, it provides work and learning opportunities for a struggling economy.

I dug up some case studies, including another one in the Bahamas. The Island School, on the neighboring island of Eleuthera, is a self-sustaining educational site which faces the same challenges as New Providence. Indeed this keeps the community busy and fed. If they can do it, so can we!

Additionally, while we’re implementing our regenerative and biodynamic practices and waiting for those lush and loamy layers of soil to build up, other ways to increase food production include:

Aquaculture
Livestock
Aquaponics
Greenhouses
Fisheries
Ancient methods (pothole farming, chinampas)

Where to implement all this:

Wetlands
Coastlines
Backyards
Right-of-ways
Recreational paths

Recreational orchard trails would be a product of community involvement. These trails are intended for recreational use throughout the island and connecting to various farm concepts including the island’s production hub or Farm Park.

community involvement in recreational orchard trail *rendering by Jana*

A Farm Park would serve as a hub for the small- to large-scale farming activities around the island. Here would be educational centers, accomodation for workers, demonstration gardens, a food forest, and sheer abundance of love, learning, and resources.

boardwalk through the Farm Park food forest

Orchard trails serve as a network connecting to various production centers and recreational activities, including Lake Killarney. This unique site is home of the “chinampas” where fertile soil from the lake bed is built into islands growing tomatoes, kale, and other essential crops. Recreation is encouraged and made possible by boardwalks on and connecting to these islands and kayak launching areas.

recreation and productive chinampas in Lake Killarney *rendering by Jana*

The real deal:

Analysis Methods – Summer 2016

August 19, 2016 by jread Leave a Comment

A study of bees in North America, aimed at comprehending the importance of bees in our society and their vital role in the production of food crops worldwide. Under its current course, bees may lose their critical mass needed to be able to sustain current agricultural practices.

The goal of this project was to learn the causes of bee decline, where decline is most prevalent, and what solutions may be available.
Homogenous farming practices, urbanization and pollution are among the many factors contributing to decline bee populations, and through research and analysis mapping, strong correlations between habitat loss locations of deleterious practices become blatantly apparent.
This course looked at theories and methods of the organization, analysis and interpretation of cartographic data using geographic information systems. Research and investigational study of architecturally relevant topics enabled students to
understand the importance of analytical processes in the resolution and formulation of design processes and strategies.

Design II Spring 2016: Brickell Bay Drive

May 14, 2016 by jread Leave a Comment

Semester two, and the project is Brickell Bay Drive and surrounding streetscapes and alleyways. Things are awfully dead along the waterfront, and awfully dark and dreary in the streets due to all these tall buildings. My goal: bring the vibe down to the human scale and engage people through to the waterfront.

Analysis