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Presentation on the Pavilion

The twin states landscape architecture conference (MS & AL) ended its ceremony with a tour of the arboretum. We also put our final boards for the gumpond project on display. We presented it to some of the board members and anyone else who was interested. We are going to submit the project for the ASLA student awards and the Wayne Grace student design award (CLARB).

On a different note. Sara's wedding was absolutely amazing. I was pretty tired during the presentations yesterday because of it, but am so glad that I made it.

Bob's intro to the project













Master plans













bride and groom in in the barn

Photoshop CS5

Coming soon to a computer near you ... Photoshop CS5!

Check this out!

PHOTOSHOP CS5 Preview!

can't figure this out

Sorry i have trouble with the site here is the pic from the company ski trip.

update

I have been doing a mixture of handdrawn and cad drawn plans. my company is pretty quick with thier stuff as far as meeting with clients, pumping out plans, and getting them installed. I do a lot of proposals and work orders along with helping out on some designs. I recently had my first solo meeting with a client and had to come up with a solution for him...we'll see how that comes out.... I have a couple of pics including: a design i did(maybe i'll post one later of it completed), my company ski trip, a prairie dog(for kelly), a house in a neighborhood we are landscaping, and a pic for all the hunters back home.
P.S. I miss the all the people but I could get used to no classes and no homework...it's sweet!!!!!

Inside the office of :: SMM

This is a little of what I have been up to in the office. This first project is project that was only in the office for 2 week. We don't always go though projects this fast, but I worked with another girl in the office on this project and I was able make the site visit as well and work on the plans and doing the montages for the project. The reason the project went thought the office so fast was the city acquired a large among of trees to be planed in the governmental housing part of Sydney. So to plan the placement of the trees properly, as well as to raise awareness to the community the benefit of planting these tree. A local college in Sydney did series of heat test in the community that showed due to the lack of trees it is warming the area up so much that it can't cool off fast enough in the evening. So hopefully by planting these trees it will shade the pavement enough to bring down the temperature over the whole community.... After doing our research on the site and figuring out that it will never be possible due to the power, telephone and water lines that run though the area. But we were told to just continued so hopefully if we could get the raise enough awareness that one day the community would be willing to raise money to complete the project.

This next project is in Sydney's Chinatown. This project is still in the early stages of the design so I am constantly revising these montages as the design changes. But more or less we are make the street in Chinatown more pedestrian friendly, by closing streets and widening footpaths, and of course adding trees. (I know the red tree looks fake ... but it is a real tree, that really gets that red.)

These are just a few of the task I have completed while I have been here and some of these are more interesting images to look at. I jump around on a lot of the projects in the office to I have been doing a wide range of jobs. One being some cool sections on a road where we are installing large pole allowing these flying squirrels to cross the highway, so we had to calculate the distance they can fly and place poles high and far enough apart so they can safely cross, the poles will one day be taken down once the trees reach the proper heigh (very interesting). Sections to come later

Stockholm

Last weekend John and I ventured to Stockholm, Sweden, traveling on 5 euro per flight tickets. The city exceeded our expectations. It has a very clean and a had a grandeur to it, a royal feel. We spent the entirety of Saturday walking all over the city, which is built up on several islands, each with a varying topography. The city's grand architecture matched the feel of its natural landscape. As we walked around each piece of the city, we were able to glance back across the water to where we had traveled and what we had in store. The city's elevation change provided many amazing views of different perspectives.

Our hostel was crazy, being located in an old prison that had gone out of use in 1775. The rooms were amongst a museum for the prison and our beds were in the old cells. We saw a lot of the city over the course of the weekend and also had amazing weather. Both John and I have created flickr pages too, and we have more pictures on there: Will's and John's

Crayfish

I helped some researchers from the US Forest Service collect "crayfish" for a genetic study. They were wondering if we had them on site near the pitcher plant bog because that is where the species in question resides. I told them that I had plenty of mud chimneys where I have been working so they came over and set some traps. I was a bit suspicious of the traps and sure enough, they did not yield one crawfish. They came back in the morning and I soon realized why they would rather catch them in the traps! We dug them out of their holes by hand. We collected within the woods where I am working then I took them out to a bog site the arboretum owns about 10 miles away and collected a few more. It was really nice to take a break from the pond and get my hands dirty in some biological research. Quite different from Mr. Tietje's collection methods!

high line NYC

On Saturday, I put my life in jeopardy for the second time by riding the Fung Wah bus down to New York City. I went down there mostly to check out the High Line park, by Field Operations. The former freight rail track has been transformed into a public park in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, and is very popular so far with the locals. Here are some pictures:

My mode of transportation

From street level

It was really crowded. Best weather up here all winter...

Moveable lounge chairs on rails

The typical bench used throughout the site

The concept for the design was to embrace the way vegetation overtook the site after it had been abandoned

Some of the existing rails were used in the final design

Sometimes paved into the concrete

For the most part, the views didn't offer much, but a few were good

The work continues... I believe this is the final phase of construction

Transportation and Infrastructure :: Sydney

So I began noticing some things about Sydney's transpiration and movement thought the city very early in my time here. I have drawn sections and plan and taken picture of things a liked about it. Starting with first section, in many city there is always the problem of large roads dividing neighborhoods, suburbs, and at time families friends and animal communities. What Sydney has done thought with the use of their radical topography they taken the main arteries in and of the city and they have sunk them allowing people leaving the city to get out quickly and back to their own suburb while still allowing to changes on and off in various suburbs. I feel this is very successful in not diving up the city.

This next plan and section show how Sydney has wisely used their topography. By stacking all of these different modes in transportation it allowing a lot to go on but in a little space whiles still moving you quickly or slowly though the city.

Pictures of what has been drawn above.

Charrette in Starkville

This past weekend I made a trip up to Starkville, MS where we conducted a charrette detailing the design of the gum pond in attempt to make it more site specific. It was a really great trip.

The weather was perfect so I took my time getting there. I stopped at the Southern Miss campus which was very nice and then ate lunch at the Chicken Basket in Meridian (great plate lunch). When I made it to Starkville I explored campus on my own for awhile. It is nice but is very sprawled with tons of lawn to be maintained. Sasaki has recently been hired on in master planning efforts. I then made it to the Landscape Architecture buildings. They are actually in the School of Agriculture whereas we are in the School of Art and Design. I met some of their students and we compared schools for awhile. Studio spaces were similar except they share spaces between grade levels. I then met up with Sadik Artunc the LA Director whom I would be staying with. He gave me a guided tour of the campus then we met up with all of his professors at a local beer joint. After a couple of rounds Sadik, Bob (professor I am working closely with), and I headed out to grab dinner. The dinner was a really amazing experience as we discussed business and sorts. I was sitting among two very wise LA's. The charrette Saturday went well so we are closer, but have still not reached a final resolution of plans for the pond.

1 of very many stacks of vegetation









I built this fence, which is at the entrance of the children's garden with repurposed pines



Charrette workspace complete with breakfast and lunch

Sporting Clays Tournament

Uh yeah this is me shooting a shotgun at the the 8th annual sporting clays tournament. Native Land Design is one of the annual sponsors. I did not get to participate in the actual tournment but I got to do something better... I was one of the pull people. You know where they say pull and I push the button to let the clays fly. I only messed up twice!