China Landscape Architect

ASLA launch Annual Meeting and EXPO website

 The ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO web site is now open for business and I’d like to invite you to join us in Philadelphia, October 3-7.  In the next few days, you will be receiving the print registration brochure in the mail as well.  These contain all the info you need to register for the meeting, plan your travel, and book your hotel room.

The theme of our meeting will be Green Infrastructure: Linking Landscapes + Communities.  Now more than ever, the landscape architecture profession is leading the process that connects environmental, social, and economic health: green infrastructure.  Our annual meeting will celebrate the contributions of landscape architects in the design, planning, management, and research of the life support system for the planet.

This year’s event offers the unprecedented opportunity to earn 31.5 professional development hours through more than 120 exceptional general sessions, education sessions, field sessions, and tours.  We have recruited the very best experts from the U.S. and abroad to serve as our faculty.  The ASLA EXPO—the largest product display in the industry—will feature nearly 450 exhibitors, many of whom will be new to our show this year.  We’ll recognize current and future leaders of the profession with honors and awards.  We’ll connect with our colleagues from across the country and around the world at special events throughout the weekend.  And as our legacy to Philadelphia, we’ll introduce area ACE Mentor Program high school students to careers in landscape architecture in continuation of our “Each One, Reach One” campaign. 

Special thanks to our good friend Edward T. McMahon, Hon. ASLA, and to Island Press for allowing ASLA to use the book title, Green Infrastructure: Linking Landscapes and Communities as the theme for our meeting.  It’s inspiring reading and you may purchase a signed copy through the registration form for pickup at the annual meeting in the ASLA/ULI Bookstore.  Sales of the book support The Conservation Fund’s Green Infrastructure Program.

SOURCE: American Society of Landscape Architects.

Chinese Developer Urges Taiwan to ‘Relax’ Property Investment Rules

Text of report by Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post website on 30 June

[Report by Sandy Li: "Mainland Developer Urges Taiwan To Ease Property Investment Rules"]

China National Real Estate Development Group (CRED), the mainland’s largest state-owned developer, has called on the Taiwan government to relax remaining conditions on cross-strait property deals by mainland investors.

SOURCE: blackenterprise.com - Chinese Developer Urges Taiwan to ‘Relax’ Property Investment Rules.

Beijing boasts stunning new buildings - International Herald Tribune

This ancient capital city, long known for the architectural splendor of its centuries-old palaces and temples, is getting a new look that could have been plucked from science fiction.

A series of landmarks, notable for their futuristic design, will greet visitors to the Olympics. They include an Olympic stadium that looks like a giant bird’s nest, a swimming venue literally built of bubbles and a pair of black office towers that lean toward each other at a 10-degree angle.

SOURCE: International Herald Tribune – Beijing boasts stunning new buildings 

Today’s suburbs, tomorrow’s slums? - globeandmail.com

According to some doomsday scenarios, spiking gas prices could turn the cul-de-sacs and two-car garages that surround North America’s cities - built over the past 60 years and designed for the convenience of people with cars - into tomorrow’s slums.

The predictions for the most part come from subscribers to the theory of “peak oil,” which holds that crude prices will shoot permanently upward as global demand outstrips dwindling supply, ruining the economy. But their predictions are getting a second look now, as suburbanites, especially in the United States, grumble at the rising price of a fill-up.

Read more @ the SOURCE: globeandmail.com: Today’s suburbs, tomorrow’s slums?.

A mastermind of green design - China Daily

This site in Sandao, Hainan province, has been recreated in the virtual online world of Second Life where the public will design an “Eco-friendly Community” that will later be built on the actual site.

When David Greenberg stumbled across a cluster of tree houses while trekking the jungles of Maui, he felt a sudden and mighty urge to rebel.

“That was the moment I knew I wouldn’t be an urban designer,” he says. The California native with a disdain for convention and an admiration of nature would instead reinvent himself as an “anti-architect” and “anti-designer”.

“Just like the architects went into the rundown parts of the cities in the US during the 1960s to remodel and revive, the landscape architects must go to China’s rural areas and do much the same thing,” he says. For that reason, he says: “I’m so lucky and so happy to be working for my last few years in China.”

SOURCE: Chinadaily – A mastermind of green design.