Next Issue
February 15, 2005

Hello

Welcome New Members

• Inge Daniels, Associate ASLA, Cambridge MA
• Katherine Miller, Associate ASLA, Bedford Design Consultants, Manchester, NH
• John C. Moyles, ASLA, Watertown, MA
• Nia Rodgers, Associate ASLA, Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc., Jamaica Plain, MA
• David Tibbetls, FASLA, Tyngsboro, MA
  

Events

January 27, 2006
New England Regional Ski Day
Stowe, VT
Click here for more details - www.bsla.org/pdf/VTASLASkiDay2006.pdf

Tuesday, January 31
VectorWorks Landmark Educational Seminar   
6:00 PM
Symmes, Maini, McKee Associates, Inc.
1000 Massachusetts Avenue, 4th floor
Cambridge, MA
Learn more...

February 8
Award Submission Deadline
3:00 pm

March 3-4, 2006
2006 Winter Conference & Eco-Marketplace
Royal Plaza Hotel & Trade Center
Marborough, MA
www.ecolandscaping.org
Learn more...

April 13, 2006
National Landscape Month
State House Exhibit

April 27, 2006
BSLA Gala and Awards Dinner

April 27-30, 2006
Historic Roads Conference
Boston, MA
Click here for more details - www.bslaweb.org/pdf/HistoricRoad.pdf

LARE Review Program in Rhode Island

The Rhode Island ASLA Chapter will again provide review sessions for the 16th year! In their most recent newsletter, they remind us that "The RIASLA sessions have gained the reputation of being challenging, focused, information, interactive and whenever possible, fun."

Click here for registration information and the schedule - sessions start February 4.

LARE Review Program in New Jersey

Job Opportunities

Landscape Architect Position Available
Dan K. Gordon Associates, a landscape architecture firm with a mix of custom residential and institutional commissions, is looking for a landscape architect to join our existing six person team. Candidates should have a professional degree in Landscape Architecture, 1 to 4 years of experience, and strong design, technical and graphic skills. Proficiency in AutoCad and enthusiasm for the profession are essential. We offer a creative, friendly and collaborative work environment with broad opportunities for professional growth.

Please send cover letter, resume and work samples to:

Dan K Gordon, ASLA
Dan K. Gordon Associates, Inc.
267 Washington Street, Suite 6
Wellesley MA 02481
dg@dangordonassociates.com

Lexington Tree Committee 2006 Lecture Series
Six Views of the Urban Forest
Cary Library - Free to All
More details..

Design Competitions

Announcing the 2006 LUXURY LIVING AWARDS
A design competition celebrating Boston's most beautiful living spaces

HomeWorks Sourcebook is proud to bring you the 2006 Luxury Living Awards, an exclusive design competition that recognizes New England's most beautiful living spaces and the professionals that create them. The goal of the Luxury Living Awards is to promote outstanding home & garden design. The Awards focus on interior and exterior living spaces such as kitchen, bathroom, living room, outdoor living and more.

HomeWorks Sourcebook organizes the Luxury Living Awards with the support of leading trade groups, media partners, and financial sponsors.

Award Categories
The Awards are organized around common interior and exterior residential living spaces. A total of 12 award categories have been established: kitchen, bathroom, master suite, living room, dining room, casual living, home theater, specialty space (e.g., wine cellar), custom home, outdoor living, whole house remodel, and landscape. A 'Design of the Year' award will also be chosen.

Entries
Professionals and/or homeowners may submit entries for any residential living space that has been remodeled within the past 2 years. Though an individual company may take the lead in submitting an entry, the entry must be made on behalf of the entire 'team' of professionals - design, build, retail - responsible for creating the space. Team members need not have formally been a team to enter.

All entries must reach the Luxury Living Awards, c/o HomeWorks Media Group, 399 Boylston St., Boston, MA 02116 BY 5:00pm, JANUARY 27, 2006. Late entries will not be considered.

For further information, please contact Divya Thomas at dthomas@hwmg.com or 617-292-7317.

Inside:Out - Weaving Arts into the Urban Fabric -
A National Open Design Competition

The Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) is pleased to announce "Inside:Out - Weaving Arts into the Urban Fabric," a national open design competition that will transform the Tremont Street plaza and other public spaces surrounding the BCA, which occupies an entire city block from Clarendon Street to Berkeley Street in Boston's historic South End. The ideas phase of the competition will be open to all interested persons within the United States regardless of background or training. "Inside:Out", which has been in planning for over a year, will have a public launch in January 2006 with a "Visioning Event". Registration will open in February, five finalists will be selected in May, and the winner announced in September.

The website for the competition, http://insideout.bcaonline.org, will be launched February 1, 2006.

Celebrating its 35th anniversary in 2006, the BCA is an urban cultural village, incubating and showcasing the performing and visual arts and artists of our times. The BCA provides a creative "home" for artists, a welcoming destination for audiences, and an arts connection for youth and community across Greater Boston. The BCA complex includes 50 working artist studios, 6 live/work spaces, The Mills gallery, four theatres including two located in the new Calderwood Pavilion opened in 2004 in collaboration with Huntington Theatre, educational and rehearsal spaces, and the historic Cyclorama. It is also proud to be the home for the Boston Ballet, the Community Music Center of Boston, and almost a dozen other non-profit arts organizations. For more information please visit www.bcaonline.org.

Click here to view the schedule.

by Gail Greet Hannah for Landscape Forms

As landscape architects face heightened concerns for safety and security in outdoor environments, solar-powered LED technology offers a potentially powerful addition to the toolbox. Solar-powered LED lighting is a smart technology that addresses multiple issues of interest to landscape architects. It offers a range of lighting options for application in a variety of outdoor settings; provides exceptional reliability for promoting safety and security in public spaces; and is an energy-saving, environmentally-benign lighting solution.

Solar-powered LED lighting can be off the grid, making it uniquely flexible and reliable. In a blackout, lighting is uninterrupted. Each of the lights in an array is independent and self-contained, so physical destruction at a site affects only those lights immediately impacted while all others in the array continue to function. The absence of hardwiring makes solar-powered LED lighting much easier to install than hardwired systems and virtually maintenance free. Replaceable storage batteries are long lived and bulbs last up to 15 years. And as LEDs are solid state, they emit no gasses, contain no glass, and use about 10% the electricity of standard incandescent bulbs.

The technology was developed by Carmanah Technologies as an aid to marine navigation. In 1996 Carmanah, which is based in Victoria, British Columbia, invented the first integrated solar LED marine light. Today the company supplies LED marine lights for the US Coast Guard and other water authorities worldwide. In 2002 solar powered LED airfield lights were introduced and are now installed in more than 20,000 locations. Following Hurricane Katrina, Carmanah sent 500 lights to Louisiana for use where bridges were out, temporary helipads were being built, and airport runways were being altered. As traffic flows and other situations on the ground changed, the lights could be simply picked up and moved.

Currently, solar-powered LED lighting is being used for a variety of applications where robustness and reliability, safety and security are key. Road way lighting provides 24-hour beacons, programmable school zone flashers, and construction hazard markers. Industrial worksite applications include warehouse lighting and railway, bridge and other site hazard marking. The technology is being used to facilitate way finding on public and private sites and to enhance visibility and security in urban transit systems. For example, Landscape Forms has incorporated solar-powered LED lighting in bollards and transit shelters. And while Carmanah has become the world's largest supplier of solar-powered LED lighting, other manufacturers have entered the market.

The implications for landscape architecture could be significant. Landscape architect Len Hopper, former ASLA president (2002-2001) and current president of the Landscape Architecture Foundation, is the New York Housing Authority's Project Administrator for Site Improvements. He has written extensively on Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), a multidisciplinary approach to reducing crime and the fear of crime through redesign of the environment. He describes the role of lighting in the CPTED process by saying "Lighting alone is not enough to provide security. On the other hand, you can't have true security without it. Lighting is a critical - perhaps essential component - in any job we do."

Hopper's work explores safety and security in public spaces in terms of appropriate light levels and transitions between levels, and the use of lighting in delineating pedestrian and vehicular functions, creating areas and paths of access, facilitating way finding, and attracting people to public spaces. It is a CPTED axiom that when people with benign intentions congregate in a place their very presence helps make it safer and more secure. And when people have a psychological sense of safety and security in a place they are more likely to congregate there and thus increase the intensity of use and perpetuate the positive cycle.

Len Hopper believes there are opportunities for using the CPTED approach to thwart other safety and security threats. In Security and Site Design: A Landscape Architectural Approach to Analysis, Assessment and Design Implementation, a book co-authored with Martha J. Droge, Hopper writes: "Although the goal of addressing enhanced security against terrorist activities may be a different goal, many of the CPTED strategies can be tailored to this purpose. Building on the premise that if site design can make a potential target more attractive, then with changes it can be transformed into a powerful security-enhancing tool." Hopper and Droge propose four overlapping strategies to attain this goal: Natural access control; Natural surveillance; Territorial reinforcement; and Target hardening. Significantly, lighting is an element in the first three of those strategies. The off-the-grid reliability of solar-powered LED in implementing these strategies appears promising, indeed.

New applications for this new smart technology continue to emerge. And landscape architects can play an important role in identifying uses for a technology that marries their challenge to enhance safety and security in an increasingly unsafe and insecure world with the challenge to implement solutions that uphold the profession's commitment to stewardship of the environment. This may be just the tip of a very big iceberg.

Circle of Support
Landscape Architecture firms who would like to join the Circle of Support should contact the Chapter Office (508-620-5018). Benefits include a yearlong web link - a great value.

Sponsor an Issue of the BSLA EBulletin
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Only 3 sponsor placements per issue. Contact info@BSLAweb.org for more details.