Member Profiles 2012: Urban Design (Part 2)



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This article is the seventh in a series profiling members of ASLA’s Professional Practice Networks (PPNs), based on responses to the 2012 Annual PPN Member Survey. Members of this PPN work on a variety of urban design projects ranging from urban agriculture, to transportation alternatives, to new housing projects in large and small communities. Here are some highlights of their work.

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J. Edward Pinckney, FASLA, is president of J. Edward Pinckney/Associates, Ltd. in Bluffton, South Carolina. He recently attended and was participant and professional mentor in a program called "Our Town," sponsored by National Arts Foundation. He worked with graduate students in landscape architecture from Clemson University on a project in nearby Pendleton, South Carolina. There they spent two days with town leaders and other representatives in a workshop to determine how the town could become more vibrant, and benefit from its location adjacent to the thriving university town of Clemson. Everyone participated enthusiastically and Pinckney believes that the workshop was a success.

Donna Walcavage, FASLA, is a principal at AECOM Design + Planning in New York, New York. A particular interest is implementing green infrastructure in very dense urban environments.

Sara Pinnell Hedstrom, ASLA, is the president and founding principal at Hedstrom Design LLC in Knoxville, Tennessee. She would like to see a greater emphasis on sustainability and improved design in the area of above-ground utilities.

Jonathan Henney, ASLA, is a principal at Gresham, Smith and Partners in Louisville, Kentucky. A key practice area is sustainable urban design that highlights physical design and its impact on healthier lifestyle choices. He has been involved in several projects in his community to expand and design on-road and off-road bicycle and pedestrian facilities. The goal is to provide additional transportation alternatives, encourage healthier life styles, connect neighborhoods, and improve access to important community historic, cultural, and environmental resources.

Elizabeth Miller, ASLA, is a senior urban designer/planner at the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) in Washington, DC. NCPC, in coordination with the District of Columbia Office of Planning and other local and federal agencies, is spearheading the Southwest Ecodistrict Initiative in Washington. It is a strategic plan to transform a 15-block area of the Southwest quadrant into a sustainable and livable community that uses federal land and natural resources efficiently, and contributes to the economic vitality and environmental health of the city. The collaborative effort aims to create a model that showcases innovative and sustainable urban development, transportation, and environmental practices in the nation's capital.

In particular, the plan would rehabilitate, infill, redevelop buildings, streets, and open spaces, and expand transit capacity to improve water, waste, and energy efficiency and achieve a livable community. When completed, the collection of buildings and related infrastructure should function together to reduce energy and water consumption, move toward zero-net carbon energy, manage stormwater, and reduce the federal government’s operating costs there. The partners expect to complete the plan by Summer 2012.

Scott Reinholt, ASLA, is the national sales manager for Landscape Forms in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He finds that city life is affected by how designers develop public urban spaces, and that successful urban projects follow both behavioral understanding as well as strong design concepts. He is looking forward to “the next big thing” in good urban design.

Taner Ozdil, ASLA, is an associate director for research for the Center for Metropolitan Density, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, Texas, a Board Member for the North Texas Congress for the New Urbanism, and an active research team member of Vision North Texas. His most recent research concentrates on sustainable and green design initiatives in North Texas.

Ozdil’s primary interests are in the interdisciplinary areas of design and planning. His aim is to create economic, environmental, and social value through sustainable landscape architecture, urban design, and physical planning. He particularly emphasizes mixed-use developments and centers, transit-oriented planning, and high-density urban areas.

He also teaches and coordinates design studios and projects that assist communities, cities, and the private sector in the North Texas region.

Andrew Masterpole, ASLA, is an urban designer and senior landscape architect at Yaggy Colby Associates in Rochester, Minnesota. A recent highlight was his involvement in the implementation phase of the Downtown Master Plan for Rochester. He enjoyed working on the new large scale, mixed use project in the area and welcomed the challenges of coordinating with the city and owners to establish the best design of the street/streetscape to foster the vibrancy and pedestrian activity envisioned in the master plan.

Heidi Hajna, ASLA, is a senior project manager at TPA Design Group in New Haven, Connecticut. Her primary foci are streetscapes that use of green technologies.

Fatima Idris, Associate ASLA, is a student member in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Last June, she worked at LANDinc in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on a project located in Morocco. The firm prepared the master plan for a low-income housing development for which she drew the perspectives manually. With her background in art, she really enjoyed the activity as a variation from usual collage and Photoshop imaging.

Gordon Lemmel, Associate ASLA, is an environmental consultant at Rabe Consulting in Klamath Fall, Oregon. He enjoyed meeting other professionals at the ASLA conference in San Diego. He was particularly pleased to meet people with similar interests and gain some new insights.

Stephen Dorn, Associate ASLA, is a recent graduate of Clemson University and is currently the design intern at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. He recently worked on a number of symposiums geared toward Sustainable Sites and the impact of LEED. With the focus of the past few years on how to become more sustainable, he is excited to see what the years to come have to offer.

Ryan Madson, Associate ASLA, is a professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia. He would like to see a return to contextuality and a phenomenological approach to urban design that emphasizes theory and pedology.

Crystal Ana Vega, Student ASLA, is a student at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She hopes there will be a greater use of green roofs, green walls, and other plantings to manage storm water more effectively and address issues of heat island effect and bad air quality. More “greening” of urban environments would improve the quality of life in these areas.

Bryan Obara, Student ASLA, is a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts. He is very interested in how to design and plan an “informal city.” With the rapid urbanization of many developing nations, entire communities have had to be “self-constructed,” without any of the influence or guidance that is available in planning traditional cities.

With this concern, Obara began to work with the non-profit organization, Inverde, which is developing green infrastructure for the Jardim Botånico (Botanical Garden) neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. The neighborhood developed near the Rio dos Macos (River of Monkeys) and extends into the steep slopes that are owned by the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Gardens and Tijuca National Park. This occupation has grown from the housing of former workers for the Botanical Gardens. Now, however, the residents are threatened by eviction. While Obara has been acting as a planner and designer for Inverde, the skills he has most used are those of a facilitator of empowerment. He has focused on what the groups have in common, and found that community-organized agriculture is becoming more significant to the sustainability of cities in general. He believes that urban designers need to understand and work to preserve the cultural and ecological systems that define a community.

Visit the Urban Design PPN webpage for more information about this group. To learn more about ASLA's other PPNs, go to the PPN home page or contact Dena Kennett, ASLA's manager of Professional Practice, at dkennett@asla.org.

Comments

Baxter@bmla.net May 15, 2012 2:32 PM

He would like to see a return to contextuality and a phenomenological approach to urban design that emphasizes theory and pedology. Could someone translate for those of us who a bit slow?