HIGHLINE PARK NEW YORK

Manhattan’s Highline Park is an exercise in eco-friendly urban

reclamation, the rescue of an abandoned raised freight line for the
common good of the city.  After traffic through these raised rails
ceased in the 1980s, the line sat abandoned waiting for demolition. 
The neighborhood of Manhattan’s west side rallied to save the raised
line to create a public park with a green roof as an escape to the busy
pace of the streets below.  James Corner Field Operations and Diller
Scofidio + Renfro cooperated to turn this aging eye sore into a green
place of peace for Manhattan residents.  The resulting park stretches
across nine city blocks, featuring a contemporary design that fits well
with the forward thinking people it was built to serve.  Highline Park is
a prime example of the old adage that “one man’s trash is another
man’s treasure”.  [photography: iwan baan]
Highline Park Gallery
    

   

VULCANO BUONO NOLA ITALY

In an homage to the tragic history of nearby Pompei, Vulcano
Buono in Nola, Italy is a giant structure with a green heartbeat thanks
to a green-roofed landscape designed by Renzo Piano.  Vulcano
Buono is a truly massive structure, designed as a point of commerce
and tourism for one of Italy’s prime freight cities.  The structure
features a shopping mall, an outdoor theater and a hotel with a 150
square meter open market within.  The landscape architecture
designs for this building include 2,500 plants which wrap around the
eye of the volcano.  Designer Renzo Piano and his partners are no
strangers to landscape architecture, as their work is featured twice in
this list.
Vulcano Buono Gallery

   

SHANGHAI HOUTAN PARK

There is more than meets the eye in this marvel of landscape
architecture design.  Shanghai’s Houtan Park is both a place for
public relaxation and a complex ecological system that naturally
cleanses the local environment.  This park has replaced a mile-long
stretch of industrial space that had fallen into disrepair, located
alongside the almost terminally-polluted Huangpu River.  But through
a series of cascading terraces and plant-based filtering, the waters of
the Huangpu cycle through Houtan Park to the point that they can
once again support aquatic life.  Beside the water is a long stretch of
local flora and even an urban farm, giving a new natural outlet to the
citizens of this busy city.  During the Shanghai Expo 2010, Houtan
Park provided recycled water from the Huangpu River to be used for
non-potable purposes.
Shanghai Houtan Park Gallery
    

   

MILL VALLEY RESIDENCE’S GREEN ROOF

A feature on landscape architecture designs wouldn’t be complete
without a gem of residential green roof design.  The Mill Valley
Residence by Scott McGlashan, also featured on our list of green roof
designs, is a multi-generational home built in a terraced manner on a
sloping plot in California.  Its many roofs are lined with rows of plants,
encouraging the local nature to thrive in its environment.  Even
without the green roof, this home is an achievement in modern,
sustainable design, but it is a gem of landscape architecture that must
be admired.
Mill Valley Residence Gallery

   

   

TREE MUSEUM OF ZURICH SWITZERLAND

The famed Swiss landscape architect Enzo Anea designed this
stunning salute to the tree just outside of Lake Zurich.  The Tree
Museum of Switzerland is a serene retreat lined with lush green
grass, punctuated with rising stone columns.  The columns are a
canvas upon which the shape of a collection of trees from around the
world are showcased.  In this 2.5 acre “museum”, 2,000 species of
trees have been carefully curated and cultivated to honor one of
nature’s most majestic works of art– the tree.
Tree Museum Gallery

   
    

CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

Renzo Piano returns to this list of landscape architecture designs with

his brilliant work for the California Academy of Sciences building.  This
massive temple of science features a dynamic green roof above with
living plants below, fed by a series of skylights that dot the building’s
green canvas.  From a distance, the Academy and its landscape are
what immediately seizes the eye, a continuous green expanse of
trees, grass and other plant life that the building alone does not
interrupt.
California Academy of Sciences Gallery

   

   

CROSSWATERS ECOLODGE,
GUANGDONG PROVINCE, CHINA
Education is an important focus of China’s green movement, and
the Crosswaters Ecolodge endears eco-education with a retreat
where visitors can experience the green power of nature firsthand. 
Chinese eco-tourism at its finest, Crosswaters Ecolodge provides its
guests with a greater understanding of its environment while giving
back to the locals living in Guangdong Province.  The compound
includes terraced farming which feeds its restaurant and the local
villagers alike, while a wild bamboo-sourced structural habitat wows
its visitors while they enjoy their stay.  Still path-side ponds, a high-
reaching observation tower and a beautiful bamboo bridge merge
traditional Chinese architecture with sound landscape design
techniques.
Crosswaters Ecolodge Gallery
    

   

YOUTH CENTER ROOF GARDEN IN

CHICAGO ILLINOIS
While eco-education is an important focus for the Chinese, it’s of
equal importance in the United States as well.  The Youth Center
Roof Garden in Chicago Illinois is a large and plentiful roof-top garden
designed to both educate and feed those it serves.  The expansive,
concrete-grid of the city of Chicago leaves little room for farming, but
the Gary Comer center carves a niche by making it’s roof a wide, long
and deep garden sewed by the local youth.  This rooftop landscape
architecture design is the latest amongst a healthy green movement in
Chicago, and this one succeeds in both its design and the education it
provides to the wide-eyed youth that tend to its plant life.
Youth Center Roof Garden Gallery

   

   

QINHUANGDAO BEACH RESTORATION IN

QINHUANGDAO CHINA
That lush, dreamy environment above was a scarred wasteland
before this recent project.  The Qinhuangdao Beach Restoration is not
just a work of landscape architecture design, but one of magnificent
eco engineering.  Turinscape and China’s Peking University
collaborated on a massive campaign to turn a deserted, eroding and
garbage-ridden beach into a serene place of beauty for the locals,
both human and animal.  This 60 hectare strip of land has been
reborn with the seeding of native plants to protect against erosion and
provide a stunning visual backdrop to the beach’s visitors.  The
renewed beach also features a recovered wetland that will encourage
wildlife to return and use the new habitat.  This project is an example
of hope for the scars of industrialism and neglect.  Through
encouraging nature, scars like these can be healed.
Qinhuangdao Beach Restoration Gallery
    

   

BRIDLE ROAD RESIDENCE CAPE TOWN

While the modern design of this home is worthy of its own respect, it is
the landscape architecture designs about this plot that are truly
unique.  The Bridle Road Residence in Cape Town, South Africa is
located at the base of the Table Mountain with panoramic views of the
ocean bay below.  The local environment is amongst the most
ecologically diverse regions throughout the world, home to a collection
of brush species that exist nowhere else.  These fine native bushes,
called Fynbos, have been endangered by the development of Cape
Town over the centuries, so the landscape architects of this home
covered the grounds with these rare and beautiful bushes.  This home
is not just a living space for its inhabitants, it is designed to preserve
and protect one of the most rare native species of plants in the world. 
(beyond that, the natural swimming pool is a stunning touch as well).
Bridle Road Residence Gallery

   

   
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Landscape architecture designs can be about so much more than just
mulch and sod, nursery trees and shrubs.  The design of a landscape
can be a truly artful undertaking, and its results can help protect,
preserve and cleanse the world we live in.  To learn more about
landscape architecture, visit the American Society of Landscape
Architects, an organization whose mission it is to “lead, to educate,
and to participate in the careful stewardship, wise planning, and artful
design of our cultural and natural environments.”
- See more at: http://www.thecoolist.com/landscape-architecture-
designs-10-modern-masterpieces/#sthash.JSihmtOf.dpuf