Boston Flora

Tag: Matthew Urbanski

  • Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Center House Entry Garden Competition

    The Berkshire Botanical Garden (BBG) is launching a call for proposals to select a designer or design team to help create a new entry garden on its 15-acre property. This call for proposals is open to all students currently enrolled in an accredited landscape architecture program in the United States and Canada. Entrants can be individuals or teams of students.

    BBG is seeking an innovative proposal that will complement the design of its newly restored and expanded Center House building and surrounding established garden areas. The c. 4,000 sq.ft. Entry Garden area will become the new gateway for tens of thousands of annual visitors touring the Garden, attending special events on BBG grounds and inside the Center House, and participating in BBG’s varied horticultural and educational programs that take place year-round.

    The deadline to submit proposals electronically is May 19, 2017 at 5pm EDT. (A preliminary Registration Form and a $50 registration fee must first be submitted by April 17, 2017 at 5pm EDT.)

    Any applications submitted after the May 19, 2017 deadline will not be accepted.

    For further information, please contact:

    Michael Beck
    Executive Director
    Berkshire Botanical Garden
    P.O. Box 826
    Stockbridge, MA 01262
    competition@berkshirebotanical.org

    The winning design will be selected by a five-member jury made up of independent designers, horticulturalists, and landscape architects, on the basis of the creative response to the design brief as well as originality and clarity of the concept and the creative approach. The winning submission must take into consideration the specifics of the site, the challenges of the location, BBG’s estimated project implementation budget and timeline, the demands on ongoing maintenance, and the programming envisioned by BBG for the garden area and the adjoining Center House building.

    The winning design and two runners up will be announced on June 2, 2017 on the competition website and through local and regional news media. All participants will receive the results of the competition via email.

    The winning design proposal will be used as the basis for the new Center House Entry Garden that will be built beginning in the fall of 2017. BBG’s staff and design consultants will provide feedback on the concept described in the winning submission, and will work with the winning designer(s) towards a final design and construction drawings, which must be finalized by July 7, 2017.

    April 3, 2017— Registration Opens
    April 17, 2017— Online registration and fee payment deadline
    Interested designers submit contact information and nonrefundable processing fee of $50 to BBG
    April 24, 2017— Deadline for questions to BBG
    Registered designers are invited to submit questions to BBG at any point from time of registration until 5pm EDT. BBG’s answers to all questions will be posted on the competition site on a rolling basis, but no later than April 28, 2017
    May 19, 2017— Deadline for competition submission (electronic)
    Registrants submit design materials electronically
    June 2, 2017— Announcement of winner and runners-up
    June 2-July 7, 2017— Development period for winning project
    Winning designer or team to work with BBG and BBG’s design consultants on details of design. BBG has engaged Landscape Architects Okerstrom Lang Ltd. to draft all construction documents.
    July 7, 2017— Construction drawings for winning project finalized by Okerstrom Lang Ltd.
    August, 2017— Dedication of Center House Building and presentation of winning Entry Garden design to the public
    Winning designer or representative of winning design team will be invited to attend. Exact date will be dependent on building construction schedule.
    September, 2017— Construction begins for Entry Garden
    May 6, 2018— Dedication of new entry garden on first day of 2018 visiting season at BBG

    The Jury:

    Page Dickey, Writer and Garden Designer (Falls Village, CT)
    Fergus Garrett, Head Gardener at Great Dixter Garden and CEO, The Great Dixter Charitable Trust (East Sussex, United Kingdom)
    Renny Reynolds, Landscape Architect and Co-Owner of Hortulus Farm (Bucks County, PA)
    Mark E. Strieter, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects (New York, NY and Charlottesville, VA)
    Matthew Urbanski, Principal, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc., (New York, NY)

    The winning designer will be awarded an honorarium of $1,500. Two runners-up will each receive $750. These three designs will be exhibited at BBG during the summer of 2017, and BBG will seek to publicize the designs through local, regional and national media channels.

    BBG plans to have a design development and construction budget of $100,000 available to implement the Center House Entry Garden. However, we reserve the right not to implement the design based on unforeseen future funding constraints or for any other reason.

  • Tuesday, March 7, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm – Planting in the Public Realm: Projects and Projections

    The Harvard Graduate School of Design will conduct a panel discussion on Tuesday, March 7 from 6:30 – 8:30 in Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, Quincy Street in Cambridge.

    Plant life, long regarded in cities as an amenity, has throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries also become an accepted necessity integral to the urban fabric. Yet, there are multiple challenges facing plants and planting design in urban areas. Pollution, climate change, increasingly restricted space, and insufficient or nonexistent public budgets for plants are only some of the factors that make it difficult for vegetation in our cities to survive. Yet numerous new public urban parks have been created, tree planting programs persist, new plant cultivars are developed, spontaneous plant growth is studied, and new planting design paradigms are proposed.

    In a series of short presentations and a moderated discussion, landscape architects, planting designers, and ecologists will assess the current state of the art in planting the public realm. The event seeks to draw out ideas for how plants can be used in the future design of urbanizing areas to create healthy, sustainable, inclusive, and appealing environments. What is the importance of planting the public realm today, and what are its biggest challenges? What are the roles of landscape architects, designers, ecologists, and plant scientists in accommodating plant life in cities and in areas that are becoming urbanized, and are we beyond botanical xenophobia? Moderated by author Sonja Dümpelmann, associate professor of landscape architecture, with Steven Handel, visiting professor in landscape architecture; Noel Kingsbury, writer and garden designer; Norbert Kühn, TU Berlin; Doug Reed MLA ’81, lecturer in landscape; and Matthew Urbanski MLA ’89, associate professor in practice of landscape architecture.

    Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu. The event is free and open to the public.