Landscape Architecture Magazine

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Landscape Architecture Magazine

Contributors

The Words That Bind • Readers weigh in on stories from our February issue.

It’s Only Human

FOREGROUND

The Cost of Coastal Resilience

Halprin’s Embarcadero Plaza to Lose Its Centerpiece

The Fight Comes to Nebraska

Giving a Parking Lot a Soil Glow-up

A Historic Landscape Loss at the White House

An Ecological Gem With Community Roots

Challenge Accepted • Landscape architect Dan Barefoot insists he had no “grand plan” to make it to the Olympics. It still paid off.

Growing Pains • In Lowell, Massachusetts, a once-in-a-generation investment in parks takes a few unexpected turns.

Spring Forward • New plant introductions and designer vessels herald a new season.

FEATURES

The View from the Front Porch • REDEVELOPMENT OF BROWN’S ISLAND REORIENTS A KEY CIVIC SPACE TOWARD BOTH RICHMOND’S DOWNTOWN AND THE JAMES RIVER.

Your Mileage May Vary • In just a few years, artificial intelligence has transformed the way design firms do business. Balancing back-office gains with mounting costs will take longer.

Business Strategy and Development • Several of the design professionals interviewed observed that AI is saving design firms time responding to RFPs and developing business. John Payne estimates that for one RFP for a project involving operations and maintenance planning on a public project, using AI likely saved him an hour of time organizing and adding information. He adds that using ChatGPT’s ideas has spurred creative thinking and also helped with innovation generally because his “creative juices had not been used up on this nug work that uses up your energy.”

Verifying and Technical Work • AI can also help users expedite the technical aspects of design. Francisca Martina Gil Sosa, a landscape designer and building information modeling (BIM) manager at SiteWorks, uses AI, particularly ChatGPT, with Revit, Autodesk’s BIM software. Gil Sosa says that she finds ChatGPT helpful for solving technical problems and verifying grading issues.

For Risk and Benefit Analysis, Firm Size Matters • Many firms are just now beginning to track the benefits of AI compared to the costs of use. Ideally such analysis should be undertaken on a case-by-case basis, says Benjamin George of Utah State, adding that the clear AI return-oninvestment winners at present are general generative AI tools like ChatGPT. “Those applications probably deliver the biggest bang for the buck, because landscape architects do a lot of writing and a lot of research in this field, and having something that could speed up those functions by even 50 percent is easily worth 20 bucks a month,” he says, referring to the baseline monthly cost of a subscription.

Applying Guardrails to AI • In the exuberant discussion of AI’s potential, the downsides and risks posed by the technology are often less fully discussed and analyzed. Those moving forward with substantial deployments of the technology say they are trying to keep those risks in mind and develop appropriate guardrails.

OF NOTE

Landscape Architecture Education Above the ARCTIC CIRCLE • IN NORWAY, A PROGRAM AT THE NEXUS OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND RESOURCE EXTRACTION.

Modernism, in Moderation • Idyll and Ideology: Hermann Mattern and the Landscape to Live In

Books of Interest • Climate change pressures from hyperlocal to transatlantic.

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A pool with a view (of the cows).