Fossils are pretty amazing. These ghostly remains contain incredible detail about the ancient living things that accidentally created them. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal about the discovery of 385 million year old forest fossils got me wanting to know more about some of the most eerie, lovely specimens.
Silva Cells were recently installed at the University of South Carolina as part of a larger multi-use tailgate facility. The site, which is across the street from the school’s stadium, formerly housed the South Carolina State Farmers Market.
There’s no arguing that, at first glance, the Silva Cell just looks like a hunk of black plastic. Its humble and basic form definitely doesn’t reflect the extensive design, testing, and engineering that has gone in to it. Here’s a brief overview of the why the Silva Cell is the way it is.
Snowfall seems to have happened very late all across the country this winter, but now that it’s here, most people are trying to find ways to get rid of it. But salt, while effective for deicing roads and streets, can have extremely detrimental effects on trees, causing things such as necrosis, burned tips, or failure… More
The specifications for most construction project are filled with seemingly endless phrases of precision such as “not less than 100 percent maximum density,” “no variation greater then ¼,” “shall be at least .005 in thickness,” “minimum strength of 3,000 psi,” etc. Why is this? Buildings, bridges, roadways, utilities, and the like are all intended to… More
Through my work with DeepRoot, I’ve come to love and appreciate trees – especially urban trees – in a way that I never anticipated, so much so that I recently became a certified arborist. But my greatest love, since I was very little, was for animals. There is an intersection between these two interests, of… More
This post is now out of date! Please see the updated post here. In the day-to-day, we can become so focused on what isn’t working with the way we design and plant street trees that it can be difficult to focus on the people and places that are actually doing right by them. It’s just so… More
Earlier this year, Silva Cells were installed at the new Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial in Washington D.C. This site will commemorate the legacy of Dr. King but is not solely about the past; it is also about the future.
I read a lot of news stories about development projects described by words like sustainable, walkable, dense, and multi-use. These characteristics are experiencing a real surge in emphasis from both a design standpoint and from media coverage, and rightly so. They are some of the pillars of community design that support the physical and economic… More
Readers on the West Coast may already be aware of this, but Stanford University has one of the oddest mascot’s in collegiate sports: a tree.
To kick off 2012, we’re reprinting this great post written by Matthew Gordy for the Boston Society of Landscape Architects back in April 2011. One thing I love about this post is the theme of high performance. We plan and expect for high performance with other types of utilities and urban infrastructure because we want… More
As the year winds down, we’ll be looking back at some of the project case studies we’ve completed in 2011. This case study — written in British English, for those of you in North America — discusses a trees and stormwater Silva Cell project in a Derby car park. You can find the original case… More
Soil. Stormwater. Sustainable Infrastructure.
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