Description

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Since the publication of the first edition in 2000, Sustainable Landscape Construction has helped to spur a movement towards resilient outdoor environments, in the U.S. and throughout the world. The third edition has been updated to include important recent developments in this landscape revolution. It remains essential reading for everyone with an interest in "green" design of outdoor spaces and infrastructures.

Like its predecessors, the new edition of Sustainable Landscape Construction is organized around principles, recognizing that built environments, and our work in them, pose both pragmatic and ethical challenges. Each chapter focuses on one overarching site goal, such as “Pave Less,” “Heal Injured Sites,” and “Consider Origin and Fate of Materials.” These principles of land sustainability are clearly articulated and developed through specific examples of more than 100 projects from around the world, reflecting both traditions and recent innovations. Expanded coverage of industry trends toward performance monitoring, and of lessons from project failures, form an important enhancement in this edition. New content also details the necessity to plan adaptively, not just preventively, for the realities of changing climate and intensifying weather. Some of the trends covered will shift how landscape architects and contractors will do business in challenging years ahead: to survive, many professionals and clients will focus on restoration projects, motivated by ecosystem services and social justice, and funded by innovative methods.

Sustainable Landscape Construction is part of the canon of landscape construction texts, and with this update, remains a visionary, one of a kind reference for professionals and students.

About the Author

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Kim Sorvig is a research associate professor at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of New Mexico, and co-author of the Sustainable Building Technical Manual, published by the U.S. Green Building Council.
Sorvig has consulted and designed for the Historic Santa Fe Foundation; the Rio Grande Botanical Gardens Asian Meditation Gardens; the Las Aves Wildlife Rescue Facility (Espanola, NM); the restoration of the Barnes Arboretum (Philadelphia); and the restoration of the Hammond Museum and Japanese Garden (New York). He has provided site-interpretive designs for private residences and ecological and historical interpretations for several large public parks and projects. He is a registered landscape architect (NM, PA) and member of the American Society of Landscape Architects and International Association of Landscape Ecologists. Sorvig holds a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a Kew Diploma (with distinction) from the Royal Botanic Gardens, London, and a B.A. in Humanities and Social Science from Colorado State University.

Praise For…

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“The information collected in Sustainable Landscape Construction will help planners to better integrate the lofty goals of sustainability that are so easily bandied about, yet so hard to actually bring to fruition. Overall, this is an excellent and extremely practical book – highly recommended for the planning profession as a whole.”
 
— Planning West