In the Weeds

 Winged sumac

Nice article by Nate Berg in the Sept. 2015 issue of Landscape Architecture magazine on the urban ecology/design work of Future Green Studio, from Brooklyn, New York. Several reclaimed-use projects are featured, including an event space called Nowadays. The design team, led by FGS principal David Seiter, kept the pre-existing honey locust trees that were sprouting through the cracked pavement; and then replanted other urban “weeds”: including sumacs, birch, aspen, goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace. Seiter is quoted as saying “It’s rooted in a conceptual understanding of landscape and site to reveal the latencies in the site and think about how they can be woven into a future designed environment” (Berg, LAM, 2015, p. 64).

Find out more about Future Green Studio at their company website at http://futuregreenstudio.com/

About their firm: “Our approach is reductive – through analysis, we scrape away and unearth the layers of an existing site to reveal its inherent value and beauty. We develop a thorough understanding of its historical, material and spatial conditions so that we can optimize the often overlooked social, ecological and economic assets that lie dormant within it. The goal of this approach is to reveal the nuances of the urban landscape in subtle, poetic ways; awakening the user to the complex ecology of our cities.”