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Sustainable Landscape Construction

A Guide to Green Building Outdoors

Authors: Kim Sorvig, J. William Thompson

Publisher: Island Press/Center for Resource Economics

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

The publication of the first edition in 2000 spurred 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.

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Table of Contents

Frontmatter

Basic Principles: “Sustainability” in Context

Abstract

Concern for the health of outdoor places is a central theme in landscape architecture and landscape contracting, and has been since long before “sustainability” was a word. “Stewardship” is almost the mantra of the American Society of Landscape Architects. It is a concern shared by many members of related disciplines like architecture, planning, public-lands administration, and horticulture, as well as by private gardeners. Yet in translating this concern to the materials and methods of making landscapes, there frequently seems to be a disconnect between ethical intentions and practical actions.

Kim Sorvig, J. William Thompson

Principle 1. Keep Healthy Sites Healthy

Abstract

Every site resembles a living organism, and like organisms, sites vary in health. This chapter discusses what “site health” means, and methods for preserving it during construction. Like human health, site health is not easy to define in a simple formula. Prevention is usually more successful—and less expensive—than cure.

Kim Sorvig, J. William Thompson

Principle 2. Heal Injured Soils and Sites

Abstract

In a consumer society, landscape development too often becomes a form of consumption. As development sprawls outward along an ever-expanding urban fringe, forests are leveled and farms destroyed to make way for cul-de-sacs, backyards, malls, business parks, and the accompanying transportation.

Kim Sorvig, J. William Thompson

Principle 3. Favor Living, Flexible Materials

Abstract

Plants are the only truly productive organisms on Earth. Their ability to photosynthesize—the original solar-powered production—is the ultimate source of all food and fuel on which humans, and all other animals, rely.¹ As the Bible puts it, “All flesh is grass.”² It often seems, however, that we as modern humans are busily forgetting our debt to the plant kingdom—biting the frond that feeds us.

Kim Sorvig, J. William Thompson

Principle 4. Respect the Waters of Life

Abstract

Water covers nearly 70 percent of the globe, and makes up almost 99 percent of the human body. Essential to life, it is also a powerful force of change and destruction. Despite its global presence, far less than 1 percent is fresh water suitable for sustaining land animals and plants.¹ In Ambrose Bierce’s wonderful phrase, “Water occupies 2/3 of a world made for Man—who has no gills.”²

Kim Sorvig, J. William Thompson

Principle 5. Pave Less

Abstract

The United States paves more area every two years than the Roman Empire did in its entire existence.¹ Since 1980, an average of 25,500 miles has been added yearly. The US Department of Transportation counts a total of 8,766,049 “lane miles” of public highway, as of 2014.² Assuming an average 12-foot lane width, plus 4 feet for shoulder and other auxiliary areas, one lane-mile equals 84,480 square feet, or nearly two acres. The total—17 million acres—is enough paved area to cover New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware. Add to this an estimated 4.7 million acres (1,921,582 hectares) devoted to parking in the United States.³ The US road network is “perhaps the biggest object ever built.”⁴ By one estimate, the US Interstate Highway System alone excavated enough soil to cover Connecticut knee-deep, and used concrete enough for 80 Hoover Dams, steel for 170 Empire State Buildings, and drain pipe to match water and sewer for Chicago six times over.⁵ It is easy to see that paving is an environmental issue of colossal proportions.⁶

Kim Sorvig, J. William Thompson

Principle 6. Consider Origin and Fate of Materials

Abstract

One theme of this book is that inappropriate landscape design and construction—such as overpaving or invasive plantings—damages sites. Even landscapes that seem perfectly harmonious with their sites, however, can impact environments far beyond. Pliny Fisk, codirector of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems in Austin TX, illustrates this: “One can disturb a site to the least possible degree and be causing utter havoc on Earth at the same time—because of what you’re bringing to that site. Let’s say that landscape architects are going to do a large paved area and they decide to use granite pavers quarried in Minnesota. There’s a good chance that the granite is shipped to Italy, sliced up, sent back and delivered to Houston, or wherever the building site is. That’s an incredible imposition on the well-being of this planet.”¹

Kim Sorvig, J. William Thompson

Principle 7. Know the Costs of Energy over Time

Abstract

Energy is the core of life, central to doing, living, building. Since the first “energy crisis” of the late 1970s, design and construction professionals have been keenly aware of energy issues: energy-saving lights and appliances, efficiency standards for heating and cooling, and the seesawing costs of fuel. Energy efficiency can sell a property, and inefficient use of energy can sink a construction business. Construction “represents a huge, relatively long-duration energy investment”;¹ currently, this investment is mostly gambled, rather than managed.

Kim Sorvig, J. William Thompson

Principle 8. Celebrate Light, Respect Darkness

Abstract

Landscape lighting is a source of great pleasure, extending use of outdoor space into nighttime hours. Outdoor lighting, however, can be either well designed, or excessive and inappropriate. Extravagant lighting can be wonderful for temporary effects, but as a permanent landscape feature it wastes resources and causes direct damage to living things.

Kim Sorvig, J. William Thompson

Principle 9. Quietly Defend Silence

Abstract

Gardens have traditionally been retreats where silence could be sought and savored. This feature of traditional landscapes is being eroded by the spread of technology and the increase in human population.

Kim Sorvig, J. William Thompson

Principle 10. Maintain to Sustain

Abstract

Landscapes are living things. In one important sense, they are never finished. Growth, natural succession, weathering, change of use or ownership or neighbors—all keep landscapes evolving. Except in successfully restored native landscapes, the best of which maintain themselves (though not in a steady state), maintenance is not optional. Maintenance is the way an evolving landscape keeps pace with evolving human demands.

Kim Sorvig, J. William Thompson

Principle 11. Demonstrate Performance, Learn from Failure

Abstract

It is easy to forget how young contemporary green building is. Many green methods are as old as vernacular construction, dating back millennia. But the current movement is often dated to the first Earth Day, in 1970, and to experimentation in response to the 1973 “oil crisis.” Formation of the AIA’s Committee on the Environment in 1989, and the launch of LEED in 1998, are other benchmarks. Depending on which of these dates is used, the movement is no more than forty-four years old, and in the United States, attempts to set standards began only twenty years ago. The pattern is typical: as a young discipline or industry grows, competing definitions of success, failure, and quality come to the fore, gradually resolving into agreed standards. Almost every type of product or service has its own certification and set of standards, sometimes more than one.

Kim Sorvig, J. William Thompson

Sustaining Principles, Evolving Efforts

Abstract

In the landscape, beginnings and endings overlap. Healthy landscapes are ecosystems, and they survive by constant change. In a self-sustaining landscape, marsh becomes meadow becomes forest, then returns to meadow after fires, or even to marsh after floods. Individual plants and animals die, but the community—the landscape—lives on through a constant “recycling” process.

Kim Sorvig, J. William Thompson

Backmatter

Title: Sustainable Landscape Construction
Authors: Kim Sorvig
J. William Thompson
Copyright Year: 2018
Publisher: Island Press/Center for Resource Economics
Electronic ISBN: 978-1-61091-811-4
Print ISBN: 978-1-61091-925-8
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-811-4