BY JANE MARGOLIES

It’s a sunny afternoon in May, and lacrosse games are in full swing on Randall’s Island, a 516-acre landmass surrounded by water and, beyond, the New York City boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx.  Cyclists pedal on a path under the heroic arches of a 1917 railroad trestle.  A middle school track team is warming up outside the stadium where Usain Bolt broke the world record in the men’s 100-meter dash in 2008. 

The landscape architect Rick Parisi, FASLA, and I are not playing lacrosse or cycling or running.  But we are roving around the island—which is bordered by the Harlem and East Rivers, the Bronx Kill, and a treacherous strait known as the Hell Gate.  Parisi, the managing principal of MPFP, has helped with the transformation of the island over the past couple of decades, and I’ve asked for a tour of some of his firm’s accomplishments.  Besides, I have a special request: (more…)

“In our language, we have a word; it means, ‘They have no ears.’  They don’t listen, and that’s what was happening.” 

—Marisa Miakonda Cummings, Omaha tribe member

Brenda Williams, ASLA, has been working on tribal landscapes for 20 years, but it’s what she’s learned not to do that defines her reputation: Talk first.  Her work is a lesson in when and how to listen, and what to do, and not do, with what you hear.  Timothy A. Schuler follows Williams as she facilitates a new master plan for Blood Run, a sacred site carved by the state lines of South Dakota and Iowa and years of exploitation.  The photojournalist Louise Johns documents the land and the people. 

If you don’t live in New York City, you can be forgiven for not knowing Randall’s Island.  It’s not a destination park like Governors Island or a national monument like Ellis Island.  It’s where the city’s residents go to play games—right up against a sewage treatment plant and some of the city’s most monumental infrastructure.  After years of neglect, the playing fields and recreational amenities get a jolt of energy from MPFP, Starr Whitehouse, and Mathews Nielsen, among others. 

Also in this issue: A new wetland park for Wilmington, Delaware, has layers of challenge.  Jeanne Haffner explores Lawrence Halprin’s unbuilt plans for the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C.; the artist Zaria Forman gives us a preview of her new series on Antarctic icebergs; and the first biography of the landscape architect James Rose asks as many questions as it answers.  The full table of contents for August can be found here.