Julie Bargmann in the News
Friday, February 22, 2008
Assoc. Professor Julie Bargmann's Design for AMD&ART Park Featured in "Pruned"
An excerpt from the blog "Pruned" by Alex Trevi [02.22.08]: "Beginning in 1994, a multi-disciplinary team — which consisted of T. Allan Comp, a historian and director of the non-profit AMD&ART; Robert Deason, a hydrogeologist; Stacy Levy, a sculptor; AmeriCorps interns; and landscape architect Julie Bargmann, of D.I.R.T. Studio — were tasked to create 'a large-scale, artful public space that directly addresses the problems of AMD and much more.'
"AMD in the entire Appalachian Region, we read, is 'the most widespread water quality problem, as well as a significant economic and social constraint.' Indeed, the EPA has designated it as the biggest environmental problem in the eastern mountains....The result of the collaboration is, if not innovative, gloriously inspiring."
For the complete post, see "Pruned" online.
Monday, January 14, 2008
UVa Faculty Collaborative Named Finalist in History Channel "City of the Future" Design Competition
Several UVa School of Architecture faculty members have collaborated to form Grow: DC, one of 24 finalist teams in the “City of the Future” design competition organized by the History Channel. The competition stipulates that teams select one of three cities (San Francisco, Atlanta, or Washington, D.C.) and imagine what it would look like in 100 years. Eight finalists have been selected for each city. The winner of each city competition will be given $10,000 and the opportunity to compete for the national title which will be decided by a public online vote. GROW:DC is a design collaborative and urban think tank based in Charlottesville, Virginia. The team is led by Assistant Professors of Architecture Jason Johnson and Nataly Gattegno (Future Cities Lab LLC) and also includes Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Julie Bargmann and Lecturer in Landscape Architecture Christopher Fannin (D.I.R.T. Studio), as well as Elwood R. Quesada Professor William Morrish. The team is consulted by Associate Professor and Director of Landscape Architecture Kristina Hill and environmental engineer Byron Stigge of Buro Happold Engineers in New York. The team’s proposal, "Harvest the City," aims to gather together the diverse and fluctuating patches of the city: “Beyond the brilliant tyranny of its master plan, DC has to simultaneously grow at a finer street-by-street scale, while embracing the poetics of larger infrastructural systems and global networks. We envision the fufture of D.C. as a thriving ecology of multiple sites. These sites are already embedded in the messy urban, suburban, and coastal fabric of DC. They provide a framework for interconnectivity and opportunity. They engage a series of ecologies and landscapes that could be industrious and working places, productive landscapes that could yield innovative, creative and cultural change.” Competitors were given one week to assemble a three-dimensional design that is representative of their vision for the city. The finalists for D.C. presented their projects to the judges and the public at Union Station on January 15th where a team from the firm Beyer Blinder Belle was named the winner. For additional information, see the Washington Post's article 01/16/08: "Visions of a Brave New Washington", by Michael Ruane.Monday, October 22, 2007
Faculty Recognized in 2007 National Trust for Historic Preservation Awards
Two School of Architecture faculty members shared in separate National Preservation Awards which were given at the annual meeting of the National Trust for Historic Preservation held this year in Minneapolis on October 4th. Associate Professor Daniel Bluestone, Director of the Historic Preservation Program, shared in the National Trust/HUD Secretary's Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation. Awarded for the rehabilitation of the Raymond M. Hilliard Center, a five building Chicago Public Housing Project designed between 1962 and 1966 by renowned modern Architect Bertrand Goldberg. Bluestone conducted the historical research and employed the challenging Category G criterion (for historic properties of less than 50 years old) in obtaining National Register of Historic Places listing for Hilliard. This work made possible the $100 million dollar rehabilitation of the Hilliard Center as a historic renovation guided by the Secretary of the Interior guidelines on rehabilitation and supported by federal tax credits. Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Julie Bargmann's work with D.I.R.T. Studio was recognized in association with a 2007 National Preservation Honor Award for the design of the Urban Outfitters Corporate Office Campus in Philadelphia. This project involved the rehabilitation of five abandoned industrial buildings in the historic Navy Yard in Philadelphia that has sparked the rebirth and economic development of south Philadelphia.Monday, October 15, 2007
Faculty and Students Visit New Orleans' Pontilly Neighborhood to Plan Green Space
Students in Assoc. Professor Julie Bargmann's LAR 801 Refloat NOLA studio traveled to New Orleans last weekend to participate in a design workshop in the Pontilly neighborhood. Professor William Morrish and Assoc. Professor Elizabeth Meyer also participated.
From the New Orleans' Times-Picayune, "DESIGN WEEKEND
Landscape experts and students converge on Pontchartrain Park, Gentilly Woods,"(Oct. 13. 2007:
"As Pontchartrain Park and Gentilly Woods residents rebuild their neighborhoods, they can expect lots of ideas to choose from regarding how to design their natural areas.
"A group of design experts and university students in cooperation with Longue Vue House & Gardens are gathering information about the green spaces in the two New Orleans neighborhoods, collectively known as Pontilly, so they can develop strategies for shaping the landscape in ways that add to the area's beauty while helping protect it against flooding...
The Pontilly neighborhood already has a master plan, said William Morrish, a professor of architecture, landscape architecture and urban and environmental planning at the University of Virginia. This effort, he said, will provide richer details for landscaping the environment and public parks in Pontilly.
"We're hoping that by early next year we'll have a plan to take to the public," said Jane Wolff, assistant professor of architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. "It will be less like a prescription and more like a menu" from which residents may make a selection.
Wolff, Moorish, Longue Vue Executive Director Bonnie Goldblum and students from Louisiana State University, Southern University, Tulane University and the University of Virginia toured the Pontilly area Friday. They began discussing possible options for the green spaces in connection with the four-day design weekend financed by $30,000 from the Catherine Brown Memorial Fund, which is named after Moorish's deceased wife.
There are many issues to consider, said Moorish, like using some of the land in the area to reduce flooding, making the land more productive, sorting out the best use for vacant spaces and deciding what to plant...." [for complete article, visit the Times-Picayune website]
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
"Julie Bargmann Unexpurgated"
Julie Bargmann, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Principal of D.I.R.T. Studio, is featured in an interview for the "Shared Wisdom" section of Landscape Architecture magazine in the October issue. In the article by Susan Hines, "Julie Bargmann Unexpurgated: This Tough-Talking Chick in the Hard Hat Doesn't Mince Words about Turning Brownfields Around," Bargmann describes the early influences on her career and the nature of the success she has achieved in reclaiming and repurposing formerly toxic and abandoned sites. For the complete article, see Landscape Architecture, Oct. 2007, pp133-139 (article not available online). Excerpt: "Julie Bargmann is known for many things - embracing the most toxic landscapes, developing a viable postindustrial aesthetic, and cussing like a sailor. "She makes great copy. She is petite and sassy and tackles unpopular, even scary, sites. Her Charlottesville, Virginia-based D.I.R.T. Studio has helped create what Bargmann calls a regenerative park in Vintondale, Pennsylvania, from a former coal field rendered poisonous by acid mine drainage and developed ways to detoxify Ford Motor Company's enormous Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan. "As a result of these and other efforts, Outside magazine placed her among its pantheon of 25 Action Heroes, describing Bargmann as 'a sort of fairy godmother to industrial wastelands.' She has been hailed by Time as an innovator for the 21st century and by Metropolis for her research on transforming Superfund sites into viable landscapes...."Wednesday, September 12, 2007
U.Va. Group Fostering Communities that Embody Sustainability
News Source: Explorations
Sept. 12, 2007 -- At U.Va., you have only to walk as far as the Lawn to see an example of a sustainable community — Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village. As in all sustainable design, the relationship of structures to the environment was an important consideration for Jefferson. He placed his suite of buildings at the end of a long ridge with an uninterrupted view from the Rotunda to the Ragged Mountains in the south. The classrooms and living quarters are in close proximity — and the Rotunda serves as a natural gathering place. This built environment encourages the exchange of ideas between faculty members and students — a process that is essential to its long-term viability. The Lawn also incorporates the cultural ideas of the time as well as enduring values of balance and proportion. Almost 200 years after its creation, it still excites our imagination.
As School of Architecture dean Karen Van Lengen points out, “Sustainability, broadly defined, is not only based in the ecology of an area, but supports equity and embodies important cultural ideas.” As part of U.Va.’s Sustainable Communities Group, Van Lengen and her colleagues seek to create and support communities that extend the characteristics of the Academical Village for our time.
[For the complete article, please visit Explorations online - Fall 2007 issue]
Monday, May 21, 2007
Assoc. Professor Julie Bargmann's Firm Receives 2007 ASLA National Honor Award for Residential Design
Associate Professor Julie Bargmann’s firm, D.I.R.T. Studio, received a 2007 National Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects for their collaborative creation (with the firm MESA) of the design for Turtle Creek Pump House, a residential garden created from a former water works near Dallas, Texas.The jury commented, "We love the artful re-use aspect of this project, it's truly rare and admirable. This is sustainable in so many ways and gives great lesson value, yet it's also playful and inviting for children of all ages."
Monday, October 2, 2006
Assoc. Professor Julie Bargmann Featured in Archinect Interview
I like to think that Julie Bargmann fights the good fight. She grew up cruising through the New Jersey Turnpike, under powerlines, past the oil refineries and through America's dumping ground, The Meadowlands. Now she dedicates her research and practice, D.I.R.T. (Dump It Right There) Studio, to taking on abandoned railyards, closed quarries and landfills, disused factories and former coal mines. And with more than half a million contaminated sites in the US alone, there's a strong argument for remediating what's been used, rather than sprawling out and building new. Her practice is a critical one, which means there's no erasing the evidence. Instead, she works to transform the waste produced by a century of manufacturing and consumption into something culturally and ecologically productive. She's got a pink hard-hat and a quick wit, and a willingness to get her hands dirty and talk about things like "beauty," in a way that redefines it for us all.
-- Heather Ring ("D.I.R.T. Studio," Archinect 10/2/2006 www.archinect.com)
Thursday, August 17, 2006
MLA Student Receives EPA "STAR" Fellowship for Phytoremediation Visualization Project
Mary Nelson, a graduate student in the landscape architecture program, has received a Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Fellowship from The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for her proposal, Visualization of Site Specific Phytoremediation. Her project will utilize GIS software to create an interactive database of phytoremediation species that can be cross-referenced to specific geographic locations for the visualization of their spatial and temporal design.Using GIS technology, the scientific data of phytoremediation, (the plant species, contaminant(s) addressed, and quantifiable data on the remediation process) can be represented as a graphic database cross-referenced to site-specific qualities, (climate, geography, solar orientation, soil type) informing not only what species would function best, but also the spatial and temporal growth potential of each plant. The expected result is an interactive database that will identify the phytoremediation plant species and methodology available to any site of a user’s choosing.
As primary faculty advisor, Julie Bargmann, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, will guide research on both phytoremediation and design. As the faculty co-advisor, David L. Phillips, Associate Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning, will guide the GIS resources of the project, including the development of appropriate geodatabases and 3D visualization, and the utilization of resources available at U.Va.’s Geospatial and Statistical Data Center.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Assoc. Professor Julie Bargmann's Work With Superfund Sites Featured in Virginia Magazine
The work of Associate Professor Julie Bargmann, both in her landscape architecture studios at the school and in her practice, D.I.R.T., is featured in the spring issue of Virginia Magazine article, "Queen of Slag: Transforming Industrial Wastelands," by Lee Graves. Several of Bargmann's projects over the past 6 years are highlighted.
Friday, January 6, 2006
Assoc. Prof. Julie Bargmann Named "All-Star Innovator" by Outside Magazine
"AS ONE OF THE LEADING landscape architects specializing in revitalizing toxic Superfund sites and derelict brownfields, Julie Bargmann is a sort of fairy godmother of industrial wastelands…." Outside Magazine, Dec. 2005.
Monday, February 7, 2005
Landscape Architecture Program Reaccreditation Visit a Major Success
The Program in Landscape Architecture received rave reviews from the members of the reaccreditation team who visited the School January 31- February 2, 2005. The team consisted of Gary B. Kesler, FASLA (Associate Head, University of Illinois); Dawn Barrett (Dean, Rhode Island School of Design); and Neil Dean, FASLA (Principal, Sasaki Associates). “They reported that we met all the standards and also that our students are extremely mature and thoughtful,” said Julie Bargmann, Associate Professor and Program Director. In preparation for the team’s visit, the landscape architecture students mounted an impressive exhibit of their work, spanning the past several years, under the direction of Assistant Professor Caroline Westort.
While the team’s final written report is expected in a couple weeks, Dawn Barrett, Dean of the Rhode Island School of Design, commented at an open reporting session that landscape architecture is a “very strong program, enviable, in fact – and worthy of its elite status.” The team was also impressed with both the autonomy and the opportunities for interdisciplinary engagement the program enjoys within the new joint department of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.
Plans are underway to publish the work from the reaccreditation exhibit, and interest has been expressed from other parts of the university in learning more about the School’s curricular emphasis on community engagement, to be held as a model for other disciplines.
