I’ve added two Seattle projects to LENS. Freeway Park is one of Lawrence Halprin’s classic works. Much of its appeal, for me, lies in the way it reinterprets streams and waterfalls through abstraction, genuine tectonics and simple gestures, creating spaces with remarkably rich spatial and visual layers.
re:Invent Plaza is a much smaller urban street-corner space, with a particularly comfortable scale and relationship between its seating, planting and fountain. The sculpture also makes it a useful place to think critically about the role of sculpture in the urban public domain—its scale, what it communicates, and how it addresses the public.
Lee Parks, a great friend of mine and an amazingly caring landscape architect who leads AECOM’s landscape practice in Shanghai, has published a video of our visit to Tongva Park on Xiaohongshu. It’s incredibly rich and captures much of the place, especially the plantings.
Please give it a watch, and if you’re on Xiaohongshu, follow him for some great landscape architecture content.
I’m excited to have Tongva Park online, with seven viewpoints—the most available for any single project in LENS so far.
I enjoyed this park a lot, not only for its “heroic” formal moves, but also for the richness of its spatial layers. The shaded play slope, picnic grove and smaller seating spaces have a particularly comfortable human scale. Careful planting gives these places much of their character. For me, this is where the park’s placemaking is especially successful.
If you’re in the LA area, this is definitely worth a visit in person—and you can get there by Metro. For now, please enjoy the seven views in our archive.
The Broad is now on LENS, the first project in the archive to include architecture and interior spaces. What interests me here is the museum as an extension of the city’s public domain. The plaza, the sheltered edge of the building and the spaces inside belong to a connected public experience, even as their forms and materials change.
Their spatial forms, materials, design approaches and scales offer useful references for design teaching and research. I’m glad to bring them into the collection. Moving beyond this disciplinary boundary allows LENS to focus more clearly on its core mission of documenting the urban public domain and the spatial experience.
I’ve added two recordings from the children’s area at Shenzhen Talent Park Phase II, filmed on a summer evening in 2025. Within this large urban park, the play area has a rich sequence of spaces and a scale that feels comfortable. It was a lovely evening, with the space full of laughter. A reminder of how much pleasure a good public space can bring to everyday life.
I was in Los Angeles as a presenter at this year’s ASLA conference and combined the trip with some recording for LENS. This time I visited Tongva Park in Santa Monica and The Broad in downtown Los Angeles, including the plaza beside the museum. Both will be joining the archive.
Smale Riverfront Park is online
Three recordings from my visit to Smale Riverfront Park are now on LENS: the swing canopy, a sculpture area and the water features. These are among the park’s more representative spaces, each with a distinct sense of scale.
The first LENS recordings are now on YouTube. I’ve started with Yongqing Fang and Huacheng Plaza in Guangzhou, with two viewpoints available for Huacheng Plaza. You can find the recordings and basic design information on their project pages.
LENS is now online at lens-vr.com. I’ve set it up as a home for the 360° recordings I’ve been collecting of contemporary urban public spaces. The collection is small for now, but I have more material from recent trips to add.
I collected 360° recordings of several public-space projects during a summer visit to China. I’ll be adding these to LENS gradually as I prepare the individual project entries.
July 2026
Choosing YouTube for the recordings
After weighing several hosting options, I’ve decided to use YouTube for the recordings in LENS. Device compatibility was the main consideration: the archive needs to be accessible on a range of VR headsets as well as ordinary computers, tablets and phones. YouTube seemed the best fit for making the same recordings available across these different devices.
March 2026
A trip to Cincinnati
I combined the CELA conference in Cincinnati with visits to Smale Riverfront Park, Zaha Hadid’s Contemporary Arts Center and Fountain Square. I also went to the University of Cincinnati to see the campus landscapes by Hargreaves Associates. The photograph here is from the campus; I’ve included a few more from the rest of the trip below.
Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati — Zaha Hadid.National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati.Smale Riverfront Park, Cincinnati — looking back toward downtown.
November 2025
A November visit to Seattle
I made a recording trip to Seattle in November, visiting several established landscape projects as well as the new Waterfront Park on Elliott Bay. The waterfront had celebrated its opening that September, shortly before my visit. I also had the chance to meet someone from GGN, who generously spent several hours chatting with me about design and the creative process at the practice. I really enjoyed the conversation!
About these notes
Starting the Journal
I’m starting a Journal alongside the project archive. Collecting trips and new releases each have a bit of context that doesn’t always belong on a project page. I’ll use this space to share those updates and photographs from my visits.
