Gaining new insights into New York City — LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AOTEAROA

What’s your favourite place on the planet?

Making a whistle-stop visit of barely five days roaming New York City earlier this month provided just enough time to uncover a raft of insights into landscape architecture and urban design in the city, make new connections and renew conversations with two previous keynote speakers at past NZILA Firth conference events: Steven Tupu (2021) and Kate Orff (2023).

It’s a city that lends itself to walking, be that weaving through the world-famous Central Park from north to south, or ducking into the plethora of old and new parks and landmarks. Here are some highlights with ‘stubs’ for future stories being written for LAA over the next several weeks:

On Saturday 3 May Professor Kate Orff kindly invited Stephen Olsen as a writer/curator for LAA to observe an event celebrating the studio work of Columbia University students that was organised with an end of the academic year “science fair” vibe. This formed part of Earth Studio 2025: Landscapes of Repair.

It was a pleasure to meet many of the students to speak directly with them about their work, including students pictured from left to right here: Qingyi (Eva) Gan, Vicky Sindac, Daisy Castro and Mutita (Maeve) Ouk.

On 6 May Steven Tupu of terrain-nyc (pictured at left below) generously took LAA on a tour of the yet-to-open Terminal Warehouse development, located immediately south of Hudson Yards, to see its transformative landscape architecture elements close up. We were joined by David Russo, ASLA-NY’s new Executive Director and Board member Jason E. Bajor.

In addition LAA dropped into the Broadway office of the Urban Design Forum - “a member-powered organization of 1,000+ civic leaders committed to a more just future for our city” and met briefly with core members of the team, including Cat Betances, Hadley Stack, Clara Parker and Miranda Bellizia. This provided insights into their advocacy work, a large share of which is being directed at the New York Mayoralty race later this year (sounds familiar!)

As abiding memories go, every single park made an impression.

The John V. Lindsay East River Park on the Dumbo side of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The origins of The High Line in NYC can be traced back 25 years. It combines both an invigorating walkway with educational signage.

As with any city, there are always hidden treasures, like the Time Landscape park in LaGuardia Place.

In 2025 renowned magazine The New Yorker is celebrating its 100th anniversary. As well as an exhibition at the New York Public Library LAA discovered a celebration of The New Yorker’s Parks covers at an exhibition gallery hidden away in Central Park.

Keep visiting LAA to read more!