One of the first things I learned in grad school is that landscape architecture professors hate the term "water feature" (they also hate "hardscape). The second thing was that if you were going to add one to a design, it had to have a purpose in the space, and not just serve as a little asterisk on a...

I was waxing nostalgic about Laura Half Pint Ingalls the other day and it inspired me to seek out pictures of barns. The structure of the barn in the landscape instantly conjures a feeling of a simpler time. As agriculture becomes such a big business and the rings of suburbs stretch further and further...

Ah, the A-frame house. Quirky, as simply geometric as architecture can get, sometimes a bit impractical, but full of retro charm. Lately I feel like A-frames were swimming around me. First, I laughed at the stories in Michael J. Tougais's book about his BEYOND rustic (as you'll guess from the title)...