Dreiseitl

Herbert Dreiseitl, the German landscape architect who is pushing the functional and aesthetic frontier of how we relate to and interact with water in our cities, is featured in a post on the Portland Architecture blog. Dreiseitl's firm recently completed work on Tanner Springs Park which is part functional wetland, park kinetic sculpture and part neighborhood park. In the post, he has strong praise for Portland as a walkable, bikeable city and for that vibrant streetscape as a deterent to crime.

Since the publication of his book Waterscapes (and this month marks the publication of the follow up, boldly titled New Waterscapes), Dreiseitl has been a bit of a personal hero for his innovative rethinking about water in the urban environment. Rather than pipe stormwater away as quickly as possible, Dreiseitl advocates embracing water as a catalyst to joy, entertainment and fun. And intrinsic to those qualities Dreiseitl advocates another layer: ecology. Thus his work is infused with a cultural and natural resonance that allows it to comfortably straddle both city, suburb and country.