Description of the Charrette
The Western Massachusetts Section of the Boston Society for Landscape Architects held a charrette in which professional landscape architects developed designs for a greenway on different parts of the Mill River to celebrate Landscape Architecture Month. The meeting was limited to professional landscape architects and those members of the public who providied information for the three design teams.
The charrette took place at the Florence Civic Center on Wednesday April 18th, 2012 from 5:30-8:30. The architects worked from current and historic maps, orthophotos, historical documents, and points of interest and access, zoning constraints, etc.
The players: Mark Lindhult (UMass LARP) is in charge of the overall presentation. Nick Dines (UMass, emeritus LARP) has a group focused on Williamsburg at the upper end of the watershed and Maggie Leonard (Paradise City Landscape Design) has a group concentrating on downtown Northampton, specifically the “southern entrance” to Northampton where the river used to run around Pleasant and Conz Streets. Peter Flinker and Harry Dodson (Dodson & Flinker) have a group looking at the whole watershed that will specify the critical links, such as Leeds, Florence, and Bay State. Students from UMass and Smith will be on hand to help run the concurrent sessions.
The Williamsburg results will be presented in Williamsburg the first week of May. All the results will be presented in Northampton at a Mill River Greenway party in downtown Northampton on May 10th.May 18th 2012.
