Press Releases
What’s Out There Free, Searchable, Online Designed Landscape Database
Media Only:
Nord Wennerstrom
Wennerstrom Communications
Nord@wennerco.com
202-255-7076
What’s Out There Free, Searchable, Online Database of Parks, Gardens, and Other Landscapes Launched by The Cultural Landscape Foundation
Wiki-style Site Soliciting Public Input on Landscapes and their Designers
November 4, 2009 (Washington, D.C.) – The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) today launched What’s Out There, a searchable, online database of parks, gardens, and a wide variety of other landscapes. What’s Out There is the only free, Wiki-style database focused on the nation’s landscapes and landscape features, and will be searchable by landscape name, type, and/or style (this site includes a glossary), landscape architect and/or designer, and/or location. It is designed for use by tourists and heritage travelers, local residents, park, garden and landscape aficionados, historians, landscape architects, planners, other specialists, and the general public.
At launch, What’s Out There will cover 75 landscape types, 14 landscape styles, 380 landscape architects and designers, and more than 650 sites nationally. Updates will be made daily and the public is encouraged to offer submissions (http://www.tclf.org/landscapes/submit-landscape).
“What’s Out There is the only searchable Web feature covering the nation’s landscape legacy,” said Charles A. Birnbaum, TCLF founder and president. “We have a growing database of landscapes and their designers, but integral to this sites’ success is public input.”
What’s Out There is a new addition to TCLF’s recently re-launched Web site, www.tclf.org, which also includes: the Pioneers of American Landscape Design project, profiling 250 years of landscape architects and allied professionals; the 2009 Landslide compendium of endangered landscapes and landscape features; new oral histories, including M. Paul Friedberg; It Takes One profiles of individuals who embody TCLF’s mission of “stewardship through education”; and, Cultural Landscapes as Classrooms, a multi-media approach to examining, understanding and evaluating different landscapes.
Along with What’s Out There, TCLF’s Web site features the 2009 Landslide, whose theme Shaping the American Landscape encompasses 16 sites nationally, among them the Richardson Olmsted Complex in Buffalo, New York; the parks of the City of Hartford, Connecticut; the 16th Street Mall in Denver, Colorado; and, the collective work of Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver in Salem, Oregon.
The Cultural Landscape Foundation (www.tclf.org) is the only institution in America dedicated to increasing the public's awareness and understanding of the importance and irreplaceable legacy of its cultural landscapes.