Good ecological design may require good collaboration, with landscape architects acting like team leaders even when they're not. f When Hurricane Andrew swept across southern Florida in 1992, it carved a wide swath of devastation through Everglades National Park. Recent studies suggest that, periodically, violent tempests of this magnitude are actually healthful to ecological systems because they flush silted swamps and replenish food chains. They might also be beneficial to architecture, at least as regards the Parachute Key visitor center—a clunky, flat-roofed building that looked more at home in an industrial park than the Everglades—after it was demolished by Andrew. For years the National Park Service (NPS) had eyed the structure as a prime example of unsustainable architecture and ripe for redesign; once Andrew had done the dirty work, the park service assembled a team of architects, engineers, and landscape architects—mostly private firms—to build a new visitor center that would be more appropriate to the site.
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