Happy New Year!

I had a small supper for a few friends before a party tonight: It's not New Years Eve in my book without sauerkraut and kielbasa! I kept the centerpiece simple -just a bunch of candles on an antique mirror. A celebration of light!

I used an assortment of mismatched crystal, my grandmothers silver, my coalport harebell china and some white napkins. Nothing special but I thought it was pretty - and simple! I hope everyone has a Happy New Year!!

A Dozen of the Best of 2008

Well, in the spirit of the impending new year, it's time for a look back on the 300+ posts from Landscape+Urbanism to glean what was new, provocative, innovative, and just plain awe-inspiring. In my biased opinion, reading through the archives and downloads from the year - is that 2008 was definitely the year of Veg.itecture - both in visuals, technologies, and built works. So in this vein - a totally random and unscientific look the best of the best for Veg.itecture, Landscape and Urbanism that will continue to inspire into the new year.

1. Best Veg.itecture Project
Hands down, the most amazing project of the year was the California Academy of Sciences Building in San Francisco. Photogenic, innovative, and inspiring, this project blew everyone away, causing me to proclaim, in hyperbolic fashion, that Piano et.al. had reached the pinnacle of veg.itecture... and I still stand by this.


:: image via Metropolis

2. Best Urban Agriculture Project (tie)
This is a tie between the practical and the visionary. First, these Agrotecture visions came from the Architecture Association of London (via Pruned), such as this airborne vineyard: "The audacious structure, the winery and the vineyard for red wine grapes are connected by a suspended transport network enabling the use of ground space for a public park. With a capacity to produce 10,000 bottles of red wine annually the project re-articulates private and public space blending productive infrastructure with quality areas to Londoners and tourists."


:: image via Pruned

And the tie comes from a radically different type of urban agriculture project, from What If, an architecture collective from the UK with a novel idea: "A formerly inaccessible and run-down plot of housing estate land has been transformed into a beautiful oasis of green. Seventy 1/2 tonne bags of soil have been arranged to form an allotment space. Within their individual plots, local residents are carefully tending a spectacular array of vegetables, salads, fruit and flowers. A new sense of community has emerged."


:: image via What If

3. Best Living Wall
This one is via Balmori Associates for their design for the 'World Mammoth and Permafrost Museum', located in Yakutsk, Siberia. These interior living walls are made up of vegetation from the mosses and lichens that draped the Siberian tundra - and also regulate interior temperature and air quality.


:: image via Balmori Associates

4. Veg.itect of the Year
James Corner of Field Operations... big surprise?... Nope.:)


:: image via Metropolis

5. Best Book
While the new Patrick Blanc book was amazing, and I am constantly turning to Meg Calkins book on Sustainable Materials - my vote for best book of the year goes out to The Public Chance: New Urban Landscapes by a+t architecture publishers which offers solid and graphical analysis from a broad range of projects from around the world. Check it out - it's one that will continue to inspire (and it has since I've wrestled it back from my students from Fall term).




:: images via a+t architecture publishers

6. Best Use of Materials
There were a ton of potential projects to choose from regarding inventive uses of materials, but in review, this project from Foster and Partners for the United Arab Emirates Shanghai Expo Pavilion utilizes patterns of Islamic art and culture as well as playing with color and light... as always - we shall have to see how it comes together in reality.


:: image via Atelier A+D

7. Best Magazine
I am pleasantly surprised to honor Metropolis Magazine with the best magazine of 2008, for a couple of divergent reasons. First, their expanded coverage of landscape architecture projects has been unprecedented, and will hopefully continue in 2009 with thoughtful and insightful features - not just blurbs about a range of projects. Second, the provocative Susan Szenasy's comments on landscape architecture have fueled some healthy and much needed debate internally - which makes us all better.


:: image via Metropolis

8. Best Blog
Spawned on March 09, 2008, Arch Daily seems like one of those blogs that has been around forever - and I'm constantly amazed by the amount and quality of imagery and posts from around the world. Plus this site is perhaps most low-key and informative in the trend towards vegetated architecture - showing built (yes, in the digital flesh) projects to show that yes, it is possible to do this stuff, and do it well.


:: image via Arch Daily

9. Best Project Graphics
Coming via Pruned, this project from Marti Mas Rivera, of Universitat Politecnica De Catalunya, Barcelona, a rainwater harvesting project for the Arabic Fortress Hill of Baza in Andalucia. In the time of wicked computer graphics and the lost art of hand-drawing, these fusion-graphics restored my faith in the beauty of the minimal...




:: images via Pruned

10. Firm/Collective of the Year

My vote goes to a collective of Spanish designers that make up the group Urbanarbolismo - and are constantly producing great and inspiring work around the concepts of veg.itecture, landscape and urbanism - reconnecting the natural to the built environments. Plus, their site can be instantly translated into Spanish for those of us who's bi-lingual skills leave something to be desired.

:: La Torre I-214 refrigerada mediante bosque - image via Urbanarbolismo

11. Best new resource
Land8Lounge is like Facebook for landscape professionals without all the annoying stuff I hate about Facebook. In addition to being a good social networking site, the L8L community provides opportunities for discussions of the profession, the ability to show and see new work, as well as the possibility of getting exposure to the world-wide professional community like never before.


:: images via Land8Lounge

12. New Idea for 2009:
My vote for best new idea of the upcoming year isn't a static technology or implementation, but a re-alignment of design with nature that will illicit a vibrant and change-provoking dialogue for years to come. PHWREE Urbanism was coined by Dave Brown (minusa 'silent or lispy W') to become PHREE Urbanism - which stands for POST HUMANIST REWILDED ECO ETHICAL URBANISM... remember those words...


:: image via Tomorrow's Thoughts Today

Thank you, PVE!

Probably the best part about blogging is the friendships that happen between bloggers. Along the way I've made quite a few friends, but the first was Patricia from PVEdesign. We met while I was in NYC a few months back and toured the Cooper Hewitt museum together to see an exhibit on interior watercolors (read the original post HERE).
Well imagine my surprise when a pretty little package comes my way from...PVE!Such a cute little card with a sketch of a jacket (just like the one I wear to work everyday!)Well, she must be a faithful reader of my blog, because she knew that not only did I LOVE snoopy but I collect kitschy hallmark ornaments. This is especially notable because it's a NYC snoopy -where she and I met!

Here it is on my tree, see, not too late, Patricia!

Thank you so much, Patricia -your thoughtful gift really made my day! Thanks for all the work you put into your blog and for being a great friend! If you haven't already become a faithful reader of her blog, visit her today HERE!

Again, Time to Get High

I'll try to keep my fawning at bay as I post some new info from the High Line (although my obsession is well known)... but sometimes I just can't resist. I recently plugged through some of the recent High Line Blog posts, and particularly appreciate the short lived 'What will grow here?' - which aimed to investigate some of the horticultural aspects of the HL, and I guess was weekly, even though it only lasted a couple of said week in mid-year. A tough call for a horticulturist to sit inside blogging at the height of summer indeed. Some highlights, from Melissa Fischer, the High Line horticulturalist:


:: Eupatorium rugosum (aka White Snakeroot) - image via High Line Blog

The first post discusses a trip to the Greenbelt Native Plant Center - where some of the plantings were being grown for Section 1... "...our exciting challenge will be to see the plants through their transition from ideal nursery conditions to the more rugged micro-climates of the High Line. Thirty feet above the street, the temparature can be up to ten degrees warmer or colder than on the ground, high winds often sweep off the Hudson River, and the sun beats down in some areas while others are fully-shaded by buildings that hug the Line."

"With this in mind, it’s interesting to consider the High Line planting plans, created by designer Piet Oudolf and Field Operations. With their intentional intermixing of species found on the High Line after its abandonment (such as the White Snakeroot pictured at top) and numerous other selections chosen for their bloom time, seed heads, foliar textures, and seasonal color like this Saliva nemerosa ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ the High Line planting scheme is, at once, wild and intentional."


:: Salvia nemerosa 'Rhapsody in Blue' - image via High Line Blog

One interesting phenomenon is the use of the the 'indigenous' vegetation found on the High Line prior to development - which in one of those modern horticultural switcheroos uses plants and seeds collected from the site that are propagated off-site and brought back to the site for final planting. A follow-up post, perfect for those of use with the desire for planting-on-structure techno-nerdiness offers some in-progress construction photos of the waterproofing, drainage mat, gravel substrate, and other rooftop drainage flashing and other structures.




:: images via High Line Blog

Picking these apart a bit, this is pretty typical rooftop layering - providing a solid, well drained base to allow water to dissipate quickly, as well as, in this case, plenty of soil depth for some of the intensive vegetation and grasses that are planned for the final installation. Areas of drainage are wrapped in filter fabric to allow water passage but retain aggregates. Another interesting detail is how the railroad tracks are 'floating' prior to soil installation, which you can see in the next section of photos backfilled to finish grade.


:: image via High Line Blog

Another post from September shows some active planting and highlights the craning of vegetation, on-site layout of plant schemes, and installed vegetation within the cracks of the reinstalled train tracks. I still wonder about the train tracks and why these were put back in place - although there was some great pics of a rail-lounger... which I imagine will be up there somewhere... check these out.






:: images via High Line Blog

And to wrap it up, Tropolism featured some year end photos from Friends of the High Line from their year end newsletter of the current construction - where you can see these horticultural endeavors in action. Tasty.






:: images via Tropolism

Holiday "Cards"

At home we, like most people, put our Xmas and other cards on the bookshelf in our living room. With that in mind I thought I'd display a handful of the "cards" I received via e-mail this season.


ARX Portugal Arquitectos


JDS / Julien de Smedt Architects


Leeser Architecture


Princeton Architectural Press


Super Colossal

Chateau d'Anet

Beautiful picnic, right? but check out the background. The Chateau d'Anet in Normany was originally built for Diane de Poitiers, the mistress to Henri II in the early 16th century as a gift from the king on the land of her former husband's estate. Interestingly enough, she was 20 years his senior, talk about cougars!Her remains were laid to rest in the chapel on the estate after her death in 1566 but were later removed during the revolution. The original grave can be seen below. While the chateau escaped being pilaged and burned during the french revolution, the estate's entire contents were put up for sale. Later, most of the chateau was torn down with interesting pieces being salvaged to be put into the famous Ecole des Beaux-Arts. After World War II these elements were given back to the chateau. the chapel on the estate

The chateau was faithfully restored first in the 1840s by the Comte Adolphe de Caraman and later in the 1860s by Ferdinand Moreau who also began to collect items originally belonging to the chateau. Moreau's family still own and live on the estate but it can be toured. In 1851 it was declared a historical monument. The main dining room, seen in the 2 photos above, is really spectacular. Beautiful paneling with tons of gilding. However, the part of the chateau I really love is in the caretakers 'cottage'. The dining room housed there is less grand, but equally as elegant.
The doors opening to the garden really make the room for me. The paneling isn't bad either!

Even the ceiling is interesting with a polychromed treatment.

I thought the flowers below, gathered from the estate were just icing on the cake. To see more pictures of the estate and also pictures of an event there, please visit New York Social Diary

Visit the official website of the Chateau HERE for visiting times and prices.

Pictures from Classic Entertaining by Henrietta Spencer-Churchill and Flickr.com