Materiality: Plant Knowledge

There has been much discussion lately on the L-ARCH listserv regarding the role and knowledge of landscape architects regarding plants and planting design. (ah, a listserv, how 1997, but i digress). To sum up, there's a persistent theory that Landscape Architecture suffers from a deficiency of plant knowledge. Is this true? Well, I personally know I could stand to know much more about plants and characteristics of plants that I currently do - and plan on continuing learning, and growing for, let's conservatively say, ever.


:: Battery Park City Garden by Piet Oudolf - image via The Battery Conservancy

The issue with planting design, or any other form of landscape specialization, is that it makes you an expert at the expense of other vital skills. Does this diminish planting design? Perhaps... a bit, but the profession, as many point out, requires a high level of generalized knowledge, and aside from focus on a particular project or area of specialization, it is hard to gain depth in this wide swath of topics. Is the basis of our profession plantings, or is it synthesis of ecology, art, and science in the creation of spaces for people, which plantings is one, critical aspect?

This is not to diminish plants, and our need to understand them more and use them better. This goes for all materials, as craft involves an intimate knowledge of the tools at hand. Plants are tough. They go in small, grow, die, get to0 big, evolve, and always, change. There is a tacit assumption that, much like architecture, when it's done you walk away, and maintenance budgets reflect this. How many projects do you know that have future funds for planting, thinning, and changes after final completion?

This should be a challenge, as well as an opportunity. The trend towards Landscape Urbanism and addressing temporal change - acknowledging that there is and will always be change, and establishing fields in which these can evolve and flourish. While still a conceptual framework, it is an interesting approach. Thinking of landscapes not as static objects but as gardens that need to be tended and adjusted - perhaps would create new expectations and much better results.

Another aspect of the discussion is, whether to include a horticulturist and plant expert on a team, in addition to the landscape architect. For specific projects it makes a lot of sense, particularly ones with horticultural complexity. In this regard, a number a recent article 'A Landscape in Winter, Dying Heroically' in the New York Times, profiles the techniques of Piet Oudolf, who is the originator of a gardening style dubbed 'New Wave Planting' which couples ecology and design alongside an appreciation for structure and form.

Aside from his prolific writings, he has collaborated with many high-profile LAs on projects such as the High Line with Field Operations, Millenium Park with Kathryn Gustafson. He has also done extensive work at the Battery Park Gardens in NYC.


:: The High Line - image via Cool Hunting

This knowledge and approach gets the attention of high-profile LAs like James Corner, who is working with Oudolf on the High Line. Quoted from the NYT:

"Most people think in a formal way: if you put A and B with C, it will look like this — but only at a certain moment in time,” said James Corner... one reason he asked Mr. Oudolf to do the project’s planting design is that the way he selects and composes plants “...is thought through not only in terms of summer, but also in terms of winter — all 12 months are interesting.”

The article outlines the concept of death, decay, decomposition (coupled with dormancy) and the full season changes and ebbs and flows of plantings in Oudolf's private garden.






:: images via The New York Times

This aesthetic is counter-intuitive to the Picturesque and Romantic notions of planting design strategies. This is perhaps why Oudolf has caught the attention of more cutting-edge designers, and landscape urbanists, like Corner and Charles Waldheim, both of whom are quoted. Waldheim's reference to Oudolfs abilites to set a new course in planting design, again from the New York Times: "He’s gotten away from the soft pornography of the flower. He’s interested in the life cycle, how plant material ages over the course of the year and how it relates to the plants around it."

Knowledge is a life-long thing. Learning from masters, experimenting, continually learning are all good things. Accepting that landscape architects are not 'plant people' is not. Learn the plants, go to the nursery and arboretum. Take classes. Then you can refine and test, and put forth new approaches and aesthetic sensibilities such as Oudolf mentions in the article: "You accept death. You don’t take the plants out, because they still look good. And brown is also a color.”

Book Series of the Moment

Many book series that try to boil down complex ideas, facts, and knowledge into slim volumes end up calling the reader a beginner, a dummy, or worse, an idiot. Well, the fine folks at Routledge call their audience for these books just what they are: architects; as well as what they're apparently not: thinkers. To remedy this the Thinkers for Architects Series "offers quick, clear and accurate introductions to key thinkers who have written about architecture and whose work can yield insights for designers."

At first blush the series sounds 15 or 30 years late, as the time of basing architectural designs and their rationale on philosophy, critical theory and other esoteric texts pretty much ended when Peter Eisenman put down Derrida and picked up a laptop. Certainly form has reinvigorated much of architectural practice, but in a way that architecture can be seen as a hollow shell of its former self. Ideas in architecture need to go beyond the merely formal and computer-aided, and perhaps these books propose some sort of answer, or at least antidote.



Current titles include Deleuze & Guattari for Architects by Andrew Ballantyne, Heidegger for Architects by Adam Sharr, and Irigaray for Architects by Peg Rawes.

Routledge also is home to the SuperCrit series, "based on live studio debates between protagonists and critics, revisits some of the most influential architectural projects of the recent past and examines their impact on the way we think and design today."


The inclusion of Venturi and Scott Brown's Learning from Las Vegas is an obvious choice, but I was pleasantly surprised to see SuperCrit #1 devoted to Cedric Price's Potteries Thinkbelt, a before-its-time, speculative urban design project that is usually overshadowed by his equally innovative Fun Palace. It makes me curious to see what #3 will feature.

Flux Paroxysm: A Found Poem

Jumping the shark a bit, but here's the first part of the found poem from the SoWa endeavors with David Oates, et. al. - enjoy!:

II. Flux Paroxysm
composers: Jason King and Claire Nail

Giants move
politicos
huddled together,
a tribe
in KKK regalia
rough pioneers, hard men
act out Ahab after vengeance
unhinged by luck
dirty quarrel, barks of laughter
bones will crack
rips of sobbing
gated community.

Hard to keep one’s temper pregnant
fleecing the rich
the storm, the insistent rain
too much rotten air.

All the ways of water:
the river churning
shining in metaled light
hard pressing, air chilling
stung with January.
Is it leaching into you?

A hundred years ago,
I have to stop and remember
a point of escape:
a deer, a bald eagle, an Indian fishing—
this riverfront the slingshot
path skirting a stand of burnt timber.
The map changes, the essence remains.

All the ways of water
funnel through the lobby
centuries of hydrology:
arithmetic and penmanship—
pouring, counting, constant needled rain.

Are there mysteries in Portland?
100 years ago today, fathers slept unaware.
Daughters tiptoed out early, strays of night.
Loping horses, where women now shop for shoes.

Let’s write the book on mystery now: come wild under its power.
Imagine the Banfield one evening rush hour, if we still rode horses,
if we stood up in the saddle and spread our arms.
The West of Imagination,
as free as anywhere Oregon, high boots gleam.

I’ve crossed a hidden river, live with vast infusion,
dripped mist,
through alders and cottonwoods,
the vegetative complexities
shave grass, hills of blackberry vine.

100 years from now, running late again
stale dreams stalled,
snagged, shaven,
chiseled
a fetid cesspool,
sand and gravel.
gutted.
Dire predictions:
all the unborn babies
poured unto the ether pavement.

Rehabilitate the lost;
why not the woodland path?
Live with vast infusion.
Touch the water.
Trace the watery extents.
Take that picture, damn it!

All the ways of water,
falling from darkness,
wishing they’d quit talking
strayed so far,
silenced
the
word
rain.

(2008)

Narrative Infrastructures

[Image: Some examples of work by Imaginary Forces].

For those of you in Los Angeles, 1) consider kidnapping me and driving me back there in a van full of architecture books and coffee, because I can't even believe how much I miss that place, and 2) consider stopping by the Apple Store tonight in Santa Monica to hear Tali Krakowsky, Director of Experience Design at Imaginary Forces, speak about "trends in the fusion of design, technology and architecture."
It's the narrative infrastructure of built space:

Transformations in design thinking, inspired by emerging technologies and a fascination with storytelling, are changing the entertainment, educational, corporate and retail environments of the 21st Century. In her session, Krakowsky will break down interactive environments into their components: re-imagining content in motion, re-imagining media delivery systems, and re-imagining smart, interactive spaces, [to] examine several key projects in terms of process and design methodology.

The talk is tonight at 7pm, and it's located here. Tell Tali I said hey.

Pioneers of Planning

The historical roots of ecological planning and sustainability are varied. Metropolis magazine may not acknowledge the role of landscape architects in sustainability, perhaps this is because no one has specifically outlined a definitive history of ecological landscape architecture and planning. I began some time back to trace some of this lineage, which i will include a later date.

On a similar note, I found that the American Planning Association (APA) had previously (2003) released a list of 25 Individuals Who Influenced Planning before 1978, prepared for the 25th anniversary of the APA. A few notable LA's make this list of 25, along with a bevy of influential urbanists. This is by no means comprehensive, but telling as to the mark that the field has made on planning over the years (most links via Wikipedia):

1. Hippodamus (5th century B.C.)
2. Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806)
3. Pierre L'Enfant (1754-1852)
4. Baron Haussmann (1809-1891)

5. Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903)

:: image via fredericklawolmsted.com
"Frederick Law Olmsted is widely recognized as the founder of American landscape architecture and the nation's foremost parkmaker. His first, most loved, and in many ways his best known work was his design of Central Park in New York City (1858-1876) with his partner Calvert Vaux. But Olmsted would go on to have a significant influence in the way cities and communities are built to incorporate the idea of nature and parks. He was one of the first to espouse the principles of the City Beautiful movement in America and to introduce the idea of suburban development to the American landscape."

6. George Pullman (1831-1897)
7. Camillo Sitte (1843-1903)
8. Daniel Burnham (1846-1912)
9. Jacob August Riis (1849-1914)
10. Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928)
11. Patrick Geddes (1854-1932)

12. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (1870-1957)

:: image via Cornell University
"Arguably the intellectual leader of the American city planning movement in the early twentieth century, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. was a worthy son of a distinguished father. While still an adolescent, "Rick" Olmsted worked and studied under his father before entering Harvard. After graduation in 1894, he entered his father's firm and a year later, as the elder Olmsted's health deteriorated, he and his half­brother took it over under the name Olmsted Brothers. "

13. Clarence Arthur Perry (1872-1944)
14. Alfred Bettman (1873-1945)
15. Clarence Stein (1882–1975)
16. Le Corbusier (1887-1965)
17. Robert Moses (1888-1981)
18. Lewis Mumford (1895-1988)
19. Catherine Bauer (1905-1964)
20. William Levitt (1907-1994)
21. Jane Jacobs (1916-2006)
22. William Whyte (1917-1999)
23. Kevin Lynch (1918-1984)

24. Ian McHarg (1920-2001)

:: image via Wikipedia
"Ian McHarg was one of the true pioneers of the environmental movement... He published his landmark book, Design With Nature, in 1969. In it, McHarg spelled out the need for urban planners to consider an environmentally conscious approach to land use, and provided a new method for evaluating and implementing doing so. Today, Design With Nature is considered one of the landmark publications in the environmental movement, helping make McHarg arguably the most important landscape architect since Frederick Law Olmsted.

25. Paul Davidoff (1930-1984)

The list is diverse, showing the multiple voices that together shape movements such as planning. From ancient philosophers, to housers, writers, theorists, urban legends, and yes, landscape architects - planning, like many disciplines, is the product of genius and hard work in it's many forms.

What Is Green Architecture?

From a press release that landed in my inbox:

WHAT IS GREEN ARCHITECTURE?

A Talk by Jürgen Mayer H.
Lecture + Dialog
02/07/08
7:00pm
Goethe-Institut New York
1014 Fifth Avenue@83rd Street
New York, NY 10028
English
Free admission. No reservations required.
212-439-8700

This lecture and dialog is the first of four planned in the What Is Green Architecture? series, curated by MoMA's Andres Lepik, who also moderates the events. The following three conversations are Matthias Schuler on April 1, Christoph Ingenhoven on May 19, and Matthias Sauerbruch on June 16.

Furthermore, "Inspiration for What Is Green Architecture? stems partly from the forward-thinking desire of the Goethe-Institut New York to transform its landmark Beaux-Arts townhouse on Fifth Avenue into a showcase of sustainable design and interior architecture." These and other programs will influence the "greening" of their home over the next couple years. Sounds like a thoughtful and unique way of designing responsibly and educating the public at the same time.

Veg.itecture: New Additions

A visual tour of some of the latest in Vegetated Architecture. From the wonderful to the integrated to the sophmoric - the ideas are flowing and the concept is here to stay. A few recent projects:

In todays readings, from Archidose, the amazing pioneer of vertical greening, Patrick Blanc is at it again, creating a softly architectonic form for the CaixaForum Madrid in Madrid, Spain by Herzog & de Meuron (2008). Rusted steel panels and vertical green juxtaposed together. One word: stunning.


:: image via Archidose

A new hypergreen tower by Jacques Ferrier shows elevated pockets called 'vegetated sky lobbies' . Again this is one where representation versus realization is a question it provides a compelling building-landscape integration. So good it deserves two shots...




:: images via Green.MNP

A new project, Tuin house, by Reinier de Jong, provides a model of two-story homes are stacked into taller structures - creating vertical suburbs, aimed at providing the amenities of single-family dwellings in high-rise fashion to keep people in more densely populated areas... maybe in Vancouver. While the concept is laudable, the model, which has been floating around for a while, reminds of crappy balsawood models we did in the first year of design studio.


:: image via MoCo Loco

Finally, greening the big box. This prototype Wal-Mart store in Chicago, with gasp! a green roof. I know Wal-Mart is on a kick to 'green' up their image (forgetting the third leg of social equity now and again with its employees...) But, how the heck does Chicago get big-box stores to do this. Maybe something Portland can learn from?


:: image via Jetson Green

Robbie Williams CDs will be used to pave roads in China

EMI has announced that "unsold copies" of Rudebox, by British pop star Robbie Williams, "will soon be used to resurface Chinese roads."
More than a million copies of the CD "will be crushed and sent to the country to be recycled," we read, where they "will be used in street lighting and road surfacing projects."
This reminds me of a house I visited back in September, in Chicago – about which I wrote a short article for the March 2008 issue of Dwell – wherein the owners had pulverized boxes of old vinyl records, added them to a glass aggregate, and used that to surface the floor of their master bathroom. You could actually see tiny, vaguely recognizable pieces of crushed 45s catching sunlight near the toilet... National Geographic also covered the house.
In any case, does all this imply some strange new infrastructural claim to fame?
"You know that CD they used to pave the King's Road?" a man asks you, putting his coffee down as if to emphasize the point. He crosses his arms. "I played bass on that."

(Thanks, Steve!)

Colored Magma

[Image: ©Michael Nagle for The New York Times].

Seeing this photo of the Galapagos Islands, with its strange, almost hand-painted color scheme, like something from an old British postcard, made me wonder if perhaps we might yet discover a way to deep-inject colored dyes into active magma chambers, producing technicolor flows of liquid rock in a million years' time.
Volcanoes will erupt in Chile, forming bright green hillsides, yellow cliffs dotted with blue boulders. A fine pink gravel will wash up and down the steaming beach.
So can we introduce color into underground reservoirs of liquid rock – with the effect that, far after humans have died off, these weird and fantastic displays of dyed geology will arise, poking up beneath eroded soils, revealing themselves in fissures after earthquakes? Colored bulges of bedrock push toward the earth's surface, seeking the sun.
And isn't that exactly what will happen anyway, as mineral belts of industrial waste and plastics compress over time into new stratigraphies? We could pattern future hillsides like Scottish tartans. Like shirts from J. Crew. Like Sol Lewitt: give him a whole magma chamber to play with. Like some vast underground ink-jet cartridge ready to print colored landforms onto the surface of the earth.
Can we dye rock itself?
Unsupervised geological interventions are the future of landscape architecture.
What Ted Turner did for film, we will do for geology: the re-colorization of the planet.

(Photo courtesy of The New York Times).

Today's archidose #174

, originally uploaded by m_granados.

CaixaForum Madrid in Madrid, Spain by Herzog & de Meuron (2008), with a "vertical garden" by Patrick Blanc.

To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:

:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose

Reading List: A Pattern Language

Some books are classics. You read them, you reference them, you let them gather dust on the shelves until one day something jogs your memory and makes them vital again. This, along with other more obsessive reasons, is why I tend to collect design books with never any thought of letting them go. And design books tend to be heavy, sometimes in content, and often in heft.


:: image via Architecture.MNP

No book proves both of these points like Christopher Alexander's tome, 'A Pattern Language'. Written in 1977, this book elucidates a series of broad to specific patterns of development. The recent post by Architecture.MNP linked to a fantastic online version of the pattern language - which seems even more useful when framed in a hypertext format. Building on the strengths of the linking pattern heirarchy, this online tool allows you to access the pattern with paging through the book, even including illustrations. Each one is nested within a larger order of magnitude, and reduced to smaller constituent parts. For instance, Pattern #14: Identifiable Neighborhood, is connected from:

"... the Mosaic Of Subcultures (8) and the Community Of 7000 (12) are made up of neighborhoods. This pattern defines the neighborhoods."

These are further reduced to the parts that:

"...mark the neighborhood, above all, by gateways wherever main paths enter it - Main Gateways (53) - and by modest boundaries of non-residential land between the neighborhoods - Neighborhood Boundary (15). Keep major roads within these boundaries - Parallel Roads (23); give the neighborhood a visible center, perhaps a common or a green - Accessible Green (60)‹or a Small Public Square (61); and arrange houses and workshops within the neighborhood in clusters of about a dozen at a time - House Cluster (37), Work Community (41).... "

The online version allows for simple jumping from point to point, and back, which is a true mark of the successful pattern - context and detail. The site includes illustrations from the book, such as this visual discription of Pattern #4: Agricultural Valleys:


:: image via A Pattern Language

The language is timeless, although the vocabulary may be in need of updating. For instance, usage of the term 'green street' has evolved, and the concept remains, but as seen in Pattern #51 - Green Streets, the definition differs somewhat from our current use:

"There is too much hot hard asphalt in the world. A local road, which only gives access to buildings, needs a few stones for the wheels of the cars; nothing more. Most of it can still be green."


:: image via A Pattern Language

While the original pattern still has merit, the idea of pattern languages is an interesting point-of-departure for any type of analytical undertaking. An example, somewhat dated as well, takes the idea to separate application of the principle, Ecotrust developed their Conservation Economy Pattern Language, the goal to provide a framework for an "...ecologically restorative, socially just, and reliably prosperous society."

More recent, Alexander's new series is a four-volume set entitled The Nature of Order, investigating a broad world-view of architecture in four parts: The Phenomenon of Life, The Process of Creating Life, A Vision of a Living World, and The Luminous Ground. I have yet to check this out, other than a cursory glance at the bookstore, but i imagine they involve some density - and patience to get through, but alas, something as light as understanding the Nature of Order should require a bit of heavy thinking.

Immanent islandry

Two Chilean scientists believe that the world's largest tectonic plate, located beneath the Pacific Ocean, is "tearing apart," and possibly on the verge of cracking in two, New Scientist reports.

[Image: Courtesy of New Scientist].

The northern half of the plate has been drifting west, into the Mariana subduction zone, nearly seven times faster than the westward drift of the southern half, creating a massive linear cramp of tectonic stress that may eventually snap altogether. Indeed, the scientists suggest that "several archipelagos in the south Pacific – running from Samoa to Easter Island – including the Pitcairn and Cook islands, and French Polynesia," are evidence that this "future border," as the scientists call it, has already begun leaking magma, producing tropical island chains.
The seafloor is unzipping, one could say.
So will future archipelagos bloom there, like rocky fruits of the sea – and could we prepare for this? Mapping those islands in advance, even naming them? And might someone yet design a new, sub-oceanic architecture for these and other future spreading zones, awaiting the arrival of new landmasses, slowly explosive islands that don't exist yet? The virtuality of the tectonic.
And, for now, could we arrange a kind of psychonavigation of this future shear zone, some boatbound summer design studio on a yacht, involving martinis, bikinis, salt-bleached beards, and SPF 100, taking echo-locative readings of the Pacific seafloor, determining edges and boundaries for these islands yet to come?
Perhaps there is a whole new version of the earth that remains both immanent and imminent inside the one we currently live on – with all due implications for tomorrow's philosophy. Or geophilosophy, as Deleuze would say, sipping pinot grigio on a boat in the mid-Pacific.

The great nowhere at the edge

I'm back from London now to find the news cycle absolutely abuzz with so many interesting stories that it'll be hard to keep up – but I'll start posting the best of the best in a bit.

[Image: A photo from Jacob Carter's ridiculously gorgeous River Thames Series].

First, though, last week's lecture was a blast; I talked way too fast, of course, bungling several points in the process, but, in the main, I had a great time and can only hope that everyone who came out on a Wednesday night in London – including my father-in-law! – to hear perhaps a bit too much about geology and not enough about offshore structures, or about the colonial politics of naming alien territories, or about urban iterative architecture, had a good time, as well.
The Bartlett may or may not be uploading a film of the lecture at some point, meanwhile; until then, a few notes from the talk can be seen courtesy of Matt Jones and Mark Simpkins. Also, if you attended BLDGBLOG's recent lecture at SCI-Arc then you would have heard a lot of this before – but you would have missed out on instancing gates and billboard houses and the Indonesian mud volcano and China Miéville's "slow sculptures" and what I thought was a really fun Q&A.

[Image: Another one from Jacob Carter's River Thames Series].

So here's a huge thanks to Iain Borden for hosting the lecture, and to Alex Haw, both for setting it up and for introducing me. Expect more from Alex here on BLDGBLOG, by the way, hopefully soon.
Now: back to regular posting...

(Note: The title of this post is a line from London Orbital by Iain Sinclair).

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

Suburban Intervention in Los Angeles, California by Oyler Wu Collaborative.

The updated book feature is The Rise of the Network Society, by Manuel Castells, and Multi-National City: Architectural Itineraries, by Reinhold Martin and Kadambari Baxi.

Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

icon eye
The new page for Icon Magazine, now with daily news during the week and an RSS feed. (updated in sidebar under architectural links::publications)

twobo arquitectura
The blog of Barcelona-based two.bo arquitectura. (in Spanish; added to sidebar under blogs::offices)

J-Architectes
A new blog by a young architect in Tours, France. (in French; added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)

Crevice House

While reading a book devoted to Tadao Ando's houses and housing, I was pleasantly surprised to see an unfamiliar project. In addition to being fresh (to me), it's also in Manhattan. Ando followers are probably familiar with his unbuilt design for a penthouse from about ten years ago, as well as his interior design for Morimoto's home under the High Line, but if this project -- affectionately called the Crevice House, due to its small lot, tall neighbors, and zoning restrictions -- is built it will be Ando's first building in New York City.


[Click image for larger view]

Unfortunately the book does not provide more text or images than the spread above, though I'll be sure to keep my eyes and ears open for more in the future.

Revisit: Olympic Sculpture Park

In light of the recent AIA Honor Award for 2008, some revisit of the fantastic Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle. Designed by internationally renown firm Weiss/Manfredi Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism along with local Seattle Landscape Architect Charles Anderson.

The main theme of the project is a folded Z-shaped pedestrian spine that traverses a significant grade change between the upper portion of the park/urban interface and the lower portion of the park/waterfront interface - also spanning the riverfront roadway below - connecting the park seamlessly from Elliot Bay to adjacent Belltown. This is shown below in a simplistic 'model' of interlocking planes:


:: image via Weiss/Manfredi

This theme provides interesting details, as well as a design parti that permeates both the site, landscape detailing, as well as the architectural forms. The buildings are appropriately designed, but in true Landscape Urbanism fashion, take their forms from the surrounding landscape fabric, not dominating or directing landscape spaces.


:: images via Weiss/Manfredi

I had the chance to visit the park about a year after it was completed, and the following photographs are from this trip. I took note of the specific landscape/built-form interactions, and some of the detailing that bridges and smooths these transitions. (all following photos by author)


:: Waterfront Pathway


:: Wall detailing

The clash of sharp angles provides some dynamism, as well as some particularly difficult details. The following photos illuminate the successes, particularly my favorite space in the park, the slightly offset angular convergence of sloped concrete walls above the roadway.


:: Roadway convergence


:: sloping pathways and spatial merging

As has been mentioned elsewhere, the parks success is less about the art it contains and more about it's contribution to the urban fabric. Thus the art-container transcends the art. In contrast with say, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where the grounds provide a simple field for art placement, here the dynamic space often overshadows some of the lesser art pieces. While the collections will ultimately evolve, this follows other precedents in architecture where the museum becomes better known as a piece of architectural art, rather than as a functional space.

There are a few art-elements of note, in addition to the photogenic and iconic red form of the 'Eagle' by Alexander Calder. The first is shown below, not a consistent favority, but one i liked, is a sun-shade and canopy aptly titled 'Seattle Cloud Cover' by artist Teresita Fernandez, which plays with abstract colors and textures, as a piece in itself, as well as throwing interesting patterns on the ground plane:


:: Seattle Cloud Cover - by artist Teresita Fernandez

A consistent favorite is 'Wake' by Richard Serra, consisting of multiple forms of rusted steel forms evocative of ships and waterforms, tying the installation into the local context. Built as an interactive piece, it evolves based on the viewers point-of-view, although exists with a 'no-touching' policy which is strictly enforced, leaving some of this interactivity unrealized.


:: Wake - by Richard Serra

While primarily an urban park, there are some special moves that allow for pockets of refuge and immersion in nature along the pathways. The Grove, which naturally zig-zags up a hillside triangle, offers a dense planting of aspens along with site-specific artworks spaces along the pathway. This is a counterpoint to the dynamic rigidity to the adjacent areas.


:: a view of the grove - immersion in urban nature

The overal zig-zag concept makes for some stunning detailing, but allows for some difficult spots, particularly where there is a convergence of very sharp acute angles, which either create clunky merging of materials and lines, or allow for pedestrian crossing that degrades vegetation. The uppermost photo shows the difficult merging - and the lower shows the temporary fencing to avoid cross-cutting at waterfront level until vegetation is established.




:: Tapered crossing zones with depleted vegetation

In spite of these minor issues, the OSP is impressive - even more so in person than in the photos here or elsewhere. The combination of setting and strong design concept is powerful and seems to fit the Seattle aesthetic well. The softening of spaces that provide some counterpoint to the overall plan are successful, including adjacent fields of native groundcovers and other low-maintenance materials. The wall and pathway detailing, with a few exceptions, is impeccable, using relatively simple forms but making them vibrant by using them in subtle ways.

For additional information, here is a link to some interactive media about the OSP. Definitely check out the park flora link, as well as the construction slideshows showing in-process photos of various design elements.

Hi, I'm Lise. Buy this phone.

Flipping through a lifestyle magazine in a waiting room last week, I couldn't help but stop my speedy flip through the rag on an ad for Blackberry featuring Asymptote's Lise Anne Couture. While easily more photogenic than co-principal Hani Rashid, nevertheless I was quite shocked to see an architect hawking expensive mobile electronics. I was also surprised that a more well-known architect didn't get the job. But when one pictures the most famous woman architect, Zaha Hadid, it's easy to see the shallow, surface-oriented minds of the advertisers easily making that decision, particularly with the fact that advertising isn't limited to the page these days, but also includes the requisite sound + video.

Bio-diversity

A meditation on plants, picking up on some earlier threads of vegetated abstractions, whether they be sculptural or metaphorical, aesthetic or functional. First is the idea of global warming, and it's impacts on the biological functioning of plants. While often reported as a purely negative or neutral, the shifts of hardiness zone allows for greater biodiversity, but changes the natural makeup of the ecology of regions.

There are potentially some aspects of this that are beneficial, such as the extended growing season, which allows for greater plant functions, such as the uptake of carbon, as well as more vigorous growth (i.e. faster production). While the long-term results are inconclusive, this may be a subtle way of nature trying to balance out some of the man-made global temperature increase and carbon spikes by using it's available means - similar to James Lovelock's idea of the Gaia Hypothesis, in which the earth is a self-regulating organism.


:: image via Treehugger

The origins of trees - both physical and metaphor take on complexity when couple with chaos theory and fractal geometry, investigating the innate form and structure. Similar to biomimicry, and riffing on threads of golden section, drawing trees requires both artistic process as well as a scientific way of looking to parse the specific formal properties. 'Branching', an interesting study on drawing trees, provides a play-by-play of a significant artwork.


:: image via sevensixfive

While trees are but a part of the overall strategies for landscape and urbanism, there are some specific functional aspects that are vital components of design and planning strategies. Two examples show a range of functions of urban vegetation. The first is more holistic, in terms of loss of habitat, is summed up in a reference on Treehugger to the significance of habitat loss, referencing Wikipedia:

"Habitat destruction is a process of land use change in which one habitat-type is removed and replaced with another habitat-type. In the process of land-use change, plants and animals which previously used the site are displaced or destroyed, reducing biodiversity. Urban Sprawl is one cause of habitat destruction. Other important causes of habitat destruction include mining, trawling, and agriculture. Habitat destruction is currently ranked as the most important cause of species extinction worldwide." [emphasis from Treehugger]

:: image via Treehugger

We talk often of urban ecology and providing habitat for particular species of plants and animals that are mutually beneficial to urban dwellers. This often comes at the cost of providing available habitat for more vigorous adapted species that we consider nuiscances. This balance will only shift more as habitat destruction and displacement occurs throughout the world, creating pressure on particularly mobile species to find refuge in our urban zones.

The second aspect involves some more specific potential strategies for mitigation of global warming, by planting and adapting plants for particular qualities that provide higher levels of surface reflectivity, or albedo. Mentioned on various sources, including BLDGBLOG's reference to a recent Guardian article on the subject involves plantings with silver, while, or lighter pigments for increased reflection of suns rays. Studies have shown that switching from darker and more uniformly surfaced plantings to ones with higher surface area (i.e. hairy leaves) and lighter colors can reduce temperatures significantly.


:: image via BLDGBLOG

How these seemingly disparate threads converge in a strategy? A previous post tied together aspects of current plant bioengineering techniques, touching on the good and bad components of these endeavors. As with many science, design, and planning strategies, we tend to look at the individual issues in isolation rather than as an aggregation of potential benefits. Unlike monocultural agriculture, the idea of plant life is one not of isolating and maximizing productivity - but rather it using more of a biodynamic perspective to investigate plants innate synergies with each other, and by default with us. And to not look at plants solely as a solution, but to other possibilities as well. While plants provide multiple functions, other man-made elements are more simplistic, and have possibilities, as BLDGBLOG notes, for some simpler solutions, including "...an architectural side to all this: "Other scientists have suggested different ways to cool the planet [such as] painting roads, roofs and car parks white." Recent trends in cool roofing and green building are steps in this direction.

In this regard we can tie together the following threads into something resembling coherence. First, we look at the responses of nature to man-made situations such as global warming as potential strategies to emulate in coming up with solutions. Second, we take a closer look at nature's patterns and processes at a more specific level - knowing plants, and their characteristics and synergies in new ways, not just as commodities or products of aesthetic appreciation. Third, we balance solutions not as a single goal, but a collective benefit - to humans, to habitat and it's related flora and fauna, and to providing overall solutions, taken FROM nature's processes. Finally, we don't look to science to remake similar mistakes (such as getting rid of conifers, genetically modifying plants for single uses, such as biofuels, and planting monocultures of broad-leaf and high-albedo species) but to find a balance.

Coming full circle, we look at the big picture, examine the components in detail, identify problems and solutions, and provide balanced approaches that are locally and globally beneficial. Kind of like nature does already.

Storefront Books

On January 23, "to reinforce the gallery’s ongoing commitment to generate dialogue and collaboration across geographic, ideological and disciplinary boundaries," the Storefront for Art and Architecture opened a "curated micro-bookshop."

The store is comprised of three sections: books selected by key figures in the Storefront's past and present, an artists' book series published by Centre for Contemporary Art Kitakyushu in Japan, and books and other material related to exhibitions held at the space.



The store is added to my NYC Bookstores post, accessible via the sidebar under "series".

(via Dwell Blog)

Literary Atmospheres

A British novelist has been awarded legal damages in excess of £100,000 because she writes thrillers, not literary masterpieces. What's at fault?
She's been inhaling fumes from a nearby shoe factory.

The author "claimed to have become so intoxicated" by the fumes that "she was reduced to writing thrillers." Indeed, the fumes grew so intense "that she was unable to concentrate on writing her highbrow novel, Cool Wind from the Future, and instead wrote a brutal crime story, Bleedout, which she found easier."
That book went on to sell 10,000 copies.
So there are several unspoken arguments being put forward by her claim. Such as:

1) Literary judgement. Why is one "reduced" to writing crime thrillers? Perhaps Henning Mankell is more interesting than, say, Zadie Smith. This writer thinks so, at least. I.e. me. Perhaps the traumatized British author under discussion here should actually owe money to the shoe factory – a small percentage of her royalties, for instance – or at least an acknowledgment in the book.
2) Environmental causality. Perhaps BLDGBLOG is caused by the fact that I do not inhale fumes from a nearby shoe factory. Perhaps I find it difficult to concentrate on anything but architecture because of my city's aroma... I'd thought it'd been all the coffee.
3) Paranoia. Perhaps you, right now, are inhaling something that prevents you from writing your own Ulysses. Perhaps you are being held back by untraceable smells. Perhaps your life is being quietly reshaped by something you can neither see nor properly talk about, some vast and mysterious influencing machine that manipulates you from the outside. Perhaps that machine is a giant shoe factory.
4) Theft, unauthorized use of services, and/or copyright infringement. Perhaps this woman has been using the shoe factory's fumes without permission. Perhaps, Delphi-like, they have been wafting through the neighborhood for someone else's use, mesmerizing home scribblers into a state approaching hypergraphia. Perhaps there was another writer in the flat next door furiously pounding out thrillers and loving every minute of it. Perhaps this woman had no right to use the fumes in the first place – like taping a film whilst sitting at the cinema. Put the pen down, love. These fumes aren't for you. It's a form of neurochemical shoplifting.
5) Scapegoating. Perhaps you can't finish the novel you started writing last summer because of London. You don't live in London – in fact, you've never been there – but it's distracting you. It's forcing you to write emails to friends, instead. You haven't touched your novel in ages. You should sue London... Or perhaps all those buildings you see everyday are preventing you from being a good architecture critic. It's not your eye for detail – it's the buildings you're forced to write about. Perhaps the streets you take to work each day are not inspiring you to travel abroad and be interesting and do something fun with your life. Perhaps your coworker's cubicle makes you terrible at data entry. Perhaps nothing is your fault at all. Perhaps the color of Manhattan taxi cabs prevents you from writing good music. You're now homeless. You prepare to sue.
6) Aromatherapeutic innovation and/or the future of global perfume. In 2010, Burberry will release a new scent. It will smell like the fumes of British shoe factories. Within days of buying your first bottle you begin to convulse – and write thrillers...

So is your neighborhood causing you to write – or not write – highbrow novels? Can you prove it? Or do you only cook spaghetti because of the sad little street you live on – when, really, you're a gourmet chef...?
What is your city doing to you?

(Thanks, Steve T!)

Baraka

In a post at Blog Like You Give a Damn on Kowloon Walled City -- one of the most amazing self-generating entities I've witnessed via photographs and video -- commenter fred shares a reference to Baraka, a 1992 film by Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson with scenes of the walled city.


[Kowloon Walled City | image source]

The generous stills on this web site include a few images of the physical conglomeration that made up the walled city, illustrating its proximity to the now-demolished-just-like-the-walled-city Kai Tak Airport.


[Kowloon Walled City | image source]

Kowloon Walled City was demolished in 1993 for a number of reasons, so only images such as these are what survive for those, like me, fascinated by the place but never to visit it.


[Kowloon Walled City | image source]

Glancing at some of the other stills on the film's web site, Baraka clearly resembles another non-narrative film devoted to presenting imagery of the world's populations and their respective environments: Koyaanisqatsi.


[Brazil slums | image source]

The first film of Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi trilogy, released ten years before Baraka, looks at "the collision of two different worlds -- urban life and technology versus the environment," according to the filmmakers. Baraka, likewise, "show some of the best, and worse, parts of nature and human life."


[Sao Paulo, Brazil | image source]

Having seen the earlier film and not (yet) the latter, it sounds like the big difference between the two films that share much in common, including the use of time-lapse photography and a minimalist soundtrack, is their outlook: the former pessimistic but the latter a bit more positive.


[Varanasi, India | image source]

One way this assumption can be deduced is the derivative of each title...


[Bhaktapur, Nepal | image source]

Koyaanisqatsi: Hopi Indian term meaning "life out of balance."


[Auschwitz, Poland | image source]

Baraka: Sufi words meaning blessing, essence of life.


[Ta Prohm Temple, Cambodia | image source]

Regardless of Baraka's relatively positive tone, images of the "bad" accompany those of the "good," like a corridor of a concentration camp in Aushwitz shot the same as a ruined temple in Angkor, Cambodia.


[Mecca | image source]

All images above from Baraka.