LU Top 8: Recap 2007

While this blog has not been around long enough to warrant a year-end (or month-end) recap, I did spend some time sifting through the list of blogs and assorted sites that I look at regularly, and found some great stuff. While there are good sites that touch on landscape issues, like BLDGBLOG, Pruned and others... I want to position the content on this site to encompass the transitional space between building and landscape, while being able to occupy the margins of both areas of inquiry. See the constantly expanding sidebar to get a feel for the types of source material that I am drawing from.

This is a quick recap of the best of 2007 I encountered...

1. Pure Geography - from the October '07 blog Pruned, the residential development of Punta Pite, near Santiago, Chile, which was showcased in the August 2007 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine - and the cliffside trail system leading to the was skillfully designed by the Chilean firm Teresa Moller & Associados.


:: image via Pruned

2. Under construction photos of the California Academy of Sciences Building in San Francisco by Renzo Piano and the wonderfully organic and undulating green roof. I have yet to find out whom is responsibe for the green roof, but will do so asap.

:: image via Archidose

3. Tattoo House by Andrew Maynard Architects. As profiled in Architecture.MNP this architectural abstraction of vegetation teeters on the edge of kitsch without falling - making it a daring and quite simply stunning use of natural form to articulate a facade.


:: image via Architecture.MNP

4. The virtual mind-trick played by City-Shrinker using simple camera manipulation of the depth of field and color, creating a diorama-like effect that turns real spaces into virtual models.


:: image via Architecture.MNP

5. Agricultural rehabilitation via BLDGBLOG, featuring the work by Front Studio's creation of Farmadelphia. Using agricultural landscapes as ways to reclaim unused and blighted urban spaces.


:: image via BLDGBLOG

6. West 8's competition-winning entry for Governor's Island in New York City. See all of the entries (including Field Operations, Hargreaves, WRT, MDP - and some architects you may have heard of at the site: The Park at the Center of the World.


:: image via Treehugger

7. The consistently good work of Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture in the Bay Area. A overview of some of her work was posted on Atelier A+D, as well as showing up in many design mags throughout the year. Ahhh.


:: Pacific Heights Residence image via http://www.acochran.com/

8. Lastly, my newfound love of blogs and blogging (refer to sidebar for my current and growing list of readings) - I was a skeptic for years, passing blogging off as self-indulgent, mindless, crap. But no more... and it allows me to satisfy my sometimes insatiable craving for input, and gives me something productive (I guess) to do with it! Overall, I'm a little disappointed in the lack of good landscape blogs (Pruned has been slow of late) - and thus the desire to ramp up my content... Anyone knows of sites i'm missing, let me know.