Design Under Sky

Sacred Groves

2010-07-21T14:54:03Z

[All images above by the Bureau of Architecture, Research, and Design (BOARD). ]

A landscape always exists in an ephemeral state in comparison to most architecture. Much of its makeup often being organic, there is an expiration date unless certain remediations take place to maintain a somewhat original existence. We've discussed ways in which landscape architects might design in accordance with this natural decay, allowing projects to fade away in an intended manner, rather then employing a tireless effort to maintain a certain "pristine" condition.

In a brilliant read by Geoff Manaugh [BLDG BLOG] through CCA, the idea of a "sacred grove" is discussed and what might constitute one. Their organic nature not lasting the tests of time, much of what we think existed can only come from their depictions through poetry, paintings, and as Manaugh mentions, mint. Their intended purpose, or meaning left to the interpretation of the descriptive artwork.

As it was suggested, could it be that a certain grove held sacred was merely a utilitarian construct, planted not as an emotional or religious space but purely for timber production?

[From "Growing A Hidden Architecture" by Christian Kerrigan ]From "Growing A Hidden Architecture" by Christian Kerrigan ]

I've stumbled upon groves in the forest. After trouncing through miles of random tree placement I come upon an orthogonally ordered alignment of mature pine oddly placed in the middle of this natural growth. Clearly man made, this pine grove did possess a certain power. It might of been simply the juxtaposition of arboreal spaces, but the idea that man had long ago used and created this space, regardless of intention, was quite fascinating to me. I let my mind wonder, studying the area in my own form of landscape archeological reconnaissance.

Continuing in the article is a list of potential future sacred groves. One favorite being Christian Kerrigan's "Growing a hidden Architecture," which reminds us of the FabTreeHab, its description:

By controlling the manipulation of refined armatures, calibrating devices and designed corsets,” Kerrigan writes, “the system is capable of controlling the growth of a ship inside the forest. The ship will grow over a period of 200 years and will exist as a hidden architecture inside the trees. The ship growing in the forest is the ship from the ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner,’ a tale of man’s relationship to mortality.” In a particularly fantastic detail, “the artificial system harvests resin from the trees to measure time passing.

Slowly growing to completion, the end of the system within the forest is signalled by the Amber Clock, the resin cycles in the trees keeping time. The armatures alter the geometries of the copse with technologies, which are spliced into the hull of the ship.

[From "Growing A Hidden Architecture" by Christian Kerrigan ]

Please read the CCA post in its entirety here.

Transparency

2010-07-20T13:40:03Z

[Window into the OLM studio]

It might be fair to say that for those unfamiliar with landscape architecture the idea of "what we do" is often obscure, and understandably so, as we've found, many LA's aren't quite sure what they do either.

That's why its so important to create a transparency from the studio to the outside world, to give everyone willing an inclusive look and understanding that design is a process and that landscape is not an afterthought. Better understanding may lead to a greater want, and thus, more work.

Unlike many design shops such as IDEO and Adaptive Path, landscape/architecture studios have been rarely successful in exposing who they are and how they do what they do. Instead so often we get the ubiquitous photo of three or four staff members leaned over a table and drawing "engaged" in the process. Accompanying this might be a descriptive paragraph with words thrown in such as "listening" and "inspiring" but shows little as to how that's done. With easily accessible technology, I think we can be more creative.

These thoughts came after viewing a video by The Office of Lanscape Morphology, a landscape architecture studio in Paris, which simply introduces the cast of staff and shows them in their native habitat, emerged in the process of design. Their site is a bit clunky, but I think the video is a particular fine example of how new media can open studio windows to the public eye.

A Central Central Park West

2010-07-14T20:07:00Z

[Image by Douglas Jamieson / June 23, 2010]

Having spent several years in the LA area, one of my proudest achievements was eventually being somewhat able to navigate the cluster f*ck of traffic and sprawl of its satellite cities. That's not to say I don't love LA, but the city is hard to define exactly where IT rests. After 5pm little (in LA standards) takes places minus the isolated events of Staples, small venue concerts like the Wiltern, or the Disney Concert Hall. The rest of the action is scattered about the 110, 5, and 405 in the towns of the likes of Hollywood, Santa Monica, Venice, etc.

[Image via Rios Clementi Hale Studios]

A quicker then the city could handle boom after WWII sent the city in a spiraling sprawl, and with the addition of poor planning left the city with essentially no core, no public transit, and no parks.

So it is encouraging to see such a focus of urban development taking place in what might the most challenging city to do it in, but I might also add with the most opportunity. We wrote last week about the Wilmington Park under construction, and this week highlight even a grander attempt at unifying the city core, the downtown Civic Park project.

A $56-million endeavor, Rios Clementi Hale Studios were given the task to bring life into the concept, which construction crews have begun working this week on the sloping site between the Music Center and City Hall. RCHS's theme was derived from the Goode homolosine projection, a cartographer's 1923 solution for showing the curved lines of the earth's surface on a flat space.

As Rios explains them, the paths, whose curving lines recall those of a Goode map of the globe, emerged from an effort to think broadly about the remarkably diverse population the park is meant to serve. (As he likes to point out, an astonishing 92 languages are spoken by students in the Los Angeles Unified School District.) As a design gesture, the new paths turn those ideas about Los Angeles and its role as a global city into an organizing principle, at least abstractly, for the park and how visitors will move through it. Rios and other designers in the firm also studied maps and diagrams showing plane trips across the globe as well as various car and sea routes.

[Image via Rios Clementi Hale Studios]

An exciting possibility of the park is in its potential partnership with the Music Center, which would take over management of the park, bringing possibly world-renown musicians to an open downtown forum.

Naturally it wouldn't be LA without the designers having to juggle different political and economic interests along with the dizzying array of parking garages and concrete ramps, but we're excited to see local firm taking on the challenge, and look forward to its hopeful fruition.

Built High, without the Line

2010-07-07T15:42:27Z

[Aerial view of the park in construction]

The High Line is cool, a representation of what is more to come in park development. It brought a lot of attention to landscape architecture which I like, but must every elevated project be referred to as the "High Line of the [fill in the geographic location]? Or for that matter parks of the west being referred to their eastern counter parts (i.e. The Great Park as the Central Park of the west).

Given the climate, far greater flora/fauna opportunities, and cities such as LA with a dearth of proper parks and integrated green infrastructure, I foresee the west becoming a hotbed of landscape architecture, in addition to the east of course.

[Rendering of the "Great Lawn."

The port city of Wilmington’s version, for now known as the Harry Bridges Boulevard Buffer, neither extends along an abandoned railroad nor is it particularly narrow like New York’s prototype. Instead, it consists of a 30-acre, nine-block-wide stretch of sloping land that separates the busy Port of Wilmington from a residential neighborhood to the north. The $55 million project is well underway and set to be completed by next summer.

Designed by Sasaki Associates and under construction, the park forms a barrier from the port, established after public outcry from the port's extension, the original plan. HBBB get's its reference to the High Line from the elevated sound wall sloping the park to the east and separating it from the street. The park will include tree groves, open lawns, pavilions, fountains, and an amphitheater. To break up the mass and ease circulation, the berm will have several openings connected via pedestrian bridges. One bridge, a steel span structure designed by Arup, will be the centerpiece of the design.

+ Via Archpaper

The Last Frontier

2010-06-23T18:00:45Z

[Mendenhall Glacier, Juneau, AK]

June has always been a tough month for me to post, to be honest, given the weather, I'd rather be in the landscape then writing about it. I've been frequently taking several mile hikes deep in the woods, often trying to visualize how it existed before man. I also spent some time in and around Juneau Alaska, kayaking Auke Bay and becoming acquainted with Mendenhall Glacier. A beautiful part of the US but certainly not a land for the faint of heart.

Hope to get a few posts up shortly, thanks for sticking around.

AEA

The Best Symbol of Peace Might Better Be the Garden than the Dove

2010-05-19T15:48:48Z

Coming across a project entitled "The Vegetable Garden House" from the Italian collective in the 1970's calling themselves"Group 9999," the concept and ideals of the garden are manifested in a way that beholds it as a religious icon, or an altar, maybe.

Our project must be understood, therefore, as the model of a real object, which must find its place in the home. It is an eco-survival device, to be reproduced on a global scale. It is itself a habitable and consumable place in accordance with the principles of the recycling of resources. Intentionally, it makes use of very simple elements: a garden, water and an air bed.

[through this project] Man is in direct contact with nature: he follows its growth and development; [...]. He establishes a symbiotic relationship.

[...] If technology keeps on destroying nature, the possibility of having contact with the vegetable kingdom in its integral cycle will assume even greater significance. The vegetable garden will become the sacred place of a new religion.

Essentially what they are describing is the role many landscape architects have played for decades. The garden as a retreat from the "horrors" of urban plight. But perhaps a bit of a pessimistic outlook, as the only sanctuary in the future to experience "nature" within the city and even beyond would be personalised gardens.

While portrayed as a radical notion, Garrett Eckbo, Thomas Church, and James Rose among others were already expanding the idea of the garden, and blurring the lines of interior/exterior space. And one of the most important intentions of landscape architecture, is to bring what Group 9999 discusses as man's inherent mental and physical need for nature to the city confines. We should not have to choose between life in the city or the countryside: both are essential, but today it is nature, beleaguered in the country, too scarce in the city that has become precious.

Originally directed to me through @ethel_baraona

Weeds

2010-05-12T15:14:06Z

[A Picturesque landscape garden by Thomas Hearne, 1795] Recently reading David Gissen's Subnature, in which a small chapter discusses the social and architectural attributes of weeds, we began to think of what it is to be a weed, which in our own socially defined context, is simply a plant out of place, a human construct, a defect of our perception, and what is its potential function in landscape architecture.

Weeds are often synonymous with "nature." When we see a space left unmanicured and taken over by weeds we refer to it as nature, or wildness taking over. When unintentional seen as a nuisance, but in "nature" a part of the natural system. A nostalgia for wilderness comes easy once it no longer poses a threat. And in the 19th century romanticism of the natural began when the English countryside had been so thoroughly dominated, every acre cleared of trees and bisected by hedgerows, that the idea of a wild landscape acquired a strong appeal, perhaps for the first time in European history.

The weed gives the likes of Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau and generations of American naturalists with a favorite trope—for unfettered wildness, for the beauty of the unimproved landscape, and of course, when in quotes, for the ignorance of those fellow countrymen who fail to perceive nature as acutely and sympathetically as they do.

But are weeds as wild as we think they are? It would seem that the weed, in actuality has evolved in a way in which it benefits the most from the land in which man has already disturbed. In his plowed gardens, in the cracks of sidewalks, in any area intended for a cultivated plant, lies the preferred habitats for weeds.

Frank Lloyd Wright once wrote:

The wielder of the hoe would wonder why weeds couldn't be studied, possibilities found and then possibly cultivated. The "crop" eliminated....Tobacco was a weed once....And tomatoes were once thought by Europeans to be poison....Nearly everything was a weed once upon a time....What vitality these weeds had! Pulsey for instance, Chess (velvet weed), Pigweed....Would the weeds become feeble, if they were cultivated, and "crops" become as vigorous as "weeds" if able to flourish on their own? What of such science and art?

Wright is speaking of this notion of the weed as a human construct, and in fact many of the plants we consider wild weeds today are not actually "wild" but non-native species brought by the first settlers.

Its hard to think of it, but the Indians lived so lightly on the land, that there were few man "improved" areas for weed species to flourish. Many of the weeds we know of today were brought over deliberately: the colonists prized dandelion as a salad green, and used plantain (which is millet) to make bread. The seeds of other weeds, though, came by accident—in forage, in the earth used as shipboard ballast, even in pant cuffs and cracked boot soles.

If you consider the spread of weeds as an artifact of man, then it challenges their presumptuous role as a natural phenomenon, or in urban settings, as reverting back to nature.

What if we were to reverse the roles of certain weeds and plants? Like Wright mentioned, would the plants we so diligently hold dominion over flourish like weeds, and certain weeds act as cultivated plants? What if rather then discerning between weed or plant we designed to allow for a flexible, "natural" takeover of spaces?

[Image by R&Sie(n), Paris, 2008-2009 / I'm Lost In Paris, view of the ferns around the house.]

As found in Subnature, and discussed on UrbanTick, the experimental architecture studio R&Sie(n) questions the way nature and molecular nature of cities interact. Stating: "Nature is unpredictable so that it cannot be easily domesticated." But I might add, if nature was to be somehow isolated from man, then its processes in a whole system sense would be rather predictable. Its unpredictability only shown with our intentions of it as a datum.

In the case of the housing project I’m Lost in Paris, the principle is clear: ferns will grow up thanks to the installation of hydroponic system that will feed them. The house will probably disappear and provoke fear to the neighbors.

This house functions as the principle of plants: it is unpredictable, if not to say, self-organizational. It aims at demonstrating that building as well as plants is capable of being changed in response to local or global stresses.

[City on Fire/City in Bloom, by West 8, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 2007]

In another landscape project, West 8 transforms potted flowers into something containing weedlike images. In a memorial to the bombing of Rotterdam West 8 designed a image of flames out of flowers appearing to consume its surroundings.

In these works, R&Sie(n), and West 8 celebrate the idea of plants as colonizers of space, as unwanted and out of place, in other words, as the "weed," discovering ways to use architecture to bring plants into forms in which they might not belong.

Global Islands Database

2010-05-11T14:13:11Z

[Screenshot of the GID mapping protected areas and islands]

The Global Island Database aims to enhance the participation and role of islands in international decision-making through identifying and bringing together existing sources of data and information relevant to island systems, and presenting new analyses to aid resource managers and decision-making at the island, national, regional, and global level.

The GID also aims to develop linkages, partnerships and collaborations with the wide array of organisations involved in island conservation and decision-making to ensure that the database is up-to-date and relevant, and so it provides a platform for communication and networking.

The GID quickly allows you to map things such as sea turtle migrations, the islands themselves, protected areas, diseased/healthy coral regions, etc. A beautiful mapping effort that allows us to view so many interacting environmental events.

Safe Trestles Finalists Announced

2010-05-10T14:01:04Z

[Image by kola+kle]

The somewhat controversial competition to provide safe access to the legendary surf spot Trestles beach has come to a close with the announcement of five finalists. As predicted, the winning entry solutions range from the architectural to the ecologically focused. But overall, we were impressed with the entries. Here are the five selected finalists:

Easy*Safe*Dry [pic above]

By: kola+kle

The shortest distance between two points is a line. This entry uses this approach to create a simplified solution for beach access. The elevated wood walk and direct shot to the beach is low impact and wetland friendly, I think this entry fails to address the unique 'experience' of the beach journey that is so important to the local surf scene.

[Image by Joshua Beck, Tom Reiner] The Wave 7012

By Joshua Beck, Tom Reiner

The Wave is a beautifully drawn structure intended to be seamlessly integrated into the landscape. Another strong architectural design that compliments the landscape by not disrupting it. The flow of the form adds visual interest to the beach journey.

[Image by E. Tsirintani, G. García, J. Gamboa and M.P. Seixas] Unveiling the Natural

By E. Tsirintani, G. García, J. Gamboa and M.P. Seixas

This entry aims to "not hide the reality of the place, but it only wants to face it through a lineal natural form tool." Another wood structure that is more intensely focused on integrating into the landscape. Vertical wood extentions from the walk orient views.

[Image by Murphy Burnham & Buttrick Architects] The Natural Scheme

By Murphy Burnham & Buttrick Architects

Not quite as glamorous in imagery, The Natural Scheme entry however presents one of the more applicable solutions, and one that addressed local surfer's concerns about the project. The entry, coming from Architects, is heavily plant focused.

[Image by Ken Smith Landscape Architect]

The Long Trail

By Ken Smith Landscape Architect

If this project were to ever be built, this might be the most viable solution. Ken Smith uses existing desire lines to influence paths and evenly considers and addresses the issues influencing the project.

See all the competition and winning entry details at the Safe Trestles Competition site.

Additions to the Kindred Crowd

2010-05-03T13:23:38Z

I've recently updated my blogroll with some fantastic new reads I've been following. Most of them with one foot in the landscape realm, and the other in various peripheral reaches. I'd recommend adding all of these to your RSS feed to expand your idea of how the landscape affects our world in so many different ways:

Edible Geography

Authored by Nicola Twilley, longtime contributor to BLDG BLOG and wife to its author, Geoff Manaugh, Edible Geography tailors the common thread between food, landscape, architecture, geography, planning, and urbanism, among others. With titles such as Cupcake Gentrification, Cow Tunnels, and The Towns that Chocolate Built, Twilley reveals the extents to which food affects our infrastructure and cities.

Friends of the Pleistocene

FOP is a project of Smudge, a collaboration between Elizabeth Ellsworth and Jamie Kruse. Described as a dedication to exploring the conjuncture between landscape and contemporary human activity at sites shaped by the geologic epoch of the Pleistocene (2.588 million to 10000 years BP). Posts such as Subterranean Imagination and the Aesthetics of Nuclear Voids and The Desertification of New York City often draw massive scale depictions of earth processes and their relation to human activities.

Pathological Geomorphology

Or what I like to call landform porn, this posterous blog is a contribution by a makeup of several Geopathologists describing itself as "images of extreme landscapes, landforms and processes." Flocked full of various river delta satellite imagery from around the globe, the site is a beautiful resource for studying the earth's greatest sculptor, water, in action.

Quiet Babylon

Quiet Babylon asks you to take a look if you like "cyborgs, or architecture, or thoughtful futurism" (which we do) and "about sifting through the debris of the past and present to try to answer “What comes next?” Written by Tim Maly, we've found The Architects and Cyborgs series and Woven Spaces particularly fascinating.

polis

A spinoff of Where, polis is a collaborative blog on urbanism with a global focus. It is a space for our regular contributors and readers to share ideas and information about anything and everything urban from multiple lenses. We've enjoyed reading Cities for Children and the Public Parks in Moscow series, which provides an alternate view of Moscow, often viewed as a stark and bleak environment, and 96 parks, 18 public gardens, and 100 square kilometers of forest existing in and around the city.

Below are a few other mentionable blogs, some younger then others, but worth keeping an eye on as they develop:

Plan and Section

What Were the Skies Like

Landscape Invocation