Peril of the Forgotten

One of the most amazing and sad sights from my trip last year to Detroit was a swing 'round the disheveled and crumbling Michigan Central Depot, a massive train station built by the same architects responsible for NYC's iconic Grand Central Station. With it's monumental scale and litany of busted out windows, our group was both wowed and amazed by the fate of such a historic resource in the City. While the City Council recently voted to demolish the building, a movement to save and reuse the structure was pointed out in a recent post by the Infrastructurist which is definitely worth a read.


:: images via The Infrastructurist

Time for some of the historic preservationists to get moving on this one, as it'd be a shame for this to be gone the next time I'm in Detroit. Just imagine what it could be... or we shall just forget that it ever was?




:: images via The Infrastructurist

Alt/Urbs

A kind commenter directed me to the site Alt/Urbs. An online journal billed as 'an electronic potlatch', the site is open for submissions of unpublished work related to 'alternative urbanization, design, and radical urban geography'. It's an interesting usage of the term 'potlach' to describe the process - but overall the idea is good... and some of the minimal content so far is interesting. One significant piece of scholarship is related to urban farming...


:: image via Alt/Urbs

... and a more visual exploration via multiple posts called Diagramming (U)topophillia, which "...has searched for the place of ‘utopia’ in relation to cyberspace, the public commercial centre, and the private home/work place. Currently, it appears as if the ‘souk’ is the last form of ‘public’ space. Cyberspace, on the other hand, represents a metaphoric free zone of nothingness that takes a likeness to general utopian theory."


:: images via Alt/Urbs

From the site: "What we’d like to see: articles, case studies, book reviews, research, design projects or any other data on alternative urbanisms. The subject matter and extent of your effort can vary depending on your agenda, whether it is a short paragraph and images, or an extensive focus on particular subject matter, (i.e. social issues, geographies, ecologies, built environments, utopias, anarchies, etc.) The intent is to disseminate information on different, or uncommon types of living throughout history."

It will be interesting to see how popular this model becomes as a forum for work - particularly as the site expands and is more known... and definitely interesting to see is a coherent and readable narrative comes out of an open and minimally guided call for contributions. One of those ideas that make the new modes of communication very interesting. Looking forward to seeing more, and if you have something to contribute, additional information on submittal requirements is available on the site.

North Dakota - Mobile Chaplet

It is not too often that North Dakota architecture gets the nod from Some recent coverage from Bustler featured one of the 2009 AIA Small Projects Awards for the 'Mobile Chaplet' by Moorhead & Moorhead.


:: image via Bustler

"Mobile Chaplet is one of six portable spaces for reflection commissioned to travel to rural communities around the state of North Dakota as part of the Roberts Street Chaplet Project. The conceptual starting points for Mobile Chaplet were the covered wagons that transported settlers to the Midwest. The final pattern consists of two vaulted forms, one nested inside the other. Constructed on a trailer bed, the vaulted canopy is composed of over 200 thirty-foot long thermoplastic composite rods. A bench floats above the trailer bed supported by the rods, which also act as a backrest for the bench."

The idea of a form on the flat prairie is very apt for North Dakota, where the grandness of forms can be more restrained - a subtlety that is very appropriate to context. Also, the concept of a chaplet has an interesting dual meaning (and I could make a case that this weaves into both sides)... particularly in the idea of prayer beads which "....are considered "personal devotionals," and there is no set form and therefore they vary considerably. While the usual five decade rosary may be referred to as a chaplet, often chaplets have fewer beads than a traditional rosary and a different set of prayer" juxtaposed with the idea of a metal support "...used in casting to support the core of a mold. A chaplet is incorporated with the part being cast and so is generally made of materials that has higher melting point than the liquidified casting metal."

Horizontal v. Vertical Farming

As a continuation of a common recent theme, Treehugger offers some additional questions, as well as a really cool example of a horizontal farm - The Zuidkas, by Architectenbureau Paul de Ruiter from the Netherlands. The post makes the case for horizontal vs. vertical farming as perhaps a more realistic opportunity for integrated urban agriculture. Using rooftop greenhouses, along with captured waste heat from buildings, shortening the distance from food to fork and incorporating mixed use into the buildings.




:: images via Treehugger

This decentralized method seems to make sense, although it'd be interesting to see if you could actually grow enough food to sustain the residents of the building using just the available rooftop area. Thus the hybrid between terrestrial farms and intensive vertical farms in one location may be hundreds and thousands of these interventions... and the good thing, the concept, albeit stylized here, could be pragmatically retrofitted to buildings (in the Zabar's model from NYC).




:: images via Treehugger

Some info about the interesting opportunities for closed loop systems that use building inputs and outputs: "The design includes a glass shell that covers the configuration of the ground level and naves, creating a variety of climate buffers, that will work as an intermediate zone that naturally tempers the effects of the outside climate. The shell surrounding the building strongly reduces the surface area responsible for the loss of heat during the winter and cold during the summer. The buffer area facing south functions as a sun lounge for the homes. Thanks to the buffer effect, the loss of heat in the winter is reduced. In the summer, the sun lounge cools the adjacent areas thanks to the stack effect. In this process, fresh air is sucked in and constantly circulated. It will be possible to open the exterior shell, to prevent the area behind the shell from becoming too hot."



Some more images from the De Zuidkas site, along with additional information.






:: images via De Zuidkas

I'm not saying this is a panacea as well - just a good looking and functionally viable of the concept in theory. The point is not to say that vertical farms don't have merit, but I like the well-rounded discussion of urban agriculture that includes full buildings, rooftops, walls, vacant lots, backyards, community gardens - the entire fabric. Feeding people in urban areas, and reducing the distance from food to fork requires integrated planning, design, and implementation. Let's keep that conversation going...!

Escape to Book Mountain

As a self-professed bibliophile... I was excited by the recent visuals fo MVRDV's Book Mountain - the coolest library I've seen since the Seattle Public Library by Koolhaas . Check out more from World Architecture News, with some description of how the project "...will feature the literal translation of 'a mountain of reading' by creating a transparent layer around the book stacking system. With a surface of 10,000 m² the library will use a glass membrane, referred to as the 'bell jar', to make a feature of the contents creating an evolving picture from the outside when books are borrowed, replaced and moved."




:: images via WAN

Experiment in Urban Chickens

I've posted before about the preponderance of urban chickens (especially in Portland) - and I just had to share the plans we have for our deluxe urban eco-coop in the back yard... (now if I could just register for LEED with this... :) I'll post some progress pics as is goes together... for now some Sketchup.










:: images via L+U

While Sketchup is great for visualization, it was actually a great exercise to build this - every stick is accounted for, and generate a materials list - definitely a good way to try out the design and some of the framing, materials, and color beforehand... as well as the spatial arrangement for the chicken abode.






:: images via L+U

Bad Idea of the Week

This one from Treehugger made me question what the actual point of this exercise was in the grand scheme of landscape and furnishings... "Michel Bussien has designed a new way to help you get up close and personal with nature--by turning it into furniture. The "Growing Chair" shown is a sharply designed mold that allows you to turn greenery into a chic seat."


:: image via Treehugger

There's an interesting history of integrated furnishings and literally bending plants to our will to create structures and furnishings. This seems like torture for the plants to fill the lucite containers, offering nothing good for the plant and little for us in these clear prisons of furnishings. Maybe you can read more from Treehugger and the designer and decide for yourself how you feel. I'm not buying it..


:: image via Treehugger

Pringle Creek + the Gravel Verge

Building on some recent posts on the SEA streets in Seattle, and Crown Street in Vancouver, BC, a few images of Pringle Creek - the uber sustainable community in Salem, Oregon. A significant feature is the use of the gravel verges - popularized by Patrick Condon these curbless sections allow infiltration on the edges of streets, as well as reducing construction costs.


:: Site Plan - image via Jetson Green

From their site: "Pringle Creek Community in Salem has one of the largest installations of pervious asphalt in the country. The green streets are narrower than conventional streets, using less materials to build and calming traffic. They have no curbs, which reduces construction costs and allows vegetated swales to capture, absorb and clean stormwater runoff."


:: image via GreenWorks


:: image via Pringle Creek

The use of permeable asphalt and curb bulb-outs is sort of a belt and suspenders approach, but together creates a very unique environment and aids in traffic calming and the ability to manage greater amounts of stormwater runoff (and look, sidewalks!) It will be interesting to see how the permeability holds up during construction of the houses, which is slowly happening over time... slowly.




:: images via GreenWorks

Another aspect of the community was the ability to route roadways, and limit impacts to existing large trees, giving a feel of a much more established community. And the rain gardens are waiting patiently for new residents to enjoy them.




:: images via GreenWorks

It's definitely telling to see the interface with the porous and non-porous surfaces, here at one of the site entries. Also a quick video showing the performance of the permeable asphalt pavement. (both via the Pringle Creek Blog)


:: image via Pringle Creek Blog

DeWinging: Dragonfly

Ok, let me start off by saying I'm a big fan of wildly speculative work that pushes the boundaries of thought and expands the thinking of our urban spaces and landscapes. That said, I'm started to chafe at the preponderance of overwrought schemes flown about under the guise of skyscraper or vertical farming (previously discussed here, here, and here). It seems as a fashion du jour, anything goes both stylistically and fantastically, and has recently spawned a new species - the Dragonfly - by Vincent Callebaut Architects which if you've been hibernating, or out working in the garden like myself, you've spotted on no fewer than a dozen blogs in the last couple of weeks. So here's my half-hearted rant against the inevitable (given with a grain of salt, or maybe a sprinkle of slow-release organic fertilizer).


:: image via Inhabitat

Ok, maybe it's not fair, but I despise this building... for starters, it's ugly as hell (even for a future new york). Second, it's derivative biomimicry hidden behind flashy graphics and some equally derivative text: Some of the derivation, via Arch Daily: "The metal and glass wings, directly inspired by the exoskeleton of a dragonfly, house the plant and animal farms. Due to the appropriate sun and wind conditions within these wings, proper soil nutrient levels can be achieved to maximize plant growth. Exterior vertical gardens filter rain water, and once that water is mixed with domestic liquid waste, both are treated organically in order to be reused for farming needs."


:: image via Inhabitat

The building is essentially sci-fi, so is specifically framed as a futuristic technology that I guess the world isn't quite ready for. Materially, it's got some cool imagery, specifically the derivatives from Dragonfly biology - although I'm not quite sure how this particular insect is the optimal housing for


:: image via Clean Air Through Green Roofs




:: images via Arch Daily

I think it's best put on Inhabitat, as a utopian superstructure, which as I mentioned is fine fodder for the vision, but needs a bit of grounding in some form of reality. So there is some valid research that proves, in theory, that the foundations of vertical farming are solid. It seems, to pardon the puns, that we continue to look for a chicken prior to the egg, and firmly put the cart before the horse in the visualization of schemes with little reality to back them up. One good example of this technology in action, even a somewhat homely and utilitarian one, to prove the technology and cost-effectiveness is all I'm asking for.

In response to the Dragonfly and many of the other over-glamourized examples, I offer some reality (let's call it literally grounded) from Vulgare, by artist Helmut Dick, for an installation entitled 'Lettuce Field as Big as a Skyscraper Building': "10,000 lettuces were grown right beside a sky scraper, on a 1200m² field which is as big as the façade of the building. After a growing period of 5 weeks the salad heads were ready for harvest. These were given to the local inhabitants during the one week harvest period." Call it the anti-vertical farm...




:: images via Vulgare

It's a Quantity Thing...

It's interesting to see the yardstick in which trends are measured... in the case of green roofs, it's pretty easy to add up square footage and declare a winner. A recent post on Land8Lounge showed the annual sizing up of metropolitan areas in North America... and impressive listing for sure with a total of over 3 million square feet installed in one year.


:: image via Land8Lounge

Top Ten Metropolitan Area – Green Roof Square Footage Installed, 2008
City, State - Square Footage (source: Green Roofs for Healthy Cities)

:: Chicago, Illinois - 534,507
:: Washington D.C. - 501,042
:: New York, New York - 358,986
:: Vancouver, British Columbia - 320,000
:: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - 196,820
:: Baltimore, Maryland - 150,032
:: Montreal, Quebec - 75,700
:: Grand Rapids, Michigan - 74,784
:: Princeton, New Jersey - 56,250
:: Newtown Square, Pennsylvania - 48,130

Now I'm pretty sure that Portland had more than 10th place Newtown Square, with a bit over an acre... so curious to see who dropped the ball at the City of Portland on this reporting. Not that it matters, in size war, Portland will never be the leader for square footage, with our minimalist 200' square blocks and our smaller economy - but with the rapid growth and bountiful incentives, it's actually somewhat embarrassing to see the city absent from this list. I'll do some digging and see where we did end up in the 2008 tally.

Illustrating the Urban Condition

From a representational point-of-view, it is interesting to see some of the ways in which representation plays a vital role in communication. I'll inevitably revisit this some more, as it's a topic worth exploring, but these examples span the photographic to the planimetric, while encapsulating a wide range of messages. To begin, it's always interesting to see the popularity of documenting the urban conditions ala Alex Maclean - through semi-oblique aerial photography. His work stands on it's own, as well as illustrating some great books like 'Drosscape' and 'Reclaiming the American West' and the idea of this form shows up often as a method for exploration of the territory between eye level and satellite aerial...

:: Honolulu Area - photography by Alex Maclean - image via anArchitecture

This method is become more popular - with a plane rental and some good camera work being the necessary ingredients... often more informational than artistic - this method offers an additional view of the world that provides something lacking in the true plan-representational aerial that is useful in planning. This is found in many sources, including amongst others, the views of the LA River in The Infrastructural City, as well as another great urban typology - that of 'A Vocabulary of Sprawl' from The Infrastructurist.


:: Ground Cover - image via The Infrastructurist

:: The Alligator - image via The Infrastructurist

The traditional aerial photograph is still a great tool for many uses - either as a base map or a deeper analysis of land use. The accessibility of google earth and other high-resolution, easy to navigate sources is still used daily in our practice - and a hell of a lot easier than going to get blueprints of the mylars down at the city offices... A great example from Emergent Urbanism shows the figure-ground and 'wasted' space in our American gridded cartesian landscape: "Notice how much negative space is created by the imposition of the grid on a chaotic reality. The simplicity of the cartesian plan is deceptive. It generates complications as the random process of change unfolds."

:: image via Emergent Urbanism

The ability to utilize a temporal series of traditional aerial photographs, such as this view of Las Vegas over the past 25 years (via Archidose)... offers another added value of the urban form and growth (or sprawl in this case)... ""These images of the western portion of the Las Vegas metropolitan area show the city’s steady spread into the adjacent desert landscape. Undeveloped land appears along the left edges of the top two images. Here, the land on the city’s outskirts appears in shades of beige and tan, with just a hint of the street grid to come. By 1989, however, development filled the upper left corner—a residential area, complete with curving roads and semicircle streets. In subsequent images, development spreads southward, and by 2004, the entire image shows cityscape, including Interstate 215 passing through southwestern portion of the city."

:: image via Archidose

The plan offers a somewhat quantifiable planning tool, as seen in the installation 49 Cities by Work AC - which delves into the 'future' of some of the most vivid and unrealized utopian proposals from over the years, such as Corbu's Villa Radieuse and Koolhaas' Exodus Plan for London (seen below): Via Arch Daily: "49 Cities sets out to crunch the numbers of several centuries of unrealized urbanism, all the way from the Roman city to the great utopian projects of the 20th century. Through plans, sections, diagrams, charts and scale drawings, 49 cities are observed statistically and presented in an unprecedented comparative study, the result of a research project conducted over several years. Despite the fact that they never actually existed, this history of utopian urbanism provides a remarkable insight into our understanding of the contemporary metropolis."

:: image via Arch Daily

The illustrative quality is definitely captured in the sketchy planning maps - reminiscent of the on-the-fly analysis of Kevin Lynch and his Image of the City - outlining landmarks, nodes, paths, edges, and so on. These maps by Guy Debord, seen via Vulgare, show a number of interesting ideas of analysis for Paris...

:: images via Vulgare

A similar investigation spotted on the Portland Architecture blog reminded me of how evocative a selective display of information can be. In this case, a diagram showing a selected dataset, including major roadways, nodes, and parks - with the interstitial spaces being left blank as sort of an ambiguous filler... it's very much a representation of the fabric of Portland, neatly captured in a simple diagram.

:: image via Portland Architecture

To the other extreme, there is the visually dense drawings of one of my favorites, Lebbeus Woods or in this case, a reference to Paul Rudolph's illustrative technique, via urbanism.org: "Despite a number of monographs, including the mammoth Paul Rudolph: Architectural Drawings with its terrifyingly detailed, Piranesi-esque images, Paul Rudolph’s architecture is not easy to fully comprehend. Paradoxically, it could be argued that precisely because of the unsparingly detailed drawings of complex plans and sections, the tendency is to be overwhelmed rather than enlightened. Rudolph’s architecture is as densely “architectural” as it comes."

:: image via urbanism.org

The interesting thing is there isn't any 'right' way of communicating data and ideas, but there are many rules that offer some much needed guidance for legibility, orientation, and scale. Always a cartophile, a recent link via cityofsound to a fabulous blog called Making Maps: DIY Cartography, offered some wisdom of one of my favorites, Edward Tufte, towards the making of maps in this 2007 post entitled 'How Useful is Tufte for Making Maps?'. Read it all, then read/absorb Tufte, it's wonderful.

Bad Idea of the Week

It's almost summer in Portland (aka the Rose City), thus time for the annual schlock-fest we like to consider the Rose Festival... in that spirit, the bad idea of the week goes to the tacky Neon Rose atop the John Yeon designed building (that previously was the visitor's information center and has sadly sat partly to fully idle for a number of years) on Portland's waterfront, championed by City Commissioner Randy Leonard.


:: the rose in 'bloom' - image via OregonLive


:: the rose in situ - image via Portland Mercury

It seems with all of the interesting urban issues, we seem caught up in discussions and diversions about all things signs this spring. Thanks Commish Leonard for this little nugget of public ephemera! Can't wait to see what's next.

Urban Typologies - Freeway Field Guide

This was one of those posts you immediately fall in love with as someone with a penchant for infrastructure and urbanism. We love naming typologies and objets d'urbanity, so when poignantly topical blog The Infrastructurist offered this two-part series on 'A Field Guide to Freeway Interchanges' I decided to devour it, then share some of the tastiest morsels. (Part I Part II).


:: Turbine - image via The Infrastructurist

Each of the typologies has an aerial photograph, as well as some simple text. The photo above is one of those transportation engineering wet dreams, entitled The Turbine... "A “free-flow” style of exchange like the cloverleaf — that is, no traffic signals or intersections." The naming conventions are both simple and evocative, with easy to discern ideas such as the ubiquitous 'Cloverleaf' and 'Classic Diamond' to the simply and aptly named SNAFU titled the 'Spaghetti Bowl'... I'm not sure where this one is from, but I was on one in Chicago once that scared the bejeesus out of me... and I was merely riding in a cab.


:: Spaghetti Bowl - image via The Infrastructurist

There are definitely some interesting variations that I can't even remember if I've experienced, like the 'Lofthouse' or the very interesting 'Spooey' - which is short for Single-Point Urban Interchange - or as I envision it - a state fair figure-8 demolition derby.


:: Spooey - image via The Infrastructurist

Part II continues as more of an advanced course - including the 'T-Bone' to the bizarre 'Single Leaf' - to some of the wacky, including the 'Volleyball' and my favorite, the just offset enough to seem wrong 'Double Trumpet'.


:: Volleyball - image via The Infrastructurist


:: Double Trumpet - image via The Infrastructurist

This selection of typologies is fascinating, and is telling in our striving for efficiency and the lengths we will go to in our desire for connectivity. It definitely makes you think the next time you're out on the road, especially trying to figure out the internal geometry while in the car at ground level (not recommended while driving)... and then racing home to check google earth to see if it was a 'ParClo' or did you read it wrongly as merely a 'Butt'. Or... maybe that's just me - but it sure makes freeway driving more tolerable.

Ecological Urbanism - Podcasting Now

I was really excited to see that the Podcasts of the Ecological Urbanism conference at the GSD (from early April) are now available... for those of us unable to make the trek to check it out live. While a 100x200 pixel image isn't the same as a conference, I hope this trend continues with other events, as the impossibility of getting to all of the good dialogue continually sinks in...

Check back on their site for more additions, and in the meantime check these out here. I'm slowly savoring them, and will post some highlights as I get to them:

Friday April 3:
3:30 pm Introductions: Dean Mohsen Mostafavi and Mayor Thomas M. Menino
4:00 pm Roundtable: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Ecological Urbanism
6:30 pm Keynote: Rem Koolhaas in conversation with Homi Bhabha, moderated by Sanford Kwinter

Saturday April 4:
9:00 am Lecture: Bill Dunster. Respondent, Antoine Picon
10:30 am Panel 1: Productive Urban Environments
2:00 pm Welcome: President Drew Faust
2:15 pm Panel 2: Curating Resources
4:00 pm Panel 3: Mobility, Infrastructure and Society
5:30 pm Lecture: Andrea Branzi. Respondent, Charles Waldheim

Sunday April 5:
9:30 am Panel 4: Ecologies of Scale
11:30 am Panel 5: Engineering Ecology
2:15 pm Roundtable: What Next?

Clean Water Services - Field Operations Center

A recent trip out to a meeting at the Clean Water Services Field Operations Center yielded some interesting images of some of the innovative stormwater ideas that were implemented into this project, which opened in 2003. The design was completed by Pivot Architecture from Eugene, along with Murase Associates from Portland as landscape architect.


:: image via Pivot Architecture




:: images via L+U

As a water resource utility provider in the Portland metro area, Clean Water Services folded their mission into the design of the site and building: Thankfully rebranding from the Unified Sewerage Agency to CWS in 2001, this better reflected this mission (from their site): "Today we work to improve water quality in our local streams, manage flooding, protect fish habitat, manage flow in the Tualatin River, and operate four award-winning wastewater treatment facilities. Our nationally recognized work in water resource management is an investment in clean and thriving waterways."

The facility offers a number of strategies as a public face, including permeable parking, rain gardens, curbless green streets, and the visible ecoroof. The vegetation, predominately natives, have literally blown up, and create annother visible cue to the different sort of facility that exists here.

:: permeable pavers in public parking - image via L+U

:: Scuppers to rain garden - image via Pivot Architecture


:: linear rain garden in front of building - image via L+U

:: crushed gravel employee seating areas - image via L+U

And the ecoroof, covering approximately 8000 square feet, is canted towards the street, making it a very visible cue to the facility. The facility is located on a service road, and until a few years back (and the introduction of some housing between, the roof used to be visible from the adjacent higher traffic roadway. An unfortunate loss, as there are not many ecoroofs, much less visible ones in Beaverton so this definitely caught the eye.

:: ecoroof - images via L+U

The roof has undergone some revisions over time as the right mix of vegetation is found, which is laudable for any client to realize that there needed to be adjustment and take the time to do so. There were a number of plants that were more clumping varieties and didn't spread, leaving gaps in the roof vegetation. These were augmented with new species that provided better cover and now the roof features a base of sedums along with other natives and grasses to give it more of a natural and full appearance.

:: ecoroof - images via L+U

While the public face is interesting enough, there are a few interesting ideas that continued through the entire facility - making it a model for more sustainable industrial development. The employee parking lot featured one of the first installations of permeable concrete, which is holding up well over time.


:: permeable concrete employee parking - image via L+U

The site is predominately covered with pavement and due to the nature of use and their proximity to the Tualatin Hills Nature Park, the client felt that permeable paving was not a good option for the service areas - thus a combination of structural systems and linear parking and paving swales allows for the treatment of stormwater. Also, there is a service storage area in the back area that used an interesting form of permeable paving.

:: vegetated swales - image via L+U

:: geogrid with river rock for storage - image via L+U

Plant Propaganda

A recent visit to the Clean Water Services Field Operations Center in Beaverton offered the added bonus of some interesting signage about native plantings... While I'm not a native purist by any means, I like the inventive way of conveying the idea.




:: images by CWS - photos by author

Stay tuned for some pics of the facilities rain gardens and stunning ecoroof as well... one of my local favorites.

Reading List: CPULs

This is one of those densely packed and overpriced small volumes that make you think twice a few times in the bookstore - until you get your hands on it and unlock some of the potential of Andre Viljoen's thoughts on Continous Productive Urban Landscapes: Designing Urban Agriculture for Sustainable Cities.

:: image via Transition Culture

I just had to have this finally as the parallel tracks of urban agriculture and landscape urbanism have skewed slightly to intersect at the idea of adaptive landscapes, CPULS, or whatever you wanna call it - un-static landscape design... which I know is an oxymoron, but functionally is revolutionary. Stay tuned for some highlights of the text, and for some more info, check out the following links:

:: Transition Culture

:: Culiblog

Wilderness, Continued...

Book Review continued from Part I: Reading List: Wilderness and the American Mind

Aldo Leopold's ideas of a 'land ethic' and 'ecological conscience' offered a touchstone for a new movement - giving birth to the idea of instilling Americans with a love and respect for their land. While mostly known for the amazing work 'A Sand County Almanac', it's interesting to see how Leopold came up through the ranks of the government system through US Forest Service in New Mexico and other locales. The ideas of working within the system (for the 'man' if you will) to expand the National Parks and Wilderness Area designations is novel. It was a struggle but eventually succeeded in developing an expanded and official role for wilderness protection. Leopold's influence expanded to others such as the pioneering planner Benton Mackaye whom among other victories was responsible for the Appalachian Trail.


:: image via Wikipedia

The dual ideas of planning and ecology definitely opened a new thought for looking at wilderness and it's benefits in new ways. "The science of ecology came of age during Leopold's lifetime. In rapid succession a series of breakthroughts revealed the way in which land and the life that shared it constituted a complex organism functioning through the interaction of its components... Ecology enabled him to concieve of nature as an intricate web of interdependent parts, a myriad of cogs and wheels each essention to the health operation of the whole." (p.195)

Others joined Leopold on this fight in the 20th Century, including Robert Marshall, Sigurd Olson, Howard Zahniser and notably, earth-day founder David Brower - along with a number of official organizations that continued and expanded the fight for wilderness across the country. While the New Deal worked for progress, proponents such as Marshall looked at the inevitable issues facing a wilderness ethic. Quoted in 1935, Marshall concluded: "What makes wilderness areas most susceptible to annihilation, is that the arguments in favor of roads are direct and concrete, while those against them are subtle and difficult to express." (p.204)

The Echo Park Dam became the new fight in the mid-1900s - centered around part of the Colorado River Storage Project which would dam multiple wilderness areas, including the Dinosaur National Monument, a significant area of fossil concentrations. This again became the touchstone of the movement, with references to Leopold. MacKaye referred "...to Leopold's notion that wild country provided 'an exhibit of normal ecologic process.' Dinosaur National Monument and other wildernesses... constitute 'a reservoir of store experiences in the ways of life before man.'"


:: Dinosaur National Monument - image via National Parks Traveler

The Echo Park Dam was deafeated, which was a new rallying call after the defeat at Hetch Hetchy earlier in the century, and language was added to preclude National Park lands from water system projects for the Colorado River Storage Project. Those areas not so lucky were outside of the boundaries, and including the famous Glen Canyon Dam - which always makes me thing of Edward Abbey for obvious reasons. The next target was a big one as well - and much more known... dams within the Grand Canyon.

For the Grand Canyon the stakes were definitely high, and the national prominence of this feature made it easier to win the hearts of the public. The rhetoric changed somwhat, but continued to include the spiritual, the historical, and most important, the health and wellness of our society. Zanhiser, quoted in 1964 - summed up beautifully the position: "Out of the winderness has come the substance of our culture, and with a living wilderness... we shall also have a vibrant, vital culture, an enduring civilization of healthful, happy people who... perpetually renew themselves in contact with the earth." (p.233)


:: image via Wikipedia

These references back to Thoreau, Muir, and Olmsted were used often and continued to carry weight in the fight for wilderness, and was ultimately successful in removing dams from the Grand Canyon. Although thousands of acres of other wilderness were flooded in the search for water in the west, the victory was a big one for the Wilderness movement, and has influenced the environmental ethics of our modern society.

Another aspect of the book references some of the counterculture ideas of wilderness as we grappled with our desire to inhabit metropolitan areas, our love of the pastoral middle ground, and the desire to visit wild nature - all in conflict with one another. MacKaye folds this idea into the idea of our evolution, in three centuries, from "...the implantation in human nature, especially that of Americans, of a desire to be simultaneously "the pioneer, the husbandman, [and] the townsman." He further this into the field of environmental planning, showing that it "...must permit man to indulge the 'three sides of [his] inward nature.'" (p.243)

The idea of biophilia continued to be used as a reason for wilderness protection - with pyschologists lauding the stress-relieving qualities of interaction with nature. As our cities continued to expand, this tenet in which Olmsted based much of his work continued to be included as a vital aspect of our burgeoning urbanism. Another aspect that continually was used and gained additional rigor was the idea of ecology. "Wilderness played an important role in, and was a major beneficiary of, this new ecology-oriented conservvation. In the first place, the concept of wilderness was a pointed reminder of man's biological origins, his kinship with all life, and his continued membership in the biotic community." (p.253)


:: Forest Park (Portland, OR) - image via Travel Portland

The made it more difficult to rationalize our long-standing idea of the dominance of nature for many reasons - as we had become folded into the idea of wilderness - not removed from it with economics, religion, or politics. "From this perspective of dependency on the environment came a view of man 'as part of the system of nature, not demigods above or outside it.' This idea of a continuous web that includes man was, of course, the essence of the ecological perspective." (p.253)

The final section of the book, the Epilogue entitled 'The Irony of Victory' is another interesting historical evolution of wilderness. The sum of this chapter is that the success of wilderness protection and education has created such increased visitation to our National Parks and other areas that they have essentially been 'loved to death.' Gear, guided trips, and information made it possible for many to access these areas - seen by many as our rights due to their inclusion in the public trust. This parks-for-people vs. loving-to-death is something we still grapple with, and its interesting to see this in the context of the late 60s... roadless areas, hotels, viewsheds, and other issues that continue to threaten our parks - even airborne pollution and poor fire management - all degrade the idea of wilderness and public access.

Ecology again proved vital, in determining the 'carrying capacity' and the ability for wilderness to handle the impacts by visitors, and what was the threshold where ecosystems would collapse. Half of this was functional, as the impacts degraded wildlife and ecological function - but the social aspect was just as important - how many people can inhabit 'wild' lands before it ceases to be wilderness.


:: image via Picassa

So is it quotas, more area, better education, more services...? None of these is the silver bullet - but looking at the rich and varied history of the American experience of wilderness gives us something to apply to both urban and wild nature - and continually look to this history to see what mistakes we've made and avoid repeating it over and over. I'm curious to see how Nash has modernized the text, and hope to read the new material to see how it fits into our modern world - but as it's own piece of work - the 60s era version of 'Wilderness and the American Mind' is necessary reading for anyone claiming to have a green bone in their body.

Read Part I: Reading List: Wilderness and the American Mind

Reading List: Wilderness & The American Mind

Taking a break from the computer and the endless array of blog posts gives one an opportunity to reconnect with the written word in a different way. (For full disclosure, I hate reading on the computer - so really have to slog through text heavy posts and articles...) A couple of interesting books that I've worked through in the past month couldn't be more different - but somehow, in the very Gaian way, are related. The first - which I picked up after hearing the amazing Paul Stamets speak, is his great book Mycelium Running. Second, which I picked up for a steal in a used bookstore on a recent trip to Mt. Shasta, is 'Wilderness and the American Mind' by Roderick Nash.


:: image via Yale Univ. Press

While my copy was not the much sexier and updated 4th edition seen above, it is sometimes nice to read the original, being able to place the thought in the context of publication - in this case the 1967 version. While not necessarily breaking any new ground, this is one of the most comprehensive studies of the history of our relationship with Wilderness from the uniquely American perspective, and offers insight into our cultural baggage that influences our relationship with nature and the world even today.

Encompassing an arc of history from the early settlers to the 1960s, it's fascinating to see the linear narrative of Wilderness and our shift of ideology from fear, to celebration, to exploitation, and finally to our current state of tension that still exists today. Starting with our European ideas of wilderness expressed by early settlers - the fear of the dark primeval forest and it's dangerous denizens is shaped by an utter lack of true Wilderness that these people had to experience in settled Europe. This is contrasted by Nash in the views of Eastern cultures that had a more subtle and less binary view of wilderness.

The shift from pilgrim fear to pioneering domination shaped the next era, as wilderness was meant to be dominated as an expression of our growth and western expansion. Civilization was countered with a desire for escape to the surrounding pastoral areas. The western push opened up a view of untouched scenery that amazed the viewers with it's rugged beauty and became a defining element of the 'American' wilderness as like none other in the world.

Following such writers and explorers such as the transcendentalits Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, the explorer and wilderness fighter John Muir, wildlife watchers such as John James Audubon, and also the defining guidance of Frederick Law Olmsted in his support of the protection of Yosemite in the 1860s. Building on the work of urban parks as places of the respite in cities to restore the health and vigor of residents, the large parks provided a national analog in being able to provide a counterpoint to development and need protection from the mental stress that results from our industrious society. His report on Yosemite in 1865 included the declaration that: "the enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body, gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration to the whole system." (p.106)

:: Yosemite - image via PD Photos

The continual wilderness preservation movement followed Yosemite and included Yellowstone, spawning the National Park movement and a serious approach to significant protection of large areas of land that had both regional and national significance. With Muir at the helm, a rampant public movement was instilled in the American social experiment with a tangible value of the places within our growing country. A duality emerged: "The schism ran between those who defined conservation as the wise us or planned development of resources and those who have been termed preservations, with their rejection of utilitarianism and advocacy of nature unaltered by man." (p.129)

This 'schism' created some of the polarity of wilderness vs. development that persists to this day. While it is inevitable that the pendulum of wilderness protection would swing towards the 'cult-like', this binary approach to wilderness protection, while providing a strong movement for protection, created an equal and vibrant opposition in the form of those who put people and progress above nature in all aspects. Again, Olmsted comes out of the fray as a mediator (like a good landscape architect), straddling both the preservation ethic as well as lobbying for more parks and wilderness areas in and near cities. Olmsted and fellow landscape architect Charles Eliot: "... proposed that in additon city parks patches of 'wild forest' be preserved close to metropolitan areas... Olmsted felt the current surge of interest in natural landscapes was the result of many Americans' perceiving that 'we grow more and more artificial day by day.'" (p.155)

:: Central Park - image via NYC Architecture

The polar struggle came to a head in the early 20th Century in the form of Hetch Hetchy which pitted a wilderness area against the damming of rivers for the water supply and hydroelectric power for the growing San Francisco metropolitan area. In addition to a media debate, this was a strongly fought political one as well - with the US Government grappling with the difficult task of determining which is more important - the wild lands or the services to our urban dwellers. While one side of the debate argued for progress at any cost, others argued that the value of wilderness was incalcuable in monetary terms. Muir, always the hyperbolist - made it a fight of biblical proportions. "Hetch Hetchy became a sanctuary or temple in the eyes of the defenders. John Muir, for one, believed so strongly in the divinity of wild nature that he was convinced he was doing the Lord's battle in resisting the reservoir." (p.167)

:: Before and After - Hetch Hetchy - images via Wikipedia

Hetch Hetchy, and the eventual crushing blow to the wilderness movement by the passage of the bill in 1913 authorizing the dam and effectively destroying the wilderness in the name of progress. While there were a number of lesser battles, such as the preservation of Muir Woods, this provided a deciding battle for the country. Muir died shortly after in 1914 - and his shoes were left to be filled by a new breed of Wilderness advocate. The one to step up to this was Aldo Leopold.

Read Part II: Wilderness, Continued...

Bad Idea of the Week

This interesting product appeared last week from Inhabitat, consisting of small squares of grass for your desk or home. "These grass squares were designed at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Israel, in 2009 as a way to combine nature and architecture." While a laudable concept in theory, the idea of bring in grass as a landscape component into buildings as a way to combine 'nature' into the environment is pretty misguided and downright funny to me.


:: image via Inhabitat

There's a very vital way to include nature in buildings - called indoor plants, which actually provide benefits well beyond our monocultural lawn counterpart such as increased humidity, purification and removal of pollutants, and are much more beautiful than lawn. Plus, where does it end, when you end up having to buy a small lawnmower and trimmer, then continually spend weekends watering, fertilizing, and applying herbicide to keep your desk neat and groomed to stay within cultural expectations of care. :)

Speaking Dequindre

Detroit is still on my mind often as I see the duality of ongoing issues and inspirational stories of rebirth. It was great to see news of the recent opening of the Dequindre Cut, a section of abandoned rail line connecting the waterfront to areas of the Central City. I remember the Dequindre fondly, as when we were on the SDAT trip last fall, I got a sneak preview of the trail - and I also had the distinction of pronouncing 'De-quin-dre' wrong, oh lets say half a dozen times (trust me, it's harder than it sounds).






:: images via Detroit Free Press

The initial 1.2 mile stretch is part of a much larger network of greenways and other multi-modal transportation infrastructure as Detroit learns to love it's relationship with the car - but allow other forms of transportation some space in the urban fabric. A map of the new and future system is found below:

:: image via Detroit Free Press

As seen in the photo below, the linear route used to be overgrown with vegetation, which has a certain appeal (although probably not the most safe condition)... and the bike/ped path cleaned up the verges a bit... inevitably with vegetation creeping back in a manageable way. Treehugger had a bit about it with a video as well, which I couldn't get to load... they could have picked a less barren/highway looking photo - but check out the idiotic vitriol in the comment stream that was elicited about this one... interesting.

:: image via Treehugger

The part I like the best, although it's hard to see in the photos above, is that the design didn't just erase all of the history of the corridor (although I wish more of the pioneering veg would have been restored - say, like the High Line). On my visit, we witnessed the overpasses where graffitti was left intact, and some of the old abutments and other structures - rather than being removed, were left as context for the trail (minus bottles and tires...).

:: image via M-bike

:: image via Metropolis

Nice to see it all come together, and the people of Detroit should be proud of this one, and other communities should look to this as a great model.

Salad Days

Not the first version of this, but another cool living edible wall, via Core77 - for a product called Reviwall from an Italian group called ReviPlant.


:: image via Core77




:: images via ReviPlant

Another cool idea of this is from Green Living Technologies (GLT) which has sponsored, along with Campbells soup, a series of community edible living walls in New Jersey along with a local group Urban Farming. Cool stuff.

:: images via GLT

And a cool system of growing wheatgrass, with some interesting cost payback stats due to the rapidity of renewal.

:: Wheatgrass Wall - images via GLT

Portland City Hall Garden

Portland definitely has a bug for urban agriculture. Wherever you look there are community gardens, victory plots in street rights-of-way, rooftop and balcony planters, and farmer's markets. The dichotomy of urban living and productive rural ag space is being redefined as more people grow and raise their own food within the City, cutting down on food miles traveled and shortening the distance from farm-to-fork. I also heard a recent (unverified) account that Multnomah County has the highest per capita population of urban chickens - which if you live hear you would whole-heartedly concur that chickens have been the new urban pet for quite some time.

The local government agencies are getting into the mix as well, with a recent installation of a vegetable garden called the 'Portland Better Together Food Garden', right on the grounds of downtown City Hall. As Mayor Sam Adams points out: "The purpose of this garden is to show that in Portland you can grow food in relatively small spaces,” ...explaining that the food grown in the garden will be donated to Elm Court, a community kitchen operated by Loaves and Fishes that serves 250 meals a day in downtown Portland."




:: images via Flickr

Check out the entire construction of the garden on the Flickr page. And next, Multnomah County is getting into the act - with plans for a large urban farm on County property, as well as a rooftop 'victory garden' on the ecoroof plaza at the Multnomah County Office Building (more to post on this, as we're working on it pro-bono with a group of others). Now if we can just do something about the shortage of real community garden plots, we'll be all set.

London Bridge, Updated

The idea of habitable or living bridges keeps popping up in proposals, and the idea has a lot of merit in our desire to provide density, connectivity and ultimately, increased livability of urban areas. Another recent proposal uses the old/new idea in London to build a bridge including retail and residential uses and is being championed by Mayor Boris Johnson. As Treehugger mentions: "The Antoine Grumbach design has a pair of 35 storey towers holding up the bridge, which is lined with cafes, bars and shops, along with trees, a greenhouse and a "topiary café"."

:: image via London Evening Standard

There is some historical precedent mentioned (particularly in reference to a popular nursery rhyme), particularly in the reference to the old London bridge: "London Bridge used to be a hopping place, lined with so many houses and shops that it took an hour to get across. So 178 years ago it was knocked down and replaced with a more sedate bridge, which was sold to an Arizona property developer who thought he was buying the iconic Tower Bridge."

:: image via Treehugger

:: London Bridge - image via The Guardian

As Jonathan Glancey mentions in the Guardian, alongside this image (above) of historic London Bridge, "...inhabited bridges are alluring but impractical." - mentioning traffic issues, as well as the aesthetic not fitting into the idea of our modern world - using two major precedents as examples. "As for surviving "inhabited" bridges, well, "tacky" is a polite word to describe the experience of crossing them. Florence's Ponte Vecchio and Venice's Rialto Bridge are exquisite structures, yet both are a kitsch nightmare today. The one thing both fail to do is to get people and goods across rivers in anything like a useful or enjoyable manner."

Although the warnings may be viable, there is something intriguing about the idea of incorporating a variety of non-motorized uses into our spans. I sat in for studio crits for a University of Oregon architecture class taught by local architect Suzanne Zuniga that envisioned a range of opportunities from restaurants to swimming pools and skate parks linking east to west. Also, I posted about a speculative habitable bridge envisioned by local firm Path Architecture featuring similar retail environments. There is also the new Willamette River span - that while not incorporating commercial activity - is exclusive to light rail, bike and pedestrian crossing with a form that will become the newest addition to bridge city. Lots of potential, even without the shops.


:: image via Portland Architecture

Bad Timing? Pig City

MVRDV's proposal from a few years back (2001) for 'Pig City', a set of towers with pigs raised in the ultimate high density strikes a more recent chord with our current fascination with all things urban gardening and vertical farming - and perhaps a dischord in the recent Swine Flu pandemic. While the tongue-in-cheek nature of this project is obvious, with anything semi-satirical, there's a mountain of opportunity hidden in the folds of this proposal. So as the chicken coop at our urban homestead begins to transform from idea to reality - it makes me think of the pros and cons of urban animals in the cycle of civic ecology, as well as tapping into rooftops and buildings - complemented by open space and vacant lands not just for vegetable, but animal production. Now about the smell...


:: image via City Farmer News

Some text on the idea, via Inhabitat: "In 2000, pork was the most consumed form of meat at 80 billion kg per year. Recent animal diseases such as Swine Fever and Foot and Mouth disease are raising serious questions about pork production and consumption. Two opposing reactions can be imagined. Either we change our consumption pattern and become instant vegetarians [unfathomable!!] or we change the production methods and demand biological farming."


:: image via Inhabitat


:: image via City Farmer News

3 New Blogs

A few interesting new blogs that have either been pointed out to me or I've stumbled upon in the last weeks... do you have a blog that would be worth a cross-link? Let me know.

Fitting nicely into the Veg.itectural, I got an email from blogger Will Gorman about his blog 'Cleaner Air through Green Roofs' - featuring, obviously content: "...dedicated to the green roof, better air quality and air pollution prevention. Green roofs appear to be the most cost-effective solution to control urban air pollution and help manage storm water run-off."



A tumblr variety, People and Place offers some good inspiration and frequency - with a simple format and a relatively broad set of ideas related to landscape architecture content. I'm not sure what I think of this short content sites - as they seem limiting, but it's interesting to see (as I remain steadfastly and blissfully Twitter-free) the variety of methods of communication from the vast to the fast.



And finally, PlantWerkz, aimed at featuring 'architecturally beautiful plants' strikes a chord with me - either in tone or by tapping my modernist desire for the unnaturally natural.

Models, Now and Then

Spotted on Places and Spaces, this 'lifelike' 3-D model of Portland posted in Digital Urban offers a glimpse into the new wave of modeling, cobbled together from a variety of sources and punctuated by some visual fly-throughs that are quite stunning. This model was created by local firm Newlands & Company (aka NC3D), the cream of the crop in visualization.


This reminds me of the large scale model of the Central City of Portland, built in wood, that resides in one of the conference rooms of the Portland Building. There was a time when new development in the Central area was inserted into this model to discuss it's form and impact on the greater context... not sure if this is still the case - but the model is a unique throwback to another time. It'll be interesting to see if the new requirement will be to model and insert new forms into a digital analog of this old wooden version.

And of course, now that I'm thinking about it, I cannot find an image anywhere of the model. But a quick search reveals that there are still some stunning examples of the physical model - one of the most amazing is this scale model of Shanghai - yes, the entire City of Shanghai.


:: image via SkyscraperPage

Another I found features this scale model of central Tokyo...


:: image via onTokyo

The study model has also undergone a transformation from chipboard or museum board to sketchup - either in simple form or massing studies - a process that whichever way you want to do so - doesn't happen enough in our modern digital times:


:: Mixed Media Massing Model - image via Khang Design


:: Digital Massing Model - image via GeoPlace

Alas it is always a process of translation, and the results are really what matters... never know what you may end up with. :)


:: image via Peter Kuttner

Crown, King of the Streets

A comment from Desmond to the post on SEA streets led me to a great 'country lane' prototype in Vancouver, BC - located on Crown Street.


:: image via City of Vancouver

From the site: "This stormwater management and traffic calming project was completed in February 2006. Instead of the standard curb and gutter, this residential street was constructed with natural drainage courses that allow stormwater to infiltrate rather than be carried away in the sewer system. The ecological benefits include stabilizing the base flows in nearby creeks, filtering of pollutants from stormwater and placing less demand on the stormwater system. The roadway was constructed as a meandering, narrow street to slow and calm traffic, and is bordered by structural grass and planted swales."

A few more pics from the site - which also links to some additional info:




:: images via City of Vancouver

A little digging found some additional info from Waterbucket, a site focused on sustainable water management - and some additional pics and info from the project, including some context: "“This section of Crown Street is located in an eco-sensitive and historically important setting, containing a wetland and two of the few remaining salmon spawning streams in the City of Vancouver,” said Mayor Campbell. “This project meets the City of Vancouver’s objective of incorporating enhanced sustainability into city operations by providing an innovative model of best practices for street design. It also gives us an opportunity to greatly improve salmon habitat in Cutthroat and Musqueam Creeks.”




:: images via Waterbucket

SEAing Green Streets

Probably a case of green streets on the brain - but a current pro-bono project has inspired me do some looking back at a range of innovative stormwater projects using the street rights-of-way. One of the best is Seattle's SEA Street project. SEA stands for 'Street Edge Alternatives' and is part of the Natural Drainage Systems program - synonymous to green streets but regionally specific to the Seattle area. The interesting part of the project is the integrated nature of the streetscape, stormwater infrastructure, and residential character.

Check out some slides from a 'virtual tour' of the project for some info and visuals of this simple yet effective solution...


:: image via Seattle Public Utilities

From the tour text: "The drainage goals for this project include conveyance, flood control, and minimizing the flow of stormwater off-site. The project team sculpted the project area to move water away from the roadway and homes and into planted swales along both sides of the road."

:: image via Seattle Public Utilities

A series of additional images and text includes some details, including the residential landscape character, pollution reduction items, plantings, and maintenance. A big issue is the transportation aspects - which are definitely a challenge to engineering status quo... narrow, multi-modal, slow, and non-linear. The fact that the combination of factors for the this project was built, and is successful, is testament to the potential transferability to other locales.

:: images via Seattle Public Utilities

And interesting to see if there have been other versions of this approach, particularly retrofit versions in a residential context. A final image shows the before and after shots...

:: image via Seattle Public Utilities

Stay tuned for another precedent study, the award-winning Pringle Creek Community in Salem, Oregon that uses curbless 'gravel verges' along the roadway to allow for soft, pervious edges - inspired by the work of Patrick Condon at UBC. Any other ideas of curbless, gravel verge streets incorporating stormwater and natural drainage that others know of, let me know.

How to Grow Fresh Air

Check out this short video from TED talks by Kamal Meattle... on the purification potential of indoor plants... not a new idea, but some new attention and some good fodder for discussion.

From TED: "With its air-filtering plants and sustainable architecture, Kamal Meattle's office park in New Delhi is a model of green business. Meattle himself is a longtime activist for cleaning up India's air." The three plants mentioned in this short video include the Areca Palm, Mother-in-law's Tongue, and Money Plant - which offer a range of beneficial CO2 conversion. These are not the only ones, but it's interesting how Meattle's project quantifies the amount of plants to create air quality per person... plus all of that indoor planting and other benefits (i.e. views of green plants) can't be bad as well.

Some more info from a previous post - making the case for indoor living walls.

VIA: 11-20

And more from Veg.itecture in Action...

VIA 11: Living with Skin

:: images via Greenmeme

VIA 12: Green Roof Maintenance

:: images via Urban Greenery

VIA 13: Parliament House Canberra

:: images via Gardenvisit

VIA 14: Penn State Green Roof

:: images via Treehugger

VIA 15: Brooklyn Green Roof

:: images via Urban Greenery

VIA 16: Bostons bath mat Green Wall

:: image via Urban Greenery

VIA 17: W Midtown Hotel

:: image via G-Sky

VIA 18: The Met Roof Garden

:: image via Urban Greenery

VIA 19: Cooper Point House

:: images via inspiration wall

VIA 20: Laneway House

:: images via Treehugger

VIVA: 11-20

More from the Veg.itecture in Visual Assessment...

VIVA 11: Mas sobre el Pabellon

:: imagesvia Platforma Arquitectura

VIVA 12: Bouwkunde Building

:: images via The Design Blog

VIVA 13: Babcock Ranch

:: image via Jetson Green

VIVA 14: Annie MG Schmidt House Competition

:: images via Bustler

VIVA 15: University of Sheffield

:: image via Urban Greenery

VIVA 16: ORDOS #34

:: image via Arch Daily

VIVA 17: Punta Umbria Pavillion

:: images via Arch Daily

VIVA 18: ORDOS #36

:: images via Arch Daily

VIVA 19: Sky-Terra

:: images via Land8Lounge

VIVA 20: Chung Nam Provincial Office Park

:: images via WAN

Warped Perspectives

A horizonless project in Manhattan called Here & There, by Schulze & Webb that gives a roller-coaster like view of the island. These are really, really cool... nuff said.

:: images via Space Invading

VIVA: 1-10

The flip side of the VIA 10 spots is the Veg.itecture in Visual Assessment - looking at the latest and greatest in representational vegetated architecture. Lots to see here.

VIVA 1: G TECTS

:: image via Bustler

VIVA 2: Realize Hudson Rise

:: images via A Daily Dose of Architecture

VIVA 3: Green Wall in Cordoba

:: images via Urban Greenery

VIVA 4: Living in the Plants

:: image via Bustler

VIVA 5: Fort Lola

:: images via Arch Daily

VIVA 6: Railway Cover

:: images via Design Under Sky

VIVA 7: Concept Art by Naomi Reis

:: images via Urban Greenery

VIVA 8: National Children's Museum

:: images via Arch Daily

VIVA 9: Concept Vertical Garden

:: image via Urban Greenery

VIVA 10: Villa Panorama

:: image via Arch Daily

VIA: 1-10

Taking time off from blogging is wonderful - but the backlog of great projects to catch up on is a bit daunting. At the risk of Veg.itectural overload - I'm packing up 10 projects per post, in both the Veg.itecture In Action (VIA) category and the Veg.itecture in Visual Assessement (VIVA) categories (read here to review) to blast out the 100 or so great images in east. Consider it a summary snapshot, or a month in review for April where my posting was sporadic. Or consider in further research for the Veg.itecture book - a proposal of which is in the works.

VIA 1: Ex Ducati



:: images via Platforma Arquitectura

VIA 2: SchwimmHausBoot

:: images via The Design Blog

VIA 3: Mercado de San Sebastian

:: images via Urban Greenery

VIA 4: Khyber Ridge

:: image via ArchDaily

VIA 5: Vancouver Aquarium Green Wall

:: images via National Geographic

VIA 6: OUTrial House



:: images via Space Invading

VIA 7: Vertical Garden



:: images via Urban Greenery

VIA 8: EggO House

:: image via Platforma Arquitectura

VIA 9: Shimzu Corporation Green Wall

:: image via Urban Greenery

VIA 10: Moss Carpet



:: images via Inhabitat

Drawing Water

This great image (from BLDGBLOG) featuring a proposal from EDAW for a 2008 exhibition from the London Festival of Architecture entitled 'If I could design London I would...' As pointed out on the BLDGBLOG post, the poster features some compelling retro-futuristic graphics that look at the water-based configuration of London.


:: image via BLDGBLOG

A couple of detail images give some of the graphic richness and simplicity to the poster.

:: image via BLDGBLOG

Read more about the EDAW narrative at BLDGBLOG and see the full range of entries from BDonline... good stuff.

The Future is Now

The Wall Street Journal asked a trio of designers to imagine the 'Green House of the Future', with energy efficiency as a point-of-departure. This group came up with some inventive visions - although it's telling that all of these ideas and problems could be envisioned right now with our available technology and materials. Nonetheless, the visions tell us a bit about where we're at in the mainstream and the futuristic - begging the question - what really is going to be the future. The very different visions offer a range of opportunities, from the vegetal to the technological - showing the myriad ways to solve similar problems. The question, of course is will technology or inventiveness be the key? I have my opinions (of course) but would love to hear other viewpoints.

In my opinion, the most compelling and complete entry (albeit perhaps aesthetically challenging to ones neighbors) comes from Rios Clementi Hale Studios. The project "...has a garden façade that includes chickpeas, tomatoes and other plants. The plants also provide shade and cooling. A rooftop reservoir collects water and keeps the building cool, while rooftop windmills generate energy."

I really enjoy the graphics as well - much more sketchy and visual. The green seems less integrated than 'tacked on' - sort of a growth emerging from the south facade and a traditional 3 level box opposite. It's also interesting that there are specific plants for the garden chosen... an energy, aesthetic, or personal choice?


:: image via WSJ

Next is the same story from WMD+Partners - using the powerful metaphor that has made a career - the idea of a building like a tree. Expanding the ideas of biomimicry in architecutre: "The "bark" of the house is made up of thin, insulating films that would self-clean and self-heal if damaged. A curved roof with large eaves provides shade, which lowers the heat load in summer. The "trunk," or the frame of the home, consists of carbon tubes, while the "roots" are a heat-pump system buried in the yard."

I think theoretically there is a lot of technical rigor to this proposal, as well as many of WMDs projects... and in this case it is specifically integrated... relying both of the vegetation and natural projects as well as technological adds (such as the self-healing 'bark').


:: image via WSJ

Cook + Fox take a tecno-architectural turn, with a building skin straight out of the transmaterial ideology of Star Trek. The "...house reacts to the weather, turning dark in the bright sun to insulate the house from heat and turning clear on dark days to absorb light and heat. The façade also captures rain and condensation to fill the household's water needs. Inside, walls and furniture are on rollers to take advantage of the fact that some spaces, such as bedrooms, are underutilized most of the day."

I like the form and mutability of space - but the reliance on technology feels like a cop-out. We try to solve so many problems with techno-fixes - when good design, based on micro-climate and context can do it without the patents and high-technology... and probably a lot cheaper.


:: image via WSJ

The most yawn-inducing, yet grounded design comes last - from Mouzon Design - looking at the natural environmental design techniques incorporated into a neo-traditional frame, the design: "...uses tomorrow's technologies -- as well as ancient techniques to reduce energy use. Solar paneling built into the roof and façade provides electricity and hot water. The house also employs a "breeze chimney," an ancient architectural tool, as a kind of air conditioning."

There are some laudable and interesting concepts, but none of this seems specifically futuristic or innovative - even what they envision as 'melon cradles' for growing vertical foods... seems like a future for a place that is still designing houses like they were in 1995... I guess saying it's sort of like a future happening right now.


:: image via WSJ

All in all, these exercises are somewhat interesting in giving some quick speculative idea generation potential to problem solving - and putting them into some quickly accessible visuals. This is similar to the work of Good Magazine - or the densely concentrated containers of competition graphics... but in the end, I'd say these are more the pulse of the present and less the vision of the future... So, what's really next?