Slices of Eco-Art

The connection between environmental art and landscape architecture is dynamic... making it a common theme here at L+U. These ecological artworks and installations provide stylistic and conceptual frameworks that are less possible or legible in the traditional boundaries of applied landscape design (practical art) - this freedom gives rise to limitless potential opportunities. Landscape architecture can and should draw heavily from this well of ideas, adapting them for new forms of expression and discourse to expand the relevance and importance of the landscape as a bridge for art and science - culture and nature.

Design Under Sky provides a good overview of one of my favorites, the sculptures of Ned Kahn are landscape-based and draw from the well of natural processes of wind, water, and fire. We glimpsed a few of these in a L+U post last fall, but another image or two is is worth it.


:: ''Fire Vortex' + Wave Oculus' by Ned Kahn - image via Design Under Sky

A recent compilation of some more eco-art projects shows this breadth of expression and possibility. Treehugger offered a great slideshow of Environmental Art, worthy of checking out. Here's a few images as a teaser, but check out the post for much more.


:: 'Zunderschwamm' by Chris Booth - image via Treehugger


:: 'Reunion' by Nils Udo - image via Treehugger


:: 'Tree Mountain - A Living Time Capsule' by Agnes Denes - image via Treehugger


:: 'The Greenhouse and the Shed' by Gilles Bruni and Marc Babarit - image via Treehugger

Dwell offers words and images from Mark Allen the LA-based Machine Project - "...bringing together artists, architects, designers, makers, scientists, programmers, plant enthusiasts, poets, and gaming nerds.Far from being a traditional gallery, Machine Project could be described as an art-gallery-turned-mad-scientist’s-laboratory used for collaboration, experimentation, classes, lectures, and for play. Perhaps what stands out most is that no matter how serious the subject matter, Machine brings an air of effortless fun to the equation, making the work accessible to a large audience without needing to water down the ideas."


:: Terrarium - image via Dwell


:: TerraSnowcap - image via Dwell

Terrariums of a different sort come via SpaceInvading, which offers two posts of some amazingly detail work from artist Thomas Doyle and the Distillation series - that looks at habitation from some new angles - disturbing ones to say the least.




:: 'As You Were' by Thomas Doyle - images via SpaceInvading

:: 'Acceptable Losses' by Thomas Doyle - images via SpaceInvading

Designboom offers some views of the the new 'storm king wavefield' in New York by Maya Lin. The project offers a large-scale installation of Lin's ideas on water forms - expressed in the fluid media of undulating berms of earth and vegetation. I'm including a few of the images but be sure check out more at the full posting.




:: images via Designboom

From an artistic side, there is an amazing set of visuals on Strangeharvest that reinforce the connection of art, film, and urbanism: "'Unfriendly Skies' is a beautiful project by C-Lab which surveys the skies of disaster movies. It's part of the 'Bootleg' issue of Volume produced for the New Museum exhibition "Urban China: Informal Cities" (February 11-March 29). It seems to recall Constables exercises in cloud painting shot through with an apocalyptic bent. Though here of course the sky has been carefully designed, carefully coded as an overarching narrative environment. And, as Archigram told us, we should think of atmospheric conditions as part of architecural experience: "When it is raining in Oxford Street the architecture is no more important than the rain; in fact the weather has probably more to do with pulsation of the living city at the given moment."


:: images via Strangeharvest

Related, this post from Inhabitat features the exhibitation Out of the Blue at Bergen Community College in New Jersey.


:: image via Inhabitat

The installation: "...examines if human creativity is similarly tumultuous and unpredictable. Capturing atmospheric and geological phenomena — both real and unreal — the exhibition explores how these events, which have been unquestionably affected by humans, can also be a metaphor for the birth of new ideas. The exhibition takes a deeper look at the need for proper cultivation of social, political, and environmental influences in order for society to propagate fulfilling creative endeavors."


:: 'Swallow' by Frank Moore - image via Inhabitat

DailyLand: Green Island

Somewhat of a visionary departure for the DailyLand feature, these visions of 'green' urbanism in the literal Green Island proposals of a vegetated Tokyo are both confrontational and thought provoking. It makes me think directly of the previous post wishing for green transit, and taking it a whole city further. Specifically I ask... would cities swathed in green grass be more sustainable that the alternative, or is this just switching a specifically grey and unsustainable infrastructure for a green one? A question to consider in our time of the new 'New Deal'...








:: images via Green Island

The Cold Seat

I recently received an email from Hongtao Zhou, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Artist/Designer that recently installed a project on Lake Mendota with an environmental statement and a frigid ends - something a person who grew up in North Dakota can appreciate. Enjoy!


:: Ice & Snow Furniture Raised From Lake Mendota - image via Hongtao Zhou

From Zhou "Recently I created icy furniture on frozen Lake Mendota near the UW-Madison Memorial Union Terrace shoreline. They connect the lake, the land (architecture), the air and the people and complete a sustainable life cycle with minimum environmental impact. I hope the public climate art can help to raise up awareness of sustainable design with less or without negative impact."


:: Snow Bowls for Ice Cream - image via Hongtao Zhou

Following the weather changes, the furniture will back into the lake and become a part of the water body again and complete their beautiful green life cycle."


:: installation - photo by Susan Frikken sfrikken@yahoo.com

Water Dump

There's been a lot of activity around water - predominately its use and inevitable misuse. In this version of the dump... some choice bits worthy of another look.


:: Big Squirt - image via Treehugger

An interesting ephemeral art-piece, "STREET FOUNTAIN by HELMUT SMITS, 2002: Small water pumps in existing pot-holes in the road surface. When it rains, small fountains appear" (via VULGARE)


:: image via VULGARE

Read about bad stuff in the waters in India (via BLDGBLOG), as well as thinking about what you flush and what the consequences to water quality may be (via INFRASTRUCTURIST): "The list of pharma-contaminants includes carbamazepine, an epilepsy treatment that lowers alcohol tolerance, and estrone, a hormone in birth control pills that causes gender mutation in fish."


:: image via INFRASTRUCTURIST

Or on the flip side, how about: "...growing an entire world's worth of crops in the middle of the dessert with ocean saltwater?" (read more at Treehugger)


:: image via Treehugger

The importance of the role of water in urbanism is not to be taken lightly, as there are some particular form-giving properties that span the gamut of restoration, education, and commerce. The London Rivers Action Plan plans for "...9.3 miles of the city's rivers will be restored to a natural state in the next six years. Of the the 14 waterways to be reclaimed, seven have been buried. Others have been made into channels, originally built to combat flooding. It is hoped that wildlife such as kingfishers, otters and voles will then return to the city shores as well. "


:: image via Treehugger

The suburban 'water banking' will become the norm in areas fed by the Colorado River (via InfraNet Lab):


:: image via InfraNet Lab

And from BLDGBLOG: "As part of their new water-themed issue, the beautifully designed New York Moon has produced this interactive map of the water systems of Manhattan. ...Beneath New York’s lattices of concrete, iron and landfill lie dozens of organic waterways," they write. "Using data from an 1865 sanitation map and contemporary satillite photographs, this projection depicts Manhattan as a vascular organ, whose obscure opperation has had powerful bearing on the fate of the city."


:: Manhattan as a Vascular Organ - image via BLDGBLOG

With this shift towards urbanism, the fear of rising waters and impacts on cities has become omnipresent in our lives - due to such films as An Inconvenient Truth and other of the ubiquitous online scenarios. An interesting artistic interpretation of this comes via Chris Bodle's Watermarks Project (via BLDGBLOG), which traces the water lines in urban Bristol after the melting of the Greenland icecaps.

:: images via BLDGBLOG

With the alarmism, comes the solutions both fanciful and pragmatic. Technology may save us yet... but probably will end up killing us in other ways.

:: The Maeslantkering Storm Surge Barriers - image via InfraNet Lab

:: Flood Houses of the Future - image via WAN


:: Waterpod - image via Dwell

But take heart, in the meantime, at the very least, we can endure the torrent in safety, with umbrellas that light our way or glean liquid from the sky.

:: Rain-Powered Illuminated Umbrella - image via Inhabitat

:: Rainwater Harvesting Umbrella - image via Treehugger

DailyLand: A Square

In an effort to remedy my bursting archives, I'm instituting a new feature called DailyLand (with apologies to ArchDaily, which does the same in much greater depth and detail). Look for one-a-day in brief for the immediate future, which will also allow me to keep up with the great content out there.

"Korean photographer Hosang Park's series A Square consists of bird's-eye views of the small, over-landscaped parks that seem to accompany modern apartment towers all over the world." (Read and see more at BLDGBLOG)






:: images via BLDGBLOG

Energy Dump

Not a lot festering here in terms of energy links, but a couple of interesting ideas related to our electricity infrastructure - coming from two different worlds. The first takes a look at our existing power structure - namely the ubiquitous grid. From InfraNet Lab, this post announces the 'Power of Ecosystems/Ecosystems of Power' - mostly in reference to a comment regarding the naming of our current 'dumb' grid "...on Alexis Madrigal’s site about how the US Department of Energy has now designated the century-old electrical power grid an “ecosystem."


:: image via Infranet Lab

Ok. I'll bite... an ecosystem????. To explain: "Our century-old power grid is the largest interconnected machine on Earth, so massively complex and inextricably linked to human involvement and endeavor that it has alternately (and appropriately) been called an ecosystem." Read more about an exhibit on powerline demarcation - or urban transects - in the post as well including links to the Powerlines Project by Adam Ryder and Brian Rosa. Good stuff.


:: image via Infranet Lab

Moving from the common dumb to the buzzing smart grid, a proposal by OMA has gotten a bunch of digital ink - via Synchronicity: "Office for Metropolitan Architecture recently has presented a masterplan for the North Sea, claiming that wind farms in the North Sea can produce as much energy as the oil from the Persian Gulf is now."


:: image via Synchronicity

Aside from energy independence, the proposal is great for its sheer graphic fun - including some great representation you would expect from OMA. Jump to the post, for more...








:: images via Synchronicity

...and to Inhabitat for some more info, as well as a few of the interesting adverts from the firm’s Zeekracht masterplan - showing that good design and planning still needs good marketing.


:: image via Inhabitat

And if that weren't enough, Treehugger offers news of a 960 million watt offshore windfarm in Germany... enough juice to power a lot of green homes... smart indeed. It will, of course, be interesting to see what we're saying about all these 'new/smart' technologies fifty years from now when they are neither new and smart... and the next big thing has rolled in, allowing us to analyse a forgotten infrastructure of crumbling turbines that have become artificial reefs and marine habitat. Looking forward to it.

The Moss Room

Check out the yummy new project shown off in the latest issue of Metropolis. Back to the California Academy of Sciences building, the Moss Room by Lundberg Design is the subterranean restaurant that fittingly sheathed in a mossy covered green wall. There seems to be a lag between the print and online versions over at Metropolis - so all I could dig up were some semi-lucious photos.

I know its a restaurant and I could talk about the ambieance and food and such - but who cares. That wall is killer - with the soft, low-profile texture and literal moistness oozing from it. Damn, is the whole building green? More of the great mag photos to come when the article appears online. For now, some teasers.


:: image via Yelp

Although you can still see the edges of the panels in this system (which should fill in with some time) - it is still pretty stunning and makes for an amazing entry sequence down into the restaurant.




:: images via Eater SF


:: image via SF Gate