The holiday season has given me a chance to catch up on a LOT of reading, so stay tuned for a mash-up of some of the most notable new work in the coffers... as well as a few book reviews and other little projects that I've been trying to finish up to no avail. One project in these siftings that totally caught me off gaurd was Cité de la Mode et du Design by Jakob+MacFarlane architects.
:: image via Times Online
ArchNewsNow clued me into an article in the Times Online - which offered some good text but was woefully incomplete in imagery (I hate architecture articles without images). A taste: "...it’s green. Bright green. The green of peas or freshly unfurled leaves. So green, in fact, that it shimmers, almost metallic, in the winter sun. ...is not just a building. It’s a promenade. Cut through it at ground level a wide arcade continues the Seine-side walkways for which Paris is famous. Traversing it, a second path digs beneath from the Gare d’Austerlitz on one side to a new water-taxi station on the other. The green stuff, though, houses a network of paths and stairs that meander up and down the building and over the Seine, like a rollercoaster."
Some other images of the proposed development:
:: image via Next
:: image via EgoDesign 
:: image via LaMonde
More from the Times Online: "The flowing lines of the façade, he says, were inspired by the movement of the Seine below. It’s like a gigantic camera obscura, a device for looking out of, taking in the carefully framed views. But the pièce de résistance is on the roof: a massive public square in oak decking, like the prow of a ship, suspending you high in the air, with the Paris roofscape all around, and topped with plant-covered artificial hills, housing a restaurant, offices and terraces. It takes your breath away."
Some more construction/real photos below:
:: image via Flickr- Ollografik
:: image via Nain posteur
:: image via Flickr - laurenatclemson
:: image via RFI
It's frustrating that there aren't any pics yet of the 'promenade' areas atop the roof, specifically the artificial hills and open space, the verts, if you will :) ... but I imagine they will be out there shortly, as the project's implementation is somewhat new. I have a strong feeling that it will be a large, wooden space, with little greenery... but perhaps I'm just pessimistic. Why plant vegetation when you can put a zoomy glass facade on the front. Look forward to more on this interesting project in the future.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Viva le Cité
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Vertical Gardens
Via Topophilia, a competition right up our alley... from Exit Art:
VERTICAL GARDENS - DUE JANUARY 15, 2009
The past decade has seen an emergence of green roofs and vertical gardens created by artists, designers, architects and urban gardeners to combat the lack of flora in the city. Buildings around the world — from the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, to the Queens Botanical Garden in New York — have embraced green walls or roofs for all their economical, environmental, and aesthetic values. On a more practical level, vertical farms and gardens are being envisioned as new ways to feed local and organic foods to city dwellers. Based on the principles of hydroponics, vertical gardens would also be largely self-sustaining because they would capture large amounts of natural sunlight and water, and could use wind as an energy source. Will Allen — the Milwaukee-based farmer who recently won a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant, and whose two-acre organization, Growing Power, produces over $500,000 worth of affordable produce, meat and fish — has said: “I’d like to see Growing Power transform itself into a five-story vertical building being totally off the grid with renewable energy.” In a country where cities are suffocated by industrial materials, where can green space exist? One answer is: Up.
:: image via The Design Blog
These and other urban parks and gardens provide areas for socialization and recreation; a location for a city farm or community land-trust; an outlet through which hundreds of people can learn about farming and agriculture; and the addition of much needed plant and animal life to the otherwise concrete jungle.
We would like artists to submit work that explores the idea of the green roof and/or the vertical garden. Artists can, but are not limited to, create a structural rendering, examine the benefits or shortfalls, or respond critically to these sustainable gardens. DUE JANUARY 15, 2009.
About Exit Art:
Exit Art is an independent vision of contemporary culture prepared to react immediately to important issues that affect our lives. We do experimental, historical and unique presentations of aesthetic, social, political and environmental issues. We absorb cultural differences that become prototype exhibitions. We are a center for multiple disciplines.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
High Line Double
I just couldn't resist discussing the High Line in some sort, after a week of withdrawls... keeping it professional, a couple of great resources. A few days ago I stumbled upon the High Line Blog - which features a range of posts from the great folks at Friends of the High Line.
:: image via High Line Blog
They also have a great link the High Line's Flickr pool, with all the photo satisfaction you would need - mostly aerial shots of the track. I'd post one or two but... oh that's right... no copying allowed. Hmmmph. Well, no fear, I rallied today and was compelled by a post from the blog (and an $18 price tag) to purchase the book Designing the High Line: Gansevoort Street to 30th Street (Paperback)... which I will review when I get it. On sale this week only.
:: images via Amazon
The purchase runs through Amazon, but goes straight through FoHL. And there's real, linkable photos from the Amazon site... to further tempt you. Act now!
:: images via Amazon
Alsop v. Schwartz
A very interesting debate that came via a link from World Landscape Architect features a throw-down between Architect Will Alsop and Martha Schwartz over the role of landscape architects in public space. The video is featured on Wallpaper (alas no embedded video, so the link is here). It seems Mr. Alsop (left) made some comments about landscape architects, so Ms. Schwartz (right) threw down the gauntlet and took him to task about it... sort of.
:: images via BDonline (L) and via Archinect (R)
From Wallpaper: "When Will Alsop questioned the role of landscape architecture in the development of public spaces in a recent speech, US-born London-based landscape architect Martha Schwartz couldn’t resist a response.
And what better way to do it, than to arrange a lively discussion between Alsop and herself, on the role of landscape design to keep the debate going? The event was held in Martha’s office, chaired by Peter Bishop, Director of Design for London. We went along and here are the best bits… "
So the low-down. At a speech in 2007 at the RIBA conference, Alsop dropped this nugget (via BDonline): "The other take, of course, is that the architect should just drop the worst of the cast when all else fails and go it alone. Alsop seemed to be a bit of a fan of the soliloquy idea. ... “Landscape architects,” he mused. “Over the last 10 years they seem to have got the idea that they are better than us. They start to take control and talk like planners and local politicians.” Easily solved. “Cut them out”. 
:: LAs, you will have no part in this, sad... - image via Citizen:Citizen
Nice. Perhaps Alsop forgot that architects have been doing this same thing (cutting us out) for years, much to the detriment of buildings, urban design, and spacemaking in general. I guess if you're into insularity and starchitectural power. I think it's a good sign, mostly due to our presence on the stage... as ten years ago, he probably wouldn't have even mentioned a landscape architect. Either way, the man should never, ever, be able to convene a panel on collaboration. And clients... remember - perhaps you'll get a bit snappy and we can just cut you out as well.
So, anyway, I could rant about this for a bit, but want to hear others comments. Check out the interview for some good parry and thrust. Plus, Wallpaper has some love for Martha, with some imagery from her projects...
:: Massar Children's Discovery Centre in Damascus, Syrah - images via Wallpaper
:: Dublin Docklands - images via Wallpaper
So, what do you think of Alsop's comments and the interview? What good points does he make, other than proving to be an insufferable prick (and a good sport for showing up)? What is the strange shift of Martha Schwartz as LA cheerleader (as she was doing here)? What about the ladies of landscape architecture sticking up for the profession (such as Gustafson v. Szenasy at the ASLA conference)?
It's all, very wonderful... guys, time to step up.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
The Notorious H2O
Blue is the New Green - runs the headlines in last weeks NY Times blog, and not a moment too soon for that. Allison Arieff give an explanation: "A range of alternative energy technologies are available to us today; there is, however, no substitute for water. But there are new ways of thinking about water that can help us make better use of the available supply. ...there are innovations, large and small, now available that would provide for systematic management and optimization of our nation’s water."
:: image via Inhabitat
While this idea of peak-water is not news - it did spur an interesting debate. Arieff went on in the article to explain a range of strategies that aim to address the water dilemma, all of which are pretty common fodder on the landscape architectural front: Living Roofs, Living Walls, Greywater, and Rainwater Harvesting all focus around green building and sustainable sites.
:: images via NY Times
While many of the above examples ring truly green, the specific focus on blue, particularly in water conservation and stormwater strategies. Some other projects around the concept of water worthy of discussion. First, a great water diagram via a post from my buddies at Urbanarbolismo, (here's a link to the English translation) Jordi mentions: "Recently I published an article entitled: 10 original ideas for water treatment systems, without a doubt this project: "The mysterious story of the garden that produces water" would be the idea 11. This is a project for a garden that recycles waste water for the people of Cehegin (Murcia)." The idea comes from Monica Garcia and Javier Rubio from cómo crear historias - read more about the project at their site.
:: images via Urbanarbolismo
This may strike on one of those discussions we had related to telling stories with a minimal amount of imagery... in this case simple animated graphics that layer items upon each other to give relationships. Check these interesting and simple 'narratives'.
:: images via Urbanarbolismo
Pruned picked up a bunch of posts around water that are a fabulous cross-section. A snippet discusses the Central Arizona Project (if you've read Cadillac Desert you know this one)... 
:: image via Pruned
Monday, November 24, 2008
Corner Redux
It seems that James Corner is basking in the glow of design press recently... with another feature in New York Magazine that investigates (in depth) the evolution and potential of Fresh Kills Park. While I have yet to see the movie, Wall-E Park by Robert Sullivan alludes to the idealogy implicit in the movie and it's message of restoration. He comments: "On giant piles of trash left by a generation of New Yorkers, landscape architect James Corner is building a park that has the power to change the way we see the past and the future of the city."
:: Fresh Kills circa 1990 - image via New York Magazine
The barren landscape is evoked from the start: "Let’s start at the peak of what was once a steaming, stinking, seagull-infested mountain of trash, a peak that is now green, or greenish, or maybe more like a green-hued brown, the tall grasses having been recently mown by the sanitation workers still operating at Fresh Kills, on the western shore of Staten Island. Today the sun dries the once slime-covered slopes, as a few hawks circle in big, slow swoops and a jet makes a lazy approach to Newark, just across the Arthur Kill."
The savior... of course is James Corner and his firm Field Operations. While known in NYC primarily for the High Line, the 2000+acre landfill renovation will be the life's work: "But as celebrated as the High Line will probably be, it is Field Operations’ other New York park—the one that’s bigger than lower Manhattan, and currently about the height of Mexico’s Great Pyramid of Cholula—that may change people’s ideas of what a park is all about."
:: image via New York Magazine
And the potential to change people's perceptions of parks is perhap Corner's greatest contribution. Sullivan evokes the pastoral baggage that has accumulated over the past century plus from the time of Central Park. The new aesthetic is derived from a new model, as Corner mentions: "Parks all start to look the same,” he says, “and that sameness is either the pastoral model or the modernist formal model, and this is my problem with style. We try not to have a style.” When Corner and his team began to think about Fresh Kills, they knew that the site was so large and technically demanding that it would be distracting to think in terms of design the way Olmsted did. So they have opted instead to “grow” the park."
The idea of palimpsest is mentioned, with is perhaps a good metaphor for Corner's work at Fresh Kills... a product and a referent to the history of this site's illustrious use. This may be a question of necessity rather than planning, due to the sheer immensity of the space, and the requirement to keep certain elements and prepare 'fields' in others... a broad brush and more passive design process that yields spaces that unfold over time.
:: image via New York Magazine
While allusions to historical large parks put's him in illustrious company, Corner is: "...more like Olmsted as modern-literature professor, a designer who sees the landscape as text, a place where stories are written and rewritten, one on top of the next, sometimes getting all smudged up. At Field Operations, he is attempting to expand the idea of ecology to include not just rivers and streams but also subway lines, movements of capital, and weekend traffic. “To me, a city is an ecology—it’s an ecology of money, an ecology of infrastructure, an ecology of people,” he says. “Everyone thinks ecology is about nature, and it is, but there are so many other systems.”
While dealing with the historical remnants of shifting subgrade, methane offgassing and toxic leachate, the park design builds on this systems approach to protect and restore - no small feat on this scale. But alas, the beauty perhaps comes from the realistic and truthful approach that Corner took during the competition: "Every contestant ended up emphasizing so-called green ideas like recycling, native planting, and the use of sustainable-energy sources. Hargraves Associates featured Olmsted-sounding names like “The Meadows” and “The Preserve”; John M. Caslan and Partners proposed “ecospheres,” or giant domes that housed various American climates; and Rios’s plan featured an intrapark amphibious shuttle bus. But none of the competitors addressed the trash hills as explicitly as Corner."
:: image via New York Magazine
The beauty of the competition is that it acknowledges time as a major component of the design process. This requires some definite patience, but with a potential that pivoted on a simple idea posited by Corner: "Keep the views, which he knew would blow away every New Yorker who will, 40 years from now, take a hybrid bus or solar-powered ferry to the place. “I said, ‘Look, whatever we do we’ve got to keep the big and green. These are views and vistas that most people in a city would have to drive three or four hours to see.’ "
:: image via New York Magazine
This broad view doesn't discount the details... at least in terms of regeneration, evoking the broadness of a forest and the biomimicry of a lichen to explain the process: "Corner relates the architecture of the place to something more along the lines of forest and landscape management than typical park development. “You start with nothing, and you grow, through management, a more diverse ecology,” he says. “You take a very sterile or inert foundation and move something in. It’s like lichen. They quickly grow and die, grow and die, creating a rich soil that something else can grow onto. And that’s how ecosystems grow.”
Continuing on to explain the Lifescape concept and it's distinct phases: Moundscape, Fieldscape, Openscape, and Eventscape - gives some indication, at least in verbal form of the evolution from primitive state to usable park - with constantly expanding occupation over this time period. This evolution is conceptual but realistic - and perhaps difficult to comprehend when looking at the scale and current state of the park.
:: image via New York Magazine
With criticism of the glacial timeline, as well as the idea of 'erasing' the landfill thrown out via critics - the plan is responsive of site constraints and opportunities. Versus Duisberg Nord - a specific post-industrial ruin in which Peter Latz built a large scale park, Fresh Kills is a whole different monster: "As much as Corner admired Latz’s achievement, Fresh Kills doesn’t offer him the same opportunities for romantic decrepitude. For starters, most ecologists argue that we can’t just leave a place like Fresh Kills a broken dump. “If you left it alone,” says Handel, “it would change, but it would change in a depauperate way.” And Corner can’t imagine exposing, say, leachate streams for teaching-moment purposes, especially in a city where parents sue if their children’s feet burn on hot playgrounds. “I think landscape should be edifying, but there are joyous and optimistic ways. It doesn’t have to be so apocalyptic.”
This positivity in the face of amazing constraints is the hallmark of a long-view - which is perhaps the definition of the design. Change is inevitable in landscape architecture, yet we seem to look at design as a 'product' that has a finite timeframe and beautiful ending - not as something that evolves along sometimes unknown ways. "The most complicated part of the design is the idea that it is designed to change. “Large parks will always exceed singular narratives,” Corner wrote in a recent essay. “They are larger than the designer’s will for authorship.” He added, “The trick is to design a large park framework that is sufficiently robust to lend structure and identity while also having sufficient pliancy and ‘give’ to adapt to changing demands and ecologies over time.”
"Fresh Kills is like forest succession on a simultaneously human and industrial basis, like a nurse log in the woods, where one plant moves in on the back of another, where one use is superseded by another, one layer of ideas on top of the last." In the end, is the park on it's way to potential success, using this pliancy and flexibility? Is this something we can even begin to ascribe potential meaning, or are we caught up in the pastoral baggage of our perceptions of parks that will not allow us to comprehend something different. Or, as Sullivan mentions, does this offer a potential teaching moment, both on a site scale and as a society - about our relationship with trash, it's dirty heritage, and our way of dealing with it?
This, perhaps, is the question at the root of modern landscape architecture. And Corner deserves this moment in the spotlight, with us all following him into the breach.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Corner(ing) the Market
I've been sitting on this almost finished post for almost two weeks, patiently, then not so patiently waiting for Metropolis to get around to posting their November content online... mainly for this month's great profile about James Corner, and some sweet new pics of the High Line and other work. Finally it's here, and we can properly illustrate this article 'The Long View' and elucidate what Corner means to the profession? 
:: what can YOU learn from this man? - image via Metropolis
This picks up our threads from previous discussions of influence and professional voice... Perhaps Corner is that voice. Not a magazine to shy away from hyperbole, the frontispiece proudly starts out with the simple statement...
"By embracing the city's industrial past - reclaiming landfills, remediating browfields, developing neglected waterfronts - James Corner has helped reinvent the field of landscape architecture."
No small feat, for sure - but I think perhaps it's deserved. And since the intra-professional backbiting of a few years back had died back - perhaps the profession has finally turned that corner (no pun intended) that we all needed to attain some professional validation. I haven't heard much lately about the art versus science debate. Nor is there a bemoaning of ecology as a cop-out to design credibility within the professional dialogue. Seems, as many of us mentioned, you can (or rather have to and certainly want to) have both. And it's refreshing to see the change. Not that we've buttoned up every issue, but there seems some sort of viable platform (to borrow the election term) upon which we exist as a profession and proceed with our work. At the very least we've cracked out of our shells and remembered the importance of not just what we do - but that we need to be visible and vocal leaders in this world as well. There is credit due to a number of players - and one of those is definitely Mr. Corner. 
:: Fresh Kills - images via Metropolis
The article is a good overview about Corner, and his professional work with Field Operations giving a broad timeline of 25 years of professional and academic work that has turned from writing to competitions to realized large scale built works. It touches on some of the foundations, such as Fresh Kills, as well as showing the expansion and evolution of the scope and breadth of FO's work. It's an impressive evolution and interesting to see some visuals of newer work, such as the Lake Ontario Park in Toronto: "Similar to Fresh Kills... a combination of wetlands and uplands on an environmentally degraded site. The design accepts the complicated landscape rather than smothering it with a single-minded vision."
And the Shelby Farms proposal (previously covered by L+U here) which influence the overall role of the profession. As Corner posits, we should occupy that driver's seat in leading these design interventions: "Rather than wielding bushes and trees—the proverbial parsley around the roast of proper architecture—landscape architects are, as Corner sees it, the best prepared to tackle the complex, large-scale, often environmentally damaged sites that have become the hallmark of urban regeneration."
:: Shelby Farms - image via Metropolis
It's also refreshing to see some confidence and candor coming from the profession. One note that stuck in my head from the article: "“I don’t want to be embarrassed to be a landscape architect because we’re thought of as tree people who come in at the end of the day,” he says." It's something we can all support and strive in our practice to promote as well.
:: Fresh Kills - image via Metropolis
The article does spend a lot of time on Fresh Kills, particularly the scale (immense) and the timeline (long) for implementation. As a landscape architect best known for popularizing temporality and duration - it seems even Corner is prone to the antsiness of the designer: "...the slowness grates on Corner. “I think I may have become less patient,” he says. “You go all out, you put a lot into this, and it’s frustrating to see the way and not have it followed.” He went on, “It’s a great profession, a great medium, but I tell you, it’s such a difficult medium to move.” 
:: Fresh Kills Phase One - images via Metropolis
:: Repurposed Diggers as Signage - images via Metropolis
Perhaps some of the long timeline will be abated by the High Line, which is progressing steadily from zoomy renderings to actual reality.
The article has some great new images of the High Line's continually evolving construction and implementation of the High Line... I particularly enjoy the precast fingers... here's a few more.
:: images via Metropolis
As an further endnote... Has anyone noticed Metropolis' coverage of Landscape Architecture lately. Seems as if some of the editors have finally discovered the fair profession since Susan Szensasy's commentary from last year... thoughts?
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