DailyLand: June Callwood Park

Bustler recently announced the winning entry the international design competition to provide a vision for Toronto’s June Callwood Park. The competition was won by Toronto-based architecture and landscape design firm gh3 for their ethereal design that mixes forms of bands, waves and groves together in their entry for the 'Super Real Forest' - patterning light through canopies, mist, and glowing nighttime seating.

:: images via Bustler

Oh and pink... did I mention the pink? From Bustler: "...the Pink Field, the largest of the Super-Real Forest’s five clearings. Surfaced with pink elastocrete, its smooth, rubberized texture welcomes barefoot play in the summer. It is home to a range of year round activity: Frisbee, ball games, skipping, tag in the summer; snowball fights, snowmen, and snow angels in the winter."

:: images via Bustler

Some additional images of the renderings, which are pretty stunning.

:: images via Bustler

gh3 was selected as the winner from amongst notable finalists including: Balmori & Associates and dTAH, Janet Rosenberg & Associates, and PMA Landscape Architects and Ground. Check out the full entry, descriptions and more images on Bustler.

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

Reading List: The Sourcebook of Contemporary Landscape Design

As always, the holiday season came with a typically literary bent, as family and friends know of my bibliophilic tendencies - and I have a free moment or two to read - so look forward to some book reviews that have been waiting in the wings for a couple of months. One tome that was a wonderful additon to the library (thanks mom and sis!) is 'The Sourcebook of Contemporary Landscape Design', by Alex Sanchez Vidiella - published late 2008 by Harper Collins.


:: image via Harper Collins

These are interesting books - focused on imagery and graphics from a number of international projects that may or may not have made it into the collective consciousness - save voracious readers of blogs and European-focused journals like Topos. Thus, while some projects were known, this volume contains many projects that were new to me - and offers great photographs to reinforce and show some of the great detailing.

An excerpt of the books visually based content from the Harper Collins website:


:: image via Harper Collins

Alas, the constraint of a visually-based sourcebook is the lack of project context - which is so wonderfully presented in books like comprehensive book of 2008 The Public Chance, or special volumes on projects that are regionally or typologically based - which provide a necessary overview and grounding. There is some minimal location and context - but for the most part these projects become objects themselves, albeit wonderfully designed, implemented, and illustrated in the text.

At a remarkably affordable $60 US price tag - it's a steal to gather all this material in one spot, so definitely check it out for your office or better, yet, pick up one for your coffee table at home. No longer will visitors to your house need to know what landscape architecture is, and can be, after taking a look at this visual feast.