You Can Go Home Again

Well not exactly home, but a wonderful trip last week, back to my alma mater North Dakota State University for a presentation on my favorite topics - Landscape + Urbanism + Veg.itecture. Thanks to everyone that attended the lecture and for the great conversation before, during, and after. Fargo has changed a lot, but remarkably stays the same. More posts upcoming after this short, work- and travel-induced break.

Bilbao Jardín Garden

A wonderful addition to the International Urban Garden Competition “Bilbao Jardín 2009”, by Diana Balmori of New York-based Balmori Associates and a design that literally 'climbs the stairs' with a undulating vegetated strip and cor-ten walls splaying out in a wider planter at the lowest landing.


:: image via Bustler - Photo: Iwan Baan

Some of the designers explanatory text, via Bustler: "The garden climbs the stairs, running in undulating lines of different textures and colors. Envisioned as a dynamic urban space; it moves in time and with the seasons. Its lush planting cascades down as though the garden was flowing or melting, bleeding the colors into each other. In one gesture, it narrates a story of landscape taking over and expanding over the Public Space and Architecture, therefore transforming the way that the stairs and the space is perceived and read by the user. It is a garden of contrasts: the contrast between native and exotic plants, between the red flowers and the green grass, between the green grass and the grey paving. In form, the garden engages the horizontal plaza with the rising vertical plane of the steps and the upright gesture of Eduardo Chillida’s sculpture. Like the famous Spanish Steps in Rome, the garden is not only designed for visitors to ascend and descend, but for them to linger, and just be."


:: images via Bustler - Photo: Iwan Baan

It's an elegantly simple composition, and definitely takes advantage of the 'topography' of the stairway and foreshortening perspectives utilized to create a constantly changing perspective of vegetation in a somewhat grand, but otherwise barren staircase area left between the architectural objects. Check out more images including construction photos on Bustler.




:: images via Bustler - Photo: Iwan Baan

Terragrams

Just when I think Twitter is a roiling mass of wasted time and energy, I get a link or two that make me reconsider. One of these, spotted by @landmatters is for a site that obviously has been under my radar called Terragrams - an ongoing podcast series for landscape architecture hosted by landscape architect Craig Verzone.



From their site: "Terragrams is a podcast series disseminating discussions about the landscape. As our societal conscience and appreciation of the landscape heightens, Terragrams provides a wide portal into landscape architecture and the lives and thoughts of the professionals who shape it. The project aims at capturing, distributing and archiving these voices. It is an easily accessible, open audio digital archive aimed at collecting first-hand, face-to-face conversations between and about people in and around the field."

The cast of characters featured is a veritable who's who of landscape architecture - captured in audio for your listening pleasure. Highlights (for me at least) include Julie Bargmann, James Corner, Elizabeth Meyer, Richard Forman, Chris Reed , Liat Margolis, and the latest iteration by Ken Smith . Good stuff, and more good interviews to come.