Planter Pocket Facade

An interesting project from Osaka, Japan featuring a variation on vertical green with a Hundertwasserian flair. There is a certain transparency in the system, and I was amazed that the project has been in place since the early 1990s. (via Inhabitat)


:: image via Inhabitat

From Inhabitat: "Italian-born architect and artist, Gaetano Pesce designed and built the plant-clad Organic Building in Japan. The exterior of the building is an eye-catching vertical garden that takes its conceptual cues from bamboo. ... Completed in 1993, the Organic Building has since been named a civic landmark by the City of Osaka, which has undertaken its maintenance in perpetuity. The exterior is covered with steel-encased concrete panels glazed with a red finish that feature rather cute extruding pockets. Inside these containers are fiberglass planters that contain more than 80 types of indigenous plants and trees selected in collaboration with Osaka horticulturists, and they are all irrigated via a computer-controlled hydrating system of mechanical pipes."

:: image via Inhabitat

you hold the gun!

A call from submissions for a student-run architecture journal KTISMA from the University of Oregon,with a focus on the temporal, changing, and dynamic nature of architecture, landscape and urbanism.



ktisma
κτίσμα
ktis’-mah: thing founded; thing created

a publication edited by graduate students at the university of oregon’s department of architecture. a focused forum of discussion about environments; how they are created, imagined, interpreted, presented, and questioned.

each issue of KTISMA is a platform for the conversations within the school to provoke a discourse at large.

issue #1: “you hold the gun!”

” . . . he wanted to arrest the flight of a gull so as to be able to see in a fixed format every single successive freeze-frame of a continuous flow of flight, the mechanism of which had eluded all observers until his invention. What we need is the reverse: the problem with buildings is that they look desperately static. It seems almost impossible to grasp them as movement, as flight, as a series of transformations . . . ” -Bruno Latour, Albena Yaneva

motivated by Bruno Latour’s 2008 article “Give me a Gun and I Will Make All Buildings Move: An ANT’S View Of Architecture.” KTISMA asks for projects, of any printable media, that:

• approach the environment as a “moving project”–beyond its imaging as something fixed and static
• expand notions of communication (drawing, writing, photography, etc…) as an instrument of demonstration rather than representation
• resolve the breach between linear representation to complex manifestation
• demonstrate the multi-faceted and dynamic culture of architectural proposals
• anticipate time-based properties of the built environment: decay, growth, modification, transformation, durations, and intervals

submissions date:
6/2010

publication date:
9/2010

ktismajournal.com
ktismajournal@gmail.com

Landcast by Christian Barnard

Dubbed with simple terms as 'the voice of contemporary landscape culture' - LANDCAST is a new series of podcasts from fellow landscape architect and blogger Christian Barnard that approaches landscape media in a brand new way. With the help of radio documentarian Adrien Sala, the podcasts aim to be an irreverent and informative way to discuss landscape, architecture, nature and development.



The first episode featured Debra Guenther Landscape Architect and Principal at Mithun from Seattle - in a varied and engaging exploration of Living Buildings, vertical farms, the future of cities, and other cutting edge sustainable strategies the firm is working on worldwide.

I have yet to hear episode 2 - which should emerge around May 6th and features what (to me) is a familiar voice... but to others may register as a nasally drone... but don't let it turn you off... check it out.