Category: agriculture
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Thinking Out of the Box, Pt. 1
The ubiquitous big box store is a staple of modern life, which, along with it’s associated expansive parking areas eat up a good portion of our cities. The collections of big box stores, known as power centers, exacerbate this phenonmenon by multiplying the footprint and impact of the store uses – creating significant gashes in…
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Pruning AAgrotecture
Most readers have no doubt seen Alexander Trevi’s great quartet of projects in an ongoing series on AAgrotecture over at Pruned. Part of a Vertical Studio from the Architecture Association (AA) in London taught by Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos – the purpose was to address a central question: “Can extremes of programmatic effectiveness…
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Veg.itecture #42
It has been a while since we’ve had an opportunity to showcase some Vegetated Architecture. You missed it, didn’t you? Well, I did lose all of my accumulated links on my old computer – but it didn’t take long to accumulate some more gems. And well, it’s not all eye candy, as there has been…
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The Detroit Dilemma
As mentioned previously, I spent an intensive three-day long whirlwind charrette in Detroit, Michigan as part of on interdisciplinary team for the Sustainable Design Assessment Team (SDAT) program as part of the AIAs Communities by Design Program. This was my first SDAT experience, as well as my first visit to Detroit (short of passing through…
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Flip This Strip…
Perhaps the timing is perfect amidst our current economic downturn – the award winners have been announced for the very interesting Flip a Strip competition sponsored by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (smoca). These entries expand the conversation and definitely deliver in potential opportunities and visions for these zones of urban and sub-urban blight,…
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Missing the Trees for the ‘Forest’
A bit under a year ago, my beginning as a fledgling blogger had a start as a blog reader – and my two favorites were Geoff Manaugh’s BLDGBLOG and Alexander Trevi’s Pruned. It’s been a long while since I’ve been able to glean anything of use from the intermittent BLDGBLOG (I blame Dwell :)… as…
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Post-Successional Landscapes
This week came to a close with another Park(ing) Day, a phenomenon created by San Fran group REBAR a few years back. It was evidently a success around the world via blog posts, and from the few examples I saw around Portland, it was evident that there was a lot of interest and support… It’s…
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Bag-riculture Urban Style
Pardon the bad pun, but a bunch of posts that deal with urban agriculture using a variety of containers motivated me to post on the selection and phenomenon. Gardens are one of those things that require some sort of container in which to hold soils, plants, and allow for growth. Typically this container is our…
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Neo-Vertical Greening
As a companion to Veg.itecture #38 – a bevy of green wall projects in a number of phases… that are definitely worth a look. First, via Dwell – always good for a hot pic and aimless commentary (look for the, ‘wouldn’t it be great if we could be all sustainable and stuff and not water…
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What I did on my Summer Vacation – Pt.2
Again, I have a lull due to the joy of taking a bit of time off and visiting family… For round two of my summer break, I have recently returned from a trip to North Dakota to visit my dad. Starting in Minot, and traveling a good portion of the state over four days along…