Category: art
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Materiality and Light
There are a few different ways of approaching the use of materials in landscape installations. While there exists a finite amount of materials (albeit growing due to our ability to co-opt and produce more products), there is no limitations to the diversity of applications and combinations. While landscape architecture is getting more experimental, I tend…
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Flossin’ – Site Style
The Urban Dictionary is a fabulous resource for staying current on the constantly evolving lingo (alongside a weekly dose of William Safire). One new addition to my lexicon, via a tricked out SUV rolling by a few weeks back is the term Flossin‘ (that’s sans g, in the Palin tradition). The short of it, it’s…
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Land Art Influence
As I muddle through the very dense and wonderful book ‘Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings’, it’s continually evident that 1) Smithson was way ahead of his time in thinking of sites within the context of emphemerality and change, and 2) the field of landscape architecture can learn significant amounts from the library of land art…
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Tree Manipulation
It’s always amazing how malleable plant materials can be, particularly as we manipulate them and bend them to our varieties of will. Not content to just allow plants to grow into their natural form, we do all sorts of madness to them – chopping, topping, pleaching, espalier, trimming, bosques, poodling, topiary, arborsculture – in addition…
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Materiality: Grab Bag
It’s been a long while since I’ve posted anything on materials… perhaps due to the work I’ve been engaged in, and the fact that little of it is dealing with material selection, or the recent focus on evaluating the more sustainable materiality – sans aesthetics. That is not to say that materials don’t constantly play…
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Venice Biennial Snapshots
Be sure to check out the great post from Design Under Sky of the Gustafson/Guthrie/Nichol/Gustafson/Porter et. al. installation at the 11th Annual Venice Biennial – solidifying once again that landscape architecture is a great format for these more ephemeral installations… the white sheet held aloft by balloon is a stroke of genius. :: images via…
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Sendak, Pre-Vegitect?
One of my favorite children’s books when I was a kid was the Maurice Sendak classic ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ (probably a close tie with Ferdinand the Bull). As many know, this tale of Max as the kid with the wild imagination and awesome wolf costume (which by god I will do for halloween…
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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…