Category: furnishings
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Daily Drawdown 11: Materials
This is the eleventh in an ongoing series illustrating the relationship of Drawdown strategies to landscape architecture. For context, read the initial post here. The decisions about materials we use on projects have implications in a number of areas, including loss of biodiversity, the pollution produced during manufacturing, and the overall greenhouse gas emissions that…
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Smart Trees
Way back in undergraduate studies, I developed a project for a pedestrian street mall in Vancouver, British Columbia. The conceptual framework of car-free zones in cities was a contentious one at the time with some notable failures but the idea of removing cars from urban zones was a key driver of my design. This has…
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Purge Sculpture
Filed under ‘random’ this sculpture was spotted the previous weekend along the waterfront just north of the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle. A pile of vegetated ‘cans’ with the word ‘Purge’ punched into them – alas a web search has yielded little in terms of info beyond this. Anyone have any info? UPDATE (02/12/14): Buster…
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Materials Library: Rust
A revisit of an old feature on L+U, investigations of materials for inspirational purposes. For starters, one of my favorites, the rusted metal of Cor-ten, weathering steel, or whatever you’d like to call it, a durable and wonderful addition to exterior projects in it’s ability to blend with natural materials (landscaping, wood, stone) and more…
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A Perfect Perch
Atop the rooftop chaise lounge at the Sattler Winery in Tadten, Austria by Architects Collective (spotted via Arch Daily) :: image via Arch Daily
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Elizabeth Caruthers Park
One on the more recent additions to the park inventory in Portland is the neighborhood park for the South Waterfront Area. (see here and here for more on SoWa). The park is named Elizabeth Caruthers Park (after one of the pioneering founders of Portland – on whose original land claim the park now lies) this…
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Urban Urinals
Well in defense of the scatological, peeing in urban areas (or other specific displays of a variety of bodily functions) is something of a way of life (often in the doorway of our downtown office). Portland has become another in a line of cities experimenting with public toilets in the inner city for use by…
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Bad Idea of the Week
This one from Treehugger made me question what the actual point of this exercise was in the grand scheme of landscape and furnishings… “Michel Bussien has designed a new way to help you get up close and personal with nature–by turning it into furniture. The “Growing Chair” shown is a sharply designed mold that allows…
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Reimagining Shade
A couple of active competitions address a similar and pressing issue – reimagining the function and form of trees in our urban areas. árboles urbanos First, via Urbanarbolismo, the árboles urbanos competition, sponsored by asa, provides the following challenge (via translation, so apologies for any misrepresentation): “The Urban Trees Asacción is organized around a design…