Category: materials
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Architects Plus
The current issue of Architectural Record includes a great article on the continual blurring of the line between landscape and architecture as well as illuminating the new collaborative model of design involved in vegetated architecture. :: image via Inhabitat One project that was highlighted was the California Academy of Sciences Building by Renzo Piano, and…
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Materiality: Textural Classes
Like color, the use of texture is an adaptable design strategy to transform a material and expand its range of visual and functional characteristics. There are a number of ways to take existing material and provide an added dimension through manipulation of texture through patterning, perforating, and articulating. Digging back through the archives, I discovered…
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Tree/House
There’s a few posts out showing off a variety of actual treehouses, but what fun is that. I thought a sampling of projects of the theme would be much more informative. Just for kicks, here’s my favorite, a more refined method for the discerning tree-sitter, from Web Urbanist: :: image via Web Urbanist For spotting…
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Veg.itecture: S, M, L, XL
I will eventually run out of witty, thematic ways of presenting Vegetated Architecture (ok, I may already have), but in the interim, a selection of projects in a range of sizes (with apologies to Koolhaas + Mau). Of the precedents previously shown on L+U, architecture and landscape combinations range from the modest to the extreme,…
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Color Theory
These images on MoCo Loco’s Art MoCo featuring the work of artist Denny McCoy’s simple yet somehow deep paintings of colored bands, jogged my memory of a couple of recent color-related resources that floated by recently. Part photoshop swatch, part Timbuk2 messenger bag – it’s not the composition, but the complement of shades and tones…
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Process Landscapes
I was compelled to dust off my copy of the Landscape Urbanism Reader (ok, really just my notes), and look at a few key positions regarding the idea of ‘process landscapes’. The following quotes stuck out as applicable to process, a major tenet of LU theory (all quotations from Waldheim, ed.): Corner’s (p.16) four processes:…
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Veg.itecture: Caixa Forum Madrid
The Caixa Forum project in Madrid has been shown in brief on L+U before. It is, simply put, an amazing composition, using two complementary materials (red rusted metal panels and green vegetated panels) juxtaposed together with stunning results. Project is by Herzog & de Meuron. Vertical Garden by Patrick Blanc. Image links to Flickr pool…
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Fakery is the New PoMo
Paper or Plastic… Fake or Real. No, these are not the perennial Christmas question, or a variation of the paper or plastic debate, but another round of abstractions of all things landscape. I stumbled upon an old post on Strange Harvest that had some amazing images of design for Montreal’s 1967 World’s Expo (aka Expo…
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Shift into ‘Slow’ Gear
The Slow Food Movement has long been active in European countries, with it’s ubiquitous snail-mascot and new vocabulary (i.e. eco-gastronomy) making us stop (almost) and enjoy the concepts of local, fair, environmentally friendly food, and the idea of reconnecting to the pleasures of eating. :: logo via Slow Food International The concept is terribly European,…
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Materiality: Plant Knowledge
There has been much discussion lately on the L-ARCH listserv regarding the role and knowledge of landscape architects regarding plants and planting design. (ah, a listserv, how 1997, but i digress). To sum up, there’s a persistent theory that Landscape Architecture suffers from a deficiency of plant knowledge. Is this true? Well, I personally know…