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Finding SoWa’s Soul
Under the radar, a series of South Waterfront District Artist in Residence events have been happening at the South Waterfront District, with an eye to honing in on some sense of place in our cities newest neighborhood. AiR Studio is hosting, Linda K. Johnson, wants to provide a sense of history for a place that…
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Vegetated Architecture
New terms, or juxtaposition of terms, continually occur in the design dialogue. Sometimes these provide language for describing something new – a technology, process or approach. Other times, this language provides a new use of terms that gives resonance for a fresh approach to something old. Terms like living buildings, civic ecology, living architecture, natural…
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Materiality: Concrete
The concept of mundane materials taking new forms may offer the ability to literally ‘recast’ their use in a new light. No material is this more true than concrete. In it’s many forms concrete is a malleable soldier of the building trades, and provides countless opportunities for architecture and design. While a number of building…
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P/A Award: Taichung Gateway Park
A wide range of ‘progressive architecture’ awards were recently announced on ArchitectOnline going to a wide range of winners. The process and product of what defines ‘progressive’ is a constantly shifting target, due to new jurors as well as new architectural directions. From the article: “Last year’s jury, for instance, favored projects with a sense…
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Tree | TREE | tree
As we have seen, trees occupy a litany of places in our senses and psyche – and just beg to be used as fodder for sculptural and architectural abstraction. Some recent adaptations of the theme take on some interesting forms, due to the use of material (a future topic) form, and function. Three examples of…
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Revisit: JC Raulston Arboretum
While in North Carolina for Christmas, my planned visit to Greenbridge Development in Chapel Hill. The closest I got was a peek through the closed windows of the office, and a quick driveby to the building site, which was vacant. Alas, not much to report, until I get some materials… although the real-estate folks were…
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Revisit: Oregon Garden
It’s a rainy, gray day in Portland, so i was sorting digital photographs and stumbled upon a few from a November trip to The Oregon Garden in Silverton, Oregon. This was my first visit to the garden, and alas, the camera died about 500 feet into the garden, so a return trip is required. The…
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Madness/Genius?
You decide… what can I say… Taking the idea of ‘playing with your food’ to, I guess, ‘healthy’ extremes, photographer Carl Warner has created landscapes using only food items, photographed and digitally manipulating pastoral nature scenes. Whereas broccoli is a no-brainer for a tree analog, who would’ve pictured pink salmon ocean water lapping on to…
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Portland CityShrinking
Portland landscape architect extraordinare Dave Elkin, offers this take on City Shrinking, noted in the Landscape Urbanism year-end review… This photo of Portland’s Sandy Green Street Project in miniature uses the techniques outlined by Ben Thomas in this Adobe Design Center interview, so you too can wield the power. I have yet to try but…
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Tasty Building/Landscape Fusions
I am definitely noticing the green wall/facade, vegetated architecture trend… with ASLA’s blog asking the burning question: Are green walls ‘the green roofs of 2008?’ Seems so, at least in a theoretical, paper architecture visual sense – but as mentioned prior, green facades and walls are beginning to literally take root all over. A few…