Guilfoyle's Volcano

A long dormant reservoir, constructed in 1876 to store water for the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne now forms the focal point of an inspiring new landscape design. The design of the crater-like reservoir was originally undertaken by William Guilfoyle, as a method of irrigating the gardens through a gravity fed system along with the vision of providing a landmark landscape folly for the gardens.

After being hidden from the public for over sixty years, the reservoir has now been resurrected by Landscape Architect, Andrew Laidlaw, as the dramatic centre piece of volcano-themed garden. Rocks and red lava erupt from the crater, created by a mixture of broken terracotta tiles and fluid concrete shapes. The steep sides of the volcano are planted with a unique botanic collection of succulents and cacti species. Within the crater itself are several floating circular islands, which naturally move about the water-filled crater in the breeze. These islands are planted with native and indigenous species to form water filtration systems - an innovative and intriguing idea, which is dissapointingly more successful on functional rather than aesthetic levels.

Guilfoyle's Volcano is dramatic, powerful and symbolically playful - a unique contemporary landscape design with echoes of the original historical concepts envisaged for the landscape at the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Photo taken onsite.

A message in a bottle

These beautiful living sculptures are the creation of Paula Hayes a New York artist / Landscape designer who creates terrariums within delicate glass vessels. They remind me of specimen jars for rare plants or test tubes where young seedlings might be nurtured into a blossoming life. I'm especially fond of the oversize pendulous terrariums in the image above, where layers of soil and other growing media can be clearly seen by the viewer like a section through the landscape. Not only are these terrariums a living artwork, but they are also an intriguing way of transporting landscapes (although small in size only) to where ever we might want them to be - indoors, inside a courtyard or in a spare nook somewhere. Beautiful and fragile miniature landscapes can be nurtured and appreciated even in a seemingly inhospitable location.

The image above is from Paula Hayes' exhibition 'Excepts from the Story of Planet Thear' at the Marlanne Boesky Gallery, New York.

Blue Sticks

Following the garden festival theme of my last post: the Blue Stick Garden (Jardin de Batons Bleus) designed by Claude Cormier is intriguing and joyously simple (something which I believe is extremely challenging to 'design'). Blue Sticks was exhibited at the Jardin de Metis International Garden Festival in Quebec in 2000.

I find it refreshing to view designs, such as Blue Sticks, which approach the creation of landscapes from a different perspective. After time spent focusing on the nuances of planting designs and configurations it is uplifting to be presented with a landscape where plant species are not physically dominant, but where they inform the design expression. Blue Sticks evolved as a concept directly related to its site of exhibtion at the Jardin de Metis. The initial concept for the installation arose from the blue poppies adapted to the site's microclimate and featured extensively in the heritage mixed flower borders at the Jardin de Metis. It is wonderful to see a design in direct relation to the site itself - too many modern landscape designs seem to be shallow layered concepts that have no connection with the site they occupy or with the broader urban fabric they are a part of.

What intrigued me most about Blue Sticks however, was the simple visual trick employed by painting the long sticks blue on three sides, leaving one remaining side to be painted a vivid contrasting orange. To vistors surpise, the labyrinth-like layout of the design revealed this dramatic colour change only once they had turned around to view the path they had just walked through the garden. This chameleon-like transformation is deliciously simple and uncomplicated. It is this simplicity (almost child-like in its effortlessness) that is something we need to see alot more of in contemporay (usually over-complex) landscapes.

Garden festivals

I've recently been reading about garden festivals around the world, where designers and Landscape Architects come together to exhibit innovative design installations and landscape interventions that challenge the traditional and conventional expectations of garden design. The designs often blur the boundaries of landscape design and land art. In particular, I've been researching the Festival International des Jardins held at Chaumont sur Loire in France and the Jardin de Metis held at the Redford Gardens in Quebec. The photo above is from Claude Cormier's Blue Sticks installation at the Jardin de Metis in 2000.

In contrast, a visit to the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show on Friday was, like always, an extreme disappointment. The extremely limited number of designs on show (the number seems to diminish each year) were boring and were overshadowed by the growing crowd of retail focused stalls. The garden designs exhibited the same characteristics and features that appear year after year in residential design - the boring continuing obsession with 'outdoor rooms' (including outdoor fireplaces and bathtubs) and cubic frames that rise like malnourished pergolas from the landscapes below. As a city with a strong design culture, it is disheartening to see a broadening chasm opening up between the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show and the renowned international festivals.

Shouldn't this event be challenging people's perceptions of what gardens are and inspiring people through innovative and unique designs, instead of exhibiting the same stale formula year after year?

Forgive me if I'm ranting, but Melbourne deserves better.

Pop-up gardening

We have been noticing some pop-up gardening emerging on the streets of Melbourne recently - local communities have been cultivating veggie plots in some delightfully unexpected places within the city.

This example has appropriated part of the streetscape on the corner of King William and Napier Street in Fitzroy. The attached sign encourages people to plant and nurture the garden at will or simply sit by and enjoy its presence.

There are numerous examples of thriving community gardens in Melbourne's suburbs that we have all seen - in St Kilda, Clifton Hill, Collingwood, Brunswick etc. but this is the first example I have seen which has reclaimed actual road space. It has produced a valuable piece of landscape - a landscape which is pioneering the cultivation and 'greening' of the urban asphalt fabric of our city.

Photo and inspiration courtesy of Mark Skiba.

Paradise in Plasticine

In May 2009 James May embarked on the ambitious task of creating and exhibiting a garden entirely made of plasticine at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, the pinnacle annual event of English gardening. Luckily for me I was able to watch the whole process unfold from beginning to end as part of James May's Toy Stories program on SBS. Enlisting the help of many volunteers to create plasticine flowers and other components of the garden, the project gradually took shape to form a whimsical, fairy tale landscape. Predictably the Paradise in Plasticine garden caused a significant stir among the other exhibitors, judges and the public at Chelsea - this was particularly due to the lack of real plants! However, the garden had people enthralled, winning the RHS Peoples Choice award for 'Best Small Garden'.

Paradise in Plasticine had me spellbound with its child-like landscape filled with colour and joyous creativity. Sure, from a Landscape Architecture perspective the design of the garden didn't appear particularly well researched or developed, but it had me asking the question: what truly defines a garden as a garden? When does landscape become sculpture?

Photo taken from The Guardian.

Today is Friday.

So it's the end of the week, there is a long weekend on the horizon, and I have a design package due today. Whilst on the verge of destroying my computer, and hunting down the creator of vectorworks to have some stern words with how to create a better more functional program, I had to look for 'happy' things to keep me calm.

I came up with:

Now this lovely decked out bus shelter was designed by a Mark Reigelman, he has done lots of nifty little things with urban intervention that will put a smile on any grumpy face.

Check out an interview with him on Inside Out.

Also if you want to read a funny blog by a New Yorker about bikes click here, there was a rant about bike paths and the use of said bike paths for parking, by the local constabulary.

Design-orama - next AILA Fresh event

The next AILA Fresh event is going to be a good one including team-based design-tastic challenges! Come along and join in the design activities, meet other AILA Fresh people and generally have fun!

Green eggs and ham

Searching for inspiration recently, I came across the book Avant Gardners by Tim Richardson, former editor of Wallpaper Magazine. The book is focused on conceptualist landscape design, a term used to describe a group of designers whose work is characterised by an idea which informs all aspects of the landscape. This photo is of Nip Pasage's Virage Vert (Green Shift) project in Montreal, a fun and cheeky exploration of the importance of being green - with colour, texture and artificial materials at the forefront of the design. The large green balls function as a play space for children, seating and an art installation.

Avant Gardners details landscape designs from 50 Designers and Landscape Architects from around the world, including essays about the theory of conceptualist landscape design.

Image source: Avant Gardeners photo slideshow by Time Magazine.

Snake and ladders anyone?

This is a cool space by Cigler Marani Architects.

Link via buzz beast

Post Garden
A creative mob in the UK have designed this nifty little Post Card Garden, all you need to do is write on it, stick a stamp on, throw it in the post box, and the lucky reciever gets a little fold out postcard with the seeds to grow a little desktop garden.

Link via Postcarden

Be small to do big.
This here is an interesting article on the microclimate and ecosystem of termite nests, and how architects/designers could learn to produce sustainable dwellings and spaces.

It really is amazing how little bugs can produce such an effective natural system to survive, and yet us with our years of education without the need to fight for survival, cannot produce a similar system.

Link via New Scientist

CULTIVATING THE YOUNG. EDUCATING THE LAers of the FUTURE!
The next event, it shall be good. Do It!

Put your hand up if you thinkg light is understated in landscapes.
This is one of many installations Spanish Luzinterruptus has installed. Playing with light, latex gloves, and a frozen pond.

Lots more at their blog.

Adbusting in Berlin.
via Brainstorm#9 (portugese)
forum ekosystem.org (bit of german)

Landscape Architecture to the rescue?
Linked is a very interesting article that takes me back to 1st year uni. It talks about the necessity of green spaces within an urban setting or at least the opportunity for the occupants to take some time out and leave the city periodically, to help with the mental health of the occupants. Apparently a fair few studies done in the States as well as here concluded that even with the smallest amount of green space the test subjects were able to achieve better scores on memory tests and the such, in relation to similar test subjects without the same exposure to green or nature.
Read it, on a side note they mention something about drinking Red Bull and designing office spaces...little do they know that Landscape Architects probably drink a lot of Red Bull and design landscapes...as if it's a bad thing!

Link via The Boston Globe.

New way to analyse site?
Industrial Research Ltd in New Zealand have developed a scanner that can scan a site and build a 3d model to millimetre accuracy. Aimed at forensic investigators and scientists the scanner is based on digital camera's, pulse lasers and a GPS like device that draws its position from the laser pulses. About 20 tripods equipped with the laser pulses are needed, but the more the merrier.

Link via New Scientist

Lego in real world application. Not Structural.
Jan Vormann has done a collection of work called Dispatchwork. It is a form of architectural graffiti using pieces of lego to fill voids within brickwork or other vertical elements to create intriguing colourful peices of work.

Link via Life without Buildings
Dispatchwork Jan Vormann

The Opposite to a popup book.
Have you ever tried to build a model that can explain or portray the spatial quality within an enclosed space? Models with parts that can be taken off to show the inside space, and yet it doesn't really show how the space works?

Well maybe you can do what Olafur Eliasson has done for MoMA, a laser cut book with the interior of a building meticulously cut out of each page to create the space.

Link via Origami Tessallations
The laser cutters Kremo

Before...and After.
This mayor care about the future of their city...now why can't more care?
The first image is a familiar aerial photo of many cities, or outer suburban business centres. Large buildings, lots of roads, no green space, pedestrians non-existant.
The second image is what this particular urban sprawl could become if the mayor gets their way, and if subsequent mayors continue on the same path, densification and peoplisation(word? it is now) of outer burbs business centres could all become their own city, with metro style underground, green spaces and bus networks that work.

If only certain powers to be here had ambition and forward thinking ideas that looked further than re-election.

Link via NPR.org

P.s. Sorry about the lack there of posts, been swamped at work.