Wednesday, 23 December 2009
Gardens by the Bay - Singapore
A series of tree structures act as vertical gardens that collect rainwater and solar energy to sustain the garden and light the way at night. They range from 30-55 meters in height and will be wrapped in ferns, vines, and tropical flowers.
The gardens also comprise two botanical biospheres: a cool moist biome with plants from the Cloud Forest and a cool dry biome featuring Mediterranean plants.
The first phase opening is set for 2011, and a second 32-hectare development called Bay East is also under development which will feature water gardens and an aquatic education center.
Below is a description of the project from Grant Associates website:
'This is the largest garden project ever undertaken in Singapore, and a landscape project of world significance. It is intended to raise Singapore’s profile and cement its image as the leading garden city in the east. It is therefore integral to the future planning of Singapore as a major global hub and business centre.
The masterplan takes its inspiration from the form of the orchid, and has an intelligent infrastructure that allows the cultivation of plants that would not otherwise grow in Singapore. The centrepiece of this infrastructure is the cluster of Cooled Conservatories along the edge of Marina Bay. The Cool Dry and the Cool Moist Conservatories showcase Mediterranean, tropical montane and temperate annual plants and flowering species. They also provide a flexible, flower-themed venue for events and exhibitions.
The Supertrees are magical vertical gardens ranging from 25 metres to 50 metres in height. These structures are an iconic landmark for the Gardens and Singapore. They are also the environmental engines for the Conservatories and Energy Centre, containing solar hot water and photovoltaic collectors, rainwater harvesting devices and venting ducts.
The dual theme of Marina South is ‘Plants and People’ and ‘Plants and Planet’. Each narrative encompasses the length of the gardens, with the Conservatories providing the focus and main educational message. '
Squint Opera have done the visuals for the project and an amazing moving image of the proposal. Found here.
Monday, 7 December 2009
Geometries & Topologies
We met at the BFI on the Southbank, and our group was given an interesting topic for the location.
Geometry: the pure mathematics of points and lines and curves and surfaces
Topology: topographic study of a given place
Both definitions from the freedictionary.com
Film one was to be uncut, and played at the speed it was filmed.....First site was the skate park found under the Purcell Rooms. Unfortunately the film size is too large to upload but I will get onto resizing this for upload soon.
Film two was to demonstrate more, the key words given. It could be cut with sound and other media. We decided to take a walk along the Southbank from the BFI to the Tate Modern, recording images of all the geometries and related typologies along the route.
Sunday, 6 December 2009
Pillow talk
A few clicks and I found a website called Wrap, which describes the various uses of recycled plastic products, and M&S is mentioned as one of the companies that use recycled products in their product ranges.
I'm pleased things like this are indicated on products, hopefully it brings home the importance of recycling.
Saturday, 21 November 2009
Focus 1 - November 2009
We headed off first to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens or Spring Gardens, which hold quite an interesting history. The gardens opened in 1661, and were most popular during the early 1800's, with various entertainment activities including faires, hot air balloon ascents, fountains and fireworks. I found it to be quite a bland space, surrounded by housing and with the Vauxhall City Farm on one end. It didn't feel unsafe since there wasn't very much inthe way of shrub planting or hiding space but there was something about the absence of people during the day that made me think I would rather take a detour than walk through there at night. Either way it seemed well maintained and clean.
The City Farm is a great example of a community taking ownership of their environments to create a facility for their pleasure and purpose. The squatters on thsi site in the 70's grew their own vegetables and looked after livestock.
Our next stop was Harleyford Road Community Garden which links to Bonnington Square Gardens, both for me such inspirational community spaces. The central square of Bonnington Gardens was going to be turned into a car scrap yard after the war, and the local residents, a mix of squatters, home owners and tenants, joined forces to oppose the council's scrap yard decision and proposed a community garden. From its conception it was so successful, people living around the square started planting window boxes and greening the streets, creating bespoke street planters. Today it is a garden of Eden.....I was completely blown away at how beautiful it is.....the atmosphere is amazing, even in the last few days of autumn, the street is awash with leafyness. Brilliant precedent for greening streets, for the local community by the local community. A guy called Drake, local resident and landscape architect gave us an overview of the area, and what they had to deal with over the years with the council etc......the website is worth looking at too with some interesting stuff in the byelaws.
Finally we took the Tate to Tate boat which gave me time to take in the tight birch planting around the Tate Modern, a project of Vogt Landscape Architects who I worked for in the summer.
+ Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (Spring Gardens)
+Vauxhall City Farm
+ Gross Max
+ Bonnington Square Gardens
+ Harleyford Road Community Garden
+ Vogt Landscape Architects
Sunday, 15 November 2009
Dig for Victory
A photo that has surfaced on a few occasions in a couple of books is this below of farming in Kensington Gardens: http://cwr.iwm.org.uk/upload/img_100/D_008334_Dig_for_victory_in_Kensington_Gardens.jpg
The postal propaganda is brilliant...of all easily searchable images, the graphic design is so subtle but so in-yer-face with a massive message. People were very encouraged and in the article on 'Home Sweet Home', by 1943 over a million tons of vegetables were grown in gardens and allotments. Modern day propaganda and graphics still use similar formats.
In 2004 I went to the Stay Gold Gallery in Brooklyn, right in the eve of the Republican Convention and New York's streets were transformed with anti-Republican poster campagin by various well respected and outspoken artists.
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Focus 1 - Teach-In: 2012 Imperative - Day 2 Workshops
Monday, 12 October 2009
The Brixton Pound
A Transition Town considers the challenges of the future as opportunities to rethink the way we do everything, to reconnect with our planet and our community and to relocalise. Themed working groups are formed to vision and plan a transition to a better low energy future in food, health, work, culture etc. Localisation is key and will require that we rediscover many lost skills. TTBrixton aims to be inclusive, imaginative, practical and fun. And to build a local community that is more interconnected, resilient and self-reliant. http://www.site.transitiontownbrixton.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=71&Itemid=53
Much to the Brixton community's excitement, on Thursday 17 September Transition Town Brixton launched the Brixton Pound. 800 people pledged to convert more than £12,000 into 'money that sticks to Brixton.' More than 70 businesses had signed up to accept B£s.
What I find interesting, is that quite a few people I know who live and work in Brixton, have been quite unaware of this new and exciting achievement. These are not people living with their heads in the ground, but involved, open-minded and aware 30-somethings, and while some have overheard younger neighbours speaking of this 'Brixton money' others have very little knowledge of what is happening on their doorsteps. Since I don't live in Brixton, I cannot speak of how the message has been spread. What I do know, is that thanks to my current educational position, I am exposed more to these sorts of movements, and as mentioned in a previous post, I am becoming actively involved in my own neighbourhood's Transition Town movement (http://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/) and will sure as hell make sure everyone knows about it!
See a video here about the Brixton Pound: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brq1NY2tiWA&feature=player_embedded
+ Transition Town Brixton
+ The Brixton Pound
Focus 1 - Teach-In: 2012 Imperative
It took place at the Lecture room at the V&A on Monday 12 October. Organised by Jody Boehnert (established EcoLabs in 2006 and also co-founded Transition town Brixton) the various presenters each had some really interesting things to say, and an enthusiatic outlook in changing they way we and future students are taught.
Focus 1 - Serpentine Pavillion 2009
Radical Nature
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
Focus 1 - Community Involvement
This US initiative is about exchanging ideas and visualising space digitally, it shows that urban planning using crowd-sourced development, public data libraries, and web forums results in an idea exchange needed to make smart and case-specific decisions about the needs of a community. There are a few sites mentioned in the article worth looking at: http://connectingnyc.org/, http://openplans.org/ and http://www.oasisnyc.net/.
Here in the UK, our community-led regeneration initiatives and schemes are very similar, with the general consensus being that they are intelligent, efficient and sustainable. They incorporate knowledge, creativity and social capital. While bureaucracy has in the recent past, viewed these sort of initiatives as oppositional movements, and resulted in their decline, it is becoming more apparent that these schemes are incredibly important to the growth of every community. We are now seeing, especially in the wake of ecominic crises, community-led programmes such as Transition Town movements, with really positive results.
This year I plan to focus my attention and whatever spare time I may find, to get involved in my own neighbourhood's trnasition town movement - http://ttkensaltokilburn.ning.com/. The idea behind transition towns is about neighbourhoods and local communities becoming less oil dependent, localised and ultimately self-sustaining. This can include anything from community markets, skills sharing and lending green space for food growth. Watch this space!
+ inhabitat
+ oasisNYC
+ connectingNYC.org
+ the open planning project (TOPP)
+ transition towns
+ Kensal to Kilburn Transition Town
Work Experience #2
The office is involved in various large and medium scale projects, UK based and abroad. My duties over the two weeks were to help each team in whatever was required, whether it be researching, putting together indesign presentations, or various CAD related jobs.
What I did appreciate about Townshend, is their design process, with much site and contextual analyses. I feel I was able to walk away and be much clearer of what is expected of me as a graduating landscape architect.
The only shame was that I didn't get to spend much time with various people in the office, nor ask as much as I'd wanted to - the workload for everyone was massive. Either way, a much appreciated experience.
+Townshend Landscape Architects
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
Work experience #1
Unfortunately I only had a week with Vogt since I'd secured 2 weeks with another practice after. However in the week I was there, I worked with a lovly Columbian product designer turned landscape architect - Maria. Vogt's approch to almost all of their designs, is to make models first. Maria left me to make a 1:20 model section of an embankment - retaining wall - filtration pond - concrete wall - path - embankment, for a major project the company is working on. Since model making is not always top of my list when it comes to the design process, it was brilliant experience to spend the time doing something physical and tangible.
The point of the model was to make decisions on the concrete wall, what finishes they want and gradients of the embankment. (which the client had changed from one to one then back to the first one again)
Plaster cast in its mold waiting to dry. Man standing for scale 1:20.
Friday, 10 July 2009
Bamboo Taxi!
They are just brilliant and I can imagine all the tropical places I have travelled to incorporating their own individual styles into versions of these cute, ingenious taxis.
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Barbican Urban Farm - Squint Opera
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Queens Urban Farm @ PS1
Saturday, 13 June 2009
High Line is open!
Ten years in the making, New York city's High Line is finally open and providing New Yorkers with yet another green space, ready for summer!
The City of New York is full of parks - in fact, there are 1700! There are the enormous parks (Central, Prospect, Flushing) with medium-sized offerings (Bryant, Madison Square), and not forgetting little pocket parks everywhere like Stuyvesant and Washington Market. People such as Jane Jacobs and Jan Gehl would be the first to advocate green spaces for great cities.
On a newly renovated stretch of an elevated promenade that was once a railway line for delivering cattle — surrounded by the community activists, elected officials and architects who made the transformation happen — Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg cut a red ribbon on Monday morning to signify that the first phase of the High Line is finished and ready for strolling.
As you can imagine with such an eagerly anticipated event such as this, there are plenty of online reports dedicated to its opening:
The New York Times has posted a great panoramic here.
Treehugger and the Daily Green have put up slideshows here and here.
The Huffington Post added some great aerial shots here.
+ main image courtesy of inhabitat.
Friday, 29 May 2009
Lego Architecture
Thursday, 21 May 2009
2009 Design Projects Submission
The Wey & Arun Re:Visit is as the name suggests; we revisted the site a season and a semester later with a brief to either continue and compliment our first proposal, or create something new since seeing it with fresh eyes. My proposal compliments the first, looking at transition towns as precident and proposing a site that is self-sustaining for the local community, with productive woodlands, coppiced woodlands and wildflower meadows to provide fuel. The second proposal addresses more the continuity and the issues relating to regenerating this section of canal, as well as focussing on creating a biodiverse 'hotspot'.
Wey & Arun Re:Visit - http://www.scribd.com/doc/15685947/13Wey-Arun-ReVisit-Final-Presentation
The PLAY Module was a live project in Richmond - Hampton Hill Junior School. The caretaker's house attached to the school was redesigned to incorporate an Adult Learning Centre, and the small garden area between the junior school and ALC was to be redesigned for 2-5 year olds. The project uploaded below is a new submission since I was unhappy with the first proposal and wanted to better the mark from the first submission.
Play: Hampton Hill Junior School Garden Project - http://www.scribd.com/doc/15686671/30PlayResubmissionMay09
Streetlife: Technical & Theoretical Reports
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
Vancouver Vertical Farm
Vancouver based Romses Architects have designed a vertical urban farm, complete with a tower for growing fruits and vegetables, livestock grazing plane, boutique dairy farm, commercial space, transit lines, renewable energy and more. Entitled the Harvest Green Tower, Romses proposal is that it has the potential to be a food growing, energy producing, living, breathing sustainable transit hub.
The tower consists of interlocking tubes that grow various fruits and vegetables, house chickens and contain an aquaponic fish farm. A rainwater cistern is at the top of the tower to collect and water all the plants and animals. At the base of the tower is a livestock grazing plain, as well as a bird habitat and boutique sheep and goat dairy facility. At the ground level is a grocery store, farmer’s market and restaurant.
Renewable energy is produced from rooftop mounted wind turbines and photovoltaic glazing on the building with the additional help of geothermal heat pumps and also methane generation from composting.
This spring Vancouver held the FormShift Vancouver Competition to develop and improve the city’s livability through greener, denser developments. The Harvest Green Tower received an honorable mention in the Primary category for a mixed use primary (arterial) site along a major Vancouver street.
+images courtesy of Romses Architects
via inhabitat
Urban agriculture for NY
One of these is the latest concept design from Vincent Callebaut Architects - The Dragonfly. It has been designed with the intention of easing the ever-increasing need for ecological and environmental self-sufficiency in the urban cityscape. The proposed development, designed around the Southern bank of Roosevelt Island in New York, follows a vertical farm design which, it is hoped, would cultivate food, agriculture, farming and renewable energy in an urban setting.
While urban farming has been quite a trendy move for some urban dwellers, there is without a doubt that in boroughs belonging to cities like NYC, what little space is left is disappearing fast. So new growth must come vertically.
The Dragonfly spans 132 floors and 600 vertical meters, and accommodates 28 different agricultural fields for the production of fruit, vegetables, grains, meat and dairy. The concept scheme outlines that it's inhabitants are responsible for cultivation and along with a combination of solar and wind power, it becomes %100 self sufficient.
Offices, research labs, housing, and communal areas are interspersed between orchards, farms, and production rooms. Plant and animal farming is arranged throughout the Dragonfly’s steel and glass set of wings so as to maintain proper soil nutrient levels and reuse of biowaste.
More beautiful CGI imagery is on the architect's website: vincent callebaut architects
+images courtesy of inhabitat