Focus 1 - November 2009

Last week our London branch of the field study took us back down to the Embankment to look at and record waterfront landscapes.

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

Dig for Victory

This year's module of Management Plan and Extended essay have had me doing much research for each, and a few topics here and there form parallels and inform both of these documents. One of which is the Dig for Victory Campaign from the 40's. Second World War and it's effects on food securities saw the Ministry of Agriculture's 'survival' campaign to get people growing. Private and public spaces were transformed in an urban growing initiative consisting of mini allotments.

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.

Both the types of graphics and the messages behind them, from today's 40's inspired and the original campaigns, have parallels with these particular years' themes of troubled times. While the messages from the Second World War era, minus internet and fountains of information sources as we have today, reached so many people, our population numbers now (as well as so many other factors) have meant that these messages don't neccessarily get it accross to the responsive audience they require to make changes happen. The naked cowboy is in there because he too, has a message.

A couple personal favourites with witty and inspirational stuff are Shepard Faiery and futura 2000. Good websites which keep you for at least a half hour.

+ home sweet home

+ Stay Gold Gallery