Japanese Knotweed - Could the fight be over?

http://www.lincolntown.org/depts/ComCom%20assets/Japanese%20knotweed%201.jpg

Just watched a news report on ITV about scientists at Cabi - a not-for-profit agricultural research organisation who are doing trials on introducing a tiny Japanese insect called Aphalara itadori which only feeds on Japanese Knotweed. They apparently stunt its growth which could mean the end to the fight we have with this invasive species.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01448/Aphalara-itadori_1448862c.jpg

Japanese Knotweed was introduced to the UK in Victorian times as an ornamental plant, and it grows over 1meter a month. It has no natural predators in the UK so it's growth here has been rife. The scientists have confirmed that the Aphalara itadori eats nothing else and they will be releasing the insect to selected sites this year.

Apparently, knotweed is edible by humans, and tastes like rhubarb. Nettle is another invasive species that is edible, and great for teas, risottos and tastes like spinach........there should be more people or restaurants promoting eating these plants to assist in controlling them. Time to get cooking!

The BBC News website has a time lapse video showing a knotweed plant growing more than 1 meter in 3 weeks, and also a time scale plan of knotweed spread in the UK since 1890 which is quite interesting.

+ BBC News

+ National Biodiversity Network

Focus 3 - The Day the Olympics came to Town

I watched this program on BBC's Inside Out programme, about London's preparations for the 2012 Olympics.

They approached creative directors from a few of the capital's top advertising agencies to discuss promotion of the games using London's iconic buildings and landmarks. Some ideas of the brainstorming sessions looked at including four more London Eye's to make five rings......

Or projections onto some of our cities best known structures......

Londoner's are also per household, apparently spending £200 over the next couple of years to help pay for the Games, and thanks to the Olympic family, (advertisers, etc) there will only be 16,000 tickets available for everyone else. And Londoner's receive no preference over someone from Estonia or Italy. Since we are hosting the games, we invite the world. This is understandable, but why should so many millions of seats be available to the 'Olympic Family'??

The other issue raised in the programme, is that this is supposed to be the 'Green Games', BUT, VIP's and senior officials are residing in Park Lane for the Games, and an Olympic Route Network is planned for them to reach the games in Stratford. The estimated time for travelling in the Olympic lane from Park Lane is 22 and a half minutes, but this means that everyone else loses a lane......I am all for having less cars on the roads but why could they not have stayed in a hotel nearer to the Games site? Why does the whole of central London have to suffer so that the officials can stay in Central London? Absolutely CRAZY.

Aside from the problems, there are so many opportunities the Games can bring to London. They touched on sites that could be used for world music venues etc, and one was the site surrounding Battersea Power Station. The latest design proposal I am working on is about greening this particular area, with a river regeneration project incorporating green spaces on the Grosvenor Road/Chelsea Embankment and Nine Elms edge of the Thames. I think the Thames could be used much more for the Games, perhaps with extra transport routes to Stratford from Central and West London. This traffic route could incorporate new green spaces where events are televised and so allowing for more people to enjoy the Games.

+ all pictures screenshots from The Day the Olympics came to Town

Got Milk?

I used to joke that one day I wanted to go into a Starbucks with a container of soy milk, and ask the coffee maker to prep me up a breast milk latte. A sick joke, bad taste yes. But this article is just gross.

New York City chef, Daniel Angerer has created a cheese made from his wife's breast milk, and put it on the menu!!! Klee Brasserie if anyone's up for it. Yum.

+ from inhabitat

Focus 3 - Seoul's Cheonggyecheon Stream regeneration

Seoul has made a commitment to its people and flushed away any divisions the past had between North and South, by demolishing a highway that covered the Cheonggyecheon stream, which was formed during the Joseon Dynasty. For three decades, the stream was hidden beneath the highway, and it has now been turned into a gorgeous 5.8km urban river park.

The stream was designed to provide drainage for the city, and lasted hundreds of years until a shanty town developed next to it due to the city's overpopulation, with obvious pollution issues. This was in the 1940's, and over the next few decades the stream was gradually covered with concrete, and finally by 1976 a 5.6km highway was built over it.

Of course authorities were satisfied with the modernisation of the new highway and connections it created, but in 2003 city planners developed the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project. The purpose was to revitalise the stream, and place Seoul in a position of being a more environmentally friendly city. The project cost around £186 million, and took two years, but is a beautiful example of how an inner city river or stream can bring new life, and create community pride.

After researching many city river regeneration projects, this project has influenced me the most. Perhaps it is the graphics, but I think more so, it is seeing city planners creating spaces that are sympathetic to the environment, and peeling away the layers of man-made infrastructure to expose the earth's beauty beneath.

+ pictures courtesy of inhabitat

Focus 2 - Heart of Africa in Chester Zoo

Chester Zoo unveiled today a new £225 million project that is said to transform it into the largest conservation, animal and leisure attraction of its kind in Europe. Chester Zoo's website describe it as the first domed ecosystem in the UK, with an African rainforest-themed sanctuary for a band of Gorillas, a large troop of chimpanzees, Okapi, and a variety of tropical birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish and invertebrates, moving freely among lush vegetation.

It really saddens me that we have to save these animals from the natural environments that we have ruined over the years. The cgi images are seductive, and the concept no doubt gets many people very excited, but for me, it just seems such a shame.

Proctor and Matthews Architects were responsible for the Gorilla Kingdom in London Zoo, and the Lions at the Whipsnade Zoo, both projects commissioned by the Zoological Society of London.

Looking into the Heart of Africa project at a little more detail, the dome itself is to be constructed from a material called Ethylene Tetraflouroethylene (ETFE). I wanted to know what it was comprised of and what environmental issues if any, it had. I came across a blog called Greenline which has a good explanaition of what EFTE is. Very basically, it is a plastic which is very strong and was designed to have high corrosion resistance over a range of temperatures. Its one of these new brilliant materials that has self-cleaning qualities, thanks to its chemical composition. It is super light, weighing only 1% of a comparable glass panel, and as a result, Proctor and Matthews Architects could design a space in excess of 10,800m2 of column free planting, with a longitudinal span of 165m and cross span of 75m. Finally, EFTE transmits more light than glass, is completely recyclable and installation costs are between 24% and 70% less than for glass panels.

Some buildings that have used EFTE are The Eden Project in Cornwall, The Beijing National Aquatics Centre and The Allianz Arena in Munich.

+ pictures courtesy of archinet

+ Chester Zoo

+ Proctor & Matthews Architects

+ Greenline blog

Focus 2 - Capital Growth

''We want to help Londoners transform the capital by creating 2,012 new food growing spaces by the end of 2012.''

The Capital Growth campaign offers practical advice and support to communities around London, and helps people get access to land to create successful food growing spaces.

+ Capital Growth

+ London Food Link

Focus 2 - 2012 Park - Green Oasis

Today's Evening Standard article showed some interesting cgi's of the Olympic Park and surrounding parklands.

4000 semi-mature trees will be planted in time for the opening in 2012...A company I worked for in the summer are the landscape architects for the Olympic Village, and were incredibly frustrated because as usual, the landscape budget is continually reduced as the realities of the other costs surface. This meant that hundreds of trees had to be removed from the initial proposal. 250 acres of parklands will hopefully not look too sparse.

The wetlands is probably one of the most exciting elements to this project....little is mentioned in the article so I shall say no more. . . .

As much as I hate the travel to that side of the world, I am really looking forward to seeing the end results, and considering various budget cuts, hope it will be as lush and rich in habitats and wildlife as the landscape architects and other environmentalists intend it to.

+ Evening Standard

Focus 2 - Growing Communities

Today some of us landscape arch's volunteered our brains and brawn in the freezing cold to help Growing Communities in their new urban growing site located on the grounds at the Castle Climbing Centre in Stoke Newington.

Growing Communities is a social enterprise run by local Hackney residents, with volunteers from the area and surrounds. They work to create sustainable food systems in the form of urban growing projects and sourcing perishable fruit and veg from local farmers and selling it via local box schemes.

The people at Growing Communities are a real inspiration, with 4 growing sites in the area and a packing site from which the boxes are then distributed. Whilst digging up the new grow sites, we got to engage in chatter with everyone, finding out how they help out and the various social opportunities Growing Communities nurtures. Everything they grow is completely organic and approved by the soil assciation.

This particular site is quite interesting, and since the Castle Climbing Centre has its own environmental policies, its quite appropriate for the disused land surrounding the castle to be used for a productive landscape. the Castle Climbing centre also has an environmental blog found here.

After working on this site we were taken to Allens Gardens, one of their other growing sites that has been established for a few years now. Mainly growing salad veg and herbs, it also has a little classroom with a sedum roof and composting loo for the beds. And a rainwater harvesting system. I did ask the lady who showed the site to us how they compromise with Hackney council the uses of these plots of land. Urban growing schemes are renowned for encountering barriers with land owners and councils...I imagine since Growing Communities is quite well established, they have been able to over the last few years prove their sustainability and economic viability.

Since I have been working on the thesis, I've discovered many urban community farming initiatives, but very few are researched and documented, and some are just too small to probably warrant websites. Growing Communities is probably one of the most effective entrepreneurial growing schemes I have come across in any of my research, and they have a very informative website, with good links too.

Brilliant for the focus week, the volunteering opportunity, meeting new people who are driven to make these much needed changes, and also to inform my extended essay. Thanks to Ida for providing the opportunity to help out. Will definitely squeeze in more time over the coming months to keep in touch and see how this garden grows!

+ growing communities

+ the castle climbing centre

+ the castle environmental blog

Focus 2 - Container City in Mexico

A new container city has opened in Cholula, about 2 hours outside of Mexico City. It is beautiful, brightly painted, hip and looks like a brilliant spot to hang out and drink afternoon coffees. Created by a small community of businesses, it covers an area of about 4500 sq m and consists of restaurants, juicebars and normal bars, bookstores, art galleries, and even living spaces.

The clever layout of the 50 containers has also created alleys courtyards, streets and even an open public space with ping pong tables and bands playing for various events. I think this is such a brilliant project, and I have posted other container projects around the world in the past but this is by far the most attractive and sensible use of containers. One of the 1st floor containers even has a slide access to the ground!! So so cool. It puts container city in Greenwich to absolute shame.

The Container City website is also quite cool...........

+ Container City Mexico

Focus 2 - Sustainable Habit Reminders

Came across these cute household stickers to create a visual focus around wall plugs and light switches, in order to increase people's awareness about electricity consumption....created by London-based studio hu2.

There's a selection of images for each room in the house....the one below is probably a neccessity in plenty homes.............how many times I've walked out without the keys.....

And the studio's run by a couple of hotties. Nothing wrong with that.

+ Hu2 Design

Underground Green Belt Development

An interesting article of 2009 is that of a proposed development at Hersham Golf Club in Surrey. ReardonSmith Architects is designing the 5-star hotel for the Golf Club to be built underground. The 200+ guest rooms will be covered with a green roof, respecting the surrounding countryside and natural habitats.

While the construction will surely create a degree of damage to the landscape, there is proposed extensive on-site re-vegetation and re-organization of existing spaces (such as parking) that will actually leave the site even more eco-friendly than it is now.

Matthew Guy, ReardonSmith’s project designer, states “Our concept integrates hotel, spa, and golf facilities into a single architecturally exciting and organic composition below and above ground. The design fulfills the requirements of the brief for a bespoke five star hotel while returning hard standing to the Green Belt and improving the physical layout and visual attraction of the entire site. It represents a commercially viable solution to developing in the Green Belt and is, we believe, a world-first.”

Pictures courtesy of Inhabitat

I think many landscape architects welcome subterranean developments, but more needs to be done in urban areas to combat urban heat island issues.

Having a quick look on the web, I found a project in Italy which I'd never come across before. It is an underground parking system which solves many of the traditional problems associated with urban parking; congestion, pollution, land space and security. The underground parking 'silo' is a continuous, reinforced concrete, diaphragm cylinder, 18.8m internal diameter.

It offers a number of environmental advantages over conventional parking systems, including reduced energy consumption, air and noise pollution. Its compact construction allows for minimal impact on existing architecture and road systems. It fits in with existing structures without being a concrete eyesore.

Currently systems are being constructed in Stockholm, Turin and Rome. Systems are subject to planning permission in London and Copenhagen.

+ ReardonSmith Architects
+ Inhabitat
+ Road Traffic Technology

Gardens by the Bay - Singapore

Gardens by the Bay is a massive £350 million project in Singapore, with UK Landscape Architects Grant Associates leading the masterplanning team. Grant Associates won the international design competition for the Marina South Gardens as part of the National Parks Board Gardens by the Bay project.

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.

+ Grant Associates
+ Squint Opera

Pillow talk

I should know about these things but I was so impressed recently when buying spare pillows that the polyester filling is made from recycled plastic bottles.

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.

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

Focus 1 - Teach-In: 2012 Imperative - Day 2 Workshops

Day 2 of the Teach-in was an organised day of workshops at the participating universities and colleges. All of the students were to work together on various schemes and initiatives suggested by their tutors or themselves which will create awareness or change for their local community/ies in adapting to climate change.

The group I worked in looked at creating a community supported vertical urban farm. We had a lot of good input from various Kingston tutors who joined the workshop, as well as sustainability rep's and also local residents who are involved in various schemes in and around Kingston.

Below is a flow chart I created with the help of a group member, which using the context of the a south facing building of our campus - Knight's Park - describes the processes involved in creatinf this vertical farm, supported by students and supplying produce to the canteen.

Focus 1 - Community Involvement

Harnessing the skills and knowledge of residents of any area is vitally important to the overall success and community spirit of any area. This was a large part of learning for me in a technical and theoretical project for Dalston's Gillett Square in 2nd year's second semester.

I've recently come across an article which highlights ideas exchange and what they are calling Crowd Sourced Initiatives to create a more 'livable' New York City. It's basically a call by Obama's government for open-source programming and city governance to come together and start accepting the importance of working together rather than against or independantly of one another, in order the create better neighbourhoods.

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

Bamboo Taxi!

A small city in the Philippines, Tabontabon, has a mayor with the right idea. Rustico Balderian has commissioned two taxi's constructed of 90% bamboo, which run on coconut biodiesel. While the city is home to about 10,000 people, two taxi's won't get everyone from A-B but it is setting the right precident for tropical countries with an abundance of natural resources that can be utilised in this manner to improve fuel-efficiency, safety on the roads, and increase environmentally and aethetically friendly transport.

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.

An article about Tabontabon Organic Transport Industry can be found here - Toti eco

+images courtesy of inhabitat

Barbican Urban Farm - Squint Opera

Following on from the Urban Farm installation at PS1, Squint Opera have worked on imagery for an Urban Farm on the rooftops at the Barbican.

Urban farming is the topic of June's issue of Icon Magazine.

Queens Urban Farm @ PS1

PS1 gallery in Queens, New York City has opened an urban farm installation. 50 types of vegetables in 280 cardboard tubes filled with soil are installed on the roof of the gallery.

An irrigation system that makes use of collected rainwater waters the plants and is heated by 16 solar panels. It is estimated that there is enough surplus power to run a mobile-phone charging station and a sound and video column.

People on the ground can look through a periscope over the growing plants, which are lifted 12m in the air.

Hooray for urban agriculture.

+images courtesy of iconeye

Urban agriculture for NY

Still in keeping with the Extended essay topic choice for 2009/10, I may consider Urban agriculture as an option. There is a lot of precedent of current day urban farms found in cities such as central London and Cuba as well as historical models of urban farms such as Machu Picchu. As well as these, there are future models for urban farming that might be a little out of this world for now, but could be changing our skylines in the not too distant future.

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