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 - 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 - 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

Durban Botanic Gardens

Today I took my mum to the Durban Botanic Gardens in my hometown. I actually don't remember if I'd ever been in the 18 years living here before I left. Shameful.

It traces its origins to colonial times, when it was founded in December 1849 for the introduction and trial of potentially useful commercial 'economic' crops by Dr Charles Johnston.

The Gardens later developed collections of sub-tropical trees, palms and orchids. The Durban Botanic Gardens remains a classic botanic gardens, reflecting the universality of the plant kingdom. It has, for over 100 years, had a fine mixed arboretum of African, Asian and American trees. For my recent project I had been researching the banyan tree, or 'strangling fig' (Ficus citrifolia) in India, and how the natives in the jungles form living walkways and bridges out of its vinelike aerial roots. The first tree on entering the Gardens was none other than this amazing tree.

Orchids, Palms and Cycads are the main collections of the Gardens which is currently ranked among the top ten botanical garden cycad collections in the world.

Pancakes with syrup and cream topped topped the morning. Yum.

+ Durban Botanic Gardens

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.

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

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.

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

Meghna Residence:living in delta, Bangladesh

Constructed 2003 - 2005, this 1st cycle winner in the World Architecture Community Awards is a residential building in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In a very densley populated city, this project with residential buildings and single storey houses must be like the garden of Eden.

In the photographs you can see the swimming pool, ghat and garden for big trees at level five. The foral green and sound of water away from the ground - the library & garden at level 3. The courtyard offers privacy & connectivity, while the water layering adds to the Deltaic ambience.

+ images courtesy of WA Com

Elok House - Chang Architects

'Concrete, glass, timber and steel meet space, light and nature'.

This house is any urban city dweller's dream: to live in a forest setting, at one with nature, and quite possibly an architect’s interpretations of this dream.

This Singaporean house was conceived as a three-dimensional landscape installation, whereby the spaces were then inserted. The space features interchangeable rooms floating in a bigger volume of space with a 2-storey high retaining wall at the rear, transformed into a pebbled waterfall that opens up to the sky. There is also a pond in the living area that collects rainwater.

The house also boasts a rich arrangement of garden types; a kitchen entrance grove of trees, a 2-storey internal enclosure of fern walls to the living spaces, moss pebble entrances to bedrooms. the inhabitants of this house will smell the wet soil in the air, pick and clear up dead leaves while the plants grow and mature. This is part of the design's living, organic quality.

The need for air-conditioning and artificial lighting are reduced thanks to the configurations of the spaces and luxuriant use of plants and water elements, which generate a cool microclimate within the house.

+ images courtesy of WAN

What initally caught my eye with this project was the image of the kitchen above with grove trees growing through the floor to ceiling. I recently travelled to the Yucatan province of Mexico which is reknowned for it's lime stone caves. I snorkled in one and what intrigued me were the roots of trees growing directly through the limestone roof and dangling into the fresh water (see below). I wondered if anyone had used this in a design before and I think this may be the closest I have found yet.

Elements of a green Roof

They may be popular interventions of the 21st Century, but green roofs are in fact thousands of years old. The first recorded appearance of a green roof occurred in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon around 500 BC. The site is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

It was the Icelandics who came up with the original design, with constructed houses and sod ceilings and walls. With a lack of natural construction purposes, they made do with what resources were available. The ceilings were usually constructed of turf, but the walls were built up with stone and alternating strips of sod and turf. They realised the green roofs and walls provided extra insulation during weather extremes.

The 18th C Germans constructed green roofs as a sign of wealth and status. They were constructed on the manor houses and castles. The trend then spread across Europe in the 19th century and the first signs of green roofs in the United States occurred in the 20th century in New York City.

With that short introduction I attach an image courtesy of the American Wick Drain Corp showing the elements of Green roofing.

Brazil - Sao Paulo Eco Park

This is a fantastic and really inspirational project in Brazil I've just come across, very relevant to the seminars I attended at last week's ecobuild regarding building on brownfield sites.

Its based in a dense urban environment in Sao Paulo, Brazil, upon a once contaminated brownfield site which was previously a garbage incinerator. The architects ingeniously designed a deck floating on a stilted steel structure 3 feet above the ground, with the intention of minimizing soil excavation.

The deck is constructed from a Brazilian hardwood, sourced from distributors that follow strict rules on extraction and deforestation, and instead of using other materials for the rest of the park, the designers decided to retain a visual uniformity by using the same hardwood throughout. Rooms appear to grow out of the deck creating a fluid three-dimensionality.

It also features solar panels to produce energy and a water filtering system which I am guessing relates to the picture of the wetland below.

In this urban area, recreational and community facilities make the space an invaluable amenity for the neighbouring communities. They can enjoy music and events under a covered ampitheatre as well as a comminuty centre for eco-centric workshops. Without a doubt the site improves the social and environmental health of the surrounding neighbourhoods and it's inhabitants.

ecobuild @ earls court

**** INFORMATION OVERLOAD!!! ****

5 amazing seminars over the last two days at ecobuild. I didn't expect to come back as inspired as I am.....I didn't know where to start so thought a hot bath would be best.

Wednesdays attended lectures were:

Lecture 1 - The Future of Urban Trees with Martin Kelly of CapitaLovejoy as the chair, and introducing an interesting history of London's trees. The second speaker was Martin Ennos, Faculty of Life Sciences at Manchester Uni, presenting The Physical Importance of Trees. Thereafter, Rachel Hine of Essex Uni speaking about Health, Wellbeing and the social importance of Nature, and closing, Jim Smith of The Trees and Design Action Group, talking about What are we doing to protect our trees. Many many interesting facts....flood preventions, iTrees project, ASCCUE project in Manchester, cooling potential and potential air pollution reductions.

The Trees and Design Action Group have a website: http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/INFD-7KDEHU and are trying to get as many completed surveys in by 30 April 09 with regards to the loss and protection of London's trees.

Lecture 2 - Outdoors Insight: sustainable public spaces, chaired by Liz Lake, of LiZLake Chartered Landscape Architects + Urban Design. First speaker was Dr Bill Addis, Sustainability Strategic Consultant of Buro Happold, Materials Division. (what a mouthful) who presented information about Sustainability and Landscape Design. A good presentation to remind us landscape students to specify environmentally friendly materials over those that arent. Mentioned the Waste Resources Action Plan - a government initiative: http://wrap.org.uk/construction and gave a lot of very interesting examples of recycled materials used in landscape design. Liz Lake was up next speaking about her hottest personal topic - Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems, and thanks to her I now know exactly what it's all about, and from her presentation have walked away thinking of creative SUDS in current projects. Very informative, definitely not dull and some fantastic examples. Next up, Carolyn Steel, author of Hungry City, How food Shapes our lives.

Sadly she ran out of time as she was getting to the juicy bit but she presented some great images of historical agricultural paintings and maps of london representing the major food transport and market areas, still around today. Mentions of Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cities of Tomorrow, Thomas More's Utopia, Cuba's Organic Urban Farming and Arup's Dontang project of Vertical Farming. Final speaker was Roseanne Law, Director of Urban Design at Arup, presenting their SUDS project at Upton, Northampton. Again, enlightening the urban drainage issue, with very interesting examples which are so so easily incorporated into urban landscape practice and are long-term money saving, habitat creating and environmentally excellent!

Lecture 3 - Floods 'n SUDS. Admittedly this was the first seminar on my list to attend and was the most dull. I had heard far more interesting speakers and seen great examples so inbetween speakers slipped out quietly. The first speaker was from Hydro International, with some good examples of his company's SUDS products. Second up was Jill Thatcher of DEFRA, speaking about Water Quality and the need for SUDS.

Thursday's seminar:

Lecture 4 - Practical Biodiversity: Making it Happen, chaired by Dr Carol Williams of the Bat Conservation Trust, Project Officer. Matt Shardlow of Buglife - Invertebrate Conservation Trust gave a great presentation about the importance of Brownfield sites, what they are, their ecological importance, what's living in them and some positive examples of brownfields and SSSi's. Next up was Tom Webster of the Campaign for Dark Skies. Not really a topic a young landscape architect would consider but I now realise what an important issue this is. There is too much badly used, intrusive lighting in our cities, creating skyglow, glare and a general nuisance ans those are just the effects on humans. Fauna such as bats and seagulls were mentioned to be affected, they dont know the health effects but their behaviour at least is enough to notice. An example of affected flora was a picture of a London Plane tree with a lamppost set amongst it's branches. During winter, the leaves nearest the light were still attached which meant there was still moisture within the leaves and branches which would freeze and kill it during the coldest months. Slovenia is the first country in the world to pass legislation against light pollution.

Next speaker, Graeme Duckworth of the London Wildlife Trust speaking about the Barking Riverside Project. Very interesting what they are planning to do with this brownfield site along the Thames. Dutch Company Max Wang are the masterplanners. Plenty plenty of SUDS in this site with proposed 40% of all roofs to be living roofs. Positive. http://www.barkingriverside.co.uk/ Last speaker was Kate Vincent, Senior Ecologist of Baker Shepherd Gillespie, talking about Provisions for Birds in [urban] Buildings. This again, not a topic I would have considered but so so glad I am now informed. Because of modern urban buildings and redevelopments, the species of urban birds has been on a massive decline. House sparrows, starlings, house martins, swallows, swifts & black redstarts. Each of these birds use houses for either breeding or nesting and her presentation put forward how we can retrofit existing buildings to include bird friendly designs. This in turn creates biodiversity, internal nesting opportunities for the birds we sadly don't see anymore. Some inspirational examples were the Nottinghill Housing Trust, Islington Borough Council offices, London Zoo and a custom made example at Oxford University Tower. Also see http://swift-conservation.org/.

If there are 5 things I have taken away from these lectures to keep in mind for any future designs:

Professionals need to work together to make good things happen - those of the natural environment disciplines & of the built environment.

The use of lighting in any site: is it neccessary and is it correct.

The use trees, current or proposed: right tree, right place, in NATURAL ground with enough space to grow.

Provision for birds and invertebrate habitat creation [falls into the next category]

Creative SUDS systems.......ensuring people and all other species we share our spaces with have a pleasant, safe and sustainable environment to exist in.

That's me....over and out.

Focus: Free lecture series

On Friday evening I attented a lecture at Birkbeck University, part of a free lecture series for Spring 09 encompassing all freshwater habitat issues in the UK. This particular lecture was presented by Paul Raven, Head of conservation and Ecology at the Environment Agency in Bristol and entitled 'Getting on with the job: taking practical action for freshwater ecology and conservation'.

The lecture itself could have been extremely dull, but the speaker flew through the Agency info at the start to get to the 'interesting bits' as he calls it. Some of the facts were in fact quite interesting, what the Agency's budget is spent on, top environmental pressures (nitrates, invasive alien species, water asbtraction etc) drivers (EU Biodiversity Strategy 2010, Improving conditions of SSSI's, Climate change adaptation etc) and blueprints & plans for investors and the general public to see how their money is spent.

Client of Environment Agency

There were some interesting examples of work carried out by the Environment Agency, the science behind what they do is a mammoth task: a fair amount of it was bordering on gobbeldegook to me.......Some examples were:

Iron-oxides removed from minewaters in Gwenffrwd, Wales. Dissolved and recovered in early 1990's.

Sheep dipping in Wales: Agency workers had to walk the length of rivers to understand why levels of macro-invertibrates were so low.

Barton Broads-manipulation: Dredging sediment and the science behind it. http://www.ukcpi.org/educ/broadsauthority.html

Barton Broads Picture courtesy of http://www.ukcpi.org/

Flood defences - Calvert of the River Ravensbourne in Lewisham

River Ravensbourne courtesy of http://www.beckenhamplaceparkfriends.org.uk/

The Jubilee River in Maidenhead - flood relief channel creating a new recreational resource with approximately 1000 visitors per week. http://www.maidenhead.net/information/flood.html

The Great Fen - re-instating wetlands, Won £10m Lottery Fund, National Trust. http://www.greatfen.org.uk/index.php

Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) http://www.ciria.org.uk/suds/

And non-native invasive species of plants.........

Japanese Knotweed Courtesy of http://www.lincolntown.org/

A lovely little story that did come up was about improving economic resilience, or maybe it was ecologic, but an example somewhere was putting up barn owl boxes, which found new owners very quickly - see below. The management regime of the area in question changed and so was managed better.

Barn owls courtesy of www.bioweb.uncc.edu

The Phoenix Garden

Today I thought I would spend a little bit of time in the most peaceful urban community park I know and love - The Phoenix Garden.

Situated just off the madness of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road, and overlooked by St. Giles-in-the-Fields parish church, it is a wonderful little haven of seasonal blooms, butterflies and bees and friendly gardeners.

The garden is managed privately by volunteers as a community garden so it's not in itself a 'public' park but is open to everyone, with 4 simple rules: No Drugs, No alcohol, No dogs and No bikes. One of the gardners said it's been there since the early 80's, 1984 to be exact, and was built on the site of a car park. It it the last surviving of Covent Garden's original 7 community gardens and is leased from the London Borough of Camden for a 'peppercorn' rent. [In legal terminology, a peppercorn is a very small payment, used to satisfy the requirements for the creation of a legal contract. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppercorn_(legal)]

There are many species of birds passing through the garden, as well as central London's largest population of common frogs (probably) and various other little insects and invertebrates. The head gardner Chris is very proud of their habitat creation in the garden and so they should be. Londoners should be far more focussed in habitat-creation when designing terraces, balconies and roof gardens. In February 2008 the GLA issued a technical report on living roofs in the capital so there is hopeful support. Urban honey is supposedly much more tasty than country honey because of the concentration of various flowers....but thats a whole other honey pot....

The Phoenix Garden has a great little website, with some really interesting historical information [and photos and maps] about the site and vicinity dating right back to the 12th Century! http://www.thephoenixgarden.ik.com

They organise various events throughout the year including 'grow your own' - seasonal planting workshops and various other little quirky tea parties etc....and more importantly volunteer days to help out. [See their website for more info.]

It really is an inspiration to see a place that has literally grown out of the rubble, bring so much hope and happiness to the neighbourhood residents, workers and passers through...reading the comments page on the site is enough.

White witch in Paris

This is a brilliant article I have recently come across about a Parisian ‘urban witch’ who feeds her living house with a drop-by-drop hydroponics system through 300 glass-blown pods, which collect rainwater for irrigation.

A potion of rainwater and plant nutrients nourishes the 1200 ferns drop-by-drop throughout the year. The houseplants are entirely hydroponic, and completely engulfing the 1400 square foot concrete home. The blanket of ferns protect the house from outside elements and regulate its inside temperature, with added insulation coming from high density PU foam layers sprayed and covered by geo-textile, all the while adding life and freshness to the neighbourhood.

I did wonder why the architects built the house out of concrete and not something more suited to the sustainable style of this amazing house. Some of the photos in the slideshow below are great - showing the tubes feeding from the house to the glass-pods, like some weird science experiement.

The architects R&Sie have an interesting website, with a few more details of the house and also gigantic spider’s nest they've built and conceptualized as well as an alchemist’s greenhouse for experiementing with toxic plants. Have a look: http://www.new-territories.com/Defaut2.htm

I would love her as my neighbour....interesting cups of tea no doubt.

West London's own Living Wall

Our Focus weeks are designed for us to visit sites, take part in voluntary work, research design practice or attend seminars or lectures, all in aid of furthering our personal direction within the course, and also in our futures of landscape architecture.

I started off visiting the new living wall at Westfiled Shopping Centre in Shepherd's Bush. This got me really excited! I really am a sucker for a green wall or roof.....

The wall is formed like a wave, gently flowing its way down along the path. At it's base is a water feature of layered granite, with flush lighting creating a lovely atmosphere at night.

I have been reading Jan Gehl's Life Between Buildings and actually just got to the seating part in the book. Jan talks about how people do not like to sit in public with their backs exposed, and how built-in seating or areas that were non-designed sometimes are the best design. Applying this to the wall and fountains, I do think the Landscape Architects EDAW had this in mind as the base of the water feature makes for perfect seating, and while it weaves it's way down, the curves are enough to allow for a semi-private chat.

With regards to the planting, EDAW originally specified two-litre plants, then upgraded to 10 and 20 litre specimens to make it look better, with stock sourced from Tendercare and planted up all within a week of it's official opening by London mayor Boris Johnson.

I love it, I am jealous of it, I am so pleased it's close to my home. I will be there in summer!