The Shard

::Image via Inhabitat

The Shard is a new iconic building for London by Renzo Piano. It is due for completion in 2012 and will become the tallest building in western Europe and redefine London's skyline.

From Inhabitat: "The 72-storey building in the London Bridge Quarter will contain premium office space, a world-class hotel, luxury residences, a spa, restaurants & cafes, retail space and a 15-storey public viewing gallery. On the ground level, public piazza, restaurants and cafes will be open to the public with places to rest and changing art installations. Access to public transportation via bus line, train and underground will be directly on site. Previously at that location was the 1970’s Southwark Tower building on Bridge Street, which has already been demolished to begin construction on the new tower."

::Image via Inhabitat

42

::Image via Gizmodo

From Gizmodo: "It takes forty-two Brompton folding bikes to fill a parking space."

Greenpoint Roof Top Farm in NYC

Related article in the New York Magazine on the transformation of a warehouse roof in Greenpoint, NYC that "is now covered with 200,000 pounds of soil, 1,000 earthworms and an abundance of vegetable, herbs, and flowers".

Urban Beekeeping in Paris

:: Image via City Farmer News

I have already shared my interest in bees here and discussed how important moving bees into the urban context could be. An article in the Times describes just how successful urban bee keeping is in Paris.

There are about 300 registered beehives in the city found on buildings such as the Opera Garnier or the Grand Palais and in gardens such as the Tuileries and the Jardins du Luxembourg.

It turns out that the bees are particularly well suited to the urban environment, the warmth of the city promotes earlier breeding and it is free from the pesticides and fertilizers that are killing their country counterparts.

With a large number and diversity of flowers to pollinate, the urban bees are producing record amounts of honey. Up to 100kg of honey per hive annually, compared with the 20-25kg from typical hives on the cereal-producing plains of Ile-de-France, the surrounding region.

Growing Cities Series Part 2 - Chicago's Local Food

Chicago's Local Food - Growing Cities Series from Dave Budge on Vimeo.

From Dave Budge's vimeo entry:

"Local food is great for a lot of reasons, the least of which is that it tastes rad. We got to speak to some farmers and chefs while in Chicago about their experiences growing and using local Illinois food.

This is part 2 of the "Growing Cities" documentary series shot while traveling in the USA and Canada - June 2009. 2 person crew. Canon 5DmkII and Zoom H4n. Music is "Chicago" by Sufjan Stevens"

Growing Cities Series Part 1 - Vancouver's 6 Acre Living Roof

Vancouver's 6 Acre Living Roof - Growing Cities Series from Dave Budge on Vimeo.

From Dave Budge's vimeo entry:

"The roof of the Vancouver BC Convention Centre is covered with over 2.5 hectares (6 acres) of native grassland. Usually closed to the public, we were able to get a tour and interview with the landscape architect of the project, Bruce Hemstock.

This is part 1 of the "Growing Cities" documentary series shot while traveling in the USA and Canada - June 2009. 2 person crew. Canon 5DmkII and Zoom H4n. Music is "Andvari" by Sigur Rós"

Livable Communities Resource Guide

:: Photo credit:PA Wallace Roberts & Todd

The ASLA has added a new entry to its on-going resource guide series. The new guide is on livable communities and is made up of lists of organizations, research, concepts and projects related to livable communities.

The guide is divided into six sections covering:

• Sustainable Land Use
• Place making
• Green Schools
• Sustainable Housing
• Sustainable Employment Growth
• Health, Safety, and Security

The previous resource guides are available below:

• Combating Climate Change with Landscape Architecture
• Sustainable Design and Development
• Sustainable Transportation
• Sustainable Urban Development
• Improving Skills During the Economic Downturn

Urban Farming in Havana

New York by Day - New York by Night

::Image via The Urbanophile

The average commute to Manhattan is 34min.

Urban islands 2009

I have been following Urban Islands over on BLDGBLOG over the past few weeks. The author of BLDGBLOG, Geoff Manaugh, was a studio leader this year and he has been updating his blog throughout. This year's studio centered around Cockatoo Island in Sydney: In under one week, students had to come up with design ideas that would explore the "spatial possibilities of Cockatoo's abandoned landscapes".

::Image via Urban Islands

Recently, Geoff has started detailing some of the work that resulted from his studio and I am incredibly impressed with what his students have produced. It has squarely pointed out how desperately unimaginative and uncreative I have been when presenting my own personal projects.

::Image via BLDGBLOG

Two projects in particular caught my attention; the first one by Tristan Davison plays on the “missing” buildings of Cockatoo. As Geoff puts: "One of the most conspicuous features of the island is that most of its historic buildings are missing but for a grid of iron nails on the ground framing their interior." During the week long studio Tristan Davison produced an entire board game which had players re-assemble the missing buildings of Cockatoo: "Players progress by strategically accumulating Action Cards and Building Cards, with the game concluding atop the island's central sandstone plateau".

::Image via BLDGBLOG

I am really impressed by the ingenuity and talent on show in the production of this game. I have already seen games being created and used during public consultation for example, but none of them come close to the quality of this one.

::Image via BLDGBLOG

The second project is one by Mitchell Bonus. As Geoff describes: "Tongue firmly in cheek, Mitchell has called for Sydney's apparently much-needed second airport to be built out on Cockatoo in the form of a solar-powered zeppelin field".

::Image via BLDGBLOG

The project was presented by creating a series of laminated trading cards that were inserted into packets of crisps, cigarettes and breakfast cereal: "Viewers of his presentation were handed a bag, some cigarettes, or a cereal box and, as they opened up their personal booty, they found not just an edible lunchtime snack but a well-produced act of architectural speculation".

::Image via BLDGBLOG

The idea was that "if you want to see a new building or project take shape, then you have to stop relying on design competitions, architecture blogs, or industry publications to get the word out – that is, you need to find another way to convince the public that your design should exist, making its material realization seem more like an afterthought".

::Image via BLDGBLOG

I have been amazed by the delivery of these two projects and coincidentally, after having read BLDGBLOG, I attended a lecture by the industrial designer Anthony Lloyd from Studioplus in Brisbane. The subject of his lecture was branding and one of the key principles he outlined for creating, launching or relaunching a brand was to get people talking about it, to "create conversations". Both these projects would have been excellent examples in how to successfully launch a brand or in this case an architectural project. Hats off.

The Bees Knees

::Image via Omlet

I have a thing for bees. I have a sort of romantic vision about beekeeping, perhaps because there were always beehives in the forests near where I grew up and we could buy huge pots of honey from the local bakery.

Anyways, the decline of bee populations in general is a real tragedy. The European Food Safety Authority reports that in Italy alone, up to half of the bee population may have died in 2007. Bees are a vital part of many healthy ecosystems, as they are key pollinators of plants including many of our crops and vegetables.

It is crucial that in developing urban farming, we do not forget this vital contribution from bees and other insects. A new urban beehive called Beehaus could provide a great way of introducing bees into the urban context. By putting Beehaus on their roofs, city dwellers could collect up to 20kg of honey each year according to Natural England.

Last year I thought of including beehives in a park design I was working on, but it was discouraged because of the risk of people and children getting stung. Having these beehives on private roofs may be an answer to introducing bees into the urban context and helping maintain healthy bee populations.

Reburbia

The finalists of the Reburbia competition jointly held by Inhabitat and Dwell magazine were announced last week. The competition aimed at finding innovative ways of retrofitting suburbia and transforming the legacy of sprawl in a sustainable way. I have made a short list of some entries that particularly caught my attention:

Big box agriculture: A productive suburb

Lots of entries looked at converting vacant big box stores into urban farming centers combining farming, retail and dining such as in this entry by Forrest Fulton:

Big Box Stores Transformed into Biofuel Generators

Here, the cheap, flat, modular space networked into national and state highway systems that disused big box stores offer is used for the production of biofuels. Biofuel production would be produced by algae to the tune of over 100,000 gallons a year for the average big box store.

Urban Sprawl Repair Kit: Repairing The Urban Fabric

The entry currently winning the popular vote is an Urban Sprawl Repair Kit by Galina Tahchieva that consists of a series of simple infill techniques for retrofitting the 5 building prototypes that define Suburbia.

puRE: Transforming Swimming Pools into Water Treatment Plants

Pure by Craig England looks at transforming swimming pools into water treatment plants and integrates wastewater treatment, food production, power generation, and community infrastructure all-in-one! Utilizing the principles of constructed wetlands, Pure is able to service up to five homes per unit, puRE intakes all household wastewater and outputs clean, potable water for all to enjoy.

Unfortunately this proposal leaves no opportunity for using the swimming pool for bathing, however I am very intrigued about the possibility of combining the two.

Regenerative Suburban Median

The last project I wished to mention was the Regenerative Suburban Median by Brian Alessi. This entry ties in with something I heard during a recent lecture by the Brisbane landscape architect John Mongard. He pointed out that in many suburban areas, the only space available to be reclaimed for community use was asphalt. In the Regenerative Suburban Median, part of the street is reclaimed to create a median that treats gray water and sewage, produces agriculture, provides a platform for small scale commercial activity and slows down automobile traffic to promote increased pedestrian activity and social interaction within the neighborhood.

:: All images via Reburbia

Unseen Realities

Some amazing architectural visualizations by Nathan Freise have been showing up on a number of blogs recently. These stunning images were part of the "Unseen Realities" exhibition at the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2008.

From the press release: "Freise’s series of inkjet prints depict experimental architecture projects. His hybrid illustrations combine multiple forms of media--ink, graphite, photography and marker--with computer graphics. Freise’s representations of utopian worlds question our current conditions of suburban sprawl and urban master-planning."


The original images as well as additional work by the Freise brothers can be accessed on their website.

All images via The Friese Brothers

How a landscape architect can save the world

::Image via lemmy-forum

A few months back the Landscape Institute launched a student video competition on the theme “How can a Landscape Architect save the world?”. Some of my fellow students from the University of Gloucestershire entered and their video can be seen here. I did not have the time to enter the competition, but nonetheless spent some time thinking about what my entry might be.

Answering this question requires first of all identifying the threat landscape architects need to save the world from. For many obvious reasons I decided I would centre my entry on the threat of global warming.

There are many ways in which a landscape architect can “save” the world from climate change: He can help redesign coastal areas which may be under threat from rising sea levels; he can use sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) to reduce an increasing flood risk; he can also design green roofs and parks that will help reduce the heat island effect in cities and the energetic cost of heating and cooling buildings. He can even directly influence the amount of fossil fuels used in transport by designing communities less reliant on cars and where key amenities are accessibly by foot, bike or public transport.

All of these solutions no doubt help in the fight against climate change. However, many of these “technical” solutions do not solely depend on the intentions of the landscape architect alone. Integrating a SUDS system within a sustainable mixed-use development for example, may only be possible once an effective engineered solution such as porous asphalt or permeable paving has been developed. Likewise, there often needs to be political and economic incentive for these these visions to become reality and these technical solutions to arise. To some extent, without them the landscape architect is powerless.

The influential novel Silent Spring is credited to have considerably contributed to bringing environmental concerns to the forefront of the public conscious. The book stemmed from a friend of the author noticing a decrease in the number of birds and the amount of bird song in her neighborhood shortly after the beginning of the intensive use of pesticides. This is a very tangible way of taking stock of environmental change. One key point here, however, is that her friend was only able to identify this issue because she was used to hearing and seeing many birds during spring. I doubt many city dwellers would be able to notice such a change should it take place nowadays. The point is that we can only react to something if we are aware of what it is; if we are aware of what is changing and what we are loosing. It is only once we are conscious of this change that the will and the desire to resist it can arise.

Many of us live detached from our natural environment and are protected from most of the changes in our natural settings. I am currently living in the centre of Brisbane, where there was high rainfall a few months ago. I was initially completely unaware that only a few kilometers away, many roads were cut off because of flooding, as in numerous other areas around Brisbane. For most of us to realize the effects of climate change and it's consequences, we need to be in touch with our natural environment and be able to appreciate what we risk loosing.

By interacting with our natural and built environment, the landscape architect has a key role in accomplishing this. By making us aware of our natural environment and in creating places where we connect to it and marvel at it, the landscape architect has the ability to allow us to appreciate what we have, what we risk loosing and most importantly, make us want to protect and conserve it.

To me, this is where a landscape architect can “save the world”. The landscape architect can help create the context where increased awareness and concern about climate change will emerge and consequently bring about the political and economic change, as well as the technical solutions needed to fight it.

Noise

::Image via PagesPerso-Orange

A few years ago, I remember reading a French survey that found that the nuisance people found the most annoying was noise. An interesting article in Discover by Jennifer Barone describes the sonic experience of walking through New York. She describes an experience that could have happened in any other city around the world, demonstrating how universal the urban sounds we are exposed to are.

The article also highlights the drastic effects that noise can have on our well being. Citing the work of environmental psychologist Arline Bronzaft, she shows how noise can be linked to violence and how it can impede children’s learning:

"Following up on a complaint that a school was near a loud train track, Bronzaft compared the performance of students in the half of the building facing the tracks with that of the children in the quieter part of the school. She found that sixth-graders in the noisy classrooms were about one grade behind their peers in the quieter section on reading scores. The year after the Metropolitan Transit Authority installed rubber pads under the rails to lessen the noise, reading scores at the school evened out. Bronzaft says that more than 30 studies have subsequently documented the impact of noise on learning."

She also points out how less intrusive noises, natural sounds or music are therapeutic and effective in relieving anxiety, improving mood, and lessening pain. This highlights the importance of noise when designing for a place with a quality sensory experience. It also stresses the necessity to identify and take into account noise pollution when designing civic spaces that are to be successful.

How a landscape architect can save the world

This is a competition entry from a couple of fellow students at the University of Gloucestershire in the U.K. The competition brief was to produce a short film for the Landscape Institute explaining how a landscape architect can save the world. Good luck to them.

UN Global Compact Centre

:: Photo via Inhabitat

The Hunter's Point Shipyard has been designated by the U.S. Environmental Agency as one of the most polluted sites in the U.S. As an old naval shipyard it is contaminated with industrial toxins and radiations.

It it sometimes hard to imagine where the funds to rehabilitate such a site will come from, however San Francisco has just announced plans to build the U.N. Global Compact Centre "a world class climate change think tank and green tech incubator" on the old shipyard.

According to the mayor Gavin Newsom, the centre will “serve as an anchor for other sustainable businesses at the Shipyard in much the same way that the University of California and the Stem Cell Institute have anchored Mission Bay’s burgeoning biotech and life sciences cluster.”

Natural Pools

Catching up on a lot of unread blogposts, I came across a couple on Studio G about natural swimming pools and Gerard Gay's luxury pools.

Natural swimming pools are incredibly beautiful and have a charm that traditional pools lack. In my mind however, they were necessarily relatively small affairs, for private use.

::Photos via Studio G

When looking at the designs of Gerard Gay and particularly the pool with the mountainous backdrop above, I wondered if they necessarily have to be small and private; could large public swimming pools not also be "natural swimming pools"?

:: Photo via Gerard Gay

A noticeable thing about the public beach in the Southbank Parklands here in Brisbane is the chemical smell of the water. I have often wondered about this when watching many of the birds drink from the pool. Could such pools, as the one at the Cairns esplanade be designed as a "natural pools"?

Brisbane South Bank Parklands
:: Photo via Foundation expo 88

Cairns Esplanade
:: Photo via Goway

A large public place would no doubt benefit from a chemical free and sustainable natural swimming pool if technically feasible.

The Cove