stustainina

twitter new york

2012-01-24T09:47:00.003+08:00

Ever wonder what happens to all the data you supply online? Maybe someone makes a pretty map of it.

Eric Fischer did with twitter location data in New York.

animalnewyork.com via this isn't happiness

Looks Del.icio.us is a collection of different Delicious bookmark visualizations. They’re created with a python-based graphics library and layout engine:

webdesignerdepot.com

Lego repairs

2012-01-09T17:39:00.004+08:00

Ha Ha, isn't this brilliant!!!

from tel-aviv

Miles said.

2012-01-07T20:59:00.001+08:00

from black-culture

Do Not Covet Your Ideas

2012-01-05T18:09:00.005+08:00

from piccsy via this isn't happiness

Green wall, green house.

2011-12-26T15:18:00.005+08:00

Some more found images:

The Highline as greenroof

2011-12-21T19:49:00.005+08:00

The Highline "before"

and after.

All found images.

...goats optional

2011-12-17T11:22:00.013+08:00

from Winter Street Architects

I'm inspired by the colours of these wildflowers carpeting a city roof, a delightful hibridity of soft clothing for the urban hardscape; a colourful coat for a building. Gentle, beautiful.

These images from the USA, from Green Grid Roofs

All images found images.

Where is the city square?

2011-08-21T12:32:00.008+08:00

Does the city work as a place where public life is engaging, active, interesting, sometimes exciting, sometimes reassuringly familiar and always full of the ritual of the everyday that makes us feel part of a place, that makes us feel connected to this community, our home?

We need shared public places to sit, to engage, to be together.

We need shared places to sleep, to skate, to party, to protest, to plant, to grow, to argue and to bump into each other, to read, relax, stretch, breathe, perform, observe, survey, shelter, retreat...

A community needs spaces that all members of the community can use, young and old, parent and business person, cafe owner and graffiti artist, busker and builder, painter and procrastinator alike. We have to have places where we can engage the conviviality, the discussion and debate that forms the public life of a city. These are things that happen in the public square.

If I ask myself how are the spaces in this town organised? then I cannot help but answer: apparently without thought. Albany is an unplanned city. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say it is an overly planned and controlled city which lacks any sense of vision. Often it feels in this place that one enjoys it despite the built environment, not because of it.

How can we engage in the reformation of this city as a machine for living? How can we create a shelter that nurtures our community?

We can begin by playing, by experimenting with form and space, by imagining the possible, by messing around with ideas...

...by beginning from where we are.

2011-08-12T17:52:00.002+08:00

Extension to the Denver Art Museum, Frederic C. Hamilton Building

Denver, Colorado

2011-08-02T19:25:00.003+08:00

I was just doing some random searching online this evening when I came across this report in relation to the sheoak woodland we were trying to protect from clearing back in 1998-2000, that is now Woodrise Estate.

REPORT OF THE

STANDING COMMITTEE ON CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS

IN RELATION TO

A PETITION INTO HOMESWEST AND THE DEPARTMENT OF LAND ADMINISTRATION POLICIES: OPPOSING THE PROPOSED SUBDIVISION OF LAND OWNED BY HOMESWEST IN SPENCER PARK, ALBANY.

If your interested in the processes of government, the full document is available at this link:

http://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/Parliament/Commit.nsf/(Report+Lookup+by+Com+ID)/60DF7C63DBF572E848257831003E94C4/$file/ca050.pdf

Here are a few interesting extracts. Right now, I don't have any comments to make, I want to think about it some more. And see if this can be used in any useful way. Then I'll do another post.

But if you've gat anything to say, for now, I'm interested.

The Committee requested information from the Minister for Housing, Hon Dr Kim Hames MLA, relating to the development of the land the subject of the petition. In response to its request, the Committee received a letter from the Minister dated January 14 2000.

3.2 In response to its inquiries about the public open space in the development, and the amount of natural vegetation that would be retained, the Minister advised the Committee that a standard allocation of ten per cent public open space as per the Western Australian Planning Commission (WAPC) requirements was allocated for the subdivision. The Minister advised that this has been allocated in three separate parcels in the manner listed below:

8 892m2 3 919m2

Parcel 1 Parcel 2 Parcel 3 2 685m2 TOTAL 15496m2 Total land area 15.496 hectares

3.3 The Minister also advised that the open space allocation has been designed to provide for a mix of recreational pursuits including active, passive and natural recreation and children’s playgrounds. The Committee was informed that of the total amount of open space, 3 919m2 has been specifically set aside for natural recreation through the retention of existing vegetation. The other two areas of open space will retain a percentage of existing trees whilst also including grassed areas, playgrounds, walking paths and seating in a landscaped setting.

6.9 In regard to the Committee’s request relating to remnant vegetation and bio-diversity, Mr Prattley advised that the WAPC does not have a strategy or policy which specifically deals with remnant vegetation in Albany. “Perth’s Bushplan” only applies to the metropolitan area and although the State Planning Strategy and Albany Regional Strategy give broad direction encouraging the preservation of remnant vegetation, specific areas worthy of protection are not identified.

6.10 The Committee was advised that the WAPC's “Residential Expansion Strategy for Albany” (1994) which was a key action of the Albany Regional Strategy only gives broad guidance in promoting the preservation of significant remnant vegetation as follows:

• “Existing reserves, wetlands, waterways, proposed buffer areas and significant remnant vegetation will be integrated into a comprehensive regional, district and local open space system...” (p5); and

• “Significant areas of remnant vegetation, particularly in prominent locations, should be given priority when designing areas for public open space.” (p6).

6.11 Mr Prattley informed the Committee that the City of Albany, with assistance from the Ministry for Planning, is presently preparing a Local Planning Strategy. Mr Prattley submitted that this will be an ideal opportunity to identify areas of remnant vegetation which should be preserved. The City of Albany will then have an opportunity to reserve these areas under a new town planning scheme.

6.12 Mr Prattley also informed the Committee that the State Planning Strategy identifies the need for a Statutory Region Scheme for Albany by 2005 which would identify

12 F:\DATA\CA\CARP\Ca050rp.docFIFTIETH REPORT

areas of remnant vegetation significant at a regional level and provide a mechanism for the acquisition of this land.

8 CONCLUSIONS

8.1 Having visited the land the subject of the petition, met with the petitioners and conducted a hearing into the issues raised in the petition, the Committee is aware of

F:\DATA\CA\CARP\Ca050rp.doc 13Standing Committee on Constitutional Affairs

the local significance the land has for people in Albany and the petitioners in particular.

8.2 The Committee concludes that the Local Planning Strategy currently being prepared by the City of Albany and the Ministry for Planning will assist in identifying areas of remnant vegetation which should be preserved. The City of Albany will then be able to reserve those areas under a new town planning scheme.

8.3 It is Committee policy that with respect to petitions concerning planning and environmental matters the Committee’s role is not to replace existing planning or environmental appeal bodies but is limited to inquiring into breaches of the proper planning and environmental procedures.

8.4 Having considered all of the submissions received in relation to this petition, the Committee concludes that the evidence supplied to it indicates that at least the current minimum planning and environmental requirements have been met and that there has not been a breach of the current proper planning or environmental procedures in this instance.

9 RECOMMENDA TIONS

9.1 That the Local Planning Strategy and the Statutory Region Scheme for Albany

referred to in paragraphs 6.11 and 6.12 respectively of this report be implemented at

the earliest possible opportunity.

9.2 That in allocating the areas of land to be set aside as public open space,

consideration be given to:

• the quality of the vegetation to be included in that ten per cent;

• allocating a sufficient amount of land in each parcel of remnant vegetation in

the public open space to sustain its ecological integrity; and

• the amount of public open space in surrounding areas and the possible need to

set aside more than the current ten per cent minimum.

AEC greenroof

2011-07-21T18:09:00.006+08:00

For those of you have averted your faces, maybe it's time to take a new look at the Albany Entertainment Centre:

humdinger

2011-06-02T18:55:00.002+08:00

this is a tiny wind generator!

http://gadgetfanboy.com/general/humdinger-wind-energys-microbelt-turbine/

You are invited!

2011-05-11T20:37:00.005+08:00

Saturday 14th May from 10am

Fair Trade morning tea, home made cakes and savouries (donations welcome.)

Live Music!

146 Aberdeen St - the Old Convent/Greenskills/Elders (was ITC)

What Maps Think.

2011-02-18T23:59:00.005+08:00

An animation from mcShed that I found whilst cleaning my computer - I've no idea why I did it... and it doesn't seem to have come out very clearly on the blog. How does it look to you?

2011-01-04T20:24:00.002+08:00

another interesting site:

http://cmk.typepad.com/digitaldeities/

2010-12-15T22:59:00.000+08:00

Now THAT is a green roof!

2010-11-30T18:38:00.003+08:00

Look here for more inspiration: http://www.lostateminor.com/2010/11/12/norways-turf-roofs/

OTHER PEOPLE'S BLOGS

2010-11-14T14:28:00.010+08:00

(This is me working.)

http://urbanomnibus.net/2010/11/stanley-greenberg-city-as-organism-only-some-of-it-visible/

http://mrsminifig.posterous.com/

"Arroyo Junkers and other resurections"

http://soozeque.blogspot.com/

this image from the geurilla gardening.org blog:

http//ww w.guerrillagardening.org/ggblog27.html

http://weburbanist.com/2007/11/05/painting-the-town-green-7-examples-of-bizarre-and-amazing-plant-grass-and-moss-art/

Godsell House, Kew

2010-10-24T18:35:00.005+08:00

"...Another way of putting that is, once you’re a hooker, you’re a hooker for life. You can’t prostitute yourself and build a building and say I didn’t mean to do that one — because buildings tend to stay there. The other responsibility is to be a really vigilant and analytical observer of society — by doing so we remain relevant to society.”

Sean Godsell

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/09/23/1064082997618.html?from=storyrhs

this is one building i really quite like. and the article is worth the read.

The Tanks

2010-10-10T23:52:00.002+08:00

Things I like about melbourne

2010-09-11T13:54:00.005+08:00

Kapingamarangi Elementary School

2010-08-07T00:26:00.004+08:00

Found this gorgeous little building while trawling around Google Earth - wondering if i could see a plastic bag island after reading one of Michelle's posts.
Cut and paste the title into yr Google Earth search bar.

Janis Kornellis, I Love You!

2010-07-07T18:25:00.004+08:00

Water Feature

2010-07-07T00:12:00.004+08:00

Yay! another little garden! A water feature this time: a bird bath. This is another one of those gorgeous "inefficiencies" that I love so much: someone stepped on the plastic sheeting cleaning the gutters, and left this indentation. The birds love to bathe here. High and safe.
It appeals to me as a lovely notion that "nature" is about that which takes advantage of opportunities, of niches, of inefficiencies in design or maintenance...therefore suggesting that such inefficiency are a really beautiful thing to plan into design.

Sleeping with the enemy

2010-06-21T21:53:00.011+08:00

After more than half a decade in Melbourne studying design, I made the big trip back across the Nullabor with not much more than the carload I left with, but a lot of other stuff in my head.

Back to the south west; I like it here.

I came back here to work. I was back here to get experience of real practice...a job with a large landscape architecture practice was surely what I had intended for myself. I applied, got interviews, wondered whether these jobs were as boring as they sounded. I looked for an opportunity to be the thing I thought that I had been studying to become. I talked to the council and I took advice. I went to interviews, refused job offers...because I didn't study four and a half years to spend nine hours a day in front of a computer screen. I did enough of that while I was studying. Sitting in a dark room by a blue screen when outside the sun is shining might be the norm, but that aint my fault!

I wondered what the hell I was doing. I wondered if it is true that I will I always be an outsider, and as someone suggested to me recently – always be one of the maladjusted unemployed.

I shifted my focus, and in so doing, took some of the dilemmas of the practice into my own mind. What had been externalised now became my issue. What I had felt resistance to externally became an internal corruption. I perhaps might have realised this if, when I put in a quote for an entrance statement, I had noticed a little bit of my discomforture; when a friend refused to even talk about a constructed wetland in the middle of great big housing development that I'd spent a good deal of the afternoon finding things to like about, I had felt a little bit disrupted.

Is this making sense?

The problem is not in the conclusion, but in the slightness of the signs...so many questions were sitting unanswered behind a pile of books that were overdue for return:

Was I being o, blase - or is hard-line green an anachronism?

Is it the transient nature of design thinking that allows this kind of distancing from the subject?

Does design research approach the impartiality of scientific research, where ethical decisions get left to someone else to deal with?

Suspend your judgement, yes, to design (in the process of designing), but not indefinitely. What is happening in Albany is so very wrong. People know it, people care about it, people are trying to change it. Sitting on the fence using landscape architecture as an excuse really was not my original intent. The kind of work that I had come to imagine, (how?) the kind of 'traditional' landscape architecture I thought I should be doing, shooud instead have felt like a moral crime, felt like flirting with the Darkside. Surely that wasn't what they'd taught us at one of the best design courses going? Surely speculative design isn't just something you do in the hallowed halls of academia? Haven't I always been a dreamer? Isn't it possible to live and dream into the world wonders of great beauty and exquisite design, that don't destroy the things that people love? Nor the myriad of non-human species. All this I couldn't put into words, couldn't put my finger on, but I could feel the resistance, and I wasn't rolling anywhere with it. And what exactly was this thing I was imaging? What was this 'conventional' or 'traditional' landscape role I thought I should be taking on? Had I perhaps allowed myself to be confused by too much post-structuralist theory, and stopped caring. Did I need to question my ability to care?

Now that I’m a graduate, I’ve been wondering what that degree will be useful for in this little old town where developers have such a powerful voice; where precious habitat is still being cleared, where harbours are still being dredged, where the urban is still sprawling and where those dedicated individuals who care and who are doing so much are often forced to work against the system.

Too many of the opportunities which I seemed to be contemplating were a temptation to undertake a practice that would see me sitting on the fence where perhaps too much landscape architecture practice sits. Working in cahoots with developers suggested compromising the very values that drove me to open my mind to the university in the first place, and would mean betraying those very people who were working so hard, so tirelessly, to protect the fragile, threatened environment that had birthed me, that had let me breathe, that had given me wings.

It was time to let something slip from my fingers and break.

So I took an unplanned holiday.

It's a useful thing to do, when things don't seem right. Go somewhere that makes you feel really good. And take the time to forget. Sure a couple weeks is nice, but even half a day can do it.

Talk to the I Ching perhaps, open the passageways for the great grey rat-headed hamster. [1]

And really give yourself to it.

Consciously holidaying makes you experience what you wouldn't ordinarily appreciate, like new smells and tastes. Bird shit, rotten barnacles, they're good fodder. Some people visit exotic overseas destinations...edges and shorelines work for me.

A really good holiday takes you somewhere that allows you to loosen the grip on your sense of self. It lets things crumble slightly. It lets you fall. As Hannah said a couple days ago, sometimes some things have to fall apart for other things to fall into place.

This might seem like an obvious statement, but you have to go to the Darkside to come home again, equipped with more effective tools.

I've been back in Albany since spring; it's taken me a while to feel out the narrative that sits in me, waiting to be told. And to answer at lease one of the questions that this blog asked in the first place, while I was still studying: What am I going to do? I'm joining forces with the many, many other brave and caring people in Albany and in the world who are attempting to protect the diversity of life.

I'm using my skills as a designer to participate in change, transitioning from oil dependency, transitioning from relying on planet-warming processes.

Landscape architecture practice can be, IS so much more than decoration.

[1] Hexagram #15: QIAN: the receptive on the mountain, Humbling/the Grey One.

"The literal animal is the great grey rat-headed hamster...with a human stance. It lives in an extensive system of burrows that suggest the underworld, where it hides a great store of stolen grain. It will attack and eat other rodents and can appear suddenly and ominously, standing on its hind legs with forepaws folded." p161 Stephen KARCHER,Total I Ching, Myths for Change. 2003, Time Warner Books/Piatkus/Little, Brown Books, London.

Bruce Mau: an incomplete manifesto for growth

2010-06-21T19:20:00.005+08:00

#5 Go deep.

The deeper you go the more likely you are to find something of value.

#8 Drift.

Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgement. Postpone criticism.

http://www.ludosabato.com/mau/

an incomplete manifesto for growth.

2010-06-21T18:55:00.002+08:00

http://www.ludosabato.com/mau/

2010-05-31T16:35:00.004+08:00

"Il faut se donner un but impossible."
Valery a Gide.

Landscape Architecture and Urban Design.

2010-04-15T17:27:00.005+08:00

Landscape architects and urban designers engage critically with the landscape and its processes.

Through analysis, research and design they seek to protect and enhance the cultural and ecological resources of the site.

Design is a process of active involvement with place making; the design process seeks to make visible the various forces acting in and on site, to understand and manipulate what is occurring there and so arrive at a design outcome that is responsive as much, if not more, to the spaces between than any point within the landscape.

In design for the public realm, landscape architecture and urban design bring an important critical awareness to site use and redesign, acting on a scale that is beyond the object and is concerned with force and activity, attempting to create functional connections.

Quality landscape architecture begins at the very beginning of new works, before decisions of placement and form have been solidified. It must be engaged at the front of the place-making process.

The design process unfolds slowly, requiring commitment from all parties – clients, the public and users. It must be resourced fully – both time and money are necessary to obtain top quality new, critical design outcomes.

2010-02-10T18:26:00.003+08:00

Draft Albany Central Area Masterplan 2010 has recently been released.
It's probably worth having a look at, and making some comments.

You can find it at the bottom of this page:
http://www.albany.wa.gov.au/your-council/public-comment/

DESIGN IS...

2009-11-13T13:13:00.006+08:00

I had 5 thoughts driving from Melbourne to Albany.
Hearing what goes through your mind when that's all you've got to do is an exercise in forbearance, seven days to do not much else but stare and think. Thoughts like planets just go round and round and round in you like you're the sun.

There's plenty of time/space to work at refining an idea.
I was wondering how to describe my landscape architecture practice hopes, what I want to do in Albany and what landscape architecture is to me. First I had to define design. It took a few days...

"Design is the conscious and deliberate consideration of form/system/process."

And then I arrived.

2009-11-11T19:03:00.005+08:00

http://www.thesweetmelissa.com/sweet_melissa/2009/05/constant-readers-so-at-yesterdays-board-meeting--the-supes-passed-that-solar-energy-contract-that-leases-land-to-a--company.html?cid=6a00d83514497653ef01156f7ff88d970c

2009-11-06T20:34:00.004+08:00

this image is from the BLDGBLOG

2009-10-16T09:45:00.003+08:00

Taking Down the Fences

2009-10-13T19:30:00.007+08:00

Keith Bradby: And what next for us was to work with the farmers on the origins of the Landcare movement, work with the ecologists and the concerned members of the community on the biological values of this place and what it needs, and I'll be honest, that after 15 years of that, I think we'd achieved a lot, but nowhere near as much as we need to achieve. So we start searching for what is the next big lift that this landscape and society needs. And it is being able to think across a thousand or two kilometres and across a thousand or two years, to what is health in this landscape, what is vitality in this landscape. And it's a lot more than looking after rare species or propping up farms with a few belts of trees. It is stitching the health back together and it is bringing it, and its values and its needs into our culture. Gondwanalink is the vehicle that we think helps us do that here, and helps us appreciate both the need and the ability to do that nationally.

from the transcript to the radio program, Taking Down the Fences.

This image from http://www.gondwanalink.org/

A great show for encounter on ABC Radio National.
Gondwanalink, as most Albany people know, is an amazing programme to regrow a strip from Kalgoorlie to Margaret river, the brainchild of Keith Bradby.

What excites me about it is that taking down fences and reclaiming farm land demands a rethink of entire social, cultural and community systems. And it proposes using nature as the infrastrucure through which human interaction with the land is controlled.

Keith Bradby: ... Again, at the risk of sounding either arrogant or facetious or some other rude word, we have formally apologised as a nation to the Aboriginal people of Australia for shall we say both our mistakes and our intentional wrongs. And I don't think we have yet formally apologised to the country as a whole for our clumsiness and our mistakes and our intentional damage. And I think when you work on something like Gondwanalink and you say 'Look, over 1,000 kilometres we've ripped it asunder and broken the essential links', at some point you do have to apologise to the land or at least do those things which help atone for those wrongs.

Stretch

2009-10-13T18:24:00.003+08:00

While me and Yoshi were wandering around the soccer pitch this morning, the only place that allows for something approaching mindless wandering in my immediate neighbourhood, I caught myself stretching the grass outside the fences and up to the neighbours' front doors, and thinking - well, why is there a road there? The grass should keep going, and the cars could drive on the grass. (And so on) And I realised that's what I do: see a site, and apply a solution. It's what drove many of my projects: the water in the laneway was an opportunity to plant something, the void under the park in projekt square got me thinking about storing storm water there, the grass on the edge of the railway lines makes me think of herds of cows. Sand blowing up and making hills at Middleton Beach makes me wonder how to us the process to build a useful new land form. It's how I think. Is it how all designers think?

THE NOT-SO-RADICAL CENTRE

2009-10-13T17:16:00.018+08:00

extracts from

PRACTICE REVIEW

In reviewing a landscape practice, the statements of the practitioners can be used to measure their practice against the evidence that they themselves give of their work.

...Temporality: a nice idea, a seductive idea. It’s seduced a lot more landscape architects than these two[1].

In a landscape context the use of plants makes it a given – what grows, decays: implicit change over time… temporality is also a claim set against notions of fixity, the building, the white gallery space and the museum all fitting this category when the category was named[2]; the pot, the garden bed and the street curb are their landscape architecture cousins. “The Garden in Movement interprets and develops the energies found in the place...its name refers to the physical movement of plant species on the land, which the gardener interprets in his own way. Flowers grown [sic] in the middle of a path oblige the gardener to choose: should he conserve the passage or the flowers? …The design of the garden, which constantly changes, is the result of the work of the person who maintains it, not an idea developed on the drawing board.”[3] In this context, unmediated use of hard materials is a practice against temporality: sure they break down, but everything breaks down eventually. In the words of a master of change, “Everything passes/Everything changes/Just do what you think you should do.”[4] To respect the claim we would therefore ask what is the time frame referred to, what do you mean by change, who/what are the agents of change? How does the stone wall of the emergency services memorial “unfold like a blanket”? Unfortunately, these questions remain unanswered.

How close do the two sides of the triangle come together?

…if they are not close enough, then there are a number of options. You can change the story or be better at the practice. Perhaps that is about being brave. To claim a radical practice requires that I check my success against the claims I make with clear and transparent processes, if not to the world at least to myself.

[1] A project that has engaged with it in a real way, I would say, is Section 8. This project was a short-term act, that because of its success as a space remains, and the ‘built’ form that was otherwise (supposedly) destined for the site has been either canned or indefinitely postponed. It remains in place because it is interesting. Apparently when it ceases to be interesting it will cease to be. There are many others, like Sue-Anne Ware’s road side memorials, Act Two, and many I just can’t think of right now.

[2] There should be a reference here, but sorry, I haven’t got one. My guess is that it rose up with land art, systems art, performance etc in postformalist late 1950s/early 1960s, along with the break out of art from the white gallery space.

[3] Gilles Clément quoted on p13, Alessandro Rocca (Ed.), 2007, Planetary Garden – the Landscape Architecture of Gilles Clément. Birkhäuser. Basel, Boston Berlin, Broome.

2008_7-12% deviation

2009-10-13T09:10:00.004+08:00

2008_pre-major

2009-10-13T09:09:00.007+08:00

I just realised how this relates to small gardens: another type of public parkland.

_Oops, just realised those labels are back to front. The verge is of course the public parkland - for now, anyway.

this side of pinaroo_2007

2009-10-13T09:07:00.020+08:00

using landfill on site to create an active topography.

2006_flower tower

2009-10-13T09:07:00.018+08:00

mcShed_2007

2009-10-13T09:07:00.014+08:00

McShed was a way of using opportunities on site to bring more intensity and interest to the urban environment. Any food supplier could be the organisational centre for laying out the suburb: mcdonalds works because it is currently so disconnected from site, that it looks radical to use it rethink growing food in the city. My favorite design moment was the glass-walled abatoir next to the drive-thru. I think it's nice to be able to give the mcDoanalds customer something back, and this is a moment of theatre. It's a drive thru theatre...

MVRDV are the obvious precedent for thinking about urban systems. What my work does differently is tries to engage with a history of farming that is pre-industrial, and formally has an organic lyricism.

This image from MVRDV's project Pig City, sourced from: www.nextnature.net/?p=147

projekt square_2005

2009-10-13T09:05:00.006+08:00

diverting storm water into underground storage.

projekt laneway_2005

2009-10-13T09:04:00.002+08:00

taking down the fences

2009-10-10T11:38:00.010+08:00

Bringing architecture and nature together

2009-10-09T07:51:00.005+08:00

This is by Terunobu Fujimoi.
I took the photo of a slide at his lecture on Wednesday night. He has a piece in the "Shelter: On Kindness" exhibition at RMIT gallery for the Melbourne fringe festival.

The Quest for a Radical Centre

2009-10-08T15:56:00.016+08:00

Noel Pearson, 2007:

We are prisoners of our metaphors: by thinking of realism/pragmatism and idealism as opposite ends of a two-dimensional plane, we see leaders inclining to one side or the other. The naive and indignant yaw towards ideals and get nowhere, but their souls remain pure. The cold-eyed and impatient pride themselves on their lack of romance and emotional foolishness. Those who harbour ideals but who need to work within the parameters of real power (as opposed to simply cloaking lazy capitulation under the easy mantle of righteous impotence) end up splitting the difference somewhere between ideals and reality. This is called compromise. And it is all too often of a low denominator.

I prefer a pyramid metaphor of leadership, with one side being realism and the other idealism, and the quality of leadership dependent on how closely the two sides are brought together. The apex of leadership is the point where the two sides meet. The highest ideals in the affairs of humans on Earth are realised when leadership strives to secure them through close attention to reality. Lofty idealism without pragmatism is worthless. What is pragmatism without ideals? At best it is management, but not leadership.

As one rises above the low-denominator compromise, it takes skill, creativity, strategy, careful calculation as well as bold judgment, prudence and risk, intelligent analysis, insight, perseverance as well as preparedness to alter course, belief and humility, great competence and an ability to make good from mistakes to bring ideals closer to reality. One must be hardheaded in order to never let go of ideals.

Idealism and realism in leadership do not constitute a zero-sum game. This is not about securing a false compromise. It need not be a simple trade-off where one splits the difference. The best leadership occurs at the point of highest tension between ideals and reality. This is the radical centre. If the idealism is weaker than the realism, then optimum leadership cannot be achieved. And vice versa. The radical centre is achieved when both are strong.

Otherwise, you get the problem of skewing. This occurs when one side of (what I will call) a classic dialectical struggle is weak and the other pronounced. Skewing occurs not just because the intellectual analysis is faulty or weak, but because of the issues involved in working out interests in the real world and the great challenges of reality for any policy and leadership seeking a better resolution in the radical centre. No leadership is immune from the forces that impel confrontation with reality and ideals. Leaders are buffeted by reality and must contend with it - they cannot choose it. Leaders' ideals are not just innate qualities: they are often forced by events and by those around them who most ardently press such ideals. Some of the greatest leaders achieve their apex as much by being compelled by external forces as by their own preferences.

pp283-83 Noel Pearson, 2007, White Guilt, Victimhood and the Quest for a Radical Centre. From The Best Australian Essays 2007, ed Drusilla Modjeska, first published as a longer essay in Griffith Review 16.

Like all simple and true insights, this clear analysis that Noel Pearson makes within a critique of Australian politics may usefully be applied to other situations. Redrawing the apparent polarity of ideal design in an academic context and real-world practice through this model places good design at this apex of two sides: for myself, I find that while I am a student, although learning a great deal about design, I am not a designer until I practice, and the rough carborundum of reality smooths out some of the flaws in my concepts in a physical/practical sense and a political sense. I do not believe that I am a "designer" until I am involved in action in the world.I might also say that I am not a thinker until I speak.

sustain 7

2009-10-03T10:43:00.006+08:00

a collection point for ideas, processes, plans and actions to create a sustainable community in the south west of west australia, with an underlying principle that what we do will make a positive contribution to place in the year 2220: seven generations in the future.

Scale of the new garden.

2009-10-01T20:09:00.017+08:00

Yep, there's a lot of differences. Some too obvious to mention. Most obviously they look different. One is a stinking great palace garden manicured, managed, loved and cultivated carefully and systematically by a huge squadron of horticulturalists, aware of the full import of their every action on the history of France and landscape architecture in the western world. The other is four square inches of weeds growing in a footpath somewhere in Brunswick (or was it Preston?) about which probably no human being would care if it's not even there anymore. Quite a lot more people would be fussed if the Versailles gardens got a damn good dose of agent orange.

Chance: the chance events of viable seeds somehow managing to land in an hospitable soil in a vast desert of cement, and the chance of history preferencing one species over another for a complex planting of human-preferred geometries.

Design next to nature makes an interesting question: does nature design? To bring it a more manageable size I'll use Bill Mollison's axiom: everything gardens. This is as true of plants as it is of us, rabbits and ring tailed possums: everything tries to modify the conditions that it finds itself in to be more amenable, more capable of meeting its needs and comfort and ensuring the continued survival of itself as an individual and a species.

To get to the point, it's probably more fair to ask what's the same?

Because I'm tempted to say there's no difference, from this point of view:
both of these gardens are a whole bunch of plants and other animals (insects, microbes...) struggling to survive in a hostile environment managed by human beings. What we describe as difference is often around how we, as aesthetically focused, historically minded cultural animals feel, how we consider what are the histories of these styles of garden, on the one hand the intensely managed royal gardens that speak of power and privilege, on the other the vertiginous survival despite the odds: the wandering suburbanite, roundup in one hand, lawn mower in the other, how much odder do you get than that?
I don't know about the French floral condition, but here we know these little plants as garden weeds. And weeds in our bush. From their point of view they are living organism doing what living things do: their best to survive in the condition in which they find themselves.

As far as the concept of garden goes, is it too big of a leap to consider these little gardens with as much fidelity to the notion of garden as the Versailles gardens, to the notion of public parks as a botanical garden, as a soccer field, a reserve, a suburban park, a regional park? As the garden in the main street? As the front yard? It's about scale.

what's the difference?

2009-09-30T17:40:00.007+08:00

From: http://www.ufodigest.com/news/0508/images/versaille.jpg

Here's a little puzzle for you...what's the difference between the formalist garden at Versaille, and this little garden in Brunswick?

el loco

2009-09-30T17:10:00.007+08:00

A tarot card might seem like a strange thing to post here where I’m supposedly examining landscape architecture practice, but this card has today summed it all up. The Fool is for being "liberated by free will and trust, which lead [one] to explore simple speculations for their own sake. I don't know where I'm going, and I don't care where I've been. I only know that, as the hero of my own story, it's for me to find out. For, like Alice, I'm on the verge of stepping into a rabbit hole; unless I stop short and play it safe, I'll know soon enough where following my own feet has landed me on this curious venture."
It's true, it's true it's true! This is just how this exercise is going at the moment. I'm not sure how I'm going to practice or exactly what I want to achieve in any sphere right now, and that does make me feel like a bit of a fool, especially in the university system. Nonetheless I am completely happy with my process, a carefree wander, a dérive, if you like. It's an exploration taking me to places I would otherwise have bypassed unnoticed and I feel pretty safe in the knowledge that sooner or later I am going to get where I’m going, wherever that is.

In regards to "expanded field" I am glad I had to go look that up for myself, because it gave words to what I was on the verge of doing. Without the words for this I just couldn't get into it.

Expanded Practice Offers Greater Choice For Dental Patients In Williton

Somerset people living in the Williton area now have a wider choice when it comes to choosing an NHS dentist.

The Stoneleigh House Dental Practice, based in High Street, has recently undergone major improvements and expanded so that alongside Dr. Andre Louw there are now three other dentists working part time.

The practice opened its doors to the public some weeks ago, but the formal opening was held last Wednesday, May 6th.

It’s a great relief.If only I lived in Williton it would all make sense.

The fool asks you not to take yourself too seriously - and that has got to be the best advice to me, ever, who is far, far too serious. (Just ask anyone who’s ever played scrabble with me!)

To talk about my practice today in tutorial, as usual I made a pretty good job of avoiding the issue. I’m not finding it easy to be clear about what it is.

Should I ask myself the hard questions... or just carry on following my nose for a little while longer...?

2009-09-28T20:44:00.003+08:00

click: this is a link to 'aboriginal archicture projects' at the rmit school of architecture and design.

just chicken feed

2009-09-26T16:33:00.013+08:00

These trucks weigh about 1.3tonnes.
Australians eat 1.1 - 1.2 million kg of chicken meat each day, and 25 million chook eggs.

(Lucky she's got strong knees.)

Spencer Park Rezoning_my submission

2009-09-24T15:07:00.003+08:00

11 South Street

Preston Vic 3072

24^th September 2009

Re: TOWN PLANNING SCHEME NO. 1A – AMENDMENT NO. 171

I have viewed the Town Planning Scheme No. 1A – Amendment No. 171 from the City of Albany website (http://www.albany.wa.gov.au/website/uploads/2472_AMD171_240909.pdf)

and would like to make the following comments and suggestions:

LANDSCAPE REQUIREMENTS

Porous Paving Surfaces

I would like to suggest that, as there will be an increase in impervious surfaces resulting from increased density in the Spencer Park Special Zone, that to maintain natural hydrological systems it be required as part of onsite landscaping to use porous paving surfaces (e.g. matrix paving, porous asphalt or similar.)

Stormwater

I would suggest that rock, stone or gravel be used to line stormwater basins or channels[1], to slow the rate of flow, dissipate energy and prevent surface erosion.

Infiltration Pits

I would suggest that infiltration pits or rain gardens be part of the landscape requirements or part of works undertaken by Albany City council to ensure return of moisture into the immediate site to maintain natural hydrological systems. Rain gardens have the advantage of providing beauty and interest to the streetscape.

General construction

It is important that locally-sourced rock be used wherever possible as this will minimise energy inputs. Using recycled aggregate for fill and sourcing rocks from on-site excavation works or other local construction sites would be two suggestions.

BUILDINGS

Energy efficiency in building function

I would like to suggest that design of all buildings including commercial and other non-residential building be required to meet highest energy efficiency standards and that design requirements be limited to these processes, i.e. that it not be part of the Amendment to recommend glazing areas greater than what would meet highest standards of energy efficiency, nor that a particular façade treatment be required.

75 to 85% glazing is recommended in the Amendment, which seems contrary to council standards for residential and dwelling requirements for energy efficiency standards in other documentation, e.g. Energy Efficiency Provisions for Houses BCA Part 3.12. I suggest that glazing and façade treatment recommendations be reconsidered.

Construction and function of buildings

I would like to suggest that requirements for meeting low energy usage in both construction and function of buildings be inserted into the Amendment.

Yours sincerely,

Christine King.

[1] As well as many other WSUD recommendations from councils in Australia, many of which are available online, this fact sheet offers some practical suggestions that might be worth considering, obviously making adjustments to satisfy conditions specific to Albany: Water Sensitive Urban Design in the Sydney Region, Practice Note 7, Landscape Measures. Available from http://www.wsud.org/planning.htm, Accessed 24^th September 2009.

Rezoning Spencer Park

2009-09-15T20:49:00.003+08:00

Albany City Council is proposing a change in zoning ratings in Spencer Park, which means an increase in permissible density.

Full document: http://www.albany.wa.gov.au/website/uploads/2472_AMD171_240909.pdf (accessed 3rd September 2009)

I'm in a hurry to get this posted, and haven't had a good look at the document.
If you have any comment to make about this or other proposed changes, including cycle ways, you have only got about a week to do it. Check out the council website:

Albany City council website: http://www.albany.wa.gov.au/

Public comment page: http://www.albany.wa.gov.au/your-council/public-comment/
(This is the first in the list of articles for public comment.)

Why Spencer Park?
What will it do to the character of the suburb?
How will these changes affect our imaging of place, as Albany evolves into a city?
What about water sensitive urban design?

design a city

2009-09-13T21:14:00.006+08:00

group exercise.

characteristics of moments from our everyday:

DOG

Free roaming

ROLLING CHAIR

Directed roaming

GUMBOOT

Protective roaming

TRAIN

Directed

CUP

Delivery

COMPUTER

Free roaming

Delivery

DISHES

Cleanliness

Place

AFTERNOONS

Chill time

Other time

Own time

Sunny

Relaxed

iPOD

Free roaming (not fixed)

Delivery

Transportation

identity

JUMPER

Warmth

Wind protection

TIN ROOF

Shelter

Phenomenological

Experiential

sound

Use these characteristics to design a city.

Afternoon: what are the material properties of an "afternoon" site?
Where would you put the afternoon?
If this is a plan of a street, then:

Put the afternoon on top of a hill so it gets lots of sunlight. Then the morning is down the bottom, so you don't have to walk so far, and the evening is on the south side, away from the sun, because there isn't any then. Move between the different times of day.
A localized delivery system at the bottom of the hill for internet access, might become a transfer station: cold water moving down hill might capture heat produced by an internet service provider hub, and use that warm water to...warm a green house: transfer of enegry from isp to growing plants. Localised energy production at these sites, related to needs for each part of the day.

Move between days of the week. A circle of hills is a city layout, so that you move gradually from one day to the next.
Hill Friday might have a longer profile to accomodate the larger number of people there, and the delevery systems needed to supply what constitutes Friday, like alcohol, comfy couches, dance music...

Transition Towns

2009-09-10T11:34:00.002+08:00

Caught this guy, Andrew Lucas, talking on Bush telegraph this morning, about changing suburbs away from fossil fuel dependency, growing food locally, etc.

If you go to the end of the article and click on the listen to this link, you'll hear some really inspiring ideas.

http://www.foe.org.au/resources/audio-centre/2009-sustainability-convergence/m_Andrew_Lucas_Transition_Town.mp3/view

turtle creek pump house

2009-09-10T10:39:00.004+08:00

This is an image from the fabulous "Turtle Creek Pumphouse" project by D.I.R.T. studio that I'm investigating at the moment.
This image lifted from HATCH blog.
I just love that line of reeds coming down from the building, it's beautiful and funny. And it reminds me of a fellow student from Curtin, Jacqui Koffman, who did the most amazingly delicate work.

A link to acid mine drainage project on Pruned blogspot.

home ec

2009-09-09T19:35:00.005+08:00

...the things you find in the corners of your bathroom.
home ecology.

Middleton beach regrade.

2009-09-09T18:04:00.019+08:00

image from Leon van Schaik's Idoegoram exhibition catalogue.

This image works for me because it shows what I've been trying to draw, imagining a redesign of the grassy area next to Middleton beach (the Ellen cove end.)

It's a simple idea.
You have to imagine the wall out of the picture:
The idea is to cut the grass back down into a hollow that allows the sea to occasionally wash in,
Oh no, hang on! I can photoshop that out for you. (So don't worry about exercising yr imagination muscle.)

That is a photo of the real Middleton beach under the borrowed grass.

If you go for a walk down there, you'll notice that the edge closest to the water has become quite a hill. This is due, I think, to wind blowing sand off the beach and dropping its load as soon as it hits the grass.

Cutting this open changes the relationship between the grass and the ocean - at the moment the hill running along the wall blocks visibility and access. It is a real barrier between the beach and the play area. Let the high tides to wash in and see what new spaces result. What kind of vegetation will grow?

The design potential offered by these process is really exciting.
How can the site be redesigned to take advantage? The wind is already an active agent in the ongoing redesign of the site, but how can it be used more effectively?

Dendroremediation

2009-09-07T19:42:00.004+08:00

Dendroremediation is an emerging phytoremediation technology for cleaning up environment contaminated with organic or inorganic pollutants by using living trees to remove, sequester, or chemically decompose the pollutant.
From the point of view of dendroremediation a tree may be considered as a solar driven pump-and-treat system, which may contain a contaminant plume and prevent the spread of contamination by reducing the movement of contaminated water and the erosional transport of contaminated soil. The efficiency dendroremediation has been proven in cleaning up soils polluted with crude oil, explosives, landfill leachates, metals, pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and solvents.

DENDROREMEDIATION: THE USE OF TREES IN CLEANING UP POLLUTED SOILS
TAMAS KOMIVES AND GABOR GULLNER
Plant Protection Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences,
Herman Otto ut 15, 1022 Budapest, Hungary, FAX +36-1-4877555,
E-mail: tkom@nki.hu

D.I.R.T.

2009-09-05T19:59:00.008+08:00

check these guys out, they've got me very excited!

http://www.archinect.com/features/article.php?id=45200_0_23_0_M

Also, Phytoremediation,
and Duisburg-Nord

Looking at DIRT through the question "What can this practice teach me that will help my own practice?"
a) a precedent for working on site at a powerful and proactive community level.
b) phytoremediation as a valid action
c) a new way of thinking about site: as part of the ongoing process of globalized capitalism.
d) whose voices do we hear, when we design this site?
e) This project forced me to look at Robert Smithson in a new light: he is actually really interesting! And what I am reminded to do from this is to question my assumptions!

2009-09-04T20:17:00.006+08:00

About a week ago.

More Little Gardens

2009-08-30T18:24:00.007+08:00

These ones were created by some very clever person in the holes at the ends of a concrete drain cover. The mushroom is a nice edition - gives it that little touch of individuality.

Very very very samll gardens

2009-08-29T18:57:00.001+08:00

Some gardens are so small you don't see them. For three weeks I've been walking over the top of these beauties . . . in my own backyard.

Kinjarling Walk Trails

2009-08-27T18:04:00.007+08:00

I'm not in Albany, but I can't stop thinking about getting back and how great practicing there as an embedded landscape architect will be. My latest excitement came when Sarah Toa told me there are moves afoot to establish Kinjarling walking/story trails around Albany. I think "through" Albany. Lines that cut across York street, through the middle of Woollies, lines that walk you next to the war memorial on Mt Clarence...
How to show these on the ground? A bit of dirt where you least expect it, a section cut through the asphalt, a tiled pattern meandering past the deli counter that reminds you of a songline that still exists, and will still exist long after honey ham is no longer sold there.

Connect this image with parks and gardens breaking their boundaries and getting smeared across streets and through corners of buildings.

Maybe a paving type like this

in a 20m wide strip across York street, just at the cross walk:

Alison Hartman Gardens breaking free from her confining edge.

a week in albany

2009-08-25T18:28:00.006+08:00

internialities

2009-08-25T16:22:00.008+08:00

some thoughts going through my head tonight:

embedded practice_working directly in the community in which you are living
hold the whole system in the mind; is this future a system small enough to fit?

intensity_of settlement.
(what is a city?)
regarding settlement patterns as areas of intensity and dispersal how can we reconfigure our settlement patterns in a more effective, creative and sustainable way?
on a continuum most least intense dispersed
moments of intensity within boundaries which limit geographic spread.
boundaries in time, boundaries in space.
without boundaries, but within "zones" of intensity. i don't like that word here, sounds too geographically deterministic, but moments is too ephemeral. it is geographic, it is fixed in a place for a time, and it reflects temporal opportunities
refiguring the urban/rural binary as moments of intensity in a field of possibilities.

all to the purpose of allowing other species to flourish for their own sake.

maintenance is the most import pattern information we can use to define the use and uselessness of the landscape.

what is landfill but an opportunity for life, an intensity of potentials, millions of potential sites for organisms so flourish?

Green Gutter

2009-08-24T08:52:00.004+08:00

Walking the streets and laneways, coming across one of these beautiful gardens is such a joyous moment!

Ella's site

2009-08-22T19:59:00.007+08:00

Discaria pubescens, Hairy anchor plant.

Ella and I went for a drive to get out of the city today, to visit her site, near Marmsbery.

A line made by walking.

2009-08-21T19:16:00.007+08:00

"...he walked backwards and forwards until the flattened turf caught the sunlight and became visible as a line."

Richard Long

A Line Made by Walking 1967

Photograph and pencil on board

Hearing about Richard Long's Line was one of the first things that made me realize I was a sculptor. Such banal everyday practice was what people were calling art? Then ok, I am an artist! This guy, and all those British land artists like him, Hamish Fulton, Ian Hamilton Finlay etc, were so influential on my gentle practice, and what I love.

Pick a daisy, one for each day of your life (this makes an empty green spiral in a field of yellow cape weed daisies, and your hands are sticky with yellow pollen and white sap)

So how come this didn't come out in four years of design exploration studies? It is a gentle, subtle thing, and I never felt like being a design student was either gentle or subtle. Even the word designer sounds hard to me, smooth, grey and perfect... none of those things is me. I like the process of designing, but don't want to be one. I'd much rather be a sculptor, rough hands, moving clay around and hammering chunks of wood. Or a land artist, walking in the dewy grass. Walking in circles.
And what has happened to my sculpture practice? Ah, now that is a long secret... some stupid idea about not documenting stuff. But if you can't show it to someone, maybe they don't believe you did it. So just occasionally you feel like maybe you didn't do it. And sometimes that thought spills too far, and you just stop talking about it, and then you stop doing it all together.
And do you stop loving it, too?

Quote and photo from the Tate Modern website: http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=8971, Accessed 21st August 2009

Inefficiency

2009-08-20T19:14:00.006+08:00

Inefficiency is inherent to sustainable design.

the Arithmatic of the Suburbs

2009-08-18T18:03:00.002+08:00

But examples of sustainable gardening in suburban situations are of limited value. In the arithmetic of the suburbs, where each positive sits between two negatives, opposite at least one negative and within an infrastructure of negatives, the net gain is never greater than zero. What is of greater importance is to change the infrastructural numeric.

Small Gardens.

2009-08-18T16:57:00.003+08:00