Green wall, green house.

Some more found images:

The Highline as greenroof

The Highline "before"

and after.

All found images.

Now THAT is a green roof!

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

Things I like about melbourne

Taking Down the Fences

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

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?

2008_7-12% deviation

2008_pre-major

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.

projekt square_2005

diverting storm water into underground storage.

taking down the fences

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.

Bringing architecture and nature together

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.

Middleton beach regrade.

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?

About a week ago.

Kinjarling Walk Trails

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.

Inefficiency

Inefficiency is inherent to sustainable design.