Green wall, green house.

Some more found images:

The Highline as greenroof

The Highline "before"

and after.

All found images.

...goats optional

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?

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.

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.

You are invited!

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)

Now THAT is a green roof!

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

Sleeping with the enemy

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.

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

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.

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.

2006_flower tower

mcShed_2007

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

The Quest for a Radical Centre

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

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.

design a city

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	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...