The newly designed facade for the Portland Federal Building was recently featured in the New York Times. Years ago, I worked at SERA Architects with Don Eggleston, who is overseeing the renovation of the existing building, and couldn’t be happier to see some attention given to the project. Controversy is stirring, as the green wall is a GSA project funded by stimulus money.
It’s an overused expression, but I do think good fences make good neighbors, and good fences can be so delightful. There is nothing like a sculptural wall, be it stone, wood or planting to define a space. Here are some favorites that I’ve come across in the last few years in person and in print, and a couple that I have worked on. Designers, when known, are credited in each image title.
Wishing you all a 2010 filled with creativity, productivity and happiness.
We are spending January wrapping up our construction drawings for Templeton Ridge Winery & Burbank Vineyards. It should be a beautiful project when all is complete. Construction on the landscape for the main house should begin this spring (pictured above), and design development for the new cellar and tasting room facility should follow shortly after.
An underemployed landscape architect in LA has started www.livingchristmas.com. Recently profiled in the New York Times, the business delivers potted trees (in bio-diesel trucks) and picks them up again 2-3 weeks later to return them to a happy life in a local nursery. A little pricey, but a great idea. One of the nicest features: a family can rent the same tree year after year, and watch it grow.
Way to go Archinect for setting up a design competition in reaction to the referendum recently passed in Switzerland banning the construction of new minarets. What a great way to re-examine religious freedom and shifting cultural landscapes. Archinect is right, Switzerland, we have a problem.
The Cultural Landscape Foundation has launched a new database of designed and vernacular landscapes that could potentially grow into a useful reference for designers and design enthusiasts. The real promise of What’s Out There is that new projects can be submitted to the database, which could loosen some of TCLF’s who’s who parameters and create a rich collection of contemporary projects rather than a catalog of the canon.
The rendering above shows our current plan for the residential garden on El Pomar Road in Templeton, California. The project also includes the landscape surrounding a second agricultural manager’s residence, the long entry road into the property and vineyard, and eventually could include the areas surrounding a new tasting room. For the main house, the clients wanted an aesthetic that was low maintenance, agrarian, and strong, and worked with the hot San Louis Obispo County inland climate.
As an alternative to lawn, we have decided to plant no mow meadow grasses around the house, surrounded by a taller meadow of mixed pennisetum and nassella grasses to echo the golden hills surrounding the property. There really is no need for a traditional lawn in a climate like this, and also no reason to give up on having a lush, walkable, green landscape to relax in.
The San Francisco Botanical Garden Gondwana Circle Design Competition has announced a winner. Congratulations to Michael Overby and Emma Fuller for their design, titled Roving Mass.
Gondwana is the name of one half of the landmass of Pangea after the split some 200 million years ago, and the goal of the competition was to redesign a planting circle in such a way as to familiarize visitors with plate tectonics and plant evolution. Nearly 100 entries were received from around the world, below are just a few.
I’ve noticed a huge rise in the popularity of outdoor kitchens lately. I love, and am all for barbecues, fire pits, eating areas, pergolas, and pizza ovens, but the huge industrial kitchen structures that have been filling up pages and pages in landscape magazines lately have me a little off put. Why not keep it simple (and keep those energy bills in check)? Attached are some gorgeous examples of affordable, beautiful, eating, lounging and food prep areas.
We recently visited some impressive gardens on Kaua’i, including the Limahuli and Allterton portions of the National Tropical Botanical Gardens, as well as the grounds of Kaua’i’s Hindu Monastery. The National Tropical Botanical Gardens are located on Kaua’i, Maui, and in Biscayne Bay, Florida and include everything from formal estate gardens to 1000 year old lava rock planting terraces filled with taro. The Hindu Monastery is a quirky, gorgeously sited retreat, where they are painstakingly building an elaborately carved stone temple by hand. Now I wish I had a little Ganesh with a parasol in my garden too.