Ai Wei Wei Released

Following a previous Blog, I am delighted to hear that Ai Wei-Wei has been released by the Chinese authorities. He is said to be living in Contemporary Installation Exile, nurturing seeds of silent artistic protest.

Noel Farrer, The big Landscape 2020 Conference

Noel Farrer, Farrer Huxley, says landscape is a holistic profession. The client is the fee payer, but users of the space are the market. He highlighted how the green wall at Westfield’s West Kensington site has resulted in a sought after aspect and sitting area for users and retail stores, as opposed to the brick wall which was the cheaper option. He recommended reading the Governments paper, ‘The National Ecosystem Assessment: A Closer Look’. Noel says Landscape Architecture students need to be confident and stay ahead of things. Noel advised students that landscapes change all the time, so it is difficult to say how a landscape can have longevity. Things change.

Vectorworks, The Big Landscape 2020 Conference

Adrian Slatter of Vectorworks sponsored the event and gave a little background to the software. It seems to be a more useable medium than the industry standard CAD. Students get a free licence and can take command of it very quickly, but they will have to revert back to CAD to work at most companies. One very clever application is to be able to view a design from any site aspect.

Lindsey Whitelaw, The Big Landscape 2020 Conference

I have attended a few talks Lindsey Whitelaw has given on landscape architecture, and her enthusiasm and presentation is inspiring. She has recently sold her partnership Whitelaw Turkington to a big conglomerate, Grontmij and I hope that does not diminish her flames. She advised us that we will work in a team and we must lead on our strengths and let others lead on theirs, as in the horse herd theory. Lindsey says find your specialism then work with it and act as you say. She recommends Jim Collins’ ‘Good to Great’ as a must read.

John Gerrard. The Big Landscape 2020 Conference

John Gerrard is a Computer graphic artist and showed examples of his intricate graphics. Painstaking composition goes into the construction of each image and each has a particular display requirement. He will take many picture of a building or structure, reproduce it in exact detail, then display it as a constant moving image image focused on one structure and often depicting the lonely activity of a solitary figure. The only obvious change is that you are able to watch animated changes to light and activity over a set period. Its very impressive and the cost of each is another story. A London example, was his 2010 installation at Canary Wharf Underground station, titled Oil Stick Work.

Saruhan Mosler, The Big Landscape 2020 Conference

1 July. Saruhan Mosler, Writtle College. Talked about landscape & humans interaction throughout history. She showed very interesting aerial slides of the Sahara desert now and a radar pictures of the same area showing lost rivers and beds, but I can't find a copy on Google (all is lost!!). As she advises students to read all the time and learn new skills, I should try to find them in a book.

Peter Wilder, The Big Landscape 2020 Conference

1 July. Peter Wilder, Architect, Macfarlane Wilder. He set up his practice to break away from the money led ambition of mainstream corporate firms. An example of a recent project was that of Fowlmead country park, Kent. They were given a disused coalfield and eventually got the client to agree to import sewage sludge to recondition the land and build bio filtration beds to clean the water run-off. They also designed a descriptive metal gateway for the entrance. He did a whole site near the river Wandle at Rowan Road for Crest Nicholson, a housing development which incorporates suds, surface water run-off and anti pollution measures. Wilder concluded that landscape is about community and integration. Wilders’ most memorable statement was when said ‘he can teach a monkey to use Auto CAD, but he could never teach a person how to think’. Advising students that it does not matter what media they use to show ideas, they must just use the one which is best for them. He went on to say that to be a Landscape Architect you need to be tenacious and question all the time, thinking of landscapes as multifunctional not just landscapes. He is a visiting lecturer at Greenwich University, so I look forward to many wise words.

Ed Wall, The Big Landscape 2020 Conference

1 July. Ed Wall, Urban & Landscape Architecture Lecturer, Kingston University. Started with the Ebenezer Howard's Garden City magnet image showing how new towns should be designed to incorporate town and country. He then showed Geddes Valley Section 1917, a cross section of a landscape and how each portion is historically used. Ed Wall concluded that connections should be accountable to each other.

A very clear diagram I have recently found sums it all up, by OzPolitics.

Kingston Uni Landscape Degree Show Night.

8 June. I was honoured to be awarded the Studio Interface Student of the Course award. Probably because I cleaned up after everyone all the time. The award for best portfolios however, went to Joe Sanders and Jason Wilder, two very gifted Landscape students and individuals. Sarah Donovan was another exceptional student and as a result of already having worked as a Landscape Architect, was snapped up by a dynamic practice straight away.

Kingston Uni Landscape Degree Show Opens.

4June. A few of our year spent a couple of days converting some of our faculty canteenspace into a smart exhibition space with the use of marine ply and white paint(and military precision by Bernard Seymour). This produced a more polished presentation than in previous years, but with limited displays. Only a few images and models were to be selected for presentation and I was delighted that my concrete block made it onto a plinth. However, disappointed that a selection of my River Wandle researchwork was left out at the last minute, despite promises. I know sexy graphics look good, but an absence of student examples of well developed and researched concepts was missing, which might suggest a lack of students actual engagement with chosen sites.

Chelsea Flower Show 2011

25 May. The Chelsea flower show never fails to present, as opinions and designs are displayed by such a diverse group of people. The packaging of the event and honours bestowed are certainly for commercial gain and industry politics, but much is built upon an underlying admiration for horticultural. Sarah Ederle’s Monaco garden was an exacting stage setting for life in the small principality and Nigel Dunnett’s RBC New Wild Garden was a rare glimpse of a designer who really believes in what he preaches and teaches. The Artesian gardens were the unsung heroes of my visit, with the simplicity of The Art of Yorkshire garden stealing the show. And, yes, I was very inspired by the use of perennial planting in many of the gardens, most of all Cleve West’s.

Qr Bar Code

Anyone can have a QR code produced, by registering on one of the nets many QR sites. My code is a direct link to my Blog, so that it can be attached to any work I produce or for other marketing reasons. It even looks like an aerial view of life between buildings.

SGD Speaker Christopher Bradley-Hole

April 2011. From an architectural background, Bradley-Hole aims to bring quality to a landscape, extracting designs from the purity of a space and using geometry and planting to establish its setting and function. Grasses and late season perennials feature heavily in his current designs. I really admire his ability to hide all the infrastructure and architectural foundations in his construction, enabling the visitor to interact simply with his design ambition. He quotes Sullivan (1896) ‘Form follows function’.

SGD Speaker Juan Grimm

April 2011. Jaun Grimm is a Chilean based Landscape Architect and garden designer who was able to show the art of design in harsh environments. He started with images of his own coastal house, Bashia Azul, perched high on a rock face with magnificent views over the sea. His aim is to use as many native plants as possible (including a favourite of mine, the Hebe) but arranged in a natural way with constructive ambition and to include the surroundings. The three other inland gardens in Chile and Argentina, again aiming to reinstate a natural setting to the built environment. Grimm is very fortunate to work with incredible settings, but has the very difficult task of making mans intervention of a place invisible. Jaun Grimm also produced exquisite pencil drawings of landscapes and gardens.

Society of Garden Designers Spring Conference, Style and Substance

April 2011. This is one of the two conferences put together by the SGD every year, using the facilities of Imperial College, London. As always, very professional, many industry exhibitors, the chance to meet garden designers and hear lectures from some of the world’s most prominent designers, chaired this time by John Wyer of Bowles Wyer, London.

Where is Ai Wiewei?

April 2011. I hear on the grapevine, that the artist Ai Wiewei might have been placed under arrest in China. I understand it because he is trying to highlight the enormous level of corruption by Government officials in China and make a stand for freedom of speech? China is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of products, taking advantage of an open global market, but only allowing a chosen few to take advantage, whilst the majority are suppressed. It is a beautiful country, with amazing history and it should encourage freedom of talent and individuality. The efforts China is making to improve new cities and landscapes is really encouraging, and let’s hope that is a start of something.

EcoBuild, Kingston University

March 2011. Kingston University was generously given the free use of a large stand at EcoBuild, to promote its sustainability knowledge. Many informal talks were held over the 3 days and it allowed Kingston an opportunity to display many of its students design ideas. This was also the launch of Rematerialise, Kingston’s own library of 1,200 samples of sustainable materials.

EcoBuild, CEMEX / RSPB, Building Biodiversity.

March 2011. CEMEX is a global building material solutions company which scars enormous areas a land throughout the world in search of its products raw materials. However, it is now attempting to manage the reintroduction of biodiversity opportunities into its enormous portfolio of exhausted sites, by working closely with the RSPB and other environmental experts. The Attenborough nature reserve in Nottinghamshire is a very good example of their ambitions.

EcoBuild, RSPB.

March 2011. They were promoting ‘Managing urban green spaces for wildlife’ and how access to be available to most people within a short walk of their home. A well managed site will improve health within a community, developed children’s awareness of nature, unite communities and improve the local economy. Good management of such places is down to keeping a variety of vegetation of differing ages, retaining mature plants / trees, keep structural diversity and having good maintenance plans to keep them under control.

EcoBuild, Energy Saving Trust, Sheffield Eco-Terrace

March 2011. This is a case study on a typical city terrace to see what needs to be done to improve energy efficiency to existing properties, document CE322 May 2010. The main structural issues are insulation and draught exclusion, with power, lighting, windows and heating high on the agenda.