Visit Landscapology at Brisbane Open House

This week I happily attended the launch of Brisbane Open House 2013.

It's inspiring to see how the event has grown in only four years, now covering a full weekend, with 71 buildings open to the public free of charge.

What's even more exciting is that Landscapology is also throwing open its doors!

Landscapology HQ is tucked into a tiny corner at the bottom of Craigston, in Spring Hill.

Welcome.

The studio design has been a rewarding collaboration between myself and Richard Buchanan,  a crazy-good designer, and (lucky me), my partner. We (well...our great builders, Rob and Chris Hogerheyde of RAM Constructions, actually) have been hard at work transforming this former caretaker's dungeon and then solicitor's office into a cabinet of curiosities, and place for reading, thinking and creating. Here's a sneak peek, just before the books and papers and pens move in...

Shifting planes.

Getting ready to introduce the collection to its new home.

A warm and cavelike space at the bottom of the building.

It's been a fun journey, and now we'd love to share our efforts with you.

Jump on the Brisbane Open House website (updated this year, and looking great) to add your name to the ballot.

Read on for some more information about lovely Craigston, courtesy of the BOH program book:

"A Wickham Terrace landmark since its construction in 1927, Craigston was the city’s first high rise residential building, a symbol of progress in a time of rapid growth and improvement in Brisbane’s CBD.

It was the brainchild of Dr Sydney Fancourt McDonald (the first paediatrician within the UQ Faculty of Medicine), who introduced  to Brisbane the concept of a co-operatively owned, multifunction office and residential block, comprising professional chambers on the ground floor and apartments above. It was built by a group of doctors, who had their consulting rooms on the ground floor, and private residences above.

The building was controlled by a company, Craigston Ltd, of which McDonald was the first chairman. Each owner purchased shares in the company entitling them to ownership of their apartment.

Architect Arnold Conrad of prominent Brisbane firm Atkinson & Conrad designed Craigston in 1926 as the first reinforced concrete framed multi-storeyed building in Brisbane. It was erected in 1927 by builder and engineer Walter Taylor, under the supervision of architect T B F Gargett."

Craigston, the loveliest lady on the Terrace.

"The completed building was eight storeys high with a basement car park and rooftop garden accessible by all tenants. The exterior was designed in a popular contemporary style known as Spanish Mission, with rendered walls, ornamental gables, arches, cordova tiled roof and a corner tower. Floors contained a single large apartment each (except for floor 6 which was divided in two), and featured silky oak paneling and generous sized rooms.

When completed, Craigston was a landmark building with stunning views. Over time most of the floors have been subdivided into smaller apartments and all have undergone renovations. The former balconies were enclosed with windows shortly after the building’s completion. Despite being surrounded by more recent high-rise buildings, Craigston still stands out as an attractive example of elegant 1920s style."

There'll be more updates on the studio in coming months, but if you're in Brisbane on the 12th of October be sure to check out Craigston and all the other delights on offer throughout Brisbane Open House.

ps: know an architecture or design-loving friend? Consider passing this info along to them too, if you think it would be of interest. Looking forward to seeing you at Open House.

Design Class: the deceptive simplicity of just one tree

Sometimes it’s easy to think of designers as a weird, black-clad species that flounces around shouting “Just make it pink! I vant everythink to be pink!” 

And admittedly, I’m sure there are some like that out there.

And…ahem…some of us do like black.

However for most designers, what they do is bloody hard work. Fun, and the only thing they could possibly imagine doing, but hard work nonetheless.

The sheer quantity and complexity of everything that must be considered can be enormous, even on the most seemingly simple of projects.

Today I’d like to share a landscape design exercise that I find very humbling. On the one hand, it lets complex tasks be broken down into smaller chunks. On the other, it reinforces the importance and impact of every decision we make when designing.

You start by imagining your favourite garden, park or street. I’m going to use the one we analysed recently.

That's the house in the middle. The shed is on the far right, and the street is to the left.

Now for the fun (and tricky) part.

You’re in charge, but you’re only allowed one tree. Just one tree. (You don’t need to consider what species at this point.)

Where are you going to plant it, and why?

For me, answering these seemingly simple questions requires me to think very strategically about how the different spaces in the garden already work, and how this new tree will alter things.

Here are a few of the options I considered:

Option 1

Placing the tree in the top left (north) corner. A tree here would provide additional privacy from the street.

As the tree grows in this location I could build a platform in the branches and see across to the lake over the road.

Option 2 

Placing the tree between the internal screen wall and the boundary.

A tree here would help screen the back of the development proposed for next door, and would provide an element that’s closer in scale as the new multistory building.

Option 3

Placing the tree at the end of the existing planting, inside the screen wall. A tree here would shade the flat section of yard directly outside the house, enabling it to be used for more hours of the day.

The tree would act as turning point or fulcrum between these two sections of the garden, allowing them to read as their own particular places. This tree would also start to screen the shed, so it would be less visible from inside the house.

Each of these options creates different spaces and function in different ways. Which would you choose?

Where have you placed your tree? Why?

To really see the power of this exercise, ask someone else to imagine the same space you chose. Then, without giving away your answer, ask them where they would place just one tree, and why.

I love the one tree exercise because on the surface it seems so simple. But it’s valuable for three reasons.

Firstly, it shows that every complex design problem can be broken down into smaller parts.

Secondly, it shows that there are lots of possible solutions to even the simplest design challenge.

Following on, thirdly, it shows that every decision we make is a design decision, and the choices we make about all decisions have a direct impact on the spaces and functions of our landscapes. We do well to proceed thoughtfully.

So tell me…where did you plant your tree, and why?

ps: Let me know if you liked the coloured pencil versions of the sketches this week. (I do) Leave a comment below, or drop me a line. Thanks!

I Don't Like Flowers. Can I Still Have a Garden?

If you saw the story on the Garfield Park Conservatory City Garden in Chicago, you couldn’t have failed to notice the riot of spring flowers erupting at every turn. 

Flowers are all around us; helping plants (and people!) get their groove on.

I remember being sent two dozen new season peonies once, by a lovely man who looked exactly like Daniel Craig in Casino Royale.  Actually, no, that never happened. Focus, Landscapology.

But what happens if you’re not that keen on flowers?

I don’t mean if you have sinus-shattering allergies, or you break out in hives if you come within cooee of a chrysanthemum. I mean what if you just plain don’t like ‘em, can’t stand ‘em, and don’t want them in your park or garden?

Does it mean you’re a bad person, willfully denying yourself and others oceans of horticultural pleasure? 

No, of course not!

What is does mean though, is that you’ll have to be a whole lot more selective when choosing plants.

There are two types of plants available to you.

The first are the true non-flowering ones. Whilst nearly all plants use flowers to help them beget more plants, some ancient plant families do not use flower power at all.

Mosses are flowerless plants that are incredibly beautiful, but often overlooked. Worse, they are sometimes dismissed as undesirable, and blasted out of their quiet lives in wall and paving joints, or under trees. I have quite a thing for moss, and can't resist patting its velvety verdure whenever given the chance. If mosses thrive where you are, why not embrace their delicate beauty.

The original 'green wall': moss cascades down a rock face at Fallingwater in Pennsylvania.

Delicate filaments catch the light on top of this wall at the Medellin Botanic Gardens.

Like mosses, ferns do not have flowers, but reproduce using spores.

From the delicate fronds of this hanging fern...

...to the tough leaves of the birds nest.

Conifers are also plants that do not have flowers. In Australia, the kauri, huon, hoop and bunya pines are just a few of the conifers that reproduce using seeds rather than flowers.

The unmistakable form of the mighty Bunya Pine.

The second type of plants increases the options considerably, but may not be strictly by-the-book for the botanical and horticultural purists amongst us. Just so you know.

Included here are those that produce very insignificant flowers, flowers that ‘don’t look like flowers’, or those that flower incredibly infrequently.

The following represents just a tiny selection of plants in this category.

Palms are grown for their foliage rather than their tiny flowers. When they do get around to it, some palms also bloom only once, at the end of their lives. 

Grasses have fine foliage in a range of colours and textures, and many have feathery flowers that ‘don’t look like flowers’, helping you get around your self-imposed flower ban.

Many succulents have tiny flowers, or a very short bloom time. (Some are totally OTT though, so choose carefully). 

Agaves are succulents that grow for years and flower but once, in a spectacular vertical eruption that is not for the faint-hearted. Following this the plant dies. Until then they are sculptural, hardy, and flower-free. 

Culinary herbs all produce flowers. During the growing season we usually want to encourage the production of more aromatic foliage by pinching out any flower buds as they emerge. At the end of the season you can avert your eyes, let the plants flower, then look back in time for them to go to seed and pop off the twig. 

Finally, the composition of different types of foliage plants can produce incredible results. Tightly clipped hedges form the structure of the Green Dock at Thames Barrier Park. Whilst some flowering plants do make an appearance, it is the grasses and foliage plants of many forms and colours that are the main attraction. 

Similarly at Landschaftspark Duisburg Nord, hedges form an important part of this garden, but so do the rampant climbers displaying their look-at-me seasonal colour change. 

But you know better than me!

Wherever you are in Australia or around the world, what plants would you suggest for our anti-flower friends out there? If you're a flower-averse reader we'd love to hear from you too!

Share the love in the comments section. Of course if you know someone else who’d enjoy this story, be sure to pass it along, and to check back soon for more landscape inspiration.

A Park with Great Ideas for Home Gardens

Most designers, art lovers and recent visitors to Chicago will be familiar with Millennium Park.

A special project of former mayor Richard M. Daley, Millennium Park converted a vast lakefront railyard into a spectacular public parkland. Leading architects, artists and landscape architects including Frank Gehry, Anish Kapoor and Kathryn Gustafson were amongst those involved in bringing Daley’s Millennium Park vision to reality.

Less well known today is Garfield Park. Located in Chicago’s west side, it was opened in 1874, one of three great western parks and pleasure grounds built for this part of the city.

Jens Jensen, acknowledged as the pioneer of prairie-style landscape architecture, (yep, landscape's Frank Lloyd Wright) was superintendent of the western parks system, implementing many significant architectural and landscape projects at Garfield Park.

The focal point of the park is the Conservatory, particularly the ornate and popular Palm Room. One of the largest in the United States, the conservatory encloses over 18,200m2. It's a lovely place to take a turn around, and I can imagine it being quite the destination in its day.

Sadly, a 2011 hailstorm damaged large sections of glass in the display and production greenhouses, and repairs to some parts of the buildings are still underway. 

Behind the conservatory lies a new park.

The City Garden aims to provide additional parkland and green linkages in this park of the city.

The central organizing element is a large lawn. Its elliptical shape is a tip of the hat to a shape that Jens Jensen once used to define spaces within Garfield Park.

View fullsize

Beginning the journey around the great lawn.

A large landform wraps around one edge of the lawn. From its summit, the dramatic Chicago skyline is visible in the distance.

The lawn tilts up into an encircling landform.

The 442 metre, 108 storey Willis Tower, (the artist formerly known as the Sears Tower) can be seen above the Palm House.

Different plant communities thrive in the varying conditions – shady and protected, sunny and exposed, flat or sloping. They enclose the lawn, frame the Palm House and shield the working conservatories. 

Small paths weave their way through the planting, like streams braiding their way to the lake.

A gravel garden allows you to steps off the paths altogether. Here, the entire ground surface is gravel, interspersed with flecks of blue glass. Plants that tolerate hot, dry environments take centre stage. Oh my hat, don't they look spectacular in the summer sun.

A lily pond, empty for cleaning and maintenance when I visited, is off to the side, and traversed by a bridge.

The bridge continues the curve of the great lawn.

Details on the bridge are repeated elsewhere, particularly those using reinforcing steel as columns to support plants and climbers. I love the way the endcaps on the reo towers almost seem to reference details from Frank Lloyd Wright Midway Gardens, another great Chicago landscape, now sadly lost.

Heading back to the great glass conservatory you pass by a childrens’ garden, rows of tiny plastic shovels at the ready. 

Finally, there is a great bluestone terrace, looking out over the entire landscape.

The big Chicago sky sits above the big green lawn. Yet strolling the City Garden allows the beauty of every individual plant to be experienced up close.

What do you think?

What aspects of the City Garden would you consider using in other parks and gardens? Could the gravel garden be created using crushed recycled concrete instead? Would you consider using the reinforcing cages as sculptural plant supports? And what about the idea of using different types of pathways to encourage different ways of moving through the garden?

I’d love you to leave a comment below letting me know.

If you know someone who’d enjoy reading this article be sure to share it, and check back soon to visit another Great Park.

Garfield Park Conservatory and City Garden is located at 300 North Central Park Avenue,
Chicago. Read more about the park’s history, activities, events, how to get there, and ways to be involved in the conservancy at the Garfield Park Conservatory website.

The City Garden was designed by Hoerr Schaudt.

Design Class: elephants never forget...and they can teach you how to read drawings

Have you ever had a designer invite you to go through some drawings? Has this given you pause for concern, worried that you’ll be confronted with a pile of papers full of squiggles and lines that make no sense whatsoever? 

Fear not.

This is actually a really common concern.  For some it can be worrying enough that they actually delay a much dreamed-about project.  Of course, your designer should be doing everything possible to guide you through, but it’s still important that you can read drawings with confidence.

Why?

You can make sure that everything you’ve discussed and agreed with your designer is incorporated.

You have a clearer idea of what the finished product will look like and how it will function.

You will feel more empowered and able to participate fully in the design process – after all, having your new house, garden or renovation designed should be an exciting and rewarding experience!

Today we’ll start right at the beginning, and look at the basic principles of reading drawings. And as this fear is often the elephant in the room at design meetings, we’ll use one of those lovely creatures as our life model for this session. 

Most projects will start with planning. Plans are the way designers make sure everything is in the right location and that everything will function properly.

Plans

Plans show what your project looks like from above.  A ground floor plan shows the building level closest to the ground, and it usually shows what’s happening about a metre above the actual ground level.  Our elephant pal Trunky’s ground floor plan would look something like this:

Buildings usually have a roof plan too. Imagine you were in a plane flying overhead. If you looked down, what would you see?  For our obliging friend it would be something like this:

Elevations

What about how the outside looks?  To describe that we use Elevations. Each elevation shows what the project looks like from a different side.  To describe Trunky we would use a front elevation,

a rear elevation,

and a side elevation:

Sections

The next thing to describe is how things are made, and how the different spaces work in three dimensions. To do this we use Sections. A section is like a slice through the building or garden.  Sections show things such as how the ground floor and upper floor work together; how stairs work; or how a swimming pool sits in the ground next to a terrace.

Let’s see what’s going on inside Trunky. If you imagined him sliced in half through from trunk to tail, and looked at the cut surface, you’d get a section something like this:

So there you have it.  You can apply this technique to reading any drawings, and it’s easy if you stop and remember that:

Plans show something from above;

Elevations show the surfaces of something from outside;

And Sections are slices through something to see how they fit together on the inside.

Of course, things can get more detailed (and potentially more confusing!) than this, and there are different types of drawings for different stages of a project, but these basic principles remain the same.

Now it’s over to you.  Have you ever been surprised with the way something has turned out on a project, because you weren’t 100% certain from the drawings how it was going to work?  What else would you like to know that would help you read drawings more confidently?

Let me know in the comments section.

Why Madrid Loves Peter Allen...

Who knew Madrilenos were such Peter Allen fans?

When their baby smiles at them they go to Rio…Madrid Rio that is…a 10-kilometre long park that stretches along the Manzanares River (or rio) from just behind the Royal Palace.

Image: bgaa via Wikimedia Commons. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mrio_rio.jpg

What’s even more amazing is that this brilliant park was created by sending 43 kilometres of motorway underground.

Yep, like so many cities Madrid built its freeway system up to and along its river. However, unlike so many cities, it eventually decided that wasn’t such a great idea after all. So underground they went, freeing up literally hectares of land to be converted back to publicly accessible riverfront parkland. Go Madrid!

Naturally this undertaking wasn’t cheap, and Spain’s not exactly flush with cash at the mo, but that hasn't stopped a gazillion Madrilenos (and a equally enthusiastic tourist contingent) from strutting their stuff along their fabulous new promenade. A year or so ago I was lucky enough to join them.

Not many parks can offer 'something for everyone' and actually deliver. Madrid Rio is so huge that it probably can. Here are a few of the highlights: 

It’s Sunny

Apple sauce with your crackling?

As the northern hemisphere moves into summer, sun worshipping Madrilenos can take full advantage of the opportunities for outdoor basking.  These ladies were taking it so seriously I felt like offering a little apple sauce as an accompaniment.

It’s Shady

For those who believe the best place to be at midday is out of the sun, Madrid Rio offers deep shady groves and long avenues of mature trees.  As someone who can burn just looking at a picture of the s-u-n, those deep pools of dark shadow were calling my name, let me tell you.

Landscape with SPF15 rating.

It’s Playful

Two of the new bridges connecting the riverbanks hide a glorious secret. Hidden inside their rough concrete shell, and visible only to those crossing the river, are amazing mosaic tile artworks depicting skateboarders. Leaping, grinding, ollying – they’re all there – larger than life, embraced and celebrated.

So how do you say 'olly' in Spanish?

The real-life models for the mosaic can be found further along, at the skatepark and basketball hoops.

For those not yet aspiring to the life of the grind there’s a very big playground, and a brilliant climbing structure made of lashed-together logs and poles.

And for those even younger, there’s the universal allure of the pop-jet fountain.

There’s Water

The pop-jets sit in a sheer disk of water, reflecting the implacable blue sky. Emboldened toddlers totter around. Then the jets start popping and it’s chaos all round.

'Pop jet': kid-speak for 'I'm going to get my kit off and go completely beserk'.

'Pop jet': kid-speak for 'I'm going to get my kit off and go completely beserk'.

Elsewhere the water runs in a cool, dark, fern-lined rill, beside the shady avenue of trees.

Ripples and reflections.

It’s About Madrid

Seems kinda obvious, but not every park says something about its location. Madrid Rio tells you stories, if you listen carefully. Amongst them:

It tells you this is a place dry enough for a public park to to be clothed in large expanses of decomposed gravel, and it's not a complete disaster if the lawn isn't doing too well.

It tells you about its temperate location, with swathes of lavender and groves of pines.

Uh oh. Is that some temperate climate lavender envy? I think it might be.

It tells you that the Avenida de Portugal used to be the ceremonial route to the Palace from the west, or the way to Lisbon from Madrid. That’s why it’s been given special treatment. In West 8’s design, the pattern of paving and even seating references the cherry blossom-filled valley that provided respite on the long journey.

Blossoms cover the ground, even when there are no flowers.

It’s Connected

Most wonderfully, Madrid Rio connects people with a part of the city that for so many years was lost to them. Now, they can once again get to the river, cross it, journey along it, and enjoy it at all different times of the year.

The fabulous Puente Arganzuela

For me, that’s perhaps the most significant thing that this park has achieved. Not only does Madrid Rio create lots of wonderful individual moments, it achieves linkages and connections on a citywide scale.

Madrid is one of many cities around the world that have unlocked the potential of their riverfronts. Other cities and countries are creating new linkages by unlocking road and rail corridors, or political and military boundaries.

If you’d like to read more about Madrid Rio, check out the chapter on Linkage Park projects in my book Future Park: imagining tomorrow’s urban parks.

What did you think of Madrid Rio. If you’ve visited recently, what did you think? I’d love to hear if you know of a place where riverfront parkland could replace freeways. Let me know in the comments.

See some more images of Madrid Rio in the gallery below and check back soon for another Great Park.