Revitalization at the VanDusen Botanical Gardens

Vancouver's VanDusen Botanical Gardens has been offering its visitors refuge from increasing urbanization for over 30 years. Internationally renowned sustainable landscape designer Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, in combination with Architecture firm Busby Perkins + Will, have been selected to provide an innovative and inspirational facility to ensure its success well into the future.

overview

The building's five-petal roof will be partially covered with solar panels and green roofing.
The roof system will also collect and process rain water.

main entrance

elevation

Living Building Philosophy

At the heart of the Living Building concept is the belief that our society needs to move quickly to a state of balance between the natural and built environments – to define the highest measure of sustainability possible in the built environment based on current thinking.

The Living Building elements have been attained in many projects around the world – just not all together. It is hoped that VanDusen’s project will accomplish this.

Site
It is understood that the buildings would cause no negative impact. The idea is to reverse the trend of land degradation and invite nature’s functions into a healthy interface with people and buildings.

Energy
A living building relies on current solar income. The building’s energy needs would be supplied by on-site renewable energy on a net annual basis

Materials
Those used will be safe, healthy and responsible for all species.

Water

A Living Building is water independent. The plan is for 100 percent of VanDusen’s occupants’ water use to come from captured precipitation or reused water that is appropriately purified without the use of chemicals. Water would be cleaned using juncos, iris and carex grown in the garden.

Indoor Quality

Healthy for all people – the design will focus on the major conditions that must be present for a healthy interior environment to occur.

Beauty & Inspiration
A Living Building Tells a Story. As a society we are often surrounded by ugly and inhumane physical environments. This project will contain design features intended solely for human delight and the celebration of culture, spirit and place appropriate to the function of the building.

perspective main entrance

conceptual master plan for VanDusen Botanical Gardens

for more information please visit:
busby perkins + will
vandusen botanical gardens

Agnes Denes Auction

Cynthia Panucci the Director and Founder of New York based Art and Science Collaborations Inc. contacted me to help support and raise awareness for her organization. November 2008's successful post Ecologically inspired Art Part 1 - Agnes Denes was the catalyst for our discussion, please read below for the exciting details.

Press Release

The celebrated conceptual and ecological art pioneer, Agnes Denes, is on our Advisory Board and is a long-time friend.

Because ours, like many small arts organizations, is having a hard time in these financially challenging times, Agnes has generously donated a framed, archival, signed print of her famous "Tree Mountain" project to ASCI for a PRIVATE SALE.

This print is a digital rendering of the original design drawing for one of Agnes' boldest ecological earthworks to date... "Tree Mountain - A Living Time Capsule - 11,000 Trees, 11,000 People, 400 Years," 1992-1996, 420 x 270 x 28 meters, in Ylöjärvi, Finland. Eleven thousand trees were planted in a complex mathematical pattern by eleven thousand people from around the world, to be maintained for 400 years. One of the largest environmental reclamation sites in the world, Tree Mountain, was officially announced by the Finnish government at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro on Earth Environment Day, June 5, 1992, as Finland's contribution to help alleviate the world's ecological stress. And in 1996, it was declared a national monument to serve future generations with a meaningful legacy by the President of Finland, dignitaries, and participants from around the world.

Agnes' print appears to be a simple oval in design... UNTIL you discover the beautiful complexity of her intriguing use of interlocking mathematical data sets!

PRIVATE SALE: May 2-8, 2009

In 2007, Agnes' print [above] became the inspiration for ASCI's "Pattern-Finding" exhibition held at the New York Hall of Science.

Agnes actually was first to coin the term "pattern-finding," which I believe will eventually become a new, highly developed, interdisciplinary art-sci genre.

ASCI's mission is to raise public awareness about artists and scientists using science and/or technology to explore new forms of creative expression, and to increase communication and collaborations between these fields. Our organization was instrumental in helping to revitalize the art-sci-tech field in the USA during the early 1990's and is now global in scope. ASCI's membership is open, inviting all those who are interested in the lively intersections of the art, science, and technology fields.

We hope you enjoy learning about "Tree Mountain," stop to visit the site the next time you're in Finland, and that you will explore ASCI's extensive website of art-science exhibitions, symposia, featured members, and members news archives.

Sincerely,
Cynthia Pannucci

Founder/Director
Art & Science Collaborations, Inc.(ASCI)
21-years serving the art-sci-tech field
pannucci@asci.org

For more information please visit
www.asci.org
Click here for Print & Private Sale details

Australian Impact

Project Name: The Australian Garden
Client: Royal Botanic Gardens, Cranborne

Principal Designer/s: Taylor Cullity Lethlean with Paul Thompson
Design Team: Kevin Taylor, Perry Lethlean, Kate Cullity, Marshal Kelaher, Samantha Parsons, Jimmy Yang, Ross Privitelli, Gary Keltie, Susan Farrugia, Sarah Haq, Ofri Gilan, Natalie Schneide

Site Area: 25 Hectares
Construction: 1995 - Ongoing

"The project seeks to stimulate visitors, in creative landscape compositions, using the diversity and potential of indigenous flora.", Taylor Cullity Lethlean on The Australian Garden.

aerial view during construction

Garden features:
Red Sand Garden
Rockpool Waterway
Dry River Bed
Arid Garden
Exhibition Gardens
Eucalyptus Walk

The journey through the Australian Garden starts with the Sand Garden where the expanse of red sand contrasts with rich green and grey foliage.

The themes of the Exhibition Gardens are:
the diversity of Australian plants
water conservation
the future garden
home garden
the children’s backyard garden

The design of the Dry River Bed relates to the ephemeral nature of water within the Australian landscape and the power of water to shape the land into river-beds on a seasonal basis.

Photographs: Dianna Snape, Peter Hyatt, Jill Burness, Ben Wrigley

Ecologically Inspired Art - Part 3 - Lucien den Arend

The artistic development of Lucien den Arend, a Dutch sculptor and artist who takes the landscape into remarkable consideration in his environmental projects, began with painting from nature or even perhaps with the shelters he made himself of flexible willow rods as a child.

Unlike town and open space planners, den Arend does not seek to create interesting or beneficial effects with the natural elements he uses; rather his main concern is with evoking the unexpected, and thus he gives hills, shrub plantings, reservoirs and canals the form of curves, semicircles, squares, lines and grids an exercise in practical geometry.
Extract from Topos European Landscape Magazine

Homage to El Lissitzky
Lelystad Flevo Polder the Netherlands






Pieter Janszoon Saenredam Project
Barendrecht Holland




Island x-ing
Continuation of the Walburg project into the Volgerlanden






Farel
Farel School Netherlands






The Iron Pollard
Hardinxveld Giessendam Holland






den Arend's Gothic 2
Penttilä Open Air Museum Finland

For more information please visit www.denarend.com and the Penttilä Open Air Museum at www.paom.ws

Vertical Farming

While preparing my vegetable plot for the growing season ahead I began to realize I was running out of space. After a quick sketch and a materials list I was creating vertical structures to house my strawberries. It seemed logical....why go out when you can go up. I could quadruple my harvest using far less space. My idea of farming vertically is not new. The images below represent the vertical farming projects that have been conceptualized in recent years. Stay tuned for my strawberry tower concept drawing.

"Aberrant Agriculture" by Scott Johnson

Gordon Graff's Sky Farm proposed for downtown Toronto's theatre district.

Advantages to Farming Vertically

*Year-round crop production; 1 indoor acre is equivalent to 4-6 outdoor acres or more, depending upon the crop (e.g., strawberries: 1 indoor acre = 30 outdoor acres) 

*No weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods, pests 

*All VF food is grown organically: no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers 

*VF virtually eliminates agricultural runoff by recycling black water 

*VF returns farmland to nature, restoring ecosystem functions and services 

*VF converts abandoned urban properties into food production centers 

*VF dramatically reduces fossil fuel use (no tractors, plows, shipping.)

"The living skyscraper: Farming the Urban Skyline" by Blake Kurasek









"VF-Type O" by Oliver Foster







Mithuns Architects' Vertical Farm Project for Seattle

What are your thoughts on cultivating our food in these types of environments?

For more information please visit The Vertical Farm Project