sketch

Lately my studio work has been filled with detailed renderings and construction drawings.

I find a great way to loosen up from hours in front of the computer is to produce a series of quick sketches. Unhindered by the rigidity of CAD, the idea is to let the eye and hand work together seamlessly. The image below was produced in 10 minutes.

Victoria Modern

Thought I would post some of my research findings for a new project I am currently working on in Victoria BC.

The highly inventive Trend House, Saanich, 1954, a demonstration house for the lumber industry, was tremendously influential. Modest in size (825 square feet), it was the smallest of the eleven Trend Houses, but easily the most dramatic, with an angular floor plan and soaring roof anchored by a massive central chimney. Throughout his career, Di Castri retained a singular vision of modernism, one that did not shy away from historical references or decorative elaboration.
article courtesy of Modernism In Victoria 1945-1975 by Donald Luxton and Associates.

Trend House brochure

About the Architect

Born in Victoria, John Di Castri showed an interest in the Arts from an early age, becoming a talented architect, writer, musician and skillful painter. As a young man, Di Castri admired the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and went to study with the formers most eminent pupil, Bruce Goff, at the University of Oklahoma. See below for some of my favorites Di Castri works.

Green Orange Composition 1956

Brown Green Orange Compostion 1971

Totemic Compostion 1958

Returning to Victoria and opening a practice in 1951, Di Castri became the architectural brains behind the modernist movement, displayed in some of Victoria's most well-trodden landmarks; including the addition to the Royal B.C. Museum, Centennial Square, the CNIB building, several local churches, the Trend House and University of Victoria campus buildings.

Improvisation Composition 1956

Westcoast Mysticisim II 1954

Adolescence Composition 1967

Homage to Mondrian 1952

Committed to the fulfillment of man's need for a significant environment, Di Castri injected modernism, low profile, and organic design into Victoria's architectural landscape.

images via WinchesterGalleriesLtd.com

The role of Social Media in Landscape Architecture, and Urban Design

Urban Interventions is the theme at the 2010 British Columbia Society of Landscape Architects Annual General Meeting this weekend in Vancouver. I will be contributing to the round table discussion on Trends in Social Media, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design. This years conference is full of stimulating topics including Plant Species for Urban Environments presented by Wimm van der Zalm, Kris Fox on Economics and Modularity In Sustainable Landscape Construction and Hell Burlingame on Reclaiming the Outdoor Space for the Digital Generation. See below for the social media round table section from the conference program, and be sure to visit the website to download the full agenda. I will let you know how it goes as soon as I get back, enjoy!

For more information please visit
www.bcsla.org

Landscapes of Future

Pavel Pepperstein (b.1966) takes us on a journey through the conceptual landscapes of the future.

the red black star - multifunctional bridge in Perm, the year 2201

the artificial icebergs with faces of the polar explorers, the year 2241

el lissicky airport in Perm, the year 2102


the artificial clouds in the year 2488

the great red flag, the year 2500

the red cube, the year 2555

the monument of the yellow colour. Kamchatka, the year 4307

the huge spriral of DNK, erected west Sibyria in the year 3021

excalibur sword to all warriors of the earth. year 2199

attack of the old houses

Pavel Pepperstein

Parisian photograffeur JR

The work of Parisian photographer and street artist JR

"Women are Heroes"
Here JR visits the slums of Kenya where he covered 2000m2 of rooftops with the images of the women who live there.







JR at the Tate Modern London


Rio de Janiero




London




Ile Saint-Louis, Paris

for more JR visit jr-art.net

great interview with JR here via The Guardian

return of landscape

Via Topos.de
“Landscape must become the law.”

exhibition Berlin Germany - 13.03.2010 - 30.05.2010

Such was the call, made as early as 1959, by the landscape architect Walter Rossow in the face of rapidly increasing water pollution and destruction of the environment.

Fifty years later his call is more relevant than ever: The urban over-exploitation of the countryside is causing environmental problems of unimaginable magnitude world-wide - and the concepts involved are familiar: climate change, water shortage, food shortages and the disappearance of species.





Urban sustainability must be conceived in a larger, more comprehensive way. The city of the twenty-first century must be developed from the landscape. But, in this process, the landscape must be seen as more than just a supplier of material resources; it must be strengthened, too, in its significance as an aesthetic and emotional living space.

The Akademie der Künste in Berlin is placing these topics at the centre of the large, interdisciplinary exhibition Return of Landscape.









Among other subjects, the exhibition will feature a comparative juxtaposition of the world’s two most artificial cities: Las Vegas (see photo; credit: Alex S. MacLean for Akademie der Künste, 2009) and Venice.

The following offices will be presenting their work: Shlomo Aronson Landscape Architects, Jerusalem; Astoc, Cologne; RMP, Bonn; Batlle i Roig, Barcelona; Workshop: Ken Smith Landscape Architect, New York; Studio Boeri, Milan; Turenscape, Peking; Atelier Corajoud, Paris; Kiefer, Berlin; Kienle, Stuttgart; Lohrberg, Stuttgart, and Venturi, Venice.

Please visit:

Topos.de
+
adk.de/landschaft

you are the city | Petra Kempf

I am currently waiting for the arrival of Petra Kempf's book You Are the City, which is not actually a book but a series of transparent sheets which allows the reader to perceive the urban phenomena by isolating and superimposing individual components in order to have a personal interpretation of what the city is.








I chose this excerpt from an interview with archdaily.com as I thought Kempf's answer was not only refreshing but reaffirmed why I originally connected with the concept of her publication.

Ethel Baraona:
There are lots of technical and digital ways to represent cities and mapping new urban plans, but you used a simple traditional way to reproduce the city just with 22 sheets of clear acetate and this is enough to represent all the concepts you want to show in the book. So, what do you think about all these new digital technologies to make data visualizations and what do you think about the future of mapping techniques?

Petra Kempf:
I agree, there are many ways to represent cities and each of the mapping technologies available certainly have their value and importance. However the technologies that are currently available, are mostly based on numbers and facts, not personal experiences. But to really experience a city one must be part of it. This is an analog process, by which we engage with a city’s intricate fabric. To re-create that analog process, in this project, I needed to use a tool that helped me simulate that experience. The limitations and computational restrictions of a computer program did not allow me that opportunity.

I appreciate that you used the word ‘simple’ to describe the method of drawing. Albert Einstein wrote once that if one is not able to describe complex things in a simple way, one has failed the purpose of communicating altogether. I believe he is right about this. These simple analog drawings are intertwined with a complex body of text; of language, of ideas. The mind, the body, and the human experience reside in the drawings through the text. I mean to suggest, through the text and the drawings, an engaged human experience. Do the drawings stand alone? Yes, but perhaps there is also a certain kind of silence, of contemplative thought required by the participant to see them or read them. Nevertheless, the drawings are intertwined with my thoughts, my text on the city.

images via kosmograd +
interview via archdaily.com