The ASLA Professional Awards were announced yesterday, and garnering an honor in the Residential Design category is The Crack Garden, by CMG Landscape Architecture.
Inspired by the tenacious plants that pioneer the tiny cracks of urban landscapes, a backyard is transformed through hostile takeover of an existing concrete slab by imposing a series of "cracks". The rows of this garden contain a lushly planted mix of herbs, vegetables, flowers, and rogue weeds retained for their aesthetic value.
Looking out of place among projects whose budgets seem crass in an age of credit crunch and foreclosure, an impostor in a cabal of slick hyper-modernity and conspicuous designery, The Crack Garden is a refreshing sight.
Quoting the project statement at length:
“The Crack Garden is an exploration of the identity of site and the clarity of intervention. Pre-existing places have an inherent identity that is based on their history, materiality, and activities. The design is conceived as an intervention that functions as a lens, altering perception of a place rather than completely remaking it. The intervention can reveal the physical and material qualities of the place, and/or become a catalyst to incite new program activities. In the case of The Crack Garden, completely remaking the garden was highly unlikely because of the tiny budget. By fully embracing a strategy of design as intervention, the garden relies on its previous identity as much as it does on the changes that were imposed.
“The conceptual basis of The Crack Garden is to reveal the potential for beauty that underlies the concrete and asphalt that is the predominant ground plane material of the urban landscape. The interventions into the site of The Crack Garden were primarily actions of removal rather than the addition of new layers and material. By eliminating portions of the existing concrete and exposing the soil beneath, potential is released, and new opportunities for the garden arise.”
Perhaps inspired by the garden, a crack team of guerrilla gardeners will undertake tactical missions to etch similar tectonic fissures in the parking lots of failed suburban malls and abandoned inner neighborhoods of post-industrial cities. With pneumatic drills or with pick axes and some elbow grease, they'll wound the earth's (un)natural asphalt skin, so that forgotten ecologies may return and hopefully fester.
And if they can afford the grotesquely exorbitant registration fees, our gardeners will then submit their covert operations for next year's ASLA Professional Awards.
"A grassroots project on how to take something and make it sustainable without any means"I'm not sure what is 'sustainable' about the project, other than that it was done without any (significant) means. Which isn't to denigrate the project at all -- that it makes so much out of so little is exactly what is wonderful (and timely, as you note) about it. But that statement seems to reveal a mindset where "sustainable=expensive", rather than one that acknowledges that making much out of little is one of if not the most inherently sustainable things possible.
Is that too harsh? They did award the project, after all... Either way, you're absolutely right about how refreshing this is.
Agree that breaking up the concrete and planting a few plants is helpful. Whether you were responding to my comment above or not, I suppose I should clarify (because I don't think I worded my first comment very well) that what I was trying to point out was an unhelpful mindset revealed by the judges' statement. That statement seems to express surprise that a space could be made more 'sustainable' without much material or financial expense, when I'd argue that making much with little would be a much better definition of 'sustainable' than, say, the LEED standards.
Well written --> "Perhaps inspired by the garden, a crack team of guerrilla gardeners will undertake tactical missions to etch similar tectonic fissures in the parking lots of failed suburban malls and abandoned inner neighborhoods of post-industrial cities..."
site:
http://depave.org/blog/
short video linked through the site:
http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/depaving-day/
-Lucas Gray
www.talkitect.com
"....
peeling paint and fallen leaves,
urban rust, a break-down of trust
..."
So glad for your reversal
http://twitter.com/Art_News
Markus
Plantsf.org (I have no affiliation) is an entire organization devoted to replacing concrete with permeable surfaces and plants. I feel like they are a lot more deserving of an award. Sorry if that sounds cranky.
The jury comment pointed out by Rob above is a little disturbing though.
also, following the concrete's own cracks, would make the hammerdrilling a lot easier too.
or, is it that you're wanting to maintain the structural integrity of the concrete by not following its own cracks?
or is it
(please excuse all the ' ' )
Often on old building sites there are cracks along the perimeter where an amazing variety of vegetation finds root and sprouts. I have often thought about purposefully planting these naturally occuring cracks, but I have never thought of creating the cracks on purpose.
Quite true. Soil infiltration is a key concept and function of the garden, though for my part, the overriding interest of this post was to point out the one-of-these-is-not-like-the-others aspect of that year's Residential Design category.
Nevertheless, I added the tag #stormwater to this post, so when reading this:
"By eliminating portions of the existing concrete and exposing the soil beneath, potential is released, and new opportunities for the garden arise.”
-- one might have an idea what sort of "potential(s)" and "opportunities" (e.g. soil infiltration) the crack gardeners were thinking about.
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