Pruned —
On landscape architecture and related fields —
Archives —
Future Plural —
@pruned —
Offshoots —
#Chicagos —
@altchicagoparks —
@southworkspark —
Pure Geography
There was an interesting article published in the August 2007 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine about Punta Pite, a residential development on the Chilean coast with perhaps the most awesome oceanside trail system.
Actually, it is more than awesome. The opening image, somewhat similar to the one above, immediately put me into a state of delirious ecstasy, a reaction no other article published by the mothership has ever elicited from me, as far as I can recall.
The article, parts of which appear online, begins thus:
While the article says these Inca-like stony trails are on private property, it also reports that they will be open to the public in the coming months.
Nothing like Punta Pite's cliffside walking path would probably be built in the U.S., or at the very least minor design tweaks would have to be implemented to meet federal regulations and to appease anxious attorneys. Certainly if it's publicly funded, the Americans with Disabilities Act would swoop down demanding railings and specifying turning curves and maximum ramp gradients. And with even more certainty, developers would not want to subject themselves to expensive litigations.
There are, of course, many landscape projects that meet both ADA and attorney approvals and still look and work marvelously. Bureaucratic regulations are in and of themselves not anathemas to great design as some vocally voice.
But the incredible thing about the path, or El sendero, at Punta Pite is the possibility for multiple-compound fractures and even death. It is designed to be accessible and relatively safe, but landscape architect Teresa Moller wonderfully did not diminish the sublime quality of the landscape — and by sublime, I mean, terrifying.
Knocks-you-unconcsious-and-petrifies-your-soul-as-if-falling-eternally-into-the-abyss terrifying!
One second you're enjoying the cliffs, its geology, the ocean crashing against the rocks. You're lulled by the beauty of it all, but then exactly one second later, you slip and bash your head down below.
One second you are assured solidity and logical direction, and the next second, you find yourself unable to move, incapacitated by too much landscape, by the knowledge that your foot is but a millimeter away from the precipice and bloody ecstasy.
Or perhaps you find yourself lost, completely subsumed by the wilderness — an unintended reenactment of Picnic at Hanging Rock or a similarly accidental homage to the late Michelangelo Antonioni.
Or so I imagined, as I obviously have yet to visit the site. But the photos are quite suggestive.
Meanwhile, Moller explains in the article that she was guided in her design by “the words of a famous Chilean poet who describes Chile as 'pure geography.'” We are not told who this poet is, but one wonders if the country will now give birth to a national Romantic movement, a whole new generation writing peans to geomorphology, tectonics, hydrology and coastal erosion.
Or perhaps dark Romantic souls will haunt these cliffs, searching for a more sinister, far truer side to Nature, but in finding it too incomprehensible that even Edgar Allen Poe will have trouble expressing it in paper, will sink ever deeper into mire.
How deeply am I willing to go into the wilderness?
There was an interesting article published in the August 2007 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine about Punta Pite, a residential development on the Chilean coast with perhaps the most awesome oceanside trail system.
Actually, it is more than awesome. The opening image, somewhat similar to the one above, immediately put me into a state of delirious ecstasy, a reaction no other article published by the mothership has ever elicited from me, as far as I can recall.
The article, parts of which appear online, begins thus:
Punta Pite is a 27-acre piece of land that follows the contours of a bay between Zapallar and Papudo, two sea towns located 93 miles north of Santiago, Chile. A residential development planned and built here between 2004 and 2006 takes its name from this place and is laid out in a way that surrenders to the power and beauty of the ocean. It was developed as a series of parts connected by a walking path, one part of which seems to be sculpted out of the existing cliffs, while the other part passes through a restored creed that were meant to create one single spatial experience of the site.
While the article says these Inca-like stony trails are on private property, it also reports that they will be open to the public in the coming months.
Nothing like Punta Pite's cliffside walking path would probably be built in the U.S., or at the very least minor design tweaks would have to be implemented to meet federal regulations and to appease anxious attorneys. Certainly if it's publicly funded, the Americans with Disabilities Act would swoop down demanding railings and specifying turning curves and maximum ramp gradients. And with even more certainty, developers would not want to subject themselves to expensive litigations.
There are, of course, many landscape projects that meet both ADA and attorney approvals and still look and work marvelously. Bureaucratic regulations are in and of themselves not anathemas to great design as some vocally voice.
But the incredible thing about the path, or El sendero, at Punta Pite is the possibility for multiple-compound fractures and even death. It is designed to be accessible and relatively safe, but landscape architect Teresa Moller wonderfully did not diminish the sublime quality of the landscape — and by sublime, I mean, terrifying.
Knocks-you-unconcsious-and-petrifies-your-soul-as-if-falling-eternally-into-the-abyss terrifying!
One second you're enjoying the cliffs, its geology, the ocean crashing against the rocks. You're lulled by the beauty of it all, but then exactly one second later, you slip and bash your head down below.
One second you are assured solidity and logical direction, and the next second, you find yourself unable to move, incapacitated by too much landscape, by the knowledge that your foot is but a millimeter away from the precipice and bloody ecstasy.
Or perhaps you find yourself lost, completely subsumed by the wilderness — an unintended reenactment of Picnic at Hanging Rock or a similarly accidental homage to the late Michelangelo Antonioni.
Or so I imagined, as I obviously have yet to visit the site. But the photos are quite suggestive.
Meanwhile, Moller explains in the article that she was guided in her design by “the words of a famous Chilean poet who describes Chile as 'pure geography.'” We are not told who this poet is, but one wonders if the country will now give birth to a national Romantic movement, a whole new generation writing peans to geomorphology, tectonics, hydrology and coastal erosion.
Or perhaps dark Romantic souls will haunt these cliffs, searching for a more sinister, far truer side to Nature, but in finding it too incomprehensible that even Edgar Allen Poe will have trouble expressing it in paper, will sink ever deeper into mire.
How deeply am I willing to go into the wilderness?
Prunings XXXVIII
On hydropower and why it doesn't count as clean energy.
On Sydney's ocean pools. In B&W but nevertheless absolutely fascinating Suprematist shapes carved into the city's rocky perimeter.
On Minnesota's sensible plan to generate $20 trillion in revenue by diverting water from Lake Superior to the parched Southwest, as reported by Garrison Keillor in 1995.
On Brooke Singer, a Yahoo! Pick profile on the creator of Superfund365.
On underground wind farms. A coalition of local utilities in Iowa is “building a system that will steer surplus electricity generated by a nearby wind farm to a big air compressor (diagram). Connected to a deep well, the compressor pumps air into layers of sandstone. Some 3,000 feet down and sealed from above by dense shale, the porous sandstone acts like a giant balloon. Later, when demand for power rises, this flow is reversed. As the chamber empties, a whoosh of air flows back up the pipe into a natural-gas-fired turbine.”
On ghost craters, uncharted territories, and the organic remains of a former world.
On hydropower and why it doesn't count as clean energy.
On Sydney's ocean pools. In B&W but nevertheless absolutely fascinating Suprematist shapes carved into the city's rocky perimeter.
On Minnesota's sensible plan to generate $20 trillion in revenue by diverting water from Lake Superior to the parched Southwest, as reported by Garrison Keillor in 1995.
On Brooke Singer, a Yahoo! Pick profile on the creator of Superfund365.
On underground wind farms. A coalition of local utilities in Iowa is “building a system that will steer surplus electricity generated by a nearby wind farm to a big air compressor (diagram). Connected to a deep well, the compressor pumps air into layers of sandstone. Some 3,000 feet down and sealed from above by dense shale, the porous sandstone acts like a giant balloon. Later, when demand for power rises, this flow is reversed. As the chamber empties, a whoosh of air flows back up the pipe into a natural-gas-fired turbine.”
On ghost craters, uncharted territories, and the organic remains of a former world.
The Vortex of 80,000 Nikes
Contrary to popular beliefs, Fresh Kills in New York City's Staten Island doesn't contain the biggest collection of garbage in the world. What Wikipedia says “could be regarded as the largest man-made structure on Earth, with the site's volume [...] exceeding the Great Wall of China” and was once the temporary dump site for the remains of the WTC Towers isn't the largest landfill at all.
In fact, the largest landfill isn't even on land, but rather it is trapped in an oceanic riverine system known as the North Pacific Gyre.
Wikipedia again: “The centre of the North Pacific Gyre is relatively stationary and the circular rotation around it draws waste material in. This has led to the accumulation of flotsam and other debris in huge floating 'clouds' of waste, leading to the informal name The Great Pacific Garbage Patch or Eastern Garbage Patch. While historically this debris has biodegraded, the gyre is now accumulating vast quantities of plastic and marine debris.”
It is so vast, apparently, that these floating clouds have a total area equal to that of 2 Texas.
Which directly leads me to wonder: can you collect these patches to create a floating solid ground?
It'll be like a new Pacific island nation molded together out of “80,000 Nike sneakers and boots” and “tens of thousands of bathtub toys and hockey equipment” lost overboard from cargo ships.
Or a recycled ocean cruisers from where eco-terrorists hunt down polluting holiday cruise ships in the high synthetic seas.
Or better yet, dump it all on the Polynesian archipelago of Tuvalu, which Der Spiegel says is “currently only 10 centimeters above sea level” and “likely to become the first country to succumb entirely to climate change.”
Paradise Lost it may certainly be, but it may yet still be Arcadia Regained from the bottom of the ocean.
Of course, the islanders have the option of not anchoring this newly accumulated stratum of detritus to their former nation; they could submit it to the whims of the ocean currents and trade winds.
And in their intraoceanic meanderings, they'll meet other climate change refugees on their own island nations made out of Barbie dolls. A new trade group could be formed, with the goal of developing self-sufficient economies and expanding their territorial boundaries by mining the Pacific for consumer goods Made in China.
Is this the future site of the New Central Park of the Pacific, designed by Fresh Kills head designer James Corner?
Open-Ocean Aquaculture
Contrary to popular beliefs, Fresh Kills in New York City's Staten Island doesn't contain the biggest collection of garbage in the world. What Wikipedia says “could be regarded as the largest man-made structure on Earth, with the site's volume [...] exceeding the Great Wall of China” and was once the temporary dump site for the remains of the WTC Towers isn't the largest landfill at all.
In fact, the largest landfill isn't even on land, but rather it is trapped in an oceanic riverine system known as the North Pacific Gyre.
Wikipedia again: “The centre of the North Pacific Gyre is relatively stationary and the circular rotation around it draws waste material in. This has led to the accumulation of flotsam and other debris in huge floating 'clouds' of waste, leading to the informal name The Great Pacific Garbage Patch or Eastern Garbage Patch. While historically this debris has biodegraded, the gyre is now accumulating vast quantities of plastic and marine debris.”
It is so vast, apparently, that these floating clouds have a total area equal to that of 2 Texas.
Which directly leads me to wonder: can you collect these patches to create a floating solid ground?
It'll be like a new Pacific island nation molded together out of “80,000 Nike sneakers and boots” and “tens of thousands of bathtub toys and hockey equipment” lost overboard from cargo ships.
Or a recycled ocean cruisers from where eco-terrorists hunt down polluting holiday cruise ships in the high synthetic seas.
Or better yet, dump it all on the Polynesian archipelago of Tuvalu, which Der Spiegel says is “currently only 10 centimeters above sea level” and “likely to become the first country to succumb entirely to climate change.”
Paradise Lost it may certainly be, but it may yet still be Arcadia Regained from the bottom of the ocean.
Of course, the islanders have the option of not anchoring this newly accumulated stratum of detritus to their former nation; they could submit it to the whims of the ocean currents and trade winds.
And in their intraoceanic meanderings, they'll meet other climate change refugees on their own island nations made out of Barbie dolls. A new trade group could be formed, with the goal of developing self-sufficient economies and expanding their territorial boundaries by mining the Pacific for consumer goods Made in China.
Is this the future site of the New Central Park of the Pacific, designed by Fresh Kills head designer James Corner?
Open-Ocean Aquaculture
Dispatches from the Super-Versailles
Last week The New York Times published the latest installment in its ongoing series exploring the environmental and human impact of China's epic economic growth, and from it we learn, among other things, that the country is continuing apace with the construction of “the biggest water project in the history of the world.”
Called the South-to-North Water Transfer Project, it will essential graft into the country's present hydrology three new major rivers — concretized, subterranean, gravity defying — which together will “funnel more than 12 trillion gallons northward every year along three routes from the Yangtze River basin, where water is more abundant. The project, if fully built, would be completed in 2050. The eastern and central lines are already under construction; the western line, the most disputed because of environmental concerns, remains in the planning stages.”
Dwarfing the more famous Three Gorges Dams in cost and scale, this hydroengineering colossal is China's solution to a predicted water-parched future, one that surely would derail the most dynamic economy in the world if it came to pass.
It's a hydrological version of the Great Wall, an olympian infrastructural defensive against an impending civilization-ending crisis.
But will it work? You'll have to read the article for a complete assessment.
Hydrology vs. the Apocalypse
Super-Versailles
Notes on Some Selections from the Visual Images Database of the Mississippi Valley Division of the US Army Corps of Engineers
Last week The New York Times published the latest installment in its ongoing series exploring the environmental and human impact of China's epic economic growth, and from it we learn, among other things, that the country is continuing apace with the construction of “the biggest water project in the history of the world.”
Called the South-to-North Water Transfer Project, it will essential graft into the country's present hydrology three new major rivers — concretized, subterranean, gravity defying — which together will “funnel more than 12 trillion gallons northward every year along three routes from the Yangtze River basin, where water is more abundant. The project, if fully built, would be completed in 2050. The eastern and central lines are already under construction; the western line, the most disputed because of environmental concerns, remains in the planning stages.”
Dwarfing the more famous Three Gorges Dams in cost and scale, this hydroengineering colossal is China's solution to a predicted water-parched future, one that surely would derail the most dynamic economy in the world if it came to pass.
The North China Plain undoubtedly needs any water it can get. An economic powerhouse with more than 200 million people, it has limited rainfall and depends on groundwater for 60 percent of its supply. Other countries, like Yemen, India, Mexico and the United States, have aquifers that are being drained to dangerously low levels. But scientists say those below the North China Plain may be drained within 30 years.
It's a hydrological version of the Great Wall, an olympian infrastructural defensive against an impending civilization-ending crisis.
But will it work? You'll have to read the article for a complete assessment.
Hydrology vs. the Apocalypse
Super-Versailles
Notes on Some Selections from the Visual Images Database of the Mississippi Valley Division of the US Army Corps of Engineers
Water in the Metropolis
The call for entries for the next Next Generation design competition is out, and this time the theme is on something very dear to Pruned's heart: WATER!
Water, glorious water! Magical water, wonderful water, marvelous water, fabulous water, beautiful water, glorious water!
Indeed, what will be your marvelous ideas?
Will you turn a city, say, Beijing (why not!), into the largest ecological wastewater treatment machine in the world?
How about a huge, thinly surfaced floating island that's both a post-oil power station and a park?
Or perhaps you'll summon the not-so-ancient spirit of Isamu Noguchi to help you design the greatest hydrological playground ever?
Will your design involve Grasscrete® or super absorbent polymers instead?
Could it be that you want to design an awesome set of cocktail glasses? And that in your poetically beautiful project statement, you will mention how water has always been considered the epitome of purity, a fundamental attribute of Paradise, and used to cleanse the soul of its sins, but it, too, can flood entire villages, terrify us with its abyss, and turn children cancerous with its impurities? You'll even say how very Treehuggable it is, because recycled hypodermic needles are used. No more shall they litter our beaches.
Will you ask yourself: What if Greenland was Africa's water fountain?
Do you have an exceptional talent for programing and so will create a computer game to rival SimCity?
I can already tell that all the winners and runners-up will be phenomenally great. But in case yours isn't one of the projects chosen, send it to me and I'll post it here on Pruned. Sometimes the best aren't chosen.
The call for entries for the next Next Generation design competition is out, and this time the theme is on something very dear to Pruned's heart: WATER!
Water, glorious water! Magical water, wonderful water, marvelous water, fabulous water, beautiful water, glorious water!
Water is everywhere—in nature, industry, home, our bodies, products, interiors, buildings, landscapes, systems (just to name a few).
With up to one third of the global population living without reliable access to clean water, we need better design solutions that account for potable water, gray water, black water—its uses, re-uses, controls, management, efficiency, and conservation.
We call on your innovative design solutions at all scales and sizes—products, interiors, buildings, landscapes, communication systems, or anything else you’ve dreamed up—for handling this most precious and most threatened natural resource. The time for new thinking on water is now.
What's your solution?
Indeed, what will be your marvelous ideas?
Will you turn a city, say, Beijing (why not!), into the largest ecological wastewater treatment machine in the world?
How about a huge, thinly surfaced floating island that's both a post-oil power station and a park?
Or perhaps you'll summon the not-so-ancient spirit of Isamu Noguchi to help you design the greatest hydrological playground ever?
Will your design involve Grasscrete® or super absorbent polymers instead?
Could it be that you want to design an awesome set of cocktail glasses? And that in your poetically beautiful project statement, you will mention how water has always been considered the epitome of purity, a fundamental attribute of Paradise, and used to cleanse the soul of its sins, but it, too, can flood entire villages, terrify us with its abyss, and turn children cancerous with its impurities? You'll even say how very Treehuggable it is, because recycled hypodermic needles are used. No more shall they litter our beaches.
Will you ask yourself: What if Greenland was Africa's water fountain?
Do you have an exceptional talent for programing and so will create a computer game to rival SimCity?
I can already tell that all the winners and runners-up will be phenomenally great. But in case yours isn't one of the projects chosen, send it to me and I'll post it here on Pruned. Sometimes the best aren't chosen.
Pruned v1.7
A new month, a new layout (i.e., back to 3 columns again), and of course, a view from Derek Jarman's marvelous seaside garden towards the Dungeness Nuclear Power Station and its twin atomic reactors, picturesquely sited as the main focus of interest in this composed pastoral scene.
Let me know if anything's amiss with the layout.
(And yes, we are now referring to ourselves in the singular again. “Hello me!” “Hello myself!” “How's me been all this time?”)
Derek Jarman's Garden
Angus Fraser
John Siddique
Bus Stop
A new month, a new layout (i.e., back to 3 columns again), and of course, a view from Derek Jarman's marvelous seaside garden towards the Dungeness Nuclear Power Station and its twin atomic reactors, picturesquely sited as the main focus of interest in this composed pastoral scene.
Let me know if anything's amiss with the layout.
(And yes, we are now referring to ourselves in the singular again. “Hello me!” “Hello myself!” “How's me been all this time?”)
Derek Jarman's Garden
Angus Fraser
John Siddique
Bus Stop
At the Gates of the Desert
One last scanned image from Diana Ketcham's Le Désert de Retz to post here, if for no other reason than it's simply a terrific photo.
It's of André Breton and his Surrealist group, posing for photograph after “[breaking] in through the crumbling wall,” as proto-(sub)urban adventurers “enchanted by the Désert as a symbol of the death of man's intelligence by forces that are primitive, elemental, and irrational.” It would be interesting to hear what they did inside: did they enact a Surrealist play; read poetry to each other; have a picnic in honor of Manet and Seurat; play hide and seek; have sex; reenact Marie Antoinette reenacting a day in the life of a shepherdess; posed for more photos, smiling or making faces behind their death masks? Unfortunately, Ketcham doesn't give a single anecdote.
Nevertheless, it's interesting to speculate what new meanings people today in the twenty-first century will exert into the garden.
Will people again see it as “a triumph of artifice” and an “ingenious integration of the civilizing arts, as works that incorporated the techniques of painting, sculpture, architecture, horticulture, and engineering with the content of literature” in much the same way as M. de Monville's contemporaries had seen it? Will today's installation and performance artists seek new forms of expressions having realized that their methods have not only been done before but also been done magnificently?
Or will it be taken up again as a symbol of gross opulence and immorality, the same way M. de Monville's prosecutors regarded it as during the Reign of Terror? Or would people find it rather poignant and precious that it had survived largely intact, against incredible odds?
And what would M. de Monville actually think of the fact that a third of his property is now part of a golf course, which is conceptually not too dissimilar from his pastoral garden?
And what about those who had found it “a frightening place, where one ventured seeking the thrills of terror” among “its monstrous trees, its shadows, its air of isolation” — how might they now think of the politics surrounding its “rediscovery” in the 60s, the calls for its renovation, and the lawsuits that have delayed its restoration? Where before one had hoped to be enveloped entirely by the wilderness in the hopes of gaining some metaphysical insight, one now detects the mundane machinations of a bureaucracy.
The Broken Column House
A Pyramid For Serving Glaciers
One last scanned image from Diana Ketcham's Le Désert de Retz to post here, if for no other reason than it's simply a terrific photo.
It's of André Breton and his Surrealist group, posing for photograph after “[breaking] in through the crumbling wall,” as proto-(sub)urban adventurers “enchanted by the Désert as a symbol of the death of man's intelligence by forces that are primitive, elemental, and irrational.” It would be interesting to hear what they did inside: did they enact a Surrealist play; read poetry to each other; have a picnic in honor of Manet and Seurat; play hide and seek; have sex; reenact Marie Antoinette reenacting a day in the life of a shepherdess; posed for more photos, smiling or making faces behind their death masks? Unfortunately, Ketcham doesn't give a single anecdote.
Nevertheless, it's interesting to speculate what new meanings people today in the twenty-first century will exert into the garden.
Will people again see it as “a triumph of artifice” and an “ingenious integration of the civilizing arts, as works that incorporated the techniques of painting, sculpture, architecture, horticulture, and engineering with the content of literature” in much the same way as M. de Monville's contemporaries had seen it? Will today's installation and performance artists seek new forms of expressions having realized that their methods have not only been done before but also been done magnificently?
Or will it be taken up again as a symbol of gross opulence and immorality, the same way M. de Monville's prosecutors regarded it as during the Reign of Terror? Or would people find it rather poignant and precious that it had survived largely intact, against incredible odds?
And what would M. de Monville actually think of the fact that a third of his property is now part of a golf course, which is conceptually not too dissimilar from his pastoral garden?
And what about those who had found it “a frightening place, where one ventured seeking the thrills of terror” among “its monstrous trees, its shadows, its air of isolation” — how might they now think of the politics surrounding its “rediscovery” in the 60s, the calls for its renovation, and the lawsuits that have delayed its restoration? Where before one had hoped to be enveloped entirely by the wilderness in the hopes of gaining some metaphysical insight, one now detects the mundane machinations of a bureaucracy.
The Broken Column House
A Pyramid For Serving Glaciers