Over-arching theme is less reliance on broad, large-scale storm water infrastructure.
There are already clusters of lots functioning as storm water retention areas–overgrown and thick with vegetation. Water already flows to a destination of low elevation.
The area’s clay soil does not facilitate water movement and the water table is too high in the wet season to utilize rain gardens and bio-swales extensively.
project uses the surface to allow storm water passage and trap as much water on individual lots as possible before it enters the surface drainage flow.
Natalie’s
the current utility situation in New Orleans is in such a state of disrepair (even before Katrina) and in need for maintenance and replacement that it is unrealistic to assume everything will get rebuilt in the near future
there are not enough funds coming in to supply maintenance, let alone rebuilding or replacing
this does provide an opportunity to look at new ways to structure a neighborhood and new technologies that are more reliable, sustainable, and can be implemented on a smaller scale yet grow with development
Taizo’s
With available budgets, concentrating on areas that are already functioning or have the most potential for development can facilitate the most impact using less funds.
I almost forgot about research methods research pseudo-paper which actually came due before the structures class. The topic I chose/ended up with suited me well. At first it started out as a discovery mission to find out how landscape architecture is addressing more than just the visual. In the end, I used a series of articles published in Landscape Journal about gardens and meaning to look at 4 different types of work, how these all potentially create meaning through a variety of purpose and medium.
The research itself was good for me as it reminded me to look at works as more than just pretty pictures, that there are levels of success and that there are many different approaches to landscape architecture. I think I actually came to some sort of epiphany when I forced myself to define “landscape,” realizing that landscape architecture is more about people than nature; it is about the relationship between people and space and to each other. One of my favorite quotes from the research was this from Lucy Lippard:
“each time we enter a new place, we become one of the ingredients of an existing hybridity…By entering that hybrid, we change it; and in each situation we may play a different role.”
One of my main purposes in this was to really think about how landscape design can be more than just icing, how we can create spaces that become a sort of poetry. From the intro pages…
“In the Anthropology of Senses and Sensations, Jack Goody says that the five basic senses are our window on the world.Through senses we acquire information and our experience of the world is mediated by the senses.As we know from physics, the world from which we obtain sensory information is very different from the world as we experience it.The “picture” our brain creates is limited by the range of stimuli to which our senses are attuned.Unlike language, landscapes can be designed to appeal to all five senses.A user must interpret these sensations and depending on the stimuli we are attuned, the meaning or significance varies.”
The four works I looked at were Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, Nadim Karam’s Urban Toys, Latz and Partner’s Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, and Kathryn Gustafson and Leni Schwendinger’s Dreaming in Color at McCaw Hall.
“The four works have little in common, but they all utilize sensory input to convey meaning between users and designers.Each can be read at multiple levels, ranging from very simple to the more complex which is fed by interrelated action of the senses and previous experience.These works offer opportunities to negotiate and renegotiate human relationships and communicate these relationships.”
And yet again another project that only gets about half way finished. I guess that was the purpose of this class though… to set up the potential for something to do later. Procrastinator’s unite! …tomorrow.
After the studio project was completed (which means that we actually still have a book to complete – of course, I say “we” as if anyone else is actually even thinking about it), the next thing that came up was the structures final project. I have to say that this project was fun and after the trials of the studio project – very welcomed. It’s really too bad that we couldn’t devote more time to it (it was only a lowly undergrad class) as thinking about materials, how to get them to work for what you’re trying to accomplish and the various ways they can be used is just stimulating.
Anyway, so the wall was a continuation of the balloon project from previous. It was made out of around 200 mylar balloons filled with helium (a few with plain air). It was 80 ft long and 6ish feet tall. It moved, it waved, it danced… it flew. Awesome.
The studio project… well, it’s finished. That’s at least something. I think that it was successful in its purpose, which was more about process than about the actual event. Off the top of my head, things that could/should have been done differently:
1. altars should have been lit… without them as a visual aid, the flow wasn’t right. it would have provided additional interest in another place on the site.
2. the project should have been set up entirely at least 2 days beforehand to allow for adjustments. This was difficult for sure since we not only had to contend with site conditions such as dew and rain, but also the routines between the buidlings which have to occur for the students who work there. We tried to get things set up, but it seems there wasn’t enough push to get people motivated. I really don’t know how to address this other than the hope that experience will demand consideration for any future project.
3. Diagrams and sketches. Even though we had a lot, they needed to be updated and used during the setup. If they had been available for people, then perhaps things could have been set up better, faster, without as much questioning??
4. The circulation needed to be adjusted/addressed better – perhaps a simple change of time on the invitation would have done the trick.
5. Because the visual and auditory are linked, the sound has to be set up with the visuals – therefore the visuals have to be set up then the sounds adjusted around them to fit. This goes back to number 2 which said that the whole thing needed to be set up way ahead of time.
To be perfectly honest, I feel as though I learned quite a bit but I’m not sure how much the class did. It feels at times that most people were just in it to get it over with and that they could care less about thinking about any future project that it might relate to. The prospect of having to do another project like this or even any group work at all is daunting and exhausting. I would actually prefer to see it fail miserably next time than to take the role of cat herder again.
I have about a million projects going on at once and, at points, they all seem to combine. So, if this seems a bit random… well, you know. Studio is about projections, sound, light… the research pseudo-paper is about the experiential in spacemaking… of course, still looking for innovative thoughts regarding the swamp project… and HYBRIDS, hybrids, hybrids… what the hell am I doing there? Something with distortion of images / time / space / perspective…
Anyway, in searching out projects to refer to in the research paper I found these through the Public Arts Review publication. It occurs to me that landscape architecture may be going through an awkward phase. Or, actually, has been going through an awkward phase. The age-old question of who am I? Are we gardeners? Are we artists? Are we urban planners? Do we build structure or design around structure? What is the role of “landscape” in landscape architecture? What is a landscape? Does the word carry within it some sort of problematic notion about nature and plants?
It also occurs to me that perhaps the landscape architecture program challenges the notion that getting a masters degree is more focused… it feels more like a nexus, rather than a focus. A place where so many fields can combine and then radiate back out. It has room for all those questions and more answers than I care to think about.
Perhaps it should just be “spacemaking”. But who would want a degree in that?
Over the weekend, I went back into the matrices to come up with a design strategy. I decided that my “buoy” thing would be some sort of device or design that would accommodate the different interactions of the user groups. It was difficult to come up with what each user group should have in a device. I mean, doesn’t everyone want shade and electricity? Anyway, here is the new design matrix as it stands right now. I think that it needs to delineate the grid pattern more- either by using a dot instead of blocks or by actually putting a grid on it. And of course it needs words.
The site:
So after that I worked on the design. Using the thoughts about the different variations of sails on a yacht – stormy weather, normal weather, windy weather – and about the connecting these areas of the swamp that are in my site, Kristi has urged me to go into this in layers. The first layer is the part that is a completely designed experience, then it goes into pieces of a designed experience, then to “its possible to go here, but I’m not going to tell you what to do” part. The materials will be deliberate – something light, something floatable, something that will weather. I’m thinking that my previous models have already told me the materials: string (rope), wire (steel, steel cable), wood (logs, boards), and whatever that paper represents… maybe a plastic or something. The string has been a really big part of the process for this project, so I really want to feature it in the design as either the material of rope or the cabling that is used for sails now. Thinking about rope, I have come to “tether and fray”. And then of course I looked at knots.
The Carrick Bend has been my favorite so far because is used to join two ropes together, much like joining the two ecologies together and joining user groups together. I have thought that this can be a sort of layout for how the design begins, then gettting further and further away as the rope “frays” at the ends.
In this part, I need to keep in mind the original beginnings to this project which are the traces that have been left on the land. What new trace am I adding and how long will it take? What does it do to the original traces and the swamp itself?
1. to lap over; extend over and cover part of; imbricate
2. to cover and extend beyond
3. to coincide in part with; have in common with
4. to correspond in character or function
5. to have one or more elements in common
6. a representation of common ground between theories or phenomena
7. the property of partial coincidence in time
8. A part or portion of a structure that extends or projects over another
9. A suturing of one layer of tissue above or under another to provide additional strength.
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I started this post last week and then the computer went crazy and then life went crazy. So where was I? I’m working on concept to design. Hopefully the last stage. As you can see, the concept is overlap – overlay. Last episode, I was working on these little hand-held models in the style of the larger model. Some of them turned out pretty cool.
Anyway, so back to overlap… a while back, I had written about overlap in my sketchbook. It was an interesting definition that I wouldn’t normally think of… overlap, in yacht racing, is when one boat is going to overtake the other, the lead boat must fall back in order to pass on the other side. I think this struck me as I was certainly surprised to see those huge yachts parked in the swamp when I was on the boat trip way back when. It has also occurred to me that in some abstract sort of way, the modeling through this reminds me of sails and rigging. So I decided to run with this a little and see if I can’t build on it. So I looked at sail configurations, sail plans and yacht race configurations.
The lines created by the masts, the varying areas and the overlapping of the different sails really does remind me of my watercolor sketches and of the lines created in the swamp. I’m not exactly sure how this is going to work in but I’m chewing on it a little. If nothing else it has led to these beautiful sail plans which I really like the style of the drawing. Simple linework, but highly detailed. I think that this style could be something to take for the final drawings. And this has in turn brought me to the yacht race configurations, which are usually based around a system of buoys.
So, buoys. I have been thinking about device, ability to be placed in different areas and the fact that much of the swamp is boat access, especially in the area of my site. Perhaps they are buoy-esque… this is where I am… thinking about buoys. Here’s some pics I’ve found to demonstrate their characteristics and potential.
Using pieces of the antipodal mapping and thinking about how we are going to be transforming the site through projections, sound and story, I decided to use the idea of carnatic music and the interference principle to explore how to create a surrealist space. To mention some things that have influenced my thoughts, I’ve been reading Urban Toys which is a book put out by Nadim Karam about his sculptural works which create these back stories and also been looking at the video work of Diana Thater, Krzyszstof Wodiczko, Janet Biggs and Dawn Dedeaux. These have all had considerable influence on the development of my thought processes.
Surrealism – stressing the subconscious or nonrational significance of imagery arrived at by automatism or exploitation of chance effects, unexpected juxtapositions.
Our backstory of the site (which for super secret reasons I cannot post here) is based upon this idea of a real history, an imagined past set of events and present conditions culminating into this new space. It is about layering these elements to create something that is a little skewed, a little wild. Drawing upon this, I thought that the interference principle was a nice term to use where the addition of 2 or more elements creates a new waveform – the butterfly effect. It is this “interference” that we are highlighting and using to create the space.
Carnatic music is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) forms of music in existence. There are a few different takes on the etymology of the word which is now used solely as a location description of the area in Southern India. Karnataka – Kanatak – Karnatik – Carnatic: karna = ear, atati = he pleases “that which pleases the ear” or kar = black, nadu = country or land “black soil” or karu = elevated, nadu = land “elevated (divine) land”. The latin spelling from carnaticus = “pertaining to the flesh”. It is said that carnatic music is of divine origin with connection to and immitation of sounds made by animals and birds. The main emphasis is on vocalization and when instruments are incorporated they are meant to be played in a singing style. Carnatic singers keep the beat by moving their hands up and down in a specified pattern, using their fingers to keep time. It is notated by tonic solfa, kind of like Western music however the seven swaras (notes) correspond to chakras, animal spirits and the cycle of life and death. There are two basic elements: raga, or melodic formulae, and tala, or rhythmic cycles.
I have to make clear as well that, since I have reformatted my machine, my video editing software is acting up so these are all very rudimentary – windows movie maker at its finest! They’re basically just sketches anyway, so enh.
Having previously documented the various sounds around the site, I took these into some ideas about how they can be reinterpretted through visuals and composition. I also looked at the hand mudras associated with carnatic music, developing them into a more symbolic look which when cycled through kind of give this impression of motion and look a bit like animal representations.
To bring it all together, I have used this idea of rhythm, cycling and connection. The rhythm and cycling are based on the carnatic music explorations obviously, but also from the initial sound explorations. The connection part comes first from my documentation of physical “connectors” and then from this idea that we are layering these realities, histories into some sort of new interpretation.
After the “pin up” today, I am pretty excited that our ideas are really forming this nice whole. No matter what KBen’s interpretation of whatever he chooses to listen to, our story is solid and the plans are coming together nicely. The most immediate questions (other than how the hell are we going to do this in a month?) are how to script the journey through the site without making the audience feel railroaded into some sort of museum tour and how to create participation elements, interactive spaces? How do we navigate this sort of treacherous site? How many yards of fabric are we going to need?
One thing I need to remember is that as a group project we are all playing roles – we don’t each have to do everything. And I think I’m an idea person, a stimulus, the “ground-breaker” as the birthday book calls me.
Composite map of traces using my lovely watercolor thingies in illustrator.
Is this really all that I have to show for today? Really? There must be something else. I suppose that I did take this thing into some of the diagrams to see if it told me anything. I think there is good reason for my selection of the piece of the site on the pass. Divided by the highway, there are two different forest ecologies, a line between marsh and swamp, a bridge between the two lakes. Not to mention the multiple traces of human-made connections (stole that from Overlay).
Some other things I picked out while reading: bridging different spaces, connect the concrete and the ephemeral spaces, elucidate the connections between human-made and natural formations, walking in a familiar place is revelatory of the cycles – changes, the rhythm of walking – specificity doubling back to generality.
“One does not impose, but rather expose the site…” – Robert Smithson
The last part of the project according to the project statements is to identify spaces, volumes, dimensions associated with cycling. (Does bi-cycling count?) Where does the impact diminish and disappear? The intervention = space to enter the swamp, a destination, a passage between.
“I feel right at home in this stunning monochrome alone in my way.” – Ani, current line as I’m typing… seems fitting somehow.
