Or is Ken Yeang’s landscape architecture subject to the same criticism as Patrick Blanc’s green walls? I would of course be much happier if these approaches to landscape architecture were genuinely sustainable. But I have my doubts. My guesses are (1) the planted balconies will be great features for wealthy residents who have more [...]
Lumenhaus inspired by Mies Van der Rohe’s Fansworth House is described by Virginia Tech students as responsive architecture. Responsive architecture according to Nicholas Negroponte’s definition is “a class of architecture or building that demonstrates an ability to alter its form, to continually reflect the environmental conditions which surround it.”
The aim of Lumenhaus designers was [...]
With the European Parliament mandating under the amended ‘Energy Performance of Buildings Directive’ that all new buildings are to be ‘zero energy’ by 2019 the heat is on to produce architecture and environments that contribute to more sustainable energy equations with a zero or positive bottom line.
According to 2006 figures from the US Department [...]
Passing time on the web, I discovered that a long-lost friend died in 2009: Anna Mendleson.
I knew Anna for 3 days only. Drinking hot sweet tea with a friend at a cafe in Bodrum in 1968, I watched her climb out of an old landrover. She came over and asked if we were looking for [...]
The problem is not so severe in Buscott Park, but I have noticed that in Greenwich Park more photographs are taken of the squirrels than of the flowers or the scenery. Are garden designers missing a trick with their comparative neglect of the animal queendom?
Vermont’s thirty eight year old Yankee Nuclear Reaction is scheduled to be shut down in 2012. The main cause of concern is the leaking of tritium which is linked to cancer.
The life expectancy of nuclear power plants is forty years. Seventy five percent of all current nuclear power plants are in the [...]
With much sympathy for the plight of North Japan, I make the suggestion that the Fukushima Nuclear Reactors might have been much better able to resist the force of the Tsunami if there had been a 50m+ planted grass mound between the four reactors and the sea: (1) it would have cost very little money [...]
Turned upside down land-scape becomes sky-scape. So what happens when the city meets the sky? 56 Leonard Street by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron disrupts the orderly rhythm of both the street-scape and of the skyline of New York with its jagged form from base to crown.
The base of 56 Leonard Street is firmly [...]
The separation between City and Landscape was very clear in the Middle Ages: the city stopped and the landscape began, as in Carcasonne. This was the relationship in Europe, India, China and elsewhere. Twentieth century cities learned to sprawl. The city centres were dense enough, but the suburbs often had too much wasted land and [...]
Britain’s last Royal Yacht, the Britannia, is now ‘permanently moored as a five-star visitor attraction in the historic Port of Leith, Edinburgh’ and the setting is a total disgrace. The ghastly building which dwarfs the yacht is Ocean Terminal ‘an urban shopping centre & entertainment complex designed by Conran & Partners in London and handed [...]