Sunday 26 February 2012

West 8



West 8 is an urban planning and landscape architecture firm founded by Adriaan geuze in the Netherlands. It is known for its contemporary designs and innovative solutions to urban planning problems using lighting, metal structures, and color.

In the Netherlands, they are responsible for masterplanning a large-scale low-rise residential development on two peninsulas comprising the formerly dilapidated Borneo Sporenburg, part of the eastern harbor area of Amsterdam as well as for the bicycle bridges and footbridge leading to the area.

Project Listing:
  • Schouwburgplein public square
  • The Whale housing project
  • Sporenburg Bicycle Bridge
  • Canada's Waterfront
  • Governor's Island redevelopment

Saturday 18 February 2012

Stourhead Garden

Stourhead is the best example of a garden inspired by the great landscape painters of the seveneeenth century. Ernst Gombrich suggests it should bear the signature of an Italianized French painter: Claude Lorrain (1600-82). The Stourhead garden was made by a wealthy English banker who had been buying works of art in Italy at the time he inherited the Stourhead estate. Henry Hoare II's 'Claudian' garden was made in an unusually well-proportioned valley behind the house. The Temple of Flora at Stourhead was made in 1745 and the grotto in 1748. But the key date was 1754, when the lake and the Pantheon were made. It is based on the Pantheon in Rome and the planned walk through the estate is based on the journey of Rome's legendry founder, Aeneas. The five-arched bridge was made in 1762 and the Temple of Apollo in 1765. Gothic features were added later in the century: Alfred's Tower, a Rustic Cottage and a Hermitage.The Stourhead woods were underplanted with Rhododendron ponticum after 1791 and with more exotic species in the twentieth century

Thursday 16 February 2012

Olafur Elliasson - "I've walked a lot in the mountains in Iceland. And as you come to a new valley, as you come to a new landscape, you have a certain view. If you stand still, the landscape doesn't necessarily tell you how big it is. It doesn't really tell you what you're looking at. The moment you start to move the mountain starts to move."

Wednesday 8 February 2012

Peter Latz

Peter Latz (born 1939) is a German landscape architect and a professor for landscape architecture at the Technical University of Munich. He is best known for his emphasis on reclamation and conversion of former industrialized landscapes. Retired today, he is an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and is also a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Latz once noted in a foreword for the book Visionary Gardens by Ernst Cramer that the overall of landscape architecture could be applied in abstract rules. "The beauty of nature lies within the essence and effect of plants and materials."