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Martha Schwartz first came to prominence with her Boston bagel garden - a radical manifesto for a more artful approach to landscape design. Her recent projects include Dublin Docklands Grand Canal Square in Dublin, Mesa Arts Centre in Arizona and Jacob Javits Convention Center Plaza, New York. In this talk, she describes her project Fengming Mountain Park in the Chinese city Chongqing for a major Chinese developer. The project is a rectangular section cut through a large construction site designed to showcase the sales centre for a series of forthcoming residential towers. Building on the idea of zigzagging movement of water down a mountain, she has created a processional route across the site, marked by a series of monumental orange cut-steel structures - like origami mountains on legs - that glow at night. This is a truly exciting time to be working in China, she says, with construction taking place on an epic scale and developers just beginning to appreciate landscape architecture as art-form.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro has long been at the forefront of design. The interdisciplinary design firm, founded in 1979, first stirred interest with its provocative exhibitions of theoretically based projects that blurred the boundaries between art and architecture. In 1999, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, the firm's founding principals, were awarded the prestigious "genius" grant by the MacArthur Foundation, in recognition of their commitment to integrating architecture with issues of contemporary culture.
With the almost simultaneous completion of two large-scale projects in New York City - the renovation of the High Line and revitalization and expansion of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts - Diller Scofidio + Renfro has galvanized the public's attention. Between 2004 and 2011, the firm, in collaboration with James Corner Field Operations, converted the derelict High Line railroad tracks on the city's West Side (from Gansevoort to 30th streets) into a sophisticated 1.5 mile elevated urban park.
From early 2003 to 2010, DS+R redesigned Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall and the Juilliard School, built a free-standing, grass-covered pavilion that houses a destination restaurant (the Lincoln) and a public lawn, and inventively modified the public spaces connecting the complex's existing buildings. As architecture critic Martin Filler states in the film, "Both the High Line and Lincoln Center have had a really euphoric effect on life in New York. So it's populism of a very high order."
In this 54-minute documentary, intelligent commentary from the architects is complemented by remarkable cinematography and interviews with New York City planning commissioner Amanda Burden and other civic figures. Critics and theorists Mark Wigley, Anthony Vidler, and Mr. Filler, offer insights into the firm's history, previous completed projects, and their unique process of reimagining the public identities of two major New York urban spaces.
The video is of a lecture given at the New London galleries in the Building Centre by the Danish architect and city planner Jan Gehl, whose career has focused on improving the quality of urban life by re-orienting city design towards the pedestrian and cyclist.
Lord Rogers, Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners provides an introduction.
For more than forty years Jan Gehl has helped to transform urban environments around the world, including Copenhagen, Melbourne, Sydney and - most recently - New York, with his approach to creating cities for people.
Jan Gehl discusses why looking after people is crucial for the quality of cities in the 21st century, how this can be accomplished and how this has been achieved in more and more projects and cities. The lecture covers the changes in city planning from the 1960s until today, where people - after decades of neglect - have once been again elevated to be a main feature in architecture, urban design and urban planning.
The event marked the UK launch of Jan Gehl's new book Cities for People.
Architect Daniel Libeskind first gained world-wide attention when his haunting, zig-zag-shaped Jewish Museum opened in Berlin in 1999. After his dramatic urban design plan for Ground Zero was selected by city and state officials in 2002, Libeskind became a household name in America. Now with his first work of architecture to be realized in the U.S., an addition to the Denver Art Museum, the American public has a chance to examine his unconventional talents. In this filmed tour of the Denver Art Museum's Hamilton Building, Libeskind explains his unusual, titanium-clad, shard-like building. The dazzling geometry we see on the exterior is reflected inside to provide spectacular spaces and arresting angles for viewing contemporary art. The sculptural building of fractured planes insouciantly claims its status as a major landmark in American museum architecture.
French architect, Jean Nouvel, has long been known in Europe for his bold, shimmering glass museums, concert halls, and high-rise towers. Now the much-acclaimed new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which opened in 2006, is displaying Nouvel's remarkable talents to an American public. With a cantilevered lobby that extends 175 feet over the Mississippi River, the dark midnight-blue, aluminum-paneled structure has captivated the culturally conscious city and helped spur the rejuvenation of a once industrial waterfront. In the tour, Nouvel takes us through three distinctive theaters he designed for the Guthrie, and out on the cantilevered deck to view the legendary river that inspired the boldly elevated design.
This presentation demonstrates multiple subject disciplines, involving professional collaborators.
Explore artistic principles (repetition, balance, unity, dominance, scale) and artistic elements (form, texture, line, color)
Discuss scientific and technical knowledge and skills used by landscape designers
Learn the five steps in the design process: site analysis, design program, schematic diagram, plan development and project installation
Understand the complexities of presenting ideas for landscape design after listening to a garden designer, landscape contractor and landscape architect.
William McDonough, Michael Braungart & the Birth of the Sustainable Economy
Architect Bill McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart bring together ecology and human design.
While some environmental observers predict doomsday scenarios in which a rapidly increasing human population is forced to compete for ever scarcer natural resources, Bill McDonough sees a more exciting and hopeful future.
In his vision humanity takes nature itself as our guide reinventing technical enterprises to be as safe and ever-renewing as natural processes.
Can't happen? It's already happening¡Kat Nike, at Ford Motor Company, at Oberlin College, at Herman Miller Furniture, and at DesignTex¡Kand it's part of what architect McDonough and his partner, chemist Michael Braungart, call 'The Next Industrial Revolution.'
Shot in Europe and the United States, the film explores how businesses are transforming themselves to work with nature and enhance profitability.
Reviews
"This film is an inspirational look at a hopeful vision of the future. It does an excellent job of presenting both theory and real world examples of a design revolution that has the potential to re-make our world." - James Gustave Speth, Dean, Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
"One of the most informative, brilliant and hopeful films about the transformation of industrial and economic activities that will lead to a healthy, just, socially stable and environmentally sustaining society for all current and future generations. By showcasing the visionary philosophy and unprecedented work of Bill McDonough with outstanding colleagues and a variety of society's most influential institutions, the film is a critical educational vehicle for changing our collective mindset to achieve these goals. It's a 'must see!'" - Anthony Cortese, Sc.D., President, Second Nature, Inc.
"This video should have a profound effect on the way future architects are educated and how they practice. Every student and faculty in architecture, landscape architecture, interior design, or urban planning should see it. We are all students of the environment." - Marvin E. Rosenman, ACSA Distinguished Professor of Architecture, Ball State University
"Inspirational! This video is a must for all-consumers, educators, health professionals, business and government leaders. Our current systems of production and habits of consumption are harming our health and the health of the planet. McDonough offers a practical vision and gives us hope for a future that is safe for our grandchildren." - Polly Walker, M.D., M.P.H., Director, Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
"Provides a vision that is simultaneously radical, yet pragmatic. It offers concepts and proven examples to show how that vision can be put into practice. This video can spark the type of thoughtful dialog and quantum leap planning that will enable any organization to accelerate its progress toward creating a sustainable organization." - Thomas C. Tuttle, Ph.D., Director, University of Maryland Center for Quality and Productivity
"It's rare to find a film about environmental issues that makes you feel better about the world after you watch it than you did before¡KAnd while the filmmakers acknowledge the dire situation our planet is in, they also understand a little hope and a lot of determination can go a long way." - Christopher Riley, Director, Cornell University Environmental Film Festival
"Superbly produced video¡KHigh school, college and university students will find here a pragmatic and ecologically sound vision of sustainability, and examples of the proactive work that sometimes succeeds while disaster hits the headlines. McDonough has a knack for putting the message in a pithy and hard-hitting form without being confrontational." - Green Teacher
About Bill McDonough
"There are very few visionaries who are practical -- Bill McDonough is one of the most profound environmental thinkers in the world." - William Clay Ford, Jr., Chair, Ford Motor Company
"His utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that -- in demonstrable and practical ways -- is changing the design of the world." - Heroes for the Planet, Time Magazine
Awards
First Place in Category, EarthVision Environmental Film Festival
Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital
Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival
Siskiyou Environmental Film Festival
The Green Festival, Washington DC
The Chris Award, Columbus International Film & Video Festival
By Laurie Olin
Reared in Alaska, Laurie Olin studied architecture at the University of Washington in Seattle. He added urban design and landscape when he started to practice in Philadelphia with Robert Hanna. Most of his work has been in the public sector. Olin has also been active in teaching and lecturing and is a Professor in the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Distrusting the idea of a personal style, he discusses the limitations to what landscape architects can achieve but on the positive side, where they get their ideas from. He aims to present the most natural things in the most unnatural way. Among his many completed landscape projects are the open spaces at Canary Wharf in London and the new Esplanade for Battery Park City in New York which has added breathing space to the area west of the World Trade Center. Recorded by Pidgeon A/V, against background sounds, in the Furness Library of the Graduate School of Fine Arts, at the University of Pennsylvania.
Michael Ellison, who at the time of this talk was President of the Landscape Institute in the UK, wanted to be an architect but, believing that "the way you group things is much more important than individual objects", he became a landscape architect after training at London University's planning school, but he retains an abiding interest in architecture. His work experience has included a year with RMJM's York University team, a short period on the landscape team at Wisconsin University, and up to 4 years on the CLC's Expanded New Towns programme, before he joined the British government's Property Services Agency in 1978. Recently the Agency passed into the hands of Tarmac Ltd where at the time of this talk he was building up an in-house team and attaching small practices to the Agency project by project.
His recorded talk is full of amusing asides and anecdotes and is an account of visits to some of his favourite parks and gardens, notably in Holland. UK, Denmark, Germany and the USA.
Dan Kiley, one of America's leading landscape architects, is a Classicist in his use of regular geometry. Two constant themes in his urban gardens are water and light, and never more so than at Fountain Place which he describes in the video. Completed in 1985, its ingredients are 160 jet fountains, 263 bubble fountains, cascades and 440 cypress trees in granite planters. People appear to walk on water and trees to grow out of it. The sound of water pervades.
The late Sir Denys Lasdun evolved an architectural approach and vocabulary now widely recognised and which can be seen in his major post-war works. He was awarded Britain's Royal Gold Medal in 1977 and a Knighthood in 1976. In his recorded talk he explains that he subscribes to a set of ideas relevant to himself, reasonable in quality and which engage with history. These ideas are about an architecture of urban landscape, which is an extension of the city or the landscape and which indeed seek to promote and extend human relationships. His buildings are related to other buildings which may be close in space however far off in time, but they do not make stylistic concessions to the past. The buildings in fact are often a metaphor for landscape and he tries to express this through a visual organisation of 'strata' and towers. As the architectural historian William Curtis has pointed out in 'A language and a theme' (RIBA Publications, 1976), this architecture of urban landscape turns its back on the transience and brashness of a merely mechanistic world and tries to elicit basic responses and to unearth fundamental human meanings.
The essence of a Chinese garden is said to be "infinite riches in a small room". Harmony, proportion and variety. The following are characteristics: - Rocks, water, buildings, trees and vegetation in different combinations. - Glimpses through delicate lattice or file pattern openings or moon gates, or through gaps in rock or bamboo. - Reflections in water. - Perspectives suggesting whole landscape or borrowing outside features as part of the design. - Bridges which zig-zag to foil evil spirits. - Mystically arranged rockeries. - Small pavilions and terraces suggesting larger scale. - Undulating covered walkways. - Fish in ponds. - Marble fencing. Everything is designed to be viewed a little at a time, and not to look natural. Everything has symbolic significance.
Notes:
1.The spelling of the Chinese names of the places and gardens in this image set is debatable, as are their English equivalents, such is the problem of translating them from Chinese.
2.The dynasties referred to date as follows: Tang/T'ang 618-907. Song/Sung 960-1280.Yuan 1279-1368. Ming 1368-1644. Ching/Qing 1644-1911.
Derek Walker, after six years as Chief Architect and Planner in Britain's Milton Keynes New Town, is now in private practice designing buildings in the UK, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and the USA. He blames current attitudes to land-use planning for the "sterility, blandness and lack of variety" in recent city developments, and would like to see instead what he calls a circular three-dimensional process with an urban designer in charge of it.
He confesses to preoccupations with the manipulation of major landscapes, as well as a continuing love-affair with detail. In his recorded talk he illustrates examples of his work, from early buildings in the north of England to a recent building design in New York in conjunction with Norman Foster; and some imaginative building projects for Milton Keynes, done as a private practitioner, which include a city park, a sculpture park, a city club, and the recently completed central shopping building. This talk was recorded in 1980.
The American-born Kathryn Gustafson went to art school in New York then trained in fashion before turning to landscape architecture which she studied in Versailles, France where she set up her own studio in 1979. At first her work was mainly in that country but now it has spread to Britain and the USA.
In her recording she talks about contemporary landscape, what that means, the methods she tries to work towards, and what she feels is important to establish in contemporary landscape. She aims to restore garden textures into her work - not just visual textures - and creates working layers topped by layers of concept and idea, to convey meaning.
She starts with words and issues, followed by sketches and clay models. From that point, plaster positives are made, the moulds are digitalised and, from them, working drawings are made.
Learning from the past is important but she does not try to recreate history. She concentrates on doing only built environments, leaving natural environments to the ecology specialist. A number of her projects illustrate her personal very perceptive sensitive aesthetic.
Seminal theoretician and influential architect, Peter Eisenman is also an irrepressible sports fanatic. In this revealing look into his design for the iconic new home for the Arizona Cardinals football team, Eisenman takes us on a tour of the stadium that represents the culmination of nearly a decade of his work on this visionary sports facility. Spectacular footage, along with Eisenman's explanation of his intentions as he walks through the stadium's spaces, provides a compelling presentation of this singular work of architecture by one of today's leading practitioners.
Principles of Interior Landscape Design lays a foundation for the use of tropicals in the interiorscape. The program examines the function of plants in interior environments, their impact on "space, mood, feel and design." Dramatic visual examples from malls, hotels, office buildings, and private homes illustrate the design principles discussed. A must for the student of interior design and architecture as well as the landscape professional.
The Pritzker-prize winning architect Thom Mayne has been identified with muscular, bold, steel-and-glass design since founding his firm, Morphosis, in 1971. With the Federal Office Building in San Francisco, Mayne proves that innovative and sustainable architecture can be introduced successfully into a building type once considered predictable and boring. In this tour of the dramatic high-rise building, Mayne takes us through the many awe-inspiring spaces, including the main lobby, upper-level offices, and an elevated outdoor bridge. During the compelling visit, the architect's engaging remarks about various green features also provides added insight into the building's inner workings.