ANDREA COCHRAN

ANDREA COCHRAN
Landscape Architect
USA
Find out more here: www.acochran.com

AC is one of my all time favorite designers, who combines bold modernist design with natural forms, plants and landscapes to soften hard edges. She is so uncluttered in her designs, and plays with large open areas to make you feel simultaneously within a garden and also within the landscape beyond its boundaries. She is based and does most of her work in San Fransico, and therefore chooses materials and plants that she knows will be enhanced by the light or by reflections of the sky.
In an interview I read with her (on the American Society of Landscape Architects website) she sights these modernist designers + minimalist artists as an influence on her work: Dan Kiley / Garrett Eckbo / James Rose / Robert Irwin / Fred Sandback 

This is a nice quote from her, talking about a rooftop garden she created for an affordable housing community:

"The point I started with was that I saw this man up there, he had the most beautiful broccoli growing in his two by three foot bed, and I don't know what else was in there, but this broccoli was unbelievably beautiful. He said I come up here and this is my therapy. I can get my hands in the dirt. I was almost in tears. I thought it was the most meaningful thing I'd ever done to just give this guy a chance to just be outside, be in the sun and work with his hands in the dirt and grow something in the five foot square plot. I think it's really worked well. When he's up there working, teenagers come up and hang out. Adults are up there working on their gardens so the teenagers are being monitored. It's not a leftover space, isolated, where things can happen. It becomes this environment that's more of a community, and people kind of watch out for one another".

 
 

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT (b.1867 - d.1959)
Architect / Interior Designer / Designer
USA

Whenever I have creative work to do, I always revisit the work of F-L-W.  His use of materials and shapes has always particularly interested me - the way that he combines natural elements like wood or stone with clearly man made concrete or sharp lines next to water. He also doesn't create a barrier between his architecture and the landscape, managing to blend the two together,  but yet also keeping a clear distinction between them. Clever stuff!

MYOUNG HO LEE (b. 1975 -)

Photographer

South Korea

'Tree' Series

To achieve these photographs, large cranes are used to hold the white canvas up behind the trees, and then minimal digital retouching is applied to remove any visible cables. 

I think they are incredible and really inspiring for the gardens project. By removing the tree from its background you are really able to look at its form and appreciate how individual each one is. This could be put to really good effect in the Japanese garden, where specimen trees such as cloud trees and Acers are already used for their shapes and architectural qualities. Also, within the woodland garden, it could be interesting to highlight one tree out of the 'woods' to make you actually look at it as a single thing, rather than just a mass of leaves and bark....

 

 

 

NEO BANKSIDE

NEO BANKSIDE
London, UK
Gillespies (www.gillespies.co.uk)

 DETAILS:
http://worldlandscapearchitect.com/neo-bankside-london-uk-gillespies/#.UvVNpl5pU7A

"At NEO Bankside, Gillespies has designed a series of innovative green spaces that spearhead this movement. The completed designs take cues from natural woodlands and glades, and transpose them to the city. The layout contains large tracts of native plants set within groves of alder and birch trees, providing a ‘bank’ of flowers, seeds and nesting material that will encourage a range of wildlife to the space. Beehives have also been installed, enabling pollination of the plants and helping to safeguard this threatened species.
An orchard of fruiting trees and a herb garden give residents access to produce, encouraging active participation in the management of the gardens. The colour and fragrance of the herb garden adds to sensory delight of the garden areas.
Large forest trees shading cool lawns give residents peaceful spaces in which to withdraw from the world outside. With its diverse and rich range of planting, NEO Bankside’s outdoor spaces uplift the senses, and give residents an opportunity to rest, recreate and retreat from city life.”
We studied the mix and composition of each space carefully. We responded to the challenges created by the particular arrangement of the tall buildings in terms of wind, light and shade in order to ensure that the outdoor spaces have visual-interest throughout the year"

 

 

WOODLAND PLANS

Some plans for Woodland Gardens:

 

WOODLAND GARDEN

One of the garden design styles I have chosen for this project is Woodland garden. I am particularly interested in trying to move the idea of a woodland garden in to a more contemporary design setting - so that the space can still be used as a functional, modern environment. I think on a large scale a traditional woodland garden is great, but in the limited space we have for these gardens, I think it would be a challenge to deconstruct what we traditionally associate with woodlands, and there place within our gardens and landscapes...

CURRENTLY READING

OLIVER SACKS
Oaxaca Journal 
2002 

"The best-selling author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks is well know as an explorer of the human mind—a neurologist with a gift for complex, insightful portrayals of people and their conditions. However, he is also a card-carrying member of the American Fern Society, and since childhood has been fascinated by these primitive plants and their ability to survive and adapt in many climates.

Oaxaca Journal is Sacks's spellbinding account of his trip with a group of fellow fern enthusiasts to the beautiful, history-steeped province of Oaxaca, Mexico. Bringing together Sacks's passion for natural history and the richness of human culture with his sharp eye for detail, Oaxaca Journal is a captivating evocation of a place, its plants, its people, and its myriad wonders". 

HOCKNEY - A BIGGER PICTURE

David Hockney 

'A Bigger Picture' Exhibition

21 January - 9 April 2012, RA 

One of the best exhibitions i've ever been to.. . . .  .

 

GAETANO PESCE (PT.2)

GAETANO PESCE
THE ORGANIC BUILDING
OSAKA, JAPAN
1993

The external containers are fiberglass and house more than 80 types of indigenous plants/trees selected with help from Osaka horticulturists. They are irrigated using a computer-controlled hydrating system of mechanical pipes. amazing!

(more of his work featured in previous post: http://eeperspeepers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/va-day-201213-drawing-looking-ref.html)