Landscape Visions

  Claude Cormier has an iconic ability of making the artificial additions to landscape appear essential and integral. Lines painted across organic rock forms, victorian-esque landscapes in citysquares under inner city skyscapers, invasions of pink elements into bland scenes.  For Claude, pink seems to epitimise the artificial additions of which he so passionately designed in to creates places by enlivening and transforming ordinary spaces (Ironically, today is National Pink Day...)  Sugar Beach is eleviated from boredom and harsh industrial origins by stylizing the space, sweetening the rock forms so they blend with funky landform additions which combine to make an informal beachfront corridor. Th e patina's of Canadian maple leaves is a little on the nose, but overall the playful additions make the space fun and inviting through whimsical appropriation of existing features.  The accumination is a surreal space, as artificial as the industrial layer on which it sits,...

 G+Z - from woodland walks  G - from an unreadable message on a brook bridge Z - some poor and unskilled ivy clearing with a chainsaw. Though the tree's wild resident doesn't mind

Following the spatial massing, the forms of 'ancient horse gods' are being worked into the landscape, from which the rooftop gardens, social spaces, entrances and key site components are being positioned depending on the horse forms, SWOC analysis and preliminary thoughts on practicality. Key additions are the water sources from the throat of the horse into the horseshoe shaped amphitheatre. This then flows from the hill-horse form as an estuary; Cheltenham itself bridging the transition from dramatic hills to winding tidal estuary, estuaries as used to romantise galloping horses across the beach.     

To understand the minimum space and volume which each key component would take up, paper spaces where cut to scale and designed to fit the space based on the SWOC analysis. The Uni Hub, Bike Hub and Productive space, and carpark were spread across several storeys. The car park takes up half the site underground plus 3 story tower block at the northeast end of North Place.  A rough model was made to understand how the site would feel with the buildings blended down into the landscape. Drooping fabric created these natural curves, whether the coos-coos helped to roughly represent some human scale. 

An experiment to understand some of the scale which a rough organically formed and  planted mass might have in the North Place space, particularly from important street views against existing buildings.  A helpful experiment, inspiring other considerations. Very wary now of just imitating hills, which could be visited by car or bus nearby by locals. The form needs more distinction.   The colour pallet of surrounding buildings was also identified to inform the colour of concept proposals. Mainly cotswolds stone yellow-cream, burgundy-rouge brickwork, and white-grey painted render. Would be interesting to contrast or juxapose these. 

To quantitively sum up Laurie Olin would be to say he has achieved both the National Arts Medal in America and the ASLA Medal. But to sum him up qualitatively seems impossible. He is a man of vast understanding. Believing Landscape Architecture to be one of the least understood but most important arts, his work is very focused on offering everyday people alternative space, and encouraging those within the profession.  The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, is one such design which demonstrates Olin's ability to comprehend the indescribable. 2711 set concrete slabs, coffin-shaped in size and spacing, are laid in a linear landscape only occasional broken up by the 'fragile but persistent' trees. The concrete steles's varying heights hides the uneven and occasionally deep terrain under foot. The matching colour pallete between steles and ground also hides this visual transition as you journey through, leaving you instead to 'feel' the journey, with al...

T & C - both from Home

Even though this was a rushed attempt at sequential sketching, I was surprised by how much you can 'feel' the space once it's drawn. I used Rhinoceros (I'm far better at it than sketchup) and am really happy about the amount of understanding that can be gained by converting the geometric 'dead' space with some pencraft.