Wk6 Laurie Olin


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 all it's uncertainty, instabilities and insecurities. 

To be given a landscape which can evoke memories or thoughts and reflection through experience is a very special gift. 

Images from 30/30 Landscape Architecture book


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wk9 Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe

Image
Sir Jeffery Jellicoe experienced Classicism, Modernism and Postmodernism eras as a Landscape Architect, realising before many architectures of the time the deep theoritical processes behind designing and creating extraordinary places for people. Integating the visible and invisible world became a key methodology.  Jellicoe was able to fuse his knowledge of these artistic eras with the Kennedy Memorial project at Runnymede, UK. Here, he rejects ‘form follows function’ principles, and instead creates a ‘post-modernism’ experience which fuses japanese zen gardenmaking, Christian Pilgrim’s Progress waymaking with classical landscape elements. This pathway leads to a more modernist experience, with the Kennedy Memorial Stone sculpted as a slightly distorted ‘floating’ funerary slab, speaking Kennedy’s name. Of greatest note are granite setts which form the pathway. This uneven, already seemingly ancient pathway shows Jellicoe’s deep understanding of invisble forces such as time. This pa...
Read more

Wk 3 - North Place Concept 1 (Sketchbook)

Image
  Inspired by site survey work and contexts of Cheltenham, the bodyshape of a lying down horse sits itself very well into the space along the main desire and wayfinding lines, and sun path. The horse's bodyshape hides and empathises the buildings I wish conceal and reveal. There is more to this concept, which I will explore, develop and reveal in other drawings. 
Read more

Wk 10 Yves Brunier (Practise Professional)

Image
  Yves Brunier   Yves Brunier died young at 28 years old, but was revered by his peers, and had the passionate mentor, Rem Koolhaas, who persuaded him towards landscape architecture 4 years before his death in 1991. His condition of AIDS led Koolhaas to believe his exploitation of clashes between culture and nature through collage were an aggressive outlet of this struggle with the disease. Yves understood a tensions between city and country, and would impatiently produce collage and drawings to contented with, I perhaps imagine, a highly intelligent struggle in his mind and need to physicalise the pieces.   Shown here is Brunier’s Model for the Garden Rooms of Museum Park, Rotterdam. Collage conveys mood, here Brunier demonstrates the different feels of the rooms within the garden. The magic is that you don’t really need to know what is there completely. The collage conveys enough about scale, sense of place, entrances, routes, colours and tone, the figure in the foregro...
Read more