As you know New York's Highline was the catalyst behind big changes on the westside of Manhattan. More changes are coming down the pike with a new park. But is that a good thing? Sponsored by private money, what is private wealth's role in remaking public spaces?
-This fall was the first time MillionTreesNYC free tree giveaway featured exclusively edible fruit trees, in total 4,500 were claimed!
-Since the spring residents of a retirement facility, just outside of Chicago, have grown vegetables on their rooftop hydroponic facility for use in their kitchen and others kitchens across the city. This is the first of it's kind, I believe.
-If you'd like to peer into the life of one horticultural therapist practicing in New Jersey, check out this blog. I've linked to the latest posting in the past, she periodically updates it with interesting anecdotes.
-An Emory College student has launced a vineyard to study the American starvine, a threatened native plant which may have tremendous medicinal benefits.
-Earlier in the year I wrote about Brightfarms opening a urban farm in DC, it will be one of the biggest in the USA. Make that, it would have been. The site is so contaminated, they make walk away from the project and $700,000 already invested. A recent paper highlighted the problem in Buffalo and New York City.
Monday, December 29, 2014
Friday, December 26, 2014
2015 - International Year of Soil
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has declared 2015 to be International Year of Soil. Have a look to see how you can take an active promotion role.
-2015 may also be a big year for a couple of other organizations. Here's some great video of a trip to EnerGaia, the folks farming spirulina in Bangkok.
-Plant-e has expanded their "power plant" trials, where they generate electricity from plant roots. They hope, one day, to get enough power from 120 square meters of roof space to power an average Dutch home.
-2015 may also be a big year for a couple of other organizations. Here's some great video of a trip to EnerGaia, the folks farming spirulina in Bangkok.
-Plant-e has expanded their "power plant" trials, where they generate electricity from plant roots. They hope, one day, to get enough power from 120 square meters of roof space to power an average Dutch home.
Monday, December 22, 2014
Season's Greetings - 2014
This Christmas - Donny Hathaway
Miracle - Matisyahu
How do you spell Channukkahh - The LeeVees
Patapan - King's Singers
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Permaculture design presentations
Ever wonder what it's like to take a permaculture design course? Or, what you should produce at the end of it? Check out some of the presentations from a recent course in New Hampshire.
Monday, December 15, 2014
2014 Gift Guide
In previous years I've profiled great green products. This year, I want to change it up a bit.
How about a holiday season without buying anything?
Here are some websites with great ideas for reducing consumption this year!
How about a holiday season without buying anything?
Here are some websites with great ideas for reducing consumption this year!
Friday, December 12, 2014
Kickstarting vertical farming, urban agriculture ventures
Success on Kickstarter is never a given, but I was blown away by two recent examples. The first, Garden Tower, has raised thousands of dollars more than their goal. Look for these in the future!
The second I think has great legs, as an innovative company. Keep your eyes on them too.
The second I think has great legs, as an innovative company. Keep your eyes on them too.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
The World's Greenest Building - The Bullit Centre
Seattle's Bullitt Center: The World's Greenest Office Building from EarthFix on Vimeo.
Ladies and gents, meet the Bullit Center, the greenest building in the world. (As of this blog post at least, you know how quickly the title changes hands!)
It's built to mimic natural processes and has basically everything you could imagine in a green building (for example, it's energy and carbon neutral and independent of municipal water and sewage systems!), hence it saving the city of Seattle $18.5 million dollars over the building's lifespan. Which is 250 years!!!
The video will blow your mind!
Ladies and gents, meet the Bullit Center, the greenest building in the world. (As of this blog post at least, you know how quickly the title changes hands!)
It's built to mimic natural processes and has basically everything you could imagine in a green building (for example, it's energy and carbon neutral and independent of municipal water and sewage systems!), hence it saving the city of Seattle $18.5 million dollars over the building's lifespan. Which is 250 years!!!
The video will blow your mind!
Monday, December 8, 2014
Australian children's hospital goes green wall crazy + "rain vortex" in Singapore airport
-Have a gander at this Singapore airport, which is in the works, the picture below shows their 40 m rain vortex in the middle of the building!
-Soil research is helping us learn more about contamination at individual urban gardens and also giving us clues to look for overall. Here's an important take away: "Urban gardeners should consider Kentucky bluegrass the 'canary in the mine shaft' for foods grown in the city, especially near busy roads and transportation corridors."
-Here’s a new app which helps urban farmers know where they can go and what the rules are. Urb.ag, “hones in on the location of where someone might want to start a farm and then applies the exact codes and what is required of the new law.” This app could save a potential farmer a lot of time and hassle.
-Could San Francisco's New Bay Bridge turn into the next iconic green infrastructure project. Dare I say it...highlinesque?
-Montreal, in two years time will have something iconic of its own down at the Old Port.
-For you green roof geeks, here's an interesting study about the carbon sequesteration potential of using sewage sludge in green roofs in China.
-Most people remark how cities are becoming less and less green, some parts of New York City have become more green over the years and that’s even before their Million Trees NYC campaign. Here are the photographs to prove it.
-Among everyone's favorites, like sweet corn, potatoes and tomatoes and lesser known treats (crambe...cuphea...luffa gourds?), the USDA has now recommended aquaponics as a viable crop for diversification.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
GILA words of the week: Gwerk and swap crop
Gwerk is definitely a word to remember. What is Gwerk...or Gesamtkunstwerk? With no direct translation from German to English, it's best described as "total work of art or synthesis of the arts".
It could become synonymous with Vancouver, the city where the idea was incubated and first put into practice. A larger question seems to hang like a ripe cherry, how is living architecture integrated and expressed in a gwerk project?
Your second word of the week is “Swap Crop”. Grew too many zucchini this year? Too much mint? Start one of these up in your community, setting it up may be easier than trying to find a home for all that zucchini or letting it go to waist.
It could become synonymous with Vancouver, the city where the idea was incubated and first put into practice. A larger question seems to hang like a ripe cherry, how is living architecture integrated and expressed in a gwerk project?
Your second word of the week is “Swap Crop”. Grew too many zucchini this year? Too much mint? Start one of these up in your community, setting it up may be easier than trying to find a home for all that zucchini or letting it go to waist.
n that a condo development gives us a new word. But Vancouver House doesn't plan to be like any other condo development.
The word is gwerk, as in “Vancouver has to stop resting on its laurels; it's got to gwerk it,” says Vancouver architect Trevor Boddy, the curator of an exhibition, Gesamtkunstwerk, which chronicles the evolution of what is hoped to be the next “special moment” in Vancouver's architectural history.
Or here's another example from Boddy: “'My office needs a real gwerk,' which means a total redesign.”
Thank goodness the developers are giving us the new word because, otherwise, few of would be able to pronounce, let alone remember, gesamtkunstwerk. It's a German word, popularized by the composer Richard Wagner, that translates into something like total work of art or synthesis of the arts.
Those are the words on the side of the building next to the Granville Bridge where the exhibit is being held. And while people have seen drawings of the gleaming twisting condo tower that will rise next to it, it's what's happening under the bridge that gives the concept a totally radical reputation.
Introducing the new Beach District, a new urban village that will run under the bridge along Beach Avenue. It's going to be a collection of pie-shaped buildings that include rental apartments, offices and retail outlets. It will also be providing the nine o'clock gun a run for its time-keeping money. At nine o'clock every night, a spinning chandelier by artist Rodney Graham will twirl its way down over the street from its base underneath the bridge, dazzle the crowd and then twist back up into its perch for another day. But it won't be the only time people walking under the bridge will want to look up. Westbank, the company behind Vancouver House, is commissioning a second installation of public art on the underside of the bridge. The light boxes will display a changing exhibit of photos produced with students from Emily Carr University.
People talk about the amazing planning that's happening in Vancouver but they don't talk about the moments that are very special,” Ian Gillespie, the principal at Westbank, said at a press conference moments after spring officially arrived in Vancouver. “What we lack are a few special moments and this is what Vancouver House will represent. It will be one of the lasting things that stays in [visitors'] minds.... Can we turn the Granville Street Bridge into a moment itself?”
James Cheng is the architect who nursed the concept from the time when it was a glint in Westbank's eye seven years ago until last October, when the City of Vancouver gave it its blessing. Cheng, who worked with Arthur Erickson during the “mind-blowing” years of exciting development, has passed on the project to Bjarke Ingels whose Copenhagen- and New York-based firm, BIG, has been creating innovative and dynamic buildings around the world.
Cheng said the Vancouver we know today got its start in the 1970s when Mayor Art Phillips pulled together a team to think about what the city could be doing architecturally. The first projects centred on South False Creek, which blended the city's talent pool. Then the federal government bought into a plan to turn its lands on Granville Island into a thriving food, arts and theatre district. After Expo 86 came Concord Pacific's False Creek development, and then eyes turned to the downtown, with questions about how to turn Coal Harbour into a continuation of this waterside housing community.
But then we became a little complacent, a little too blasé about the accolades, Cheng said. We stopped creating special moments, which are like the punctuation marks of the city's evolution. (Joo Kim Tiah, the CEO of Holborn, has a jump on the desire to create Vancouver's iconic icon architectural image with his 63-storey Trump Tower and Hotel on West Georgia. Its slated to open in 2016.)
He noted there's five decades between Erickson, whose Project 56 drawing of twisting buildings straddling English Bay is part of the exhibit, and Ingels.
Ingels said first knew of Vancouver as the home of two of his favourite writers, Douglas Coupland and William Gibson. He wanted to see the city the spawned such fabulous thinkers.
Vancouver House was born out of the need to figure out how to deal with the bridge and the odd-shaped pieces of land underneath it, he said. The bridge couldn't be moved so the project had to work around it. The main condo tower starts on a 6,000 sq.ft. footprint at the base of Howe Street (where the Buster's Towing lot used to be) to honour setback requirements but once it's higher than the bridge, it starts to turn and add floor space until, at the top of its 52 storeys, its floorplate is 13,000 sq. ft.
- See more at: http://www.westender.com/news/vancouver-house-introduces-gwerk-to-the-world-1.914679#sthash.ZscqzGuP.dpuf
The word is gwerk, as in “Vancouver has to stop resting on its laurels; it's got to gwerk it,” says Vancouver architect Trevor Boddy, the curator of an exhibition, Gesamtkunstwerk, which chronicles the evolution of what is hoped to be the next “special moment” in Vancouver's architectural history.
Or here's another example from Boddy: “'My office needs a real gwerk,' which means a total redesign.”
Thank goodness the developers are giving us the new word because, otherwise, few of would be able to pronounce, let alone remember, gesamtkunstwerk. It's a German word, popularized by the composer Richard Wagner, that translates into something like total work of art or synthesis of the arts.
Those are the words on the side of the building next to the Granville Bridge where the exhibit is being held. And while people have seen drawings of the gleaming twisting condo tower that will rise next to it, it's what's happening under the bridge that gives the concept a totally radical reputation.
Introducing the new Beach District, a new urban village that will run under the bridge along Beach Avenue. It's going to be a collection of pie-shaped buildings that include rental apartments, offices and retail outlets. It will also be providing the nine o'clock gun a run for its time-keeping money. At nine o'clock every night, a spinning chandelier by artist Rodney Graham will twirl its way down over the street from its base underneath the bridge, dazzle the crowd and then twist back up into its perch for another day. But it won't be the only time people walking under the bridge will want to look up. Westbank, the company behind Vancouver House, is commissioning a second installation of public art on the underside of the bridge. The light boxes will display a changing exhibit of photos produced with students from Emily Carr University.
People talk about the amazing planning that's happening in Vancouver but they don't talk about the moments that are very special,” Ian Gillespie, the principal at Westbank, said at a press conference moments after spring officially arrived in Vancouver. “What we lack are a few special moments and this is what Vancouver House will represent. It will be one of the lasting things that stays in [visitors'] minds.... Can we turn the Granville Street Bridge into a moment itself?”
James Cheng is the architect who nursed the concept from the time when it was a glint in Westbank's eye seven years ago until last October, when the City of Vancouver gave it its blessing. Cheng, who worked with Arthur Erickson during the “mind-blowing” years of exciting development, has passed on the project to Bjarke Ingels whose Copenhagen- and New York-based firm, BIG, has been creating innovative and dynamic buildings around the world.
Cheng said the Vancouver we know today got its start in the 1970s when Mayor Art Phillips pulled together a team to think about what the city could be doing architecturally. The first projects centred on South False Creek, which blended the city's talent pool. Then the federal government bought into a plan to turn its lands on Granville Island into a thriving food, arts and theatre district. After Expo 86 came Concord Pacific's False Creek development, and then eyes turned to the downtown, with questions about how to turn Coal Harbour into a continuation of this waterside housing community.
But then we became a little complacent, a little too blasé about the accolades, Cheng said. We stopped creating special moments, which are like the punctuation marks of the city's evolution. (Joo Kim Tiah, the CEO of Holborn, has a jump on the desire to create Vancouver's iconic icon architectural image with his 63-storey Trump Tower and Hotel on West Georgia. Its slated to open in 2016.)
He noted there's five decades between Erickson, whose Project 56 drawing of twisting buildings straddling English Bay is part of the exhibit, and Ingels.
Ingels said first knew of Vancouver as the home of two of his favourite writers, Douglas Coupland and William Gibson. He wanted to see the city the spawned such fabulous thinkers.
Vancouver House was born out of the need to figure out how to deal with the bridge and the odd-shaped pieces of land underneath it, he said. The bridge couldn't be moved so the project had to work around it. The main condo tower starts on a 6,000 sq.ft. footprint at the base of Howe Street (where the Buster's Towing lot used to be) to honour setback requirements but once it's higher than the bridge, it starts to turn and add floor space until, at the top of its 52 storeys, its floorplate is 13,000 sq. ft.
- See more at: http://www.westender.com/news/vancouver-house-introduces-gwerk-to-the-world-1.914679#sthash.ZscqzGuP.dpuf
n that a condo development gives us a new word. But Vancouver House doesn't plan to be like any other condo development.
The word is gwerk, as in “Vancouver has to stop resting on its laurels; it's got to gwerk it,” says Vancouver architect Trevor Boddy, the curator of an exhibition, Gesamtkunstwerk, which chronicles the evolution of what is hoped to be the next “special moment” in Vancouver's architectural history.
Or here's another example from Boddy: “'My office needs a real gwerk,' which means a total redesign.”
Thank goodness the developers are giving us the new word because, otherwise, few of would be able to pronounce, let alone remember, gesamtkunstwerk. It's a German word, popularized by the composer Richard Wagner, that translates into something like total work of art or synthesis of the arts.
Those are the words on the side of the building next to the Granville Bridge where the exhibit is being held. And while people have seen drawings of the gleaming twisting condo tower that will rise next to it, it's what's happening under the bridge that gives the concept a totally radical reputation.
Introducing the new Beach District, a new urban village that will run under the bridge along Beach Avenue. It's going to be a collection of pie-shaped buildings that include rental apartments, offices and retail outlets. It will also be providing the nine o'clock gun a run for its time-keeping money. At nine o'clock every night, a spinning chandelier by artist Rodney Graham will twirl its way down over the street from its base underneath the bridge, dazzle the crowd and then twist back up into its perch for another day. But it won't be the only time people walking under the bridge will want to look up. Westbank, the company behind Vancouver House, is commissioning a second installation of public art on the underside of the bridge. The light boxes will display a changing exhibit of photos produced with students from Emily Carr University.
People talk about the amazing planning that's happening in Vancouver but they don't talk about the moments that are very special,” Ian Gillespie, the principal at Westbank, said at a press conference moments after spring officially arrived in Vancouver. “What we lack are a few special moments and this is what Vancouver House will represent. It will be one of the lasting things that stays in [visitors'] minds.... Can we turn the Granville Street Bridge into a moment itself?”
James Cheng is the architect who nursed the concept from the time when it was a glint in Westbank's eye seven years ago until last October, when the City of Vancouver gave it its blessing. Cheng, who worked with Arthur Erickson during the “mind-blowing” years of exciting development, has passed on the project to Bjarke Ingels whose Copenhagen- and New York-based firm, BIG, has been creating innovative and dynamic buildings around the world.
Cheng said the Vancouver we know today got its start in the 1970s when Mayor Art Phillips pulled together a team to think about what the city could be doing architecturally. The first projects centred on South False Creek, which blended the city's talent pool. Then the federal government bought into a plan to turn its lands on Granville Island into a thriving food, arts and theatre district. After Expo 86 came Concord Pacific's False Creek development, and then eyes turned to the downtown, with questions about how to turn Coal Harbour into a continuation of this waterside housing community.
But then we became a little complacent, a little too blasé about the accolades, Cheng said. We stopped creating special moments, which are like the punctuation marks of the city's evolution. (Joo Kim Tiah, the CEO of Holborn, has a jump on the desire to create Vancouver's iconic icon architectural image with his 63-storey Trump Tower and Hotel on West Georgia. Its slated to open in 2016.)
He noted there's five decades between Erickson, whose Project 56 drawing of twisting buildings straddling English Bay is part of the exhibit, and Ingels.
Ingels said first knew of Vancouver as the home of two of his favourite writers, Douglas Coupland and William Gibson. He wanted to see the city the spawned such fabulous thinkers.
Vancouver House was born out of the need to figure out how to deal with the bridge and the odd-shaped pieces of land underneath it, he said. The bridge couldn't be moved so the project had to work around it. The main condo tower starts on a 6,000 sq.ft. footprint at the base of Howe Street (where the Buster's Towing lot used to be) to honour setback requirements but once it's higher than the bridge, it starts to turn and add floor space until, at the top of its 52 storeys, its floorplate is 13,000 sq. ft.
- See more at: http://www.westender.com/news/vancouver-house-introduces-gwerk-to-the-world-1.914679#sthash.ZscqzGuP.dpuf
The word is gwerk, as in “Vancouver has to stop resting on its laurels; it's got to gwerk it,” says Vancouver architect Trevor Boddy, the curator of an exhibition, Gesamtkunstwerk, which chronicles the evolution of what is hoped to be the next “special moment” in Vancouver's architectural history.
Or here's another example from Boddy: “'My office needs a real gwerk,' which means a total redesign.”
Thank goodness the developers are giving us the new word because, otherwise, few of would be able to pronounce, let alone remember, gesamtkunstwerk. It's a German word, popularized by the composer Richard Wagner, that translates into something like total work of art or synthesis of the arts.
Those are the words on the side of the building next to the Granville Bridge where the exhibit is being held. And while people have seen drawings of the gleaming twisting condo tower that will rise next to it, it's what's happening under the bridge that gives the concept a totally radical reputation.
Introducing the new Beach District, a new urban village that will run under the bridge along Beach Avenue. It's going to be a collection of pie-shaped buildings that include rental apartments, offices and retail outlets. It will also be providing the nine o'clock gun a run for its time-keeping money. At nine o'clock every night, a spinning chandelier by artist Rodney Graham will twirl its way down over the street from its base underneath the bridge, dazzle the crowd and then twist back up into its perch for another day. But it won't be the only time people walking under the bridge will want to look up. Westbank, the company behind Vancouver House, is commissioning a second installation of public art on the underside of the bridge. The light boxes will display a changing exhibit of photos produced with students from Emily Carr University.
People talk about the amazing planning that's happening in Vancouver but they don't talk about the moments that are very special,” Ian Gillespie, the principal at Westbank, said at a press conference moments after spring officially arrived in Vancouver. “What we lack are a few special moments and this is what Vancouver House will represent. It will be one of the lasting things that stays in [visitors'] minds.... Can we turn the Granville Street Bridge into a moment itself?”
James Cheng is the architect who nursed the concept from the time when it was a glint in Westbank's eye seven years ago until last October, when the City of Vancouver gave it its blessing. Cheng, who worked with Arthur Erickson during the “mind-blowing” years of exciting development, has passed on the project to Bjarke Ingels whose Copenhagen- and New York-based firm, BIG, has been creating innovative and dynamic buildings around the world.
Cheng said the Vancouver we know today got its start in the 1970s when Mayor Art Phillips pulled together a team to think about what the city could be doing architecturally. The first projects centred on South False Creek, which blended the city's talent pool. Then the federal government bought into a plan to turn its lands on Granville Island into a thriving food, arts and theatre district. After Expo 86 came Concord Pacific's False Creek development, and then eyes turned to the downtown, with questions about how to turn Coal Harbour into a continuation of this waterside housing community.
But then we became a little complacent, a little too blasé about the accolades, Cheng said. We stopped creating special moments, which are like the punctuation marks of the city's evolution. (Joo Kim Tiah, the CEO of Holborn, has a jump on the desire to create Vancouver's iconic icon architectural image with his 63-storey Trump Tower and Hotel on West Georgia. Its slated to open in 2016.)
He noted there's five decades between Erickson, whose Project 56 drawing of twisting buildings straddling English Bay is part of the exhibit, and Ingels.
Ingels said first knew of Vancouver as the home of two of his favourite writers, Douglas Coupland and William Gibson. He wanted to see the city the spawned such fabulous thinkers.
Vancouver House was born out of the need to figure out how to deal with the bridge and the odd-shaped pieces of land underneath it, he said. The bridge couldn't be moved so the project had to work around it. The main condo tower starts on a 6,000 sq.ft. footprint at the base of Howe Street (where the Buster's Towing lot used to be) to honour setback requirements but once it's higher than the bridge, it starts to turn and add floor space until, at the top of its 52 storeys, its floorplate is 13,000 sq. ft.
- See more at: http://www.westender.com/news/vancouver-house-introduces-gwerk-to-the-world-1.914679#sthash.ZscqzGuP.dpuf
n that a condo development gives us a new word. But Vancouver House doesn't plan to be like any other condo development.
The word is gwerk, as in “Vancouver has to stop resting on its laurels; it's got to gwerk it,” says Vancouver architect Trevor Boddy, the curator of an exhibition, Gesamtkunstwerk, which chronicles the evolution of what is hoped to be the next “special moment” in Vancouver's architectural history.
Or here's another example from Boddy: “'My office needs a real gwerk,' which means a total redesign.”
Thank goodness the developers are giving us the new word because, otherwise, few of would be able to pronounce, let alone remember, gesamtkunstwerk. It's a German word, popularized by the composer Richard Wagner, that translates into something like total work of art or synthesis of the arts.
Those are the words on the side of the building next to the Granville Bridge where the exhibit is being held. And while people have seen drawings of the gleaming twisting condo tower that will rise next to it, it's what's happening under the bridge that gives the concept a totally radical reputation.
Introducing the new Beach District, a new urban village that will run under the bridge along Beach Avenue. It's going to be a collection of pie-shaped buildings that include rental apartments, offices and retail outlets. It will also be providing the nine o'clock gun a run for its time-keeping money. At nine o'clock every night, a spinning chandelier by artist Rodney Graham will twirl its way down over the street from its base underneath the bridge, dazzle the crowd and then twist back up into its perch for another day. But it won't be the only time people walking under the bridge will want to look up. Westbank, the company behind Vancouver House, is commissioning a second installation of public art on the underside of the bridge. The light boxes will display a changing exhibit of photos produced with students from Emily Carr University.
People talk about the amazing planning that's happening in Vancouver but they don't talk about the moments that are very special,” Ian Gillespie, the principal at Westbank, said at a press conference moments after spring officially arrived in Vancouver. “What we lack are a few special moments and this is what Vancouver House will represent. It will be one of the lasting things that stays in [visitors'] minds.... Can we turn the Granville Street Bridge into a moment itself?”
James Cheng is the architect who nursed the concept from the time when it was a glint in Westbank's eye seven years ago until last October, when the City of Vancouver gave it its blessing. Cheng, who worked with Arthur Erickson during the “mind-blowing” years of exciting development, has passed on the project to Bjarke Ingels whose Copenhagen- and New York-based firm, BIG, has been creating innovative and dynamic buildings around the world.
Cheng said the Vancouver we know today got its start in the 1970s when Mayor Art Phillips pulled together a team to think about what the city could be doing architecturally. The first projects centred on South False Creek, which blended the city's talent pool. Then the federal government bought into a plan to turn its lands on Granville Island into a thriving food, arts and theatre district. After Expo 86 came Concord Pacific's False Creek development, and then eyes turned to the downtown, with questions about how to turn Coal Harbour into a continuation of this waterside housing community.
But then we became a little complacent, a little too blasé about the accolades, Cheng said. We stopped creating special moments, which are like the punctuation marks of the city's evolution. (Joo Kim Tiah, the CEO of Holborn, has a jump on the desire to create Vancouver's iconic icon architectural image with his 63-storey Trump Tower and Hotel on West Georgia. Its slated to open in 2016.)
He noted there's five decades between Erickson, whose Project 56 drawing of twisting buildings straddling English Bay is part of the exhibit, and Ingels.
Ingels said first knew of Vancouver as the home of two of his favourite writers, Douglas Coupland and William Gibson. He wanted to see the city the spawned such fabulous thinkers.
Vancouver House was born out of the need to figure out how to deal with the bridge and the odd-shaped pieces of land underneath it, he said. The bridge couldn't be moved so the project had to work around it. The main condo tower starts on a 6,000 sq.ft. footprint at the base of Howe Street (where the Buster's Towing lot used to be) to honour setback requirements but once it's higher than the bridge, it starts to turn and add floor space until, at the top of its 52 storeys, its floorplate is 13,000 sq. ft.
- See more at: http://www.westender.com/news/vancouver-house-introduces-gwerk-to-the-world-1.914679#sthash.ZscqzGuP.dpuf
The word is gwerk, as in “Vancouver has to stop resting on its laurels; it's got to gwerk it,” says Vancouver architect Trevor Boddy, the curator of an exhibition, Gesamtkunstwerk, which chronicles the evolution of what is hoped to be the next “special moment” in Vancouver's architectural history.
Or here's another example from Boddy: “'My office needs a real gwerk,' which means a total redesign.”
Thank goodness the developers are giving us the new word because, otherwise, few of would be able to pronounce, let alone remember, gesamtkunstwerk. It's a German word, popularized by the composer Richard Wagner, that translates into something like total work of art or synthesis of the arts.
Those are the words on the side of the building next to the Granville Bridge where the exhibit is being held. And while people have seen drawings of the gleaming twisting condo tower that will rise next to it, it's what's happening under the bridge that gives the concept a totally radical reputation.
Introducing the new Beach District, a new urban village that will run under the bridge along Beach Avenue. It's going to be a collection of pie-shaped buildings that include rental apartments, offices and retail outlets. It will also be providing the nine o'clock gun a run for its time-keeping money. At nine o'clock every night, a spinning chandelier by artist Rodney Graham will twirl its way down over the street from its base underneath the bridge, dazzle the crowd and then twist back up into its perch for another day. But it won't be the only time people walking under the bridge will want to look up. Westbank, the company behind Vancouver House, is commissioning a second installation of public art on the underside of the bridge. The light boxes will display a changing exhibit of photos produced with students from Emily Carr University.
People talk about the amazing planning that's happening in Vancouver but they don't talk about the moments that are very special,” Ian Gillespie, the principal at Westbank, said at a press conference moments after spring officially arrived in Vancouver. “What we lack are a few special moments and this is what Vancouver House will represent. It will be one of the lasting things that stays in [visitors'] minds.... Can we turn the Granville Street Bridge into a moment itself?”
James Cheng is the architect who nursed the concept from the time when it was a glint in Westbank's eye seven years ago until last October, when the City of Vancouver gave it its blessing. Cheng, who worked with Arthur Erickson during the “mind-blowing” years of exciting development, has passed on the project to Bjarke Ingels whose Copenhagen- and New York-based firm, BIG, has been creating innovative and dynamic buildings around the world.
Cheng said the Vancouver we know today got its start in the 1970s when Mayor Art Phillips pulled together a team to think about what the city could be doing architecturally. The first projects centred on South False Creek, which blended the city's talent pool. Then the federal government bought into a plan to turn its lands on Granville Island into a thriving food, arts and theatre district. After Expo 86 came Concord Pacific's False Creek development, and then eyes turned to the downtown, with questions about how to turn Coal Harbour into a continuation of this waterside housing community.
But then we became a little complacent, a little too blasé about the accolades, Cheng said. We stopped creating special moments, which are like the punctuation marks of the city's evolution. (Joo Kim Tiah, the CEO of Holborn, has a jump on the desire to create Vancouver's iconic icon architectural image with his 63-storey Trump Tower and Hotel on West Georgia. Its slated to open in 2016.)
He noted there's five decades between Erickson, whose Project 56 drawing of twisting buildings straddling English Bay is part of the exhibit, and Ingels.
Ingels said first knew of Vancouver as the home of two of his favourite writers, Douglas Coupland and William Gibson. He wanted to see the city the spawned such fabulous thinkers.
Vancouver House was born out of the need to figure out how to deal with the bridge and the odd-shaped pieces of land underneath it, he said. The bridge couldn't be moved so the project had to work around it. The main condo tower starts on a 6,000 sq.ft. footprint at the base of Howe Street (where the Buster's Towing lot used to be) to honour setback requirements but once it's higher than the bridge, it starts to turn and add floor space until, at the top of its 52 storeys, its floorplate is 13,000 sq. ft.
- See more at: http://www.westender.com/news/vancouver-house-introduces-gwerk-to-the-world-1.914679#sthash.ZscqzGuP.dpuf
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Bakery, laundromat and greenhouse
The Iberoamericana University in the Dominican Republic hosted a green roof symposium a couple of weeks ago. The school administers the program for the country, their stated goal "to preserve the structures of buildings and conserve native and migratory species."With so many benefits to green roofs, I love how different people, companies and municipalities embrace the technology for different reasons.
-In Europe, a Swiss company says it has just opened the continent's largest urban farming project. And they are no shy about touting that, look at that sign!!!
-How's this for an eclectic list of services, bakery, laundromat and greenhouse. These folks in British Columbia pull it off.
-The Design Trust for Public Space has released their toolkit, which they describe as “part how-to guide and part reference for urban farming”. Ohh...tasty
-In India a demo aquaponics project is trying to grow sea bass. You know what I thought of first, frickin' sea bass, of course!
-In Europe, a Swiss company says it has just opened the continent's largest urban farming project. And they are no shy about touting that, look at that sign!!!
-How's this for an eclectic list of services, bakery, laundromat and greenhouse. These folks in British Columbia pull it off.
-The Design Trust for Public Space has released their toolkit, which they describe as “part how-to guide and part reference for urban farming”. Ohh...tasty
-In India a demo aquaponics project is trying to grow sea bass. You know what I thought of first, frickin' sea bass, of course!
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