julian raxworthy
>> project visits...

(return to >> JR-FRLA)

(Updated 23rd January 2008))

(ABOUT VISITING SITES.. from a column called "The View from the Veranda" that never quite happened for SCAPE..)

Time is short when you are a traveler. Itineraries are planned. A wandering line is plotted from site to site, with an estimation of time. A kilometer in Rome is a labyrinth, but in Brisbane is a walk to the milk bar. As we judge the route through a mapped territory that is unknown but guessed at, we create virtual projects and journeys, predictions of what is we might see. What we really want though is a surprise,perhaps an unexpected meeting.. But if that should not happen, then at least we want to see a couple of places. Our itinerary is really just a jump start, but we want more:we want accidents. The time of the route is about transit which is a different sort of observation, about seeing things in passing, on the way. The time on site, on the target, is a different time to that of transit because when we get to the project, we want to see it not just to move through but as a place. After the exertion of the walk we try to calm down, to reduce our heart rate and experience it now as a project.

When we arrive we attempt to locate an intention in the design of the project, through the discovery of some sort of order. Generally this is circulation, because we must at least move around the project. As we circulate we try to feel the designers hand on our elbow, gently (perhaps brutally?) guiding us on our proper course. . Maybe our route to the site has plonked us in the “wrong” place to start our visit, so we had to slide down a scrubby slope on our bums to get in. Maybe we first see the back of the project where the budget ran out. Sometimes the site itself leads us on an entirely different path to that which has been designed. When the design and the site tendencies are beautifully aligned the circulation opens up the space to its seemingly new character, actually just the old re-emerging.

Though we are professionals, we try also to be the public. But we are still watching. We are no longer thinking about design but just seeing how people use the place. We surreptitiously take photographs of people doing things (but not of kids of course!). If the site is empty we try to find signs of life, and if there are none begin to suspect the project is art. We are not the public though, because they don't examine spaces like we do. They just love or hate them through their actions. We conduct our mandatory and uniform documentation by camera of the project, taking the photographs like we always do, emphasizing our own interests. When a site or project is radically different it challenges our documentation method and annoys us, but then we are impressed by how hard to the project is to capture .

Re-visiting parks is interesting because time has passed and the project has “settled down” after being given over to the public. As designers we want to see how robust the project is, and how the (often small) “moments” of design victory when the project was conceived have survived. Since time for us too has passed, we are sometimes confronted by our own change in taste. If we are generous we will forgive dated projects and say that “in the context of the period the project was done, it was interesting”. Sometimes they are so aged that they are like a freak in a show, and we boggle that such an approach seemed reasonable at the time . When we do this we are secretly happy that we did not build this bad project and glad that our own bad idea never hit the ground.

Leaving the project we resume the pace of the traveler rather than that of the inhabitant. . The day has stretched on and our legs are tired. We have seen so much design that we doubt that the final project will surprise us . It is late in the day and the sun is going down, and we hope that we there will be enough light to photograph. On the way to the park we buy a couple of beers since this is the last project for the day. 10 years have passed. Its a little rough now, but it looks loved. Up the path to the top of the bank and we join the troop of others who have also come to watch the sun set over the city. We crack the beers, and relax – we are not professionals anymore, we are just resting, with the sound of slow swings creaking in the behind us.

Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati, Italy	Richard Weller recommended to me that really, if you are interested in western landscape architecture you have to visit the old great projects, and it was good advice. I visited a range of them, but for me the Villa Aldobrandini was one of the best not because it had the greatest garden, but because teh landscape was infrastructural - it did stuff. Its an architectural landscape and is built and ornamented by measures that attempt to make the steep site useable, and to build in geometry, After a big line approach (and zig-zags) the steep villa is presented, but behind it is an incrfedible spoace of sculpture and water, but constricted. After this constriction, the hillside above is wild, with gruesome concealed follys. The garden is based on trees and pruning because its still a private residence and cant be too fusy. This project demonstrates how architectural devices and circulation can automaticalkly build a garden.
KCAP, Groningen Bike Parking @ NL	Groningen is a great student town with its fair share of contemporary architecture, much of which was, umm, contemporary and is now, well, horribly dated. Lets just say than the 1980's were not great to Groningen: lots of crazy multicolored tile, shards, skanky glazing, et.al. That said, this represents a commitment to the current and the future and that can be a good thing. One project that impressed me, though was quite odd, was the new bike parking facility at Groningen station. It was not there the last time I had visited, a nd so I was surprised by it this time (in only 6 months it was built?). I don't know who the designer is, but if anyone does, please tell me and I will update the site. It basically comprises a series of pebblecrete wings that peel up the forecourt of the old station, with points at the far left and right. Bikes are parked underneath and through the surface comes trees in rings, that are also the shape of seats. There is a whimsical element to the project which is nice but the pebblecrete in beige was a bit off (which was titillatingly ugly). On the whole I appreciated it as a piece of landscape infrastructure and the focus it put in the nice old station, even while it was still just another empty un useable forecourt with shit loads of action beneath.. I should note that it was very hard to photograph for me.. though I am a bad snapper.. (see article from TOPOS about this project)
Kristine Jensen, Prags Boulevard @ Copenhagen, Denmark	Returning to Copenhagen recently I got to visit another interesting project, Prags Boulevard (which I am reviewing for SCAPE), designed by Kristine Jensen. In many ways its a try-hard boulevard - its the back of everything not the front, but this gives it an economy that's nice. Simply its a graphic project, lots of dots and line marking, a lot like TOPOTEK's work. I am interested in this approach for a range of reasons, not the least of which is that it gives bang for your buck, but also because it is THIN. Its superficial, that is, its NOT DEEP. I have been thinking about this for a while, trying to think back to Martha Shwartz's work and work out what was good about it. This project involves nodes of activity along the Boulevard , each with their own graphic treatment and addresses all the streets that intersect with it. Its not a perfect beautiful project by any stretch but it has got something for me.. Maybe its a bit retro.. Maybe I am showing when I was educated.. Its a Nineties project somehow.. (see article from SCAPE about this project)
The Potager @ ENSP, Versailles, France	Since I first saw Pages Paysages (the French landscape architecture journal edited by Catherine Mosbach and Marc Claramunt), I have been fascinated by both the approach, and the idea even, of the Ecole Superior Nationale du Paysage at Versailles. As a school its latter day founders, Jacques Simon and Michel Corajoud seemed to produce a culture of landscape that was based around readings of site, an emphasis on an at-like practice and the context as culture not nature. I was lucky enough to be invited by Thierry Kandjee to be one of three international guests to run a workshop for 3rd year students over an intense week. My group of students were fantastic and keen. It was lots of work but also very social too, with BBQ's in the Potager, the kings vegetable garden. Spending this week there I got to love the place and appreciate how aspect, elevation, shelter and horticultural technique were used to grow diverse, impossible plants (for the climate), all within a simple designed structure. Each of the year levels has its own walled garden and studio in one of the old mansard roofed buildings. the perfect setting for a landscape school. (see article from DRIVEN about this project)
Foreign Office Architects - South East Park @ the Forum, Barcelona, Spain	This recent project by FOA is pretty interesting, in a whole range of ways, but suffers from the fact that its site is too small to be truly immersed in the project, with Torres and Lapena's solar thing visible everywhere. In general, the forum either has too much going on (in terms of numbers of projects) or just too much open paved space. THat said, this project by FOA demonstrates how much they have learnt from the Yokohama project. No safety markings or handrails here. In this sense it is a more refined project. Also, the approach to planting is quite loose (maybe weedy?) and this and the topographic form work well. The basic module they use is kinda charmingly retro. But there are a couple of pretty useless, or at least completely unused amphitheaters that are like functional excuses for dramatic topography. In general, I liked it.
Christiania in Copenhagen, Denmark	I really enjoyed visiting Copenhagen. I wouldn't say it was beautiful as such, but it seems a humane kinda place, with a weird spatiality - wide streets, inward facing blocks, very urban, somewhat disorientating. More than anything i found the order of everything disturbing - like it was open minded (not conservative), but that things were allowed as long as they fitted in a particular known box.. On the last day, after a lecture at KVL University for Malene Hauxner and Richard Hare, I mentioned this to Richard, and he said - you must see Christiania. Located on the site of the old medieval fortifications of the city, hippies took over the site from the military, pulling the fences down in the 1960's. It is a commune, self-governing, etc, and people there have appropriated the buildings and worked with the previous site orders. Now the site preserves a piece of wilderness like river (shown above) that is incredible considering its right in the centre of the city - I would argue that its survival is specifically because other, non financial imperatives are at work. Children of hippies, now wealthy and inheriting their shares, are looking at developing housing on the site. For my part, I loved the self-regulating, outlaw aspect of the site - i hope it survives busts and redevelopment. (see UNPUBLISHED article about this project)
Herzog and de Meuron - the Forum Building, Barcelona, Spain	I was very impressed by this building. Other than the Tate in London, which I was also very impressed with, this is the only Hz dM building I have seen. I literally found it, ie. I didn't go there to visit it, so it really surprised me, and I approached it ignorantly. It was closed at the time, so I only saw the outside. I have always been attracted to the notion of the monolith in the movie "2001" - an enigmatic object that reveals a lot through not revealing anything. I liked the way that two basic moves were used to great effect: the triangular result of hypothetical street intersection; the building top and bottom is level, that creates a space underneath that has amazing landscape qualities. The Yves Klein blue spraycrete is great (and a material that I also liked from that project by Neutlings Rejdik (?)), though the window form is a bit reflex these days (jagged shit). the material used in the undercroft, a patterned reflective metal gave the space a very psychedelic feel.
	Many projects attempt to deal with industrial heritage, and somehow Gasworks Park by Richard Haag is the model
Mauerpark by Gustav Lange, Berlin, Germany, 1994	I had never really considered Berlin as a place (apart from in spy books) until I did an interior studio with Peter King, who is a German-o-phile, and who woke me up to the contradictions of the city, particularly with his interest in Scharoun and the Kulturforum. I visited the city in 1996 and was impressed with one park in particular, Mauerpark. On that trip generally I had been disappointed by the coldness of projects (ie. they didn't do much for me), but was very inspired by Mauerpark because of its infrastructural approach and also its lack of preciousness. It creates a line with a bank on one side and a plain on the other, and then the movement of people and their desire or otherwise of privacy puts the onus on the user to occupy it as they want. While we often talk about appropriation by people, this is one of the few projects where i have seen it happen. And the project has been hammered by the public, graffiti and people everywhere, but its out of love. I have never seen a designed landscape that feels so owned. WIth its swings and views out over Berlin it proposes a type of civil existence that is based on the rights of the public, not on control by institutions... how long can that last?
Torres and Lapena- Placa de Constitucion, Girona, Spain	I loved this project, which was published in both Quaderns and in an El Croquis dedicated to their work, when I was a student. However when I visited it recently I was disappointed. Interestingly it still doesn't photograph too badly, and the details I liked then I like now still, but it just doesn't really hang together as a project. Frankly, its all edge, and those edges are spiky and sinuous and great. It has two distinct parts - an urban bit and a forest bit (plus edges of course, so that's three, right?). The forest bit was densely planted and in 12 years the trees are not much bigger than when they were planted and look sick - too much compaction I would say. So this part is dead, and its the part that faces the main drag. On the other hand, the urban at the other end is very intensively used, but is a bit barren for me. The concrete detailing is good and robust through out, and the expressionistic quality of it is still ok, despite much of the Spanish stuff seeming too expressionistic 10 years on.
Latitude Nord - Reim Landscaftspark, Munich, Germany	I became aware of the work of Gilles Vexlard and Laurence Vacherot (Latitude Nord) through seeing their Parc Departmental Essonne in Pages Paysages. I was impressed by the nature of its geometry, which comprised multiple overlaid orders, with complexity rather than confussion, and also its grading strategy of working with shallow grades on big planes. Their work seemed to be clearly in a Le Notre like French garden tradition, but also incorporating aspects of the design generation, deconstruction angle that was arising at the time (early 90's). Whilst visiting Lisa Diedrich, a friend and ex Topos person (now SCAPE), i visited their biggest project for the site of the old Munich airport. its huge. it took me 2 days to get around it. What impressed me most was the designers ability to allow bog scale geometry to have a consistency and resonance at person scale. Its detail was considered right through, but in itself it was not overworked. I liked the big line intersections on the ground with their offset kerbs, that both allows for sharp angles as well as controlling corner cutting, that at the same time referenced the big stuff. I also thought that their planting strategy of using different species with the same spacing, in the forests, was amazing. Having now seen Parc Sausset (by their teacher Corajoud), i realise that Reim has been clearly influenced by it. Though the Munichers prefer their English garden, I think that this project will be one of the greats.
DS Landscape Architects - Tilla-Durra Park, Berlin, Germany	Potsdammer platz is a complete wasted opportunity, guilt erasing all but the figure of the octagon. Its a pity also because the architecture is almost universally terrible. But there is this project, by a Dutch landscape firm. Its just a twisted plane of turf with some see saws in the middle (they are BIG seesaws). Its landscape as space maker - it claims space and makes it. What i really liked is that I got to see the guys mowing it - they use a fly-mower which is sensible, because when we had to do banks with ropes like that we just used a normal mower .. very dangerous... They used reinforcing to shape the mound that is also the mowing guide, though its a bit worn on the edges. What more is there to say? WYSIWYG..
Megan Wraight Associates - Taranaki Wharf, Wellington, New Zealand	Megan was finishing at RMIT when I started studying there and is in the same generation as other important Aussie LA's (though she is a kiwi) such as Michael Wright, Fiona Harrisson (accidental adjacency, i promise), Kirsten Bauer, Penny Allan and Stephen Tupu. Megan with those others were organisers of the EDGE TOO conference which was a very big deal for Aussie LA culture. Megan went back to NZ and set up her own office and won this project with Penny Allan. Wellington is a great windy city (like Melbourne x San Fran), and the project thoroughly suits what is at times a kinda brutal streetscape of the town. The project is an infrastructure scheme drawn from the wharf language but not pretentiously so. Great robust detail and a range of nice mini project inserts/theme gardens set into this infrastructure, such as a nice rock pool garden with indig plants and a place to get under the wharf and be amongst the structure. Its simply good landscape architecture I would say, with great judgment. Its the first bit so i look fwd to the rest. (see article from TOPOS about this project)
Topotek1 - Broderie Courtyard, Berlin, Germany	Whilst at the Versailles workshop, I met another of the guests, Martin Rein-Cano, a Argentine/Berliner, who is co director of a practice TOPOTEK 1, a pretty engaging guy. Interestingly i was familiar with his work because a couple of previous students had unashamedly collaged his scheme for the Alsop building in Stresseman strasse (also in the PDF) into their own! (UPDATE: They now tell me that they simply REFERENCED it.. umm, so where was the reference guys??). Martin's approach to LA is quite different to that of most of the Euro LA's, in so far as he is a firm believer in landscape design for its own sake, as a fashion, rather than as some sort of social responsibility. He worked for Martha Schwarz and is a big fan and it shows: his work is colourful, indulgent nearly, and graphically based. It also has a lot of camp to it, which is a quality I quite like, sometimes. The broderie courtyard is just a graphic on a surface while the stresseman project has a line graphic that then orders the use of the space. Both projects are cheap but exuberant, without the stilted elegance that one sees a lot in Europe. Martin is adamant (forgive me Martin..) that if a project "doesn't have big tits, you don't want to f*ck it" (depending on ones proclivities).. (see article from LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AUSTRALIA about this project)
RCR Aranda Piagem Vilalta Architects- Parc Pedra Tosca, Olot, Spain	While I was a speaker at the 4th Biennal of European landscape architecture in Barcelona, I also got to see the presentations for the Rosa Barba prize, the European prize for landscape architecture. There were 2 prize winners, one a wetland by French firm Paysages, which disappointed me, just because it seemed like just another naturalistic wetland, but the other, for this Lava park outside of Girona, seemed amazing. My friend Bettina from Barcelona took me to see it and I was impressed. The strategy is simple and very site specific. The main architectectonic element is an entry wall or chamber that is just steel vertical plates with rock behind. Beyond this the strategy was to simply unearth the existing rock mounds and paths that have evolved as the users of the area over long periods of time have attempted to work agriculturally around the basalt ground. The design project simply orchestrates and clears space for these "artigas" as they are called. Much of the language of this project, in terms of design, is well established, eg we know corten as a material now, we know blade walls, etc, but what impressed me here was how a clear site understanding directed the project, and the how the design could be confident but step back from what was already a great place. (see article from TOPOS about this project)
SLA (Stig Andersson)- Charlottes Garden, Copenhagen, Denmark	In Barcelona I spoke at the same session as a Danish LA Stig Andersson, who discussed a range of his projects in terms of how they engaged with ephemeral conditions - it was an interest we shared, and so I decided to visit Copenhagen and see his and other Danish projects (Denmark has one of the most significant Modern LA traditions in the world. Stig's projects, like this one all use this exaggerated biomorphic aspect to them, like Burle-Marx but with more work with levels. This project was a beauty, just a series of different grasses that creates a form out of texture, with the circulation weaving through. Its a language we know from the Americans (forgot their name), but done with a greater understanding of depth of field, and perspective. There were a lot of other interesting aspects to the project which were about the housing type, such as the incorporation of childcare in each building and children generally. (see article from MONUMENT about this project)

(return to >> JR-FRLA)