Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Late Summer Poems


Summer's waning. Cool nights. The light is intense, but lower. On the terraces, the play of plant edges with steel and rock begins to become satisfying. The garden develops its own rhythms. Spaces evolve. Sure, there's the design and the vision to establish those spaces at the outset, but the processes happening now are poems and verses that happen of their own accord and I just happen to encounter them while moving through the landscape. There's a Utah Phillips song I think about where he talks about a man who does not write poems - he finds them. That's an inspiring meditation...












Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Microclimate and Ecology

Understanding the nuance of existing microclimate is part of the assessment I truly enjoy. It's here that components of landform, canopy, soils, winds and sun, buildings, and roads among others come together. In my understanding, microclimate best represents existing conditions of what some might call urban ecology - where human actions and "natural phenomena" are put together as opposed to the traditional - natural and man made categories. I'd argue that ecology always did include people everywhere, not just in urban areas. As a species, we've had a tremendous effect on the planet, and to separate humans from the rest of the species and systems on the earth creates problematic dissonance. I have experimented with my graphic representation of microclimate shown in varying intensities of yellow below, combining it with human use, and overall physical landform. For a first go round I think it's compelling. 

I've included some other diagrams below to illustrate current conditions onsite at the center's core.