Minor alterations to pylons !

### designdaily.co.nz 04 Oct 2010 12:31 pm
Architecture/Design
When giants roam the landscape…
By Design Daily Team
There’s nothing like a meddling mass of metal in the form of a power pylon to create a blight on the landscape. Enter Boston-based Choi+Shine Architects, “A practice of thoughtful design”. Thoughtful indeed as these adapted pylons show. The pylons, designed by Jin Choi and Thomas Shine, have been proposed for the Icelandic landscape, and require only small alterations to the existing pylon design.
The proposal is so good, it received an honourable mention in 2008 at the Icelandic High-Voltage Electrical Pylon International Design Competition and this year, was one of four winning project for the Boston Society of Architects ‘2010 Unbuilt Awards’.
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

WILD about Wanaka

### ODT Online Sat, 14 Aug 2010
Developments dismay landscape architect
By Matthew Haggart
As residential subdivisions in Wanaka continue to expand the town’s boundaries, the approach of some developers has saddened the Queenstown Lakes District Council’s top landscape consultant. Dr Marion Read, the chief landscape architect at QLDC’s regulatory authority Lake Environmental, says major earthworks associated with some Wanaka developments are destroying parts of the landscape’s most distinctive features.
Read more

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### ODT Online Sat, 14/08/2010 – 10:14pm.
Comment by qksmith on Landscape Issues
While I am the first to be critical of landscape issues in the district, I think we have to accept that where land is zoned for LDR that we are dealing with a highly modified environment.
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LDR = Low Density Residential

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Don’t mind my aportioning blame, rightly or wrongly it’s a considered opinion…more like a bad reaction. Of course, Dunedin isn’t free of sprawl at the hands of some people active in Wanaka.

### ODT Online Sun, 15/08/2010 – 6:52pm.
Comment by ej kerr on Wanaka is sprawl

Being an experienced planner or not is hardly relevant when the adverse cumulative effects of house building are totalled for the Wanaka district landscape.

I fully support the comments, as reported, of Dr Marion Read.

My most recent visit to Wanaka two days ago has again reinforced how inadequate the local district plan is to counter unwarranted housing sprawl.

Half the battle might be with the drive of property owners to create (uncritically) an acontextual, uncompromising slice of suburbia in the extraordinarily picturesque, wild and weathered countryside.

Developers of the subdivisions (a small group of influential citizens whom we know by name), like the property owners, are equally uncritical of the environmental impacts of the sprawl they foster, and derive their not inconsiderable profits from.

This hedonistic activity – speculative building – which does not spring from best practice in landscape architecture, architecture (by registered architects), or sustainable environmental design – is supported (‘controlled’) by an ineffectually dull, unresponsive fabric of arbitrary local authority ‘planning’ decisions (zone rules) constraining the use of colour, gables, materials, height plane angles, non reflective surfaces, bulk and location, density et al.

The result is an impoverished sameness, an unspeakably heavy dreariness in the now over-built environment. An eyesore almost without end that submerges/denies the incredible three-dimensional topographical variances of the natural landscape. It might be expensive, it might be what the market demands, it might be what the bulldozer invites, but this is dumbed down contemporary building development at its illogical worst.

The full battle most probably rests with ‘regional planning’ education and professional practice development in New Zealand that is rather too dependent on quasi-legal/legal experiment with the RMA clause and bland generalities of rural zoning – without mandatory professionally accredited multi-disciplinary training in contextual design processes and environmental sustainability.

The collective forces suburbanising Wanaka should be halted. This is not sustainable.

A moratorium, a re-think. District intelligence must be raised for the stewardship and protection of landscape values, inviting informed sympathetic design responses for the making of comfortable ‘dwelling place’…there should be no need for hackles and loss of hair with each visit to Wanaka.

This is a district for smart design, not stuffy inert planning that expects less of the development community than it has to give.

Elizabeth Kerr, Dunedin

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Post by Elizabeth Kerr

Landscape architecture

Not saying these are all great examples even if the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) thought so enough to make the video. We’re not privy to the design briefs so treat as something to think around.

AILAnationaloffice 13 February 2009
Showcasing Melbourne landscape architecture and the diversity of practice. Melbourne was the hosting city for the AILA’s 2009 national conference.

Post by Elizabeth Kerr

Singapore’s Waterfront Gardens @Marina Bay

### http://www.inhabit.com 21 December 2009
Singapore’s Largest Garden Project Unveiled
By Mike Chino
Designs have just been released for Bay South, an incredible botanical preserve topped with super-tall solar trees that is set to be Singapore’s largest garden project. Conceived by Grant Associates, the 101-hectare expanse of lush green space will be situated right next to the Marina Bay resort and will feature two botanical biospheres and a series of towering tree structures that double as vertical gardens.
Read more + Images

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Grant Associates and Gustafson Porter have won an international competition, organised by Singapore’s National Parks Board, to design Gardens by the Bay, part of the next phase of the city’s masterplan.

According to Grant Associates: This is the largest garden project ever undertaken in Singapore, and a landscape project of world significance. It is intended to raise Singapore’s profile and cement its image as the leading garden city in the east. It is therefore integral to the future planning of Singapore as a major global hub and business centre.

The masterplan takes its inspiration from the form of the orchid, and has an intelligent infrastructure that allows the cultivation of plants that would not otherwise grow in Singapore. The centrepiece of this infrastructure is the cluster of Cooled Conservatories along the edge of Marina Bay. The Cool Dry and the Cool Moist Conservatories showcase Mediterranean, tropical montane and temperate annual plants and flowering species. They also provide a flexible, flower-themed venue for events and exhibitions.
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█ Download: PDF project sheet.

olruchimaru 06 November 2009

olruchimaru 06 November 2009
This is the second film created by Squint/Opera for the Singapore Bay International Design Competition to depict the client’s exuberant and ambitious scheme. It follows the flight of two dragonflies as they weave their way through the imagined gardens, guiding us through the unfurling layers of vegetation and the hothouse structures.

Squint/Opera is a film and media production studio whose unique work and methods bridge the disciplines of visual communication and architecture.The company makes short films, computer-generated visualisations, installations and interactive content to communicate architectural possibilities, putting narrative and humour to the service of deeply innovative design and techniques of illustration.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr