My Landscape Town: 9월 2013

2013년 9월 1일 일요일

Vietnam Veterans Commemorative Service Wall: Seymour Australia

Image Credit | Mark Wilson

A Collaboration between Melbourne practices Sinatra Murphy Pty Ltd and AQL Landscape Design transformed the design of the Vietnam Veterans Commemorative Service Wall from a traditional black granite wall with 60,000 gold gilded etched names, to a meaningful visual story that invites an audience beyond those who served. The 85 metre wall is composed of 108 glass art panels that describe Australia’s involvement in the war from 1962 to 1973.

Image Credit | Mark Wilson

Sinatra Murphy and AQL presented an opportunity to redirect the original design/construct tender for a dynamic working relationship with the Vietnam Veterans Commemorative Wall Committee, made up of elected members from the Mitchell Sub branch of Vietnam Veterans. The team combined AQL ‘s twenty‐seven years experience in delivering high quality design and construction projects with Sinatra Murphy’s twenty years experience in acclaimed design, public art and community engagement to empower the Committee in the design process and ensure ownership over the final outcome.

Image Credit | Phin Murphy

The wall concept was developed through a series of workshops to establish the parameters of the artwork including size, imagery and composition, colour and texture, and sequence. This framework was resolved in accordance with the designers’ proposal to create a modular system of installation consisting of a precast concrete plinth to accommodate each 1500mm wide, 1900mm high and 25mm thick glass panel and approximately 200 poppies. A number of plinth types were designed to create the serpentine alignment, and the original landscape design was adjusted in response to the wall. Once the size of the ‘canvas’ was established the artwork was developed, approved by the Committee, and prepared for lamination in toughened glass.

Image Credit | Mark Wilson

The wall consists of 106 wall panels divided into two parallel lengths, closed at each end with a title panel and another dedicating civilian organisations and personnel. It is a feature in the Vietnam Veterans Commemorative Walk garden sharing a chronological story of mobilisation; the entry and expanding roles of the Navy and Air Force; the battles of Long Tan, Coral/Balmoral and Binh Ba; the TET Offensive; National Servicemen; life at the base of Nui Dat; the tracker dogs; dust‐off and the medicos; R&R; and going home. The imagery from pictures taken during tour is integrated with the 60,267 names of all Australians who served from the Army, Navy and Air Force. A stand alone remembrance panel pays tribute to the 521 servicemen who lost their lives during the conflict.

Image Credit | Mark Wilson

Image Credit | Phin Murphy

Parkcycle Swarm

Source: The dirt

What if communities formed new parks when they needed them? What if these parks could be formed by swarms of bicycles? If that sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel, get ready because landscape architect John Bela, ASLA, at Rebar and artist Tim Wolfer at N55 have created Parkcycle Swarm. While this concept has been explored in a few locations in Europe, the team just created four small mobile parks for the Participate public arts festival in Baku, Azerbaijan.

In DesignBoom, they write Parkcycle Swarm “explores the possibilities of the public sculpture, while at the same time raising awareness of cycle-power and green space through a participatory activity.”

San Francisco-based urban design and public art firm Rebar first tested the Parkcycle concept for one of its famed Park(ing) Days. They describe the system as a “human-powered open space distribution system designed for agile movement within the existing auto-centric urban infrastructure.” In their lingo, “Parkcycle effectively re-programs the urban hardscape by delivering massive quantities of green open space—up to 4,320 square-foot-minutes of park per stop—thus temporarily reframing the right-of-way as green space, not just a car space.”

Here’s one instance of the concept in Copenhagen, Denmark:

N55, a Copenhagen-based public art group, sees each unit as modules in a broader system.”The Parkcycle Swarm can be seen as a DIY urban planning tool that is as an alternative to the top down urban planning that dominates most cities in the world. N55 encourage persons to build their own cycles and form swarms and hereby influence their local urban environments.” They even propose certain “formations” for traveling.

According to N55, each bike-park can be designed to fit with local bicycle standards. In their open-source manual, they show how to create one to comply with EU bicycle design standards. They encourage bike-parkers to create their own local standards, too.

See more images.

These types of DIY urban planning and landscape architecture projects appear to be coalescing into a nascent movement. A number of urban design, landscape architecture, and public art organizations are exploring bottom-up concepts. Together, these experiments are being called a range of isms, including DIY Urbanism, User-generated Urbanism, Flexible Urbanism, or Adaptive Urbanism (one non-ism variation is Iterative Placemaking). Clearly, this is just the beginning, and these designers will foment more creative experiments yet.

To explore this world further, check out an upcoming 3-day conference organized by University of California, Berkeley and Rebar called Adaptive Metropolis, September 27-29.

Image credits: (1-2) Parkcycle / Yarat, via DesignBoom (3-8) Parkcycle Swarm / N55