BIRD

This week most of our interactions with birds will come courtesy of Thanksgiving dinner. But we urge you to check out some other feathered creatures at the simply gorgeous Birdbook, an elegant site dedicated to Bird, Andrew Zuckerman’s recently released book of photography.

Zuckerman and a team of bird specialists enticed the inhabitants of several aviaries to swoop, soar and posture in front of a simple white sheet. The result is startlingly vivid and lifelike shots of birds outside their normal environments, which makes for a wild visual experience. With each of the 87 entries (from African Fish Eagle to, yes, Wild Turkey) comes helpful information such as genus, height and wingspan, plus most of the entries include each bird’s personalized call. The pictures even seem to capture a bit of bird personality: a Red-legged Seriema stalks through its shot; a puffed-up Great Horned Owl regally poses; a Golden Eagle glares (rather vengefully) at the camera. Game, on.

via VSL

Concrete Plant Park in the Bronx

Recently opened Concrete Plant Park, in the Bronx, sits on the seven-acre site of a concrete plant that operated from the late 1940s through 1987. The park has retained some of its industrial past in the form of newly-painted silos, hoppers and conveyors, structures that once served as mixing facilities and now distinguish the park as sculptural monuments to the site’s evolution. The Parks Department and the Bronx River Alliance partnered to clean up the site, which, for years, remained an abandoned strip of land and illegal dumping ground. The project garnered public support by hosting community festivals and launching public boat tours from the site into the Bronx River. The park’s amenities include a waterfront promenade, a reading circle, concrete lounges, a canoe/kayak launch and restored salt marsh. It will also be part of the Bronx River Greenway, a 23-mile long multi-use path planned to extend the length of the river through the Bronx and Westchester County.

(via NY Daily News and Fresh Kills Park Blog )

Rising Currents: Projects for New York's Waterfront

MoMA's project on addressing the threat of rising sea level around New York. The project will involve a team of 3 architects and 1 landscape architect, who will work together over 8 weeks between mid-November and early January to come up with possible solutions for several potential sites in the harbor and on the adjacent coastlines of New Jersey, Staten Island, Brooklyn, and lower Manhattan. 

The Garden that Climbs the Stairs

Now famous for its Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim building, Bilbao continues to come up with unique ideas to revitalize its city center through urban design. According to Metropolis POV, the city commissioned a master plan seven years ago for the Abandoibarra area in the city’s downtown. Bilbao then sponsored BilbaoJardín 2007, “a contest that solicited designs for garden plots of up to 80 square meters (about 860 square feet), to be built on scattered sites throughout the city.” The first competition received some 132 proposals and a total of 27 projects were built. The design competitition was renewed in 2009.

For 2009, Balmori Associates, a firm that worked on the downtown master plan, submitted a park, The Garden That Climbs Stairs. “Sited between two Arata Isozaki towers, the miniature urban park is an arresting combination of native and exotic plants sidling up the steps leading to Santiago Calatrava’s Nervion River Footbridge. (Seen from above, it kind of looks like a cross between The Blob and the High Line.)”

Read the article and view the 31 other winning projects at BilbaoJardín 2009.

Image credit: Iwan Baan/courtesy Balmori Associates via THE DIRT ( ASLA official Blog )

Lawrence Halprin 1916-2009

"...landscape design is like alchemy. That is what makes it an important art form, and why, in fact, it is worthy for us to pursue this particular profession."

Lawrence Halprin

In memory of the great landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, who passed away last week, it is worth while to read his essay, "Design as a Value."