December 15, 2010
These are a few of my favourite things. Above, a white painted branch with Kraft-paper wrapped gifts is a minimalist advent calendar, by the inventive DIY Brigg from Norway via The Style Files.
December 5, 2010
The Kastrup sea bath is by White architektur, Denmark. Via archdaily. Photographs: Ole Haupt, White Arkitekter, Erco Lighting, Åke E:son Lindman
The idea behind this swimming platform and pier is that in the not overly warm Danish summer it shields swimmers from the wind and contains the sun.
November 30, 2010
Vancouver architect Ned Pratt produced work in an era that—from the standpoint of our developer-led moment—is quickly starting to look like a golden age. Pratt and Arthur Erickson along with their contemporaries Ron Thom and Fred Hollingsworth still rank among Vancouver’s best and most influential architects.
November 25, 2010
Inspiring story about the 10-year long restoration of the Wadi Hanifah oasis outside Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, via Globeandmail.
“A Canadian planning and architecture firm has won an Aga Khan Award for Architecture for the sweeping transformation of a once-polluted Saudi waterway into a system of parks in the heart of the desert, using a system of bio-remediation.
November 22, 2010
For brutalist concrete, I find this little bank quite friendly. And not half bad for a drive-in. Unfortunately it seems to be abandoned. Photo above is by agilitynut, and and an alternate view is here.
November 11, 2010
Renowned landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander will be giving a lecture Thursday November 18 at the University of British Columbia’s Beaty Biodiversity Museum. From the site:
The environment is not the same to a landscape architect as it is to a biologist.
October 4, 2010
Cornelia Oberlander, the pre-eminent Canadian landscape architect noted for long collaborations with Arthur Erickson and Moshe Safdie among other things, designed the landscape for Erickson’s famed Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.
July 14, 2010
This sculpture installation of coloured plexiglas by Nicholas Elias takes me back to my 60s/70s childood. It’s part of the Sculpture By The Sea exhibition in Sydney, Australia. I’m a bit annoyed I didn’t do this first, though I wanted to make more of a landscaping or entrance feature.
June 19, 2010
Day 1 of measuring: fat bamboo shoot is 58″ tall
This giant timber bamboo grove came over from the neighbours’ yard. My guess it’s been there since the late 1960s, back when a well-known Japanese-Canadian poet lived next door.
April 21, 2010
Kusari toi (sometimes translitered “doi”)—the Japanese characters are 鎖樋 which translates literally as “chain gutters”—are known in English as rain chains. They are used in Japan as downspouts to direct rain from a gutter to the ground, where it either flows into a gravel or pebble bed or into some sort of catchment.
