To All The Girls I've Loved Before

It is a crime that I have not showcased my affinity for Martha Schwartz until now. She greased my slide from Architecture to Landscape Architecture with her ersatz take on design. Schwartz first gained exposure when she engineered a formal garden using carbed-out bagels and purple, aquarium gravel in Boston's Back Bay. Eventually, she would be commissioned to design an installation to replace Richard Serra's controversial Tilted Arc in Manhattan's Federal Plaza. Her ability to think beyond the box and still nail the target is fantastic.

Park

Allow "Park" to assume multiple meanings.

Design Intervention

Design inspiration for a Muskoka wooded outdoor seating area by the master, Andy Goldsworthy.

Elizabeth Street Gallery

The Elizabeth Street Gallery carries a fabulously flush collection of garden ornament. Tucked within Lower Manhattan's quintessential aisle's of gritty style, it breaks up the rigamortise of building stock as it lazes on an expansive, grassed lot. Lit with an eclectic mess of garden intrigue, I love how it denies commercial redundancy from the invasive stockists of Restoration Hardware. Simmer your Netflix calendar and stall out within it's gates- you may just find your garden-inspired chupacabra.

Boston to the T

I'm kind of digging Silvetti's glass shroud in Boston's Dewey Square.  A tip of the hat to I.M.Pei's Louvre by way of Giza, a nod to Gropius via glass and steel construction...and it's harking a Veritas hoodie spin.

PFD

The tired keyhole life jackets that I was bound to as a child were suffocating and restricting.  However, they seem far more emotionally buoyant when illustrated by Santiago Morillo.

 

Assouline

Tucked away in the lobby of NYC's Plaza Hotel is a wonderful little bookshop, Assouline. Filled with the most beautiful collection of current and collectibles, you feel honored to browse. Window shop online for fabulous gift ideas to feed virtually any hobby or enthusiast. www.assouline.com

Museo Soumaya

Mexico City's Museo Soumaya was designed by Fernando Romero.  The aluminum hexagonal tiles on the exterior suggest an apiary aesthetic, stitched by Linda Evan's seamstress.  The first curvilinear museum was spawned by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1939, this is the new age Guggenheim.

Leviathan

Anish Kapoor found the interior space of the Grand Palais "more overwhelming" than being outdoors because there were no vertical or horizontal references to human scale.  In a stroke of brilliance,  he inflated the space to engulf the occupier.  

Arts and Crafts

Mark Jenkins creates outdoor sculpture from reams of adhesive tape.   Staples must love this guy.

comic relief

Santiago Morilla's graffiti-inspired installation in the courtyard of the Fondazione Pastificio Cerere transforms the rundown urban landscape into an episodic diphthong of conjoining gestures.

Stairway to Gehry

The Art Gallery of Ontario hired Frank Gehry to design a staircase to sew the circulation path of the expanding collection together.  In a clever twist, it bows to New York's Guggenheim's shell but unravels the model to further the occupier through the space.

CCTV

Beijing's CCTV building lends an argyle je ne sais quoi.  However, the irregular web of rebar lattice poses an interesting dichotomy to Mies van der Rohe's rhythmic steel grid used at the Seagram Building.  In this case, the tighter gauge of the tartan at the entrances are fantastic as they instantly ground the occupier of the space against the magnitude of the structure. 

tepidarium redux

The Mycenaean built The Lion Gate around 13BC to provide a formal gateway from the countryside into the citadel.  In it's simplest form, it was a vast wall with one square opening. 

The physical characteristics of this pool house suggest that it's lineage began in Greece.  Working as a functional threshold, the structure also weaves the landscape with the pool area via it's materiality.  Soil horizon-like veins are translated through the reclaimed wood panels, which abbreviate to sensationally frame the landscape.

"BECOME YOUR DREAM"

De La Vega pens philosophically charged "annotated chalk drawings" on the sidewalks of NYC. Stumbling upon one is a true spree in emotional pleasure.
"THIS MOMENT IS MORE PRECIOUS THAN YOU THINK"
Pedestrian Perfection.

In the beginning...

Long before NYC's High Line became the poster child for the field of landscape architecture, urban renewal and brownfields around the world... there was Gas Works Park. As an abandoned gas processing plant along the shores of Lake Union, it was rehabilitated to become one of Seattle's best public open spaces. The chemically compromised soil was remediated and the dangerous and toxic "guts" of the plant were removed. Green grass was sown and the plant's body was impregnated with a colorful children's playground.
The awesome scale of the remaining shell of the plant is absurdly fantastic as any grown adult standing by it feels instantly minute. If only more public open spaces had the ability to make us all feel like kids again.

A Panel Discussion

When Phillip Johnson designed the Sculpture Garden at the MOMA, he looked to the Museum's fringe to bring contextual continuity to the commission. In this case, he shunned the Vitruvian Man's inference of scale and culled proportional significance from the fenestration on the Rockefeller brownstone across the street. The effect is awesome. Harnessing the Modernist didactic of using panes to craft building facades, he applied this gesture to the ground using stone slabs scaled after the Rockefeller residence. At once, the occupier of the space is slowed by the stone tartan (to better consume the sculpture) while they are delighted with an engaging carpet true to the integrity of the Modern Movement.

Heavy Rotation

Oscar de la Renta's Connecticut garden has bedded many a glossy but, it never loses stamina.  This image is top rank.  A boar sculpture was selected from the litter to herd the eye along the stunning allee of blossoming pears.

mmmmmmmMoMA

Surrounded by visual impress, Tord Boontje's cluster of armchairs, lounging at the MoMA, will be the double take of your visit.  www.tordboontje.com

mario botta

Botta's maquilage of Church of San Giovanni Battista is a figure ground basket weave of tenuous stone.  Employing native granite and marble to embellish the rhythmic dovetail ribboning effect is remarkable.