placespace

A Cheu Cheu Cha Choo

Among the shockers at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial--Apple, Boeing, Nike, and Google together on the museum wall-- landscape architect Tom Leader's work jumped out. I like Railroad Reservation Park in Birmingham, Alabama:

Many cities have a river as their functional port as well as their connection to nature and the larger world. Birmingham has the railroad. Most downtowns are trying to overcome or eliminate their rail inheritances from the 19th century. Birmingham likes their still-busy rail..just look at the number of weekend train-spotters on existing viaducts. But with the departure of warehousing activities, land has opened up in the center of downtown for people to live and to gather.

from Tom Leader Studio on Railroad Reservation Park

Chocolate-box countryside

This is from wordsmith.org (yesterday):

'chocolate-box'--used metaphorically--denotes having a romanticised beautiful image; stereotypically 'pretty' (from the kind of pictures often seen on boxes of chocolate).

Here's the fun bit: the cited e.g., in reference to a Radio 4 serial in the UK: 'But to accept that is merely to endorse a patronising, chocolate-box image of the country--to see it all as pretty lanes, thatched cottages and rosy-cheeked lasses milking cows--and to turn a blind eye to the reality of rural life today.'  (Anna Morrell, 'An Everyday Tale of Randy Rural Folk' in the Western Mail, 10 Nov. 2006; see http://tinyurl.com/yyubnm)

Randy rural folk, eh? Rather evocative of haylofts and hidden dells...

Part the Red Sea, my friends, I'm packing my bags for New York!

Few have had such a profound effect on the urban and rural landscape than Robert Moses. Lionized and villainized by many, he not only transformed New York City, but pretty much entrenched the mid-century North American planning ethos that we are still trying to get ourselves out from under. I'm pleased as punch that a full-blown exhibition about his work is on the boil for 2007, curated by the great Kenneth Jackson. Three institutions are hosting related exhibitions: "Robert Moses and the Modern City: Remaking the Metropolis" runs from February 1 through May 28 at the Museum of the City of New York (which should not be missed for other reasons). The Queens Gallery of Art is hosting "Robert Modes and the Modern City: The Road to Recreation" from January 28 to May 12. While you're there, check out the scale model of the five boroughs created for the 1964 World's Fair. The Wallach Gallery at Columbia University will host "Robert Moses and the Modern City: Slum Clearance and the Superblock Solution," time and date not yet announced.

Made it!

Whoo hoo, here at last.

These beans, being from Marin, are Hand harvested and sorted by college graduates.

As ajb points out, I have a backlog of travelogue (the above from this month's west coast trip), and will work to catch up; first, a cover letter. In the meantime, a fascinating landscape related banner:

Much to say about place and space. v

Home Ground

Its heft surprised me. I thought Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, was going to be a little guidebook, not a massive textbook of place terms. Which is a good thing. The other surprise is that it actually seems useful, for those of us in the business of describing places. Like this one, in Brooklyn, "Prospect Heights":

"Heights is a general term for an elevated landform that provides a vantage point from which to view the surrounding countryside...In a suburban context, heights carry a kind of middle-class pretension or snobbery, as if higher ground, real or nominal, makes a better neighborhood."

Or, "desire path":

A close look at any city park or green will typically reveal footpaths that break away from paved walks, trails that countless pedestrians have worn into the grass. Such a trail is a desire path: the route people have chosen to take across an open place, marking a human pattern upon a landscape.

A few more are here. I heard about the book after listening to Barry Lopez interviewed on Forum.