[ Lost in the Landscape ]

robie house planters

On my recent Chicago visit I had the chance to stop by Frank Lloyd Wright’s land­mark 1909–1911 Robie House in the Hyde Park neigh­bor­hood. Unfor­tu­nately the foun­da­tion that runs it was in the mid­dle of a major ren­o­va­tion inside. Even through we were on an archi­tec­tural tour the only way to view the inte­rior on this day was stand out­side and peer inside through the stained glass windows.

Ooh… (Look­ing inside, off the sec­ond story porch into the nearly fin­ished space…)

Uhhh… (The ground floor, still in the throes of renovation…)

Once we got that out of our sys­tem we had to con­cen­trate on the exte­rior of the build­ing and the gar­dens. I could think of worse things to have to do.

A pair of side gates opens up to an auto court with a small gar­den on the side. It was win­ter and the plant­i­ngs weren’t any too spec­tac­u­lar this time of year, but the hard­scape details were worth a close look.

The thin, wide bricks of the house and gar­den walls all fea­ture this neat lit­tle detail: The mor­tar between the courses is the typ­i­cal light mor­tar color, but the hor­i­zon­tal spaces between the bricks uses a red-colored mor­tar. The effect is that you notice hor­i­zon­tal bands and not the indi­vid­ual bricks. The house swoops side­ways towards the hori­zon, and the walls do the same, cel­e­brat­ing the ever-expanding hor­i­zon­tal prairie that makes up the Midwest.

Sev­eral of the cor­ners of the porches fea­ture these styl­ized urns. Instead of the chubby Roman mod­els, Wright has designed them to swoop side­ways just like the house and walls do.

And there are sev­eral of these planters that explode with color in the sum­mer. But now…well, not so green. The story goes that Wright designed these planters with­out drainage–something that comes as no sur­prise from an archi­tect who was obsessed with form over func­tion and noto­ri­ous for cre­at­ing houses with leaky roofs and sus­pended ter­races that sagged under their own weight.

As I reviewed the pho­tos from the Robie House, though, there’s one thing that starts to gnaw on me. Though it doesn’t look huge, it’s still some­thing like 9000 square feet if you count the out­door ter­races. All the out­door spaces seemed squeezed in there. Was this a space-intensive urban use of a small lot? Or was it a hundred-year-old McMan­sion? Even if that, it’s pretty cool as McMan­sions go…

February 28 2009 | Categories: art • gardening • landscape • landscape design • photography • places | Tags: architecture • brick • Chicago • concrete • Frank Lloyd Wright • garden walls • planters • Robie House • walls | 8 Comments »

lurie garden in february

I’m not sure what I was expect­ing out of Chicago’s Lurie Gar­den in the mid­dle of February.

The core of the gar­den is a space con­cen­trat­ing on peren­ni­als planted by Piet Oudolf, and the win­ter gar­den was defined by what peren­ni­als do in the win­ter. Even though Oudolf has selected plants that main­tain strong pro­files into the win­ter, the gar­den looks like it’s seen bet­ter days. But really, that’s the out­look that the designer brings to the gar­den: Things change. Plants grow, bloom, die back. (Oudolf’s book Design­ing with Plants, after all, even has a chap­ter called “Death.” What feel-good gar­den book would even dare to acknowl­edge such a thing?)

The path through the heart of the gar­den was off-limits—I guess they were wor­ried about peo­ple slip­ping and falling on the frozen walk­ways. Still, you can expe­ri­ence the garden’s perime­ter with the Chicago sky­line behind it. There you see the died back remains of last year’s growth: tall, dark spires of fox­glove rel­a­tives (prob­a­bly Dig­i­talis fer­rug­inea or parv­i­flora); light brown clumps of var­i­ous grasses; del­i­cate, expres­sive cur­tains of bur­net (San­guisorba offi­cianalis alba).

No gar­dener can begin to know every plant on earth, so I’m depend­ing on my iden­ti­fi­ca­tion on the garden’s ter­rific plant list that you can find online and on what I know from Oudolf’s books to be some of his favorite plants. (Actu­ally, the Plant Life of the Lurie Gar­den pages have not only plant lists, but pho­tos and cul­tural tips on most of the plants in the gar­den. It got to be one of the most impres­sive online guides to a garden.)

Although prob­a­bly most famous in the gar­den com­mu­nity for the peren­nial plant­i­ngs, the Lurie Gar­den was actu­ally over­seen by Kathryn Gustafson (with other mem­bers of her firm, Gustafson, Guthrie, Nicholand) with input from artist/set designer Robert Israel. Gustafson con­tributed the over­all land­scape design, while Israel is cred­ited with the “con­cep­tual review,” sig­nalling that this is a gar­den of ideas as much as it is a gar­den of plantings.

The cen­tral gar­den fea­tures two sec­tions, a “light plate” and a “dark plate,” rep­re­sent­ing tec­tonic geo­log­i­cal forces. (Kustafson’s office is in Port­land, Israel is based in Los Ange­les. Both are loca­tions where peo­ple think more about geo­log­i­cal move­ment than they do here in Chicago.) Pro­tect­ing the gar­den on two sides is this giant arma­ture that will mature into a hedge that rep­re­sents Chicago as the city of “broad shoul­ders,” as made famous in Carl Sandburg’s 1916 poem, “Chicago.”

With Oudolf’s plants now retreat­ing into the ground or only defined by ghosts of them­selves, it’s Gustafson’s con­tri­bu­tion that you notice most in the mid­dle of win­ter. The curi­ous struc­ture of dark steel with dark metal cables looks like a zoo pen con­tain­ing tightly planted alter­nat­ing blocks of dif­fer­ent arborvi­tae vari­eties and decid­u­ous horn­beam and Euro­pean beech. One of the decid­u­ous trees is inter­est­ing in that it that holds on to its leaves through the win­ter. As the year pro­gresses, I can see the decid­u­ous plants leaf­ing out at dif­fer­ent times, reduc­ing the con­trast between the ever­greens and the broadleaf trees.

The effect of the caged green­ery is an odd effect, for sure. Any clipped hedge talks about the con­trol of nature, and to put nature in a cage like this, like a botan­i­cal zoo, rein­forces that almost vio­lent act. It’s not a “pretty” effect, and I’m not sure I love it. But it catches my inter­est and rein­forces this as a gar­den of ideas.

In the end I guess my reac­tion to the Lurie Gar­den in Feb­ru­ary is sim­i­lar to what I feel when I hold a dor­mant bulb. I can appre­ci­ate the thing in its cur­rent state, but it’s the hope and knowl­edge of what it can do that really keeps me inter­ested. It’s not really fair to try to give it a fair read in the mid­dle of win­ter. Too bad I won’t be back every cou­ple of months to check on its progress.

If star­ing at died-down peren­ni­als and caged shrub­bery isn’t your cup of java, all you need to do to cross the street to the Art Insti­tute of Chicago. There you’ll find all sorts of amaz­ing art­work cel­e­brat­ing warm, green land­scapes, includ­ing this lily pond by Monet…

…and this Tahit­ian land­scape by Gaughin.

Paint­ings and so much of what humans do is all about per­ma­nence and things not chang­ing. We pur­pose­fully make things that resist change, whether it’s paint that doesn’t fade or Twinkies that will prob­a­bly remain as edi­ble in three decades as they are today. The gar­den across the street cel­e­brates what does change.

Give the gar­den just a few months. The peren­ni­als will be spec­tac­u­lar once spring gets going. And the “hedge” will fill in over the next decade and read more like a hedge than a zoo exhibit.

When you’re vis­it­ing the Lurie Gar­den you’ll be just a few dozen steps from Frank Gehry’s brawny new shell for pops con­certs on a lawn cov­ered by this lat­tice trel­lis structure.

And then there’s this sculp­ture by Anish Kapoor titled “The Cloud Gate”–which the locals have dubbed “the bean.” It’s major fun to walk around its con­cave and con­vex sur­faces that give you this cool, dis­torted reflec­tion of the skyline.

With its con­vex exte­rior and con­cave inte­rior, this is art­work that will make you look fat, a fact that this self-portrait can attest to…

I’m not sure whether it was inten­tional, but the Gehry band­shell and the Kapoor sculp­ture and the shoul­der hedge of the gar­den all fea­ture steel–a mate­r­ial that makes pos­si­ble the sky­line that rises around them. Chicago with­out steel? Unthinkable.

And now, Chicago with­out the Lurie Gar­den, the Gehry band­shell and the Kapoor Cloud Gate? Unthink­able, as well.

February 27 2009 | Categories: art • gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: Anish Kapoor • architecture • Art Institute of Chicago • Chicago • Frank Gehry • hedges • Lurie Garden • Millennium Park • Piet Oudolf • steel | 5 Comments »

chicago winter fling

It’s win­ter here in Chicago alright. There wasn’t much snow on the ground when I arrived, but a quick look at the leaf­less trees and a quick duck out­side didn’t leave any con­fu­sion that it’s any sea­son other than win­ter. I’ve been pretty busy attend­ing a con­fer­ence, but I did man­age to take a lit­tle archi­tec­tural tour the other day with some of the other conferees.

Here’s a nice house in the Hyde Park neigh­bor­hood as seen from the bus. Notice the wintry-looking bare trees. Brrrr, cold, said the Cal­i­for­nia blogger.

Though nice, the house isn’t a major archi­tec­tural land­mark. How­ever, as of last month, it became an impor­tant his­tor­i­cal one: This is the non-White House res­i­dence of Barack Obama. Actu­ally, it’s the side of the house. The road on the front side has been sealed off by the Secret Ser­vice.

That in part sums up the expe­ri­ence of vis­it­ing here in the win­ter. There’s a lot of stuff that would be really interesting–if only it were open. Or you see stuff that’s maybe not look­ing its best.

Still, there are at least a cou­ple blog­gable things I’ve run across that I’ll be post­ing after I return home. If only this were May, when the gar­dens are look­ing more extrav­a­gant and the gar­den blog­gers will be con­ven­ing for their Spring Fling…

February 21 2009 | Categories: gardening • places | Tags: Barack Obama • Chicago • Hyde Park • seasons • winter | 4 Comments »

chicago in may–garden bloggers unite!

In case any of you missed the post­ing back in Sep­tem­ber, over at Mr McGregor’s Daugh­ter, be sure to mark your cal­en­dars for the 2009 Spring Fling of gar­den blog­gers in Chicago. The dates are set for May 29–31, a per­fect time to visit the Lurie Gar­den (after hang­ing with the other blog­gers, of course).

Unfor­tu­nately, my only 2009 Chicago trip will be in Feb­ru­ary. But for those of you who can make it this should be a great way to finally meet some of your fel­low gar­den blog­gers. From all the reports the 2008 Spring Fling in Austin was amaz­ing, and this should be at least as great. Be sure to blog about it big time (and I know all of you will)–Make those of us who can’t be there leaf-green with envy!

December 12 2008 | Categories: rambles | Tags: blogging • Chicago • Spring Fling | 1 Comment »

chicago in…february?

Work will be tak­ing me to Chicago in mid-February. My first reac­tion to the con­fer­ence orga­niz­ers’ choice of loca­tion and time was some­thing approach­ing dis­be­lief. Chicago in Feb­ru­ary? I don’t have that many lay­ers of cloth­ing in my closet!

Mind you, you’re lis­ten­ing to a wimp from San Diego. I’ve been get­ting dis­tressed that the nights are start­ing to drop below 50 degrees. I feel like I need to count my fin­gers and toes every time I come back indoors to be sure they haven’t frozen off.

My first trip to Chicago as an adult was just over a decade ago, and I quickly fell in love with all the cul­tural ben­e­fits of the place. Its muse­ums, archi­tec­ture and restau­rants are noth­ing short of amaz­ing. Those are all pretty much indoor things, how­ever. What’s a wimpy sub­trop­i­cal gar­dener and out­doors per­son to do?

On the top of my list of things to see in Chicago is the Lurie Gar­den, designed by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd, Piet Oudolf and Robert Israel. Aside from the Bat­tery in New York, I believe it’s Oudolf’s only pub­lic work in the U.S.

Left: The Lurie Gar­den in June. (Photo by Tor­sodog via the Wiki­me­dia Com­mons [ source ])

But the gar­den in Feb­ru­ary? Even though Oudolf tries to incor­po­rate nat­ural cycles into his designs, cre­at­ing spaces that honor and cel­e­brate the nat­ural changes in the world, I sus­pect that Feb­ru­ary will be a harsh test.

Still, even if it’s an amaz­ing place in Feb­ru­ary, I’ll know that I’ll have missed one of the main points of the gar­den. This is a garden-as-process. It’s not about look­ing gor­geous for a few weeks of the year. Instead it’s ded­i­cated to the changes that hap­pen as the sea­sons progress. (From the pho­tos I’ve seen, it also hap­pens to look great most of the year…)

It’ll be like step­ping into a con­cert hall to hear a few quiet min­utes of a piece of music that lasts much longer. Even if those few min­utes are amaz­ing, that music is a liv­ing thing that has a life longer that what you’ve expe­ri­enced. You leave the hall sens­ing that you’ve missed some amaz­ing moments.

I sus­pect that’ll be how I feel after I leave Chicago.

December 11 2008 | Categories: gardening • landscape • places | Tags: Chicago • Piet Oudolf • travel | 2 Comments »