This is the last in this little series of posts on how nature has shaped what we do artistically, continuing on the post on the book, Inspired by Nature: Plants: The Building/Botany Connection.
The earlier post talked about the overt natural patterns that architects have incorporated into their works. The authors of this book also talk in more conceptual terms about how the way plants grow could also help us understand how buildings are designed.
One of the plant growth patterns is that of the epiphyte, a plant that grows on the branches of another plant. In this way the second plant can gain access to higher levels of light high in a forest. Just think of the many tropical orchids and bromeliads that use this strategy, living high in the treetops, enjoying the brighter light and protection that a treetop location affords.
Finding a parallel in the architectural realm the authors propose this project by the Dutch firm, Korteknie Stuhlmacher Architecten. The Las Palmas Parasite sits on top of another structure in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. By using the structure below, this little green addition takes advantage of the views and sunlight available dozens of feet up without the need to build a tall foundational understructure to get it up so high in the rooftops. Although called a “parasite” even by the architects, the project sits fairly benignly on its host, enjoying the location, but not drinking up its precious plant juices. To prove this point, the little structure was dismantled a few years after it was planted here on the rooftop, probably with minimal effect on the warehouses below. [ source ]
A true parasite has a more marked effect on the health of its plant host. Plants like mistletoe and dodder use another plant for support, as do epiphytes, but they also tap into the host’s reserves and draw nutrition directly from it, sometimes contributing to the death of the host.
Architectural equivalents of this are probably a lot more commonplace than that of the epiphyte—You probably have a neighbor with a room addition or remodel that seems to suck the life juices out of the original building. This book propose a couple examples of architectural parasites, one of them being this Fire and Police Station in Berlin by Sauerbruch Hutton Architects. Here the bright red-and-green glass structure hangs onto the frame of the original traditional brick structure. I’m not sure it’s sucking the host’s juices dry, but it certainly is making itself felt more assertively than with the epiphyte above.
And the last example I wanted to share was one employing the plant characteristic of the forest canopy. The trees of tropical forests grow up and up, often creating a thin concentration of greenery high above the forest floor, with tall naked tree trunks supporting the high-altitude garden.
An architectural equivalent is the Sharp Centre for Design in Toronto, built by Alsop Architects. This otherworldly building hovers high above the buildings below, like high treetops hovering high above the shade-loving plants of the understorey far below. [ source ]
Wild, eh?
None of these projects “fit it” in any traditional sense. The new buildings don’t rely on mimicking how the existing architecture looks. But to me these buildings have the same sense of happy coexistence that well-paired plants in the garden have. You can appreciate the individuals, but together they make something new and interesting.
September 24 2008 | Categories: art • gardening • places | Tags: architecture • inspired by nature | 2 Comments »
After reading yesterday’s post on natural motifs in architecture, Linda shared this photo that she’d taken recently on her recent trip to Europe. One of her stops was Barcelona’s famous Parc Güell, designed by Antoni Gaudí, where she found this haunting detail of palm fronds decorating a fence.
Palm fronds in bronze fence
Ever since I saw a lyrical documentary on Gaudí in the 1980s (I’m pretty sure it was Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Antonio Gaudí) visiting the park has been on my list of things to do…someday.
Architecture and the botanical world of course have a special relationship. Early shelters were constructed of branches, twigs, thatch, fronds, logs, and other plant products that would provide shelter from the elements. It somehow seems fitting that memories of those early days of human civilization live on in how we decorate our built environment, long after many of our building materials now come about through industrial processes and not through natural ones: Even as we seek shelter from the natural world, we continue to need to celebrate it.
Yes, humans seem to find ever darker things to do to each other and the rest of the planet. But quiet celebrations like this of what’s truly important continue to give me guarded hope for the species.
September 23 2008 | Categories: art • gardening • landscape • landscape design • places | Tags: Antoni Gaudí • Barceloa • fences • hardscape • inspired by nature | 1 Comment »
I picked up a book the other day, Inspired by Nature: Plants : The Building/Botany Connection, a translation of a Spanish architecture book by Alejandro Bahamón, Patricia Pérez and Alex Campello.
It looks at the relationship of plants and architecture in interesting ways, from the conceptual—relating how buildings are designed in ways that mimic plants, to the more overt—seeing how recognizable plant forms are incorporated into structures. Here are some great projects featured in the book:
Erick van Egeraat Associated Architects. Dutch Embassy, Warsaw, Poland. Photo by C. Richters [ source ]
Embassies these days have to employ protective measures. The stem-and-leaf fencing on this one is terrific, working as a part of the overall composition as well as serving a defensive purpose.
Klein Dytham Architecture. Leaf Chapel, Kobuchizawa, Japan. [ source ]
The vine-inspired openings on this wedding chapel light up at night in an amazing way. And during the day the sunlight filters into the interior. The patterning reminds me of the kind of designs you find on fabrics and everyday objects. It’s cool to see it blown up onto architecture.
René González. Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, Florida. [ source ]
Ceramic tiles give a strong feeling of stalks of bamboo on the walls of this building, but they’re abstracted in interesting ways. You almost might not realize that they’re bamboo in origin if it weren’t for the stands of golden bamboo planted nearby.
Allmann Sattler Wappner Architekten. Südwestmetall Offices, Reutlingen, Germany. [ source ]
Leaf designs cut from metal sheets combine the regular geometry of a grid with free-form natural shapes that defy being rationalized into neat squares. The pavement underfoot also participates in this interaction of nature and human thought.
All these projects seem a little beyond my capabilities to pull off at my little house. But then that project with he bamboo tiles might be just the coolest solution for the new bathroom shower…
September 22 2008 | Categories: rambles | Tags: Allmann Sattler Wappner Architekten • architecture • botanical designs • Erick van Egeraat Associated Architects • inspired by nature • Klein Dytham Architecture • René González | 2 Comments »
I wrote earlier about how the eucalyptus trees in my area had started to shed their bark and mentioned how there were some interesting colors combinations that were happening as part of the process. The trees have continued shedding bark all summer and now into fall.
Not long ago I was talking to Linda about colors, and she’d mentioned being struck by some of the same colors herself, and how someday she thought it might be interesting to make a quilt using some of those unexpected juxtapositions of color.
The widowmaker
For fun, I’ve taken some photos and made color palettes based on them using the tools at
colourlovers.com. Most of the combos come from colors on the bark, but the last one below derives from the colors of new leaves against the berry-red shades of the new stems.
These are all on the literal side. You could take any of these pictures and get a lot wilder—especially into the plum-grape-purple territory.
The titles for the palettes—“widomaker”—comes from the dark nickname gum trees have in Australia because of their casual habit of dropping branches onto unsuspecting folk below. It’s not hyperbole. Twice, just this past year, I’ve come within less than fifty feet of having big branches dropped on my head.
Exposed eucalyptus trunk
Color by COLOURlovers
Shedding eucalyptus bark
Color by COLOURlovers
New eucalyptus leaves
Color by COLOURlovers
September 21 2008 | Categories: art • gardening • landscape • plant profiles | Tags: color combinations • eucalyptus • exfoliating bark • inspired by nature | No Comments »
One of our fabulous wedding presents was the offer to make us a quilt. We could pick the design. We could pick the fabrics. How generous was that?
That got me looking at fabrics in a totally different way. One of the things I realized was how many of the designs had botanical origins. Here are just a few of the plant-based ones that I found interesting. Some are fairly realistic, some are so stylized that you have to look hard to see the botanical-ness of the inspiration. But no matter how abstracted from the original, the garden lives on in the fabric.
Charcoal gray botanical fabric
[caption id=”attachment_1078” align=”alignnone” width=”250” caption=”Red damask quilt fabric”]
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Bamboo inspired fabric design
[caption id=”attachment_1080” align=”alignnone” width=”250” caption=”Brown and green chrysanthemum fabric”]
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And after poring through all the fabric choices there was the issue of the design. There were so many options…traditional quilts, double wedding rings, strip and curves designs, watercolor quilts…books and books filled with interesting designs. And then I ran across the online catalog of the 2002 Quilt Visions quilt exhibition at the Oceanside Museum of Art here in San Diego County.
Liz Axford. Bamboo Boogie Woogie I,60” x 44”, hand-dyed cottons, machine pieced, machine quilted. [ source ]
The quilt looked like it wouldn’t be ridiculously difficult to piece. However, being an art quilt, it had lots of over-the-top labor-intensive details going on with it…stuff that to me looks like there’s hand dyeing and possibly hand-printing involved. Unfortunately, the museum site didn’t list the specifics. And they didn’t even list the artist! I did see the print catalog of this show, and I’ll post the artist as soon as I can research who she was. [Note: Thanks to Linda, I’ve got the catalog in my hands, and I’ve now been able to fill in some of the information the website lacked.] I found it interesting that the brief writeup in the catalog said that she had been inspired by bamboo, and that she was a member of the International Bamboo Society—You can really that influence in her design.
Fortunately, what I was most interested in was the construction method. Commonly-available fabrics could lend a sense of the original but also take the design into different territory. I played with different fabrics combinations and ended up with a tentative first draft selection of thirteen fabrics, including two of the ones pictured above. And playing with the basic construction method and enlarging it I came up with the Photoshopped mockup below.
Possible quilt design
At this point I’m just playing. I suspect that almost everyone’s first quilt attempts may not have a lot of subtlety to them, and I worry that this is a little that way. But like I said this is just a working draft that will probably change when looked at by a seasoned quilter. What’s fairly easy to do on screen may be ridiculously difficult in real quilting life. And these are fabrics thrown together from looking at them online. I’m sure that actually selecting real-life fabrics will change the result.
But gosh all this is so much fun—You can easily see why quilting is a $3.3 billion-a-year industry!
September 01 2008 | Categories: art • gardening | Tags: botanical designs • fabrics • inspired by nature • quilts | 7 Comments »
