Parc del Laberint d'Horta

Last week I spent a sunny morning in the Parc del Laberint d'Horta named after its impressive cypress maze. Emitting a sense of abandonment, with its main building partly in ruins, and offering treats as the topiary garden, the romantic creek, the island of love, the camellia garden and the false cemetery it's a wonderful place to lose yourself.

Tree house hamper

Image: Etsy

The thought of a house in a tree is always tickling. Jenna Fenwick has hand screen printed her illustration with non-toxic water based pigments on organic fabric and made a hamper, now for sale on Etsy.

Come out and play

Original images: Come Out And Play, Movium 

Finding it hard to overlook the resemblance between the grid pattern of the streets surrounding Washington Park Square and a Pac Man game plan Mattia Romeo and Gregory Trefry initiated a human version of the game calling it Pac Manhattan in 2004. (Gregory Trefry is also one of the presenters at the upcoming Movium Winter Conference I posted about here.) This came to be the starting point of the annual festival Come Out And Play offering play and games in the city streets, squares and parks with its inhabitants as participants.

The festival, every year growing and every year moving to a new location to attract new kinds of people, wants to provide a forum for new types of public games and for the participants to play and interact with their city while experiencing a sense of belonging and a strengthening in their relationship with the city and its public spaces.

Via Movium.

Iron Wire Tree

Image: Signerat

This tangled tree made of iron wire by Arnfridsson Art and Steel makes me think of fanciful fairy tales and old secret gardens. It can be bought at Signerat.

Jardí Botànic de Barcelona

Yesterday I paid a visit to the Barcelona Botanical Garden located on the northwestern slopes of Montjuïc. The area, between the 1940s and 1970s home to a vast shantytown known as Can Valero and later the site of a landfill, is now a lush 14-hectare garden displaying a representative sample of flora from the areas of the world with a mediterranean climate, i.e. Australia, Chile, California, South Africa and The Mediterranean Basin.

The garden, designed by a team of architects, horticulturalists, biologists and landscape architect Bet Figueras, is covered by an unstructured grid of situ concrete paths adapted to the topography of the area creating organized spaces for the plant communities.

Opened in 1999, the Barcelona Botanical Garden has a very contemporary feel and the objectives to help preserve threatened plant species and raise public awareness about nature and the importance of biodiversity.

The winter being a period of rest for the aerial parts of the plants, I can't wait to come back in time for the spring rains.

Eiffel tree

Image: Inhabitat

A french urban planning consultancy recently launched their vision to turn the eiffel tower into an immense body of biomass by covering it with 600.000 plants which, according to the consultants, would symbolize the reconciliation of nature and mankind as the world's population heads for nine billion, seven billion of whom would live in urban areas. Why not? Via Reuters.

Poetic path

Image: Landezine

I like how this thin path winds about among the beech trees supported only by the trunks. Installation performed between may and october this year in Kadriorg Park, Tallinn, Estonia. By Tetsuo Kondo Architects. Via Landezine.

It's a sign!

I walked by this sign in Gràcia today. Maybe it's trying to point out a direction for the upcoming holidays.

Second hand cooking

A few days ago there was a second-hand market at Placa de la Virreina where you could only buy things in exchange for food and beverages. It was initiated by an organization whose idea is cooking for homeless people with left over food given to them from markets at closing time.

Good cause at a nice site!

Happy wall

Wall painting in the corner of Carrer Verdi and Carrer d'Or in Gràcia, Barcelona.

Concrete deckchairs

Today I walked by this group of Sillargas designed by Gonzalo Milá and Juan Carlos Inés for Escofet. Situated at Platja de la Barceloneta in Barcelona they are being well used also in december.

Moses Bridge

Images: Landezine

This evening I marvel at how this ingeniously designed bridge splits the water in an almost biblical way. By RO&AD architecten. Via Landezine.

Lovely leaf

Image: Natura y Arte

Inspired by traditional paper cutting techniques art project Natura y Arte creates pieces like this.

Landschaftspark Duisberg-Nord

Image: Wikipedia (altered)

Today I read in the outdoor life magazine 365 about the Duisberg-Nord landscape park in the german Ruhr area which has been created around an old ironworks. Apparently you can climb a 70 m tall platform and dive in an old gasometer. If you want to. This whole place is a good example of incorporating the old into the new.

Oh, now I realize I've been to this site. On a field trip a long time ago. I thought I recognized that chimney!

Save the date: january 26 Livet i staden 2012

Illustration: Nils-Petter Ekwall. Via Movium

This winter's conference arranged by Movium will go by the name of Livet i staden 2012 (Life in the city 2012). This time the conference will address the idea of the city as an association of people who have gathered in a number of communities and the landscapes surrounding these people.

There will be a number of inspiring lecturers including the following:

Helga Fassbinder, Foundation Biotope City, Amsterdam, Holland

Mattias Litström, Utopia Arkitekter AB, Stockholm

Gregory Trefry, Come Out & Play Festival, New York City, USA

Piet Oudolf, Hummelo, Holland 

The conference will take place at SLU Alnarp, one of the locations of the university educating landscape architects in Sweden.

The magic of labyrinths

Pattern of the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral. Image: Labyrinthos

Some years ago I walked the terrazzo stone labyrinth at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. The idea of labyrinths always fascinated me and I think their shape and function transform perfectly into the created outdoor environments, with or without the spiritual meaning.

"The labyrinth is an archetype, a divine imprint, found in all religious traditions in various forms around the world. By walking a replica of the Chartres labyrinth, laid in the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France around 1220, we are rediscovering a long-forgotten mystical tradition.

The labyrinth has only one path so there are no tricks to it and no dead ends. The path winds throughout and becomes a mirror for where we are in our lives. It touches our sorrows and releases our joys. Walk it with an open mind and an open heart."

Quote from the Grace Cathedral website.

A walk through the garden

Picked out project: Red Ribbon Park

Photo: Kongjian Yu, Cao Yang

Photo: Kongjian Yu, Cao Yang

Photo: Kongjian Yu, Cao Yang

I so appreciate projects like this where you only need to see one picture to know what it's all about. The award winning Red Ribbon Tanghe River Park in Qinhuangdao City, China is an explicit and very functional answer to questions of preserving natural habitats as well as creating new recreational values in this quickly developing area. The ribbon structure is 500 meters long and combines functions as seating, lighting and orientation. By Turenscape and Peking University Graduate School of Landscape Architecture in Beijing, China.

Save the date: september 5-7 2012 IFLA world congress

Ten months from now the next IFLA world congress called LANDSCAPES IN TRANSITION will take place in Cape Town, South Africa. The subject up for discourse is the social and environmental challenges facing us while moving towards a sustainable future. September is springtime in South Africa!

Read more at the IFLA web site.

Mild weather

Viburnum flowers at the square. In the end of november.